Top Five TV Show Characters

Ladies and Gentlemen - introducing Judge Jonathan's Top Fives!
For the time being, all top five posts will be mirrored on http://top5ives.blogspot.com. Time will tell whether that will become Judge Jonathan's permanent home.

I still need to get rid of those Gmail invites, by the way...


Today, Judge Jonathan invites you to discuss one of his main areas of expertise - TV shows, and specifically, the characters that make them great. Being the first official Judge Jonathan's Top Fives post, this was a really tough one to figure out - hence the need for a lot of honourable mentions. Nonetheless, careful analysis has ensured that in the top five, you will find only the ultimate, essential and definitive TV show characters.

Honourable mentions:
Cosmo Kramer (Seinfeld) - for being the ultimate eccentric.
Jack Bauer (24) - for being so bad-ass, and for that very last scene of Season 3.
Cole Turner (Charmed) - for going from evil demon to all-powerful, but unhappy romantic.
Gil Grissom (C.S.I.) - for making entomology look cool.
Richard Fish (Ally McBeal) - for all those Fishisms.
Chandler Bing (Friends) - for all those - well, Bingisms.
And last but not least:
Jarod (The Pretender) - for being superhumanly smart, and superhumanly good. We still miss you.

And now, the official Top 5ive:

5. Ms. Parker (The Pretender)

Don't mess with this lady. Instead, find the one single episode of The Pretender where stone-cold Ms. Parker (whose first name will forever remain a mystery) does not pick up the phone with her trademark "what?!".

4. Dr. Sam Beckett (Quantum Leap)

This character's name was not chosen by coincidence. Travelling through time, making things right that somehow went wrong, always hoping to find his way back to 1999. I know I cried when I heard those final words - "Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home".

3. Stephanie Forrester (The Bold and the Beautiful)

"The most important thing is the family"; the Forrester family, that is. And Stephanie, godmother of daytime soap, has been fighting for all of them (well, except for Brooke) for nearly 20 years, using all - all - necessary means. You go, grandma.

2. Pacey Witter (Dawson's Creek)

Impulsive, witty, handsome, funny, and, in his way, self-confident: Pacey truly represents the kind of man every girl wants to meet, the kind of man every boy wants to become - and the only man who deserved to get the girl in the end.

...and the winner is:

1. George Costanza (Seinfeld)

Because he's overweight, because he's short, because he's bald, because he's cheap, because he's dishonest. Because he likes to go by the name of 'Art Vandelay' and pretend he's an architect when he's trying to impress people. Because when told of his fiancée's death, he reacted with what the doctor described as "restrained jubilation". But most of all, because he was, is and always will be the funniest character on TV - George is Number One.

JJtags:

• topfive
• television
• seinfeld
• dawsonscreek
• quantumleap
• pretender
• georgecostanza