The 25 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years
25. David Fisher- Six Feet Under

A few weeks ago, Entertainment Weekly ran a list celebrating the best characters of its twenty years of publication. The list was pretty solid, although there were some characters I downright hate (Carrie Bradshaw), some who shouldn’t count (The Joker), some who were ranked way too high (Sue Sylvester), some who I think will fade away with time (Austin Powers), and some who were heinously left out (many of whom I’ll write about). These lists exist to create arguments, so I thought it might be a fun exercise to rank my own top twenty-five and check in on them periodically.

A friend of mine once called Six Feet Under “a show that will make you a better human being.” As high-minded an endorsement as that is, it’s not without merit. The themes that Six Feet Under explores—death, grief, family, brotherhood, love, doubt, and ultimately faith—are exactly the same concepts you must master to be a better human being. In the show’s five seasons, no one struggled more mightily with these ideas, and learned more about them, than the middle child of the Fishers, David.

Of the Fisher clan, David is cast as the responsible one, and we’re conscious of the weight on his shoulders, both in keeping together his living family and upholding his father’s legacy. He’s a man filled with a heightened awareness of his place in the world, and he’s pained whenever what he’s doing is inconsistent with what he’s supposed to be doing. While he’s usually depicted with a shirt and tie, most of his development has to do with unbuttoning and letting go. That’s what his foil Nate and his partner Keith push him to do, and he finds a healthy balance.

David is also the most realistic gay character in TV history because of the cliches he resists: He’s monogamous instead of promiscuous; he’s religious instead of libertine; he’s reserved instead of flamboyant. He is honest about his lifestyle with some people, and he is guarded with others. He’s more of a real person than an exaggerated type, which is all anyone ever asked for.

While the writing of the character was remarkably detailed and consistent, we should credit Michael C. Hall with a lot of David’s growth. He was capable of showy speeches and moving breakdowns, but, especially in the season following David’s violent attack, Hall excelled at being quietly overwhelmed, adrift in emotions he couldn’t control. His searching eyes could convey all of the lessons that he, and we, had learned. He was the heart and soul of a show with a lot of heart and soul.

The 25 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years
24. Seth Cohen- The OC

During The OC’s first season in 2003, it was one of the best shows on TV, which few people will now admit. By the show’s rushed conclusion after the fourth season, it was a whipping post for missed opportunities and maudlin acting. Part of the reason the show ended unsuccessfully, however, was because of the greatness of that marathon first season. So much plot and character development was jammed into the first twenty-four episodes, so many romantic entanglements and frenemy combinations were explored, that there was nowhere to go but down. Creator Josh Schwartz himself would probably tell you that he blew his load too early. You can only have one beautiful person punch another beautiful person into a swimming pool so many times.

While the show’s faults are obvious—absurd plot developments, Mischa Barton, an over-dependence on music—The OC negotiated a space in between the genuine and the ironic that few other works ever have. Schwartz retraced the juicy tropes of Beverly Hills 90210 and was sometimes able to mine them for real emotion, but he also portrayed southern California with a knowing distance that allowed extra-textual readings. Any teen hour-long is bound to trade in unintentional comedy (again, Mischa Barton was the female lead), but this was different. This was an ongoing commentary on the show’s more soap operatic developments that originated within—but without—the text itself. It was done through the device of Seth Cohen.

Played by Adam Brody, Seth served as an obvious stand-in for show-runner Schwartz. Like Schwartz, he is a hyper-literate, geeky, upper-class Jew who is at odds with the shallow SoCal around him but gets by with quick wits and winning charm. Within the environment of Orange County, he stands out: skinny in a muscular world, reasoning in an impulsive world, pining in a world of instant gratification. And, in what might have been a first for network TV, he was an unabashed hipster, even if people didn’t yet know what that was. He turned Ryan onto kung fu films. He made mixtapes for Summer with bands she had never heard of. He reveled in nostalgia and tight shirts, obsessed with the cool, even if it was only his own version of cool. And here’s where it gets complicated.

In relation to the OC universe, Seth was something we thought we had seen. He’s the sarcastic best friend. He’s the nerd who doesn’t fit in and has to disarm people with wise-cracks. As much as Schwartz imbued Seth with those familiar qualities though, Adam Brody also filled in blanks. By all accounts, it was Brody’s love for Death Cab for Cutie that got them onto the show. It was his praise for The Goonies that got incorporated into the dialogue. It was his real-life romance with Rachel Bilson that developed into a romantic thread on the show. Over time, he revealed more and more in interviews that Schwartz “let him do his own thing.” It’s true that Brody was playing a type, but only in the respect that he himself was a type; Brody was playing a unique human being only inasmuch as he himself was a unique human being.

In postmodern literary theory, this is what’s called The Simulacrum. Jean Baudrillard described the concept as “a copy without an original”; that is, an element of culture that resonates in a way that is both new and sort of rehearsed/retreaded at the same time. The classic example of this is the ’50s diner. We’ve all been to one and can picture its vinyl booths, formica tables, checkered linoleum, poodle skirts, James Dean posters, Elvis music, burgers and malts. And though we all know that studied ideal of a ’50s diner, there was no place in the actual ’50s that combined all of these elements in such a way. It’s an approximation, a bastardization of cultural elements that never coexisted in such an obvious, artificial manner. It’s a simulacrum of those things, just as Seth Cohen is both a character we think we have nailed down and a character for which we have absolutely no reference point.

As you would expect, pop culture at large had no idea how to react to this. In an interesting twist of fate, it was Adam Brody, not his tan, brooding, blonde costars, who became the heart-throb of the show. He projected a sensitivity and a squinting self-awareness that women found appealing at the time. Plus, most teenaged girls are huge Baudrillard fans, which explains the whole Twilight thing too. Since the character and Brody were forever intertwined, his acting career suffered. He took weasely, fast-talking bitparts in Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Thank You for Smoking because no one could imagine him as anything else. I feel sorry for Brody. He had the comedic timing and affability to be the next Tom Hanks, but it was because he was so perfect as Seth Cohen that we don’t see much of him anymore. It’s not his fault.

It was the tendency of The OC to exploit things. Naturally, a character who began as slightly postmodern became ridiculously postmodern. By the third season, Seth and Summer were running into characters from The Valley, which was the OC-esque show-within-the-show. Because Brody played in a band, Seth makes a joke about the guy from The Valley’s band, and Summer questions the character’s off-screen romance with his  co-star: “Are you sure that’s a good idea? What if you guys break up?” Actors going out in real-life play characters going out who meet characters going out who are actors going out in real-life. Anything more meta- would be uncivilized. We are in the diner pumping quarters into the jukebox.

My relationship with The OC was complex. I didn’t advertise to people that I watched the show. I don’t believe in guilty pleasures—if I like something, I can explain why and have no reason to be bashful about it—but at the time I felt as if few people understood the levels on which the show operated. I didn’t want to be similarly misunderstood. Seth Cohen was a supporting character, but it was impossible to imagine the program without him. What separated The OC from its counterparts was the fact that it didn’t take itself too seriously, and Seth was the reason it didn’t. He was its lifeblood. A viewer could be engrossed in the show on a genuine level and, at the same time, hover above its mechanics like Seth. This medium is always criticized for one-dimensional characters, but here is one who affects the work on every theoretical level. And he punched people into swimming pools. That was cool too.

The 25 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years
23. Stringer Bell- The Wire

[spoilers within]

In the Entertainment Weekly list that inspired this one, the Wire character the staff chose was Omar, and I can’t really fault them for it. He gets some of the juiciest lines, he’s played with an awe-inspiring commitment, and he lasted for the bulk of the series. They also stress the contradictions that he exemplified as a way of showing how deep and complex the characters of the program were, how everything was more than what it seemed.

To me though, The Wire’s true strength lied in thematic consistency. It’s a show about how small a person’s world can be, as well as how little hope there actually is for someone to escape his destiny. The drug wars that constitute much of the show don’t have any winners: they just have people who lose more slowly. Both cop and criminal are victims of circumstance whose flaws catch up with us, and no one on the landmark show spoke to this theme like Idris Elba’s Stringer Bell. As drug kingpin Avon Barksdale’s right-hand man, Stringer grew up poor and humble but grew to be rich and influential. As he educates himself and seeks to become a legitimate businessman, however, he realizes the differences between wealthy and hood-rich.

Somewhere in the middle of season one, Stringer distinguishes himself as a more sophisticated, ambitious man than many of his counterparts. By the end of the first season, he’s cashing in on some of that ambition, feigning calm and confidence in Avon’s absence. By the middle of season two, he seems desperate to leave the game, getting stalled by bureaucracy as he underestimates politicians who end up being just as dirty as he is. By the end of season two, he’s dead.

Way before he actually gets killed, the writing is on the wall. It was only a matter of time before a man as cool and machiavellian a person as Stringer Bell got betrayed by someone just as ruthless. Stringer serves as a tragic hero whose fatal flaw was not believing that he was just another corner kid. He floats through the second season like a ghost. He seems doomed, no matter how meticulously he switches the SIM cards on his phone or tightens up his tie. There’s a conversation he has on a rooftop with Avon—in fact the last conversation they ever have—in which, speaking of the assets they’ve accumulated, he says, “We don’t have to dream no more.” This should be a vainglorious declaration, but in Elba’s skilled delivery it rings like a hollow lament. If your entire life is based on dreaming, you have no identity when those dreams actually come true. Stringer’s caught between two worlds, and he knows he doesn’t really belong in either one.

Even the character’s smart casual wardrobe speaks to his place in the world. His polos and stretchy shirts are more mature and cool than the baggy white-tees around him, but they’re still worlds away from the pinstripes and pocket squares of the men he’s trying to bribe. 

Elba, who affects such a convincing Baltimore accent that you’d never know he was British, communicates poise so well when he’s looking over his glasses at runners that we’re surprised he can generate so much pathos when he’s drifting over his head in other circles. Rather than tipping his hand with panic, Elba plays Stringer’s last moments in the same subtle way he played everything. He’s cool. He tries to bargain for his life, asking: “What do y’all want? Money? Because I’m much more useful to you alive.” Isn’t it fitting that even his life became just another commodity?

Sometimes being cool isn’t enough.

The 25 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years
9. Ron Burgundy- Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
22. Kenny Powers- Eastbound & Down

St. Matthew wrote: “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.” That statement sums up what makes Ron Burgundy and Kenny Powers so compelling, but I doubt either one has read the Bible. Powers has probably only read his own autobiography, and even that is, tellingly, an audio book. Burgundy is, of course, more of a TV guy.

Will Ferrell and Danny McBride specialize in playing quotable men whose bravado gets the better of them or—to put it more accurately—men who are their bravado. Their signature characters are marked by an unmerited confidence in themselves, as well as a delusion of superiority over nearly everyone else. They act smarter than they actually are, they act more handsome than they actually are, they act more likable than they actually are. Despite evidence to the contrary, they also have a consuming faith that there is a certain order to the universe that acknowledges this superiority. There is a way the world is supposed to work, and they are unique snowflakes in that world. In this way, as worldly as they pretend to be, they are also boyishly naive.

But why are we attracted to this stubborn, arrogant type of character? Why did we even elect one of these types as our president? (And why did—despite looking nothing like him—Will Ferrell impersonate him better than anyone else?) It’s more than relating to their folly and false heroism because we have, say, a boss who is just as fatuous.

I suspect that it’s because what they actually do is validate our own view of the world. By exalting themselves, they put themselves in the position of being humbled. With their office boners and premature ejaculations, they publicly restore our own sense of order. There’s a part of us that rejoices in watching the mighty fall—even those who are only mighty in their own mind.

But it’s more than simple schadenfreude. In the case of Powers and Burgundy, we appreciate that, as dickish as they may be, at least they are true to themselves. When Powers gets the “thanks anyway” at the end of season one, it should be tragic. Instead, striking out on his own and driving solo down the highway is strangely triumphant. Even if no one else wants him, his pride isn’t deflated. While their solipsistic view of the world is wrong, we still love how steadfastly they cling to it.

More importantly, these characters feel true because we are a society who, for various reasons, can no longer take any hero at face value. Think back to the last ten modern stories you’ve encountered. Was there a Spartacus—or even a Rudy—among their protagonists? We need to have heroic qualities complicated or subverted or contradicted. As a matter of fact, we have to consume everything on more than one level. We are truly postmodern.

Entire genres of television exist because of this need: “Oh my God, I hate the stupid Kardashians. Did you watch last week’s episode?” We’ve always felt this way, of course: loving to hate, engaged from a distance. It’s only now that art is catching up and presenting us with the perfect role models for that kind of anti-hero worship.

Think back to Bush, the face of the country during Ron Burgundy and Kenny Powers’ reign. His fans generally like him for two reasons. For one, he’s unwavering and persistent; even if something is an unmitigated disaster, he will stay the course. He insists upon a vision of the world that continues according to plan, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to flip-flop. San Diego means “whale’s vagina,” and that’s that.

The second reason is more intriguing though. Across the country, cutting across all social classes and designations, Bush’s supporters believed that, deep down, he was just like them. Realistically, George W. Bush is nothing like the rest of us. He has hundreds of millions of dollars; he was handed the best education money can buy; he was given countless opportunities regardless or whether or not he deserved them. But he retains a warm, approachable, charismatic, all-too-human quality that seduces you into believing that you could knock back a few beers with him. Publicly, he is allowed to represent everything we resent because privately he is, like the rest of us, doomed to live out life as no one but himself.

What Ron Burgundy and Kenny Powers taught us was: maybe we weren’t wrong for liking him.

The 25 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years
21. Marge Gunderson- Fargo

To call Frances McDormand’s Marge Gunderson the moral center of 1995’s Fargo is an understatement. In a tale of blackmailers, backstabbers, and crooks, she’s the essential audience surrogate, the only character we can admire or take at face value. As brilliant as the Coen Brothers are, their filmmaking is not known for its tenderness. Because of the presence of Marge, however, Fargo stands as one of their most touching, relatable offerings; without her, it would be their coldest.

There’s a scene halfway through the film that I found clunky upon first viewing: an old flame invites Marge to dinner and confesses that he thinks he’s still in love with her. Marge rebuffs him, honoring her husband, but she does it with overpowering grace and understanding. McDormand underplays the scene with a flattered discomfort, a humility that keeps this misguided suitor from being humiliated. It slows down the narrative, but this scene goes to show us that in an easily corruptible world, this is the closest Marge comes to temptation. And it’s not even that close.

Marge isn’t a saint. After all, she did agree to meet with this dude and has few illusions about why he might have called her out of the blue. She even dresses up for the occasion. Later on, her pluck is replaced with pride when she, a vulnerable, pregnant-out-to-here cop, refuses to call backup for the climactic showdown. Like the best of us, she never pretends to be perfect. She makes mistakes and does her best to overcome them one day at a time, even if that penance is something as homespun and minor as bringing her husband nightcrawlers for his ice fishing. Marge Gunderson is better than perfect: she’s real.

Despite only thirty minutes of screen time, McDormand won the Best Actress Oscar for her poignantly rustic performance. (More proof of how central the Marge character is.) While the role is less showy than the type that usually wins, she took home the trophy mostly for nailing her final two scenes: a devastating speech to the murderer Marge has just captured and a quiet taking-stock scene with her husband. In her speech she’s as forceful as she ever is, explaining how she literally can’t understand the wickedness of the life of an ignoble criminal. She still rolls her o’s in her midwestern accent, but she’s done being cheery and self-effacing. She has led by example for the entire movie, but here she knows that words might speak louder than actions. In the epilogue she lifts her husband’s spirits and doesn’t bother to gloat about her accomplishments that day. Even as a wife, she’s just doing her unassuming job. Finally, she rubs her belly to remind us of her baby. And maybe that’s the most comforting thing about Fargo. Sure, we’re relieved that there are two fewer murderers, one fewer deadbeat, and one fewer bald-faced liar. But the real hope is that maybe—just maybe—there will be one more Marge.

The 25 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years
20. Don Draper- Mad Men

The most compelling storyline of Mad Men’s first season is the slow reveal of Don Draper’s true identity. Although he’s a powerful, visionary ad exec now, he began life as a poor, abused, hillbilly whore’s son named Dick Whitman. He escaped to the army, where he served with a man named Don Draper, and he escaped further when he stole the killed-in-combat Draper’s identity after the war.

Most shows would have stuffed this information into the pilot, but Mad Men’s writers parceled it out over thirteen episodes. Their restraint created a mystery and tension that has boiled underneath the surface ever since. In that first season, for example, Draper/Whitman’s estranged brother finds him and seeks to develop a relationship with him, which our man Draper wants no part of. Draper arranges a meeting and stops off at home, where he stealthily takes something out of his desk, which we assume is a gun. At the moment of truth, he opens his briefcase to reveal…a stack of money to pay the guy off.

Knowing what we do about Draper now, that bribe seems consistent with his character. But it’s telling that, at the time, we had spent twelve hours with the dude and still figured that he was capable of killing his own brother. The character of Don Draper is founded upon dramatic irony, but even though we know more about him than any of the other characters, we still don’t know all that much.

To bring up another one of those literary elements most people forget from high school, we mostly learn about Draper though indirect characterization. As electrifying as Jon Hamm would make it, there’s never been a showy speech that gets at the heart of who Draper is. We learn about him through his actions and subtle dialogue. And without a giving and confident actor like Jon Hamm, all of that would be lost. While he certainly nails the debonair side of Draper, he can also hint at his wounded nature, even if we don’t get all of the details of that side until later. As Molly Lambert puts it: “One of Jon Hamm’s greatest skills as an actor is his ability to convey simultaneously the many different levels of Don Draper’s bluffing while making it fully believable that most other people would see only the very top layer.”

In that way, part of Draper’s appeal comes from his power as a cipher for his era’s false modesty and buttoned-up distance. There are so many things I can’t imagine him doing: signing into twitter, waiting in line on Black Friday, knowing who any of the Kardashians are. He embodies a cold yet fatherly presence, an all-business dedication that is both inspiring and empty. Everything he does is a distraction, and there’s so much that he hasn’t come to terms with yet.

As exciting as watching Don Draper for three seasons has been, what he might look like in three more is one of the more enticing prospects of the show. In season four we’ve already seen women get wise to his lines and he-man persona. His six-martini lunches are already out of style by 1965. Who knows what lies ahead in a more open and challenging late ’60s?

Certainly not Draper himself. And, appropriately, probably not the viewers either.

The 25 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years
19. Rob Gordon- High Fidelity

You can tell a lot about a man’s age and relationships from his dedication to pop culture. My dad finds fulfillment through his work and watches TV when he has time for such diversions. I see work as a nuisance keeping me from seeing a movie on opening day. My dad compares female characters to his wife. I compare my wife to Annie Hall. Or at least the Japanese girl who mailed Rivers Cuomo stationery. (Men younger than me don’t have wives. They’re too busy playing video games.)

Rob Gordon is the protagonist of Nick Hornby’s luminous 1995 novel High Fidelity, and in this way he’s a man without a country. He’s between my dad and me in age, and his work—running Championship Vinyl—is pop culture. He is understandably conflicted. On one hand, he can’t help but view the world through the artificial walls he has built around himself. On the other hand, he’s lived long enough to know how trapped he is by those walls.

Nick Hornby’s writing is always candid and astute and loving, but, re-reading the novel, it’s surprising how isolated and morose Rob is. In the introduction he reflects: “What came first—the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all of those records turn you into a melancholy person?”

Music is Rob Gordon’s life, and Rob Gordon’s life sucks. So does music suck? These are questions he should have faced before his mid-thirties, but that lack of awareness is what makes him so iconic. He believes that everything can be summed up by outside influences, and he avoids internal conflicts until he is forced to confront them. He believes that wanting Aretha Franklin’s “Angel” played at his funeral says everything about him. And it does—more than he even knows. Gordon is one of the most representative characters of Generation X, a group of people raised with and defined by irony, but he doesn’t sense irony when describing himself. How ironic.

While the film adaptation is more propulsive, the bulk of the novel is an inventory of the past. Gordon, starting at what ruined his union with Laura, looks back at all of his relationships to see where he went wrong. What he finds is that he never went right. His story is a journey from being self-involved to being introspective.

That journey is not a sea change. Compare the gradual differences in this final speech to the opening:

“Just because it’s a relationship, and it’s based on soppy stuff, it doesn’t mean you can’t make intellectual decisions about it. Sometimes you just have to, otherwise you’ll never get anywhere. That’s where I’ve been going wrong. I’ve been letting the weather and my stomach muscles and a great chord change in a Pretenders single make up my mind for me, and I want to do it for myself.”

By the end of the novel, Gordon’s voice hasn’t changed all that much from its digressive, overwhelmed, capricious tone at the beginning. He obviously has a long way to go, but he has the answers to some of his earlier questions. He didn’t have problems with women; they had problems with him.
 

The 25 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years
18. Puck- The Real World

On the day after every new episode of Jersey Shore, online outlets such as Vulture and Slate publish recaps that debate the behavior of the characters. Although Jersey Shore is a reality show, the critics have few compunctions about calling Sammi and Ronnie characters. The peer-over-sunglasses-directly-into-the-camera and the lift-shirt-to-expose-abs moves are only the beginning of The Situation’s posturing. Snooki’s spoonerism-spouting, slipper-wearing Galactus of a guidette persona may be rooted in who Nicole Polizzi is, but it became an irreversible, parasitic exaggeration long ago. Was it Nathaniel Hawthorne or Pauly D who said: “No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true”?

Kim Kardashian deserved a seat at the Emmys last week, despite the dirty looks of her scripted opponents, because reality TV has become big business. It’s cheap and easy to produce, and the premises can be specialized enough for every vestigial cable network to have its own lineup. And over the years the stars of these shows have become cultural touchstones in ways traditional characters rarely are.

There are many reasons for reality stars’ popularity. For one thing, they allow real people to cat-call and insult the “type” of person they hate without any of the repercussions that might come from gossiping about someone in real life. Reality stars also fulfill a get-rich-and-famous-quick model that is pretty exhilarating and enviable, even if it’s getting rich and famous for dubious reasons.

We also can learn about reality TV’s current success by analyzing its past failures. In the early iterations of MTV’s The Real World, it was just that: real—usually at the show’s peril. All apologies to Eric Nies, but the first few casts were ugly, self-aware, and boring. If Dom felt irritated during the Los Angeles season, he left the house and sought some time alone. If Jon had a cultural difference with the roommates, he had an open, civil conversation with them to understand them. They acted as most of us would have. If that’s what I wanted, I wouldn’t be watching TV.

For good or ill, the artifice of modern reality TV can be traced back to 1994, The Real World’s San Francisco season, when a bristly bike messenger named David Rainey took the mantle of Puck and changed the game forever. (Or, more accurately, made it a game forever.) Shooting off snot rockets and cursing unrepentantly, Puck openly challenged all of his roommates until his presence monopolized the house; even if he wasn’t there, everyone’s conversation revolved around him. He wasn’t the first cast member to be disagreeable, and he wasn’t even the first to get kicked off a show. But he was the first individual to become bigger than the show itself by sheer force of will.

If Puck hadn’t done it, someone else would have. In fact, on that same season Pedro tried to manipulate the show into a platform for AIDS awareness. His earnest, hopeful spirit represented an alternate route in the fork of reality TV’s road and, when pitted against the obnoxiousness of Puck, he lost. Anarchy won the battle, and so far it has won the war.

I believe that Puck is a legitimately odious and oppositional person—he happens to share the name of Shakespeare’s trickster character—but he was obviously playing it up to make himself the Other. In San Francisco for the third season of The Real World, however, the Other was the viewer. In a way that was much more entertaining than his predecessors, Puck served as a stand-in for the audience. We all thought Judd was a pussy, so Puck said it for us. We all wanted to make out with Rachel, so Puck did it for us. Pedro might have had gentle honesty, but Puck had brutal honesty. He moved the Greek chorus from the wings to the front of the stage.

Because he was so patently coarse, it’s easy to call Puck unpredictable. Analyzing his behavior as a whole, however, he was quite predictable. From the beginning—showing up late because he was in jail—to the end—saying “good riddance” at Pedro’s funeral—Puck did whatever created the most conflict. And his roommates fueled the fire by responding with as much deflection as possible, even dismissing him from the house by speakerphone. The Real World began as an innocent enterprise, so many people watched his antics and asked: “Is this guy for real? Is this all an act?” After Puck, we’ve taught ourselves to ask, “Does it matter?”

That being said, perhaps Puck’s greatest contribution to television history was painting a completely realistic portrait of tension. In the Los Angeles season before this one, David got bounced from the house for forcing Tami onto a bed and ripping off her towel to see her naked. Puck got kicked off for eating from someone else’s jar of peanut butter. That looks ridiculous on paper, but it reveals how one tiny action can set people off once they’re in a heightened state. Puck had created an atmosphere of discomfort and volatility in the house, a spirit of hatred and resentment that festered until no one could even put his finger on how it started. That feeling ends with something as innocent as a tub of Jif standing in for an emotion that can’t be articulated.

And you know what? That’s exactly how hateful feelings for someone close to you manifest themselves: their peccadillos add up until you can’t even describe how things first went sour, and eventually you reach an arbitrary point at which those feelings explode. Except in The Real World, over twenty episodes, I can add up all the times Puck rolled his eyes at Pam, and I can chart out the endpoint. By being larger-than-life, Puck showed exactly how small life can sometimes be.

If I “know” him as well as I think I do, I’ll bet that tattooed provocateur has the peanut butter jar hung up in his house as an absurd lifetime achievement award. God, or at least the cast of Big Brother, knows we owe him at least that.

The 25 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years
17. Max Fischer- Rushmore

I saw Rushmore for the first time at an advanced screening with my mom. As the theater cleared after the film, a girl with a legal pad hounded people about their opinions. Most swept by with grumbles about nothing really happening and the main kid being annoying. I had the opposite reaction—I had just seen something special—but I was overwhelmed and couldn’t express it properly: “And when they do the slow motion in the middle of the shot…” I stuttered, “And, like, it’s amusing but not really obviously funny.”

My mom’s review was more succinct: “He reminded me of you.” Because I liked the movie and had an affinity for Max Fischer, I took that as a compliment without interpreting it too much. As an adult, I now see that my mom meant something different.

In one of his first scenes, Jason Schwartzman’s Max is being threatened with expulsion because of his poor grades. He sits across from Dr. Guggenheim, the caretaker of Rushmore Academy, and reminds him of how he was admitted to the school on scholarship as a child. “I wrote a play,” he recalls, “A little one-act about Watergate.” That’s, of course, an exaggeratedly mature thing for a first-grader to do, yet we can still imagine a younger version of this kid doing it. It’s absurd but believable in this context. Guggenheim, played by Brian Cox, looks wistful at the mention of how bright Max used to be, but he straightens up and remembers why he’s here now. It’s years later, and Max has not delivered on that promise. In a nutshell, Rushmore is about that moment when someone stops being precocious, when a person is judged on what he is instead of what he could be.

It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure out that Max is sabotaging himself in school so that he isn’t forced to move on. He wants to fail with the security that someone will tousle his hair and send him on his way. Increasingly though, his actions take on mature consequences. Attempting to prove his worth in other ways, Max partners with the hardened Herman Blume and romances the damaged Mrs. Cross, and he finds himself unprepared to navigate the adult world’s complexities.

For example, Max knows that Blume likes him, sees a piece of himself in Max’s blazer and glasses, so he propositions Blume for a $35,000 check for a school aquarium. Blume curtly brings him down to earth with $2500. It isn’t a devastating disappointment, but it’s a clear sign that Max can no longer get whatever he wants with premature charm. The rest of the movie, particularly Cross’ rejection of him—as much for who he is as for how old he is—is more devastating.

In the film’s first half, Max’s actions toward Mrs. Cross are mature, but they are rooted in the superficial intentions of a child, like building an aquarium so that a girl will like you. Eventually Cross picks up on Max’s juvenile display of affection and confronts him. She demands: “Do you want to finger me? Or maybe I could give you a hand job in the back of a Jaguar. Would that put an end to all of this? What do you really think is going to happen between us? You think we’re going to have sex?” When he says that she’s cheapening that possibility, she says, “Not if you’ve ever fucked.” He is taken aback because, while he probably does find her sexually attractive, he really just wanted to possess her, like a little boy would a toy. By making concrete the emotions that he isn’t able to articulate, she intimidates and emasculates him.

In general, the film communicates distance between people by the way they cling to concrete objects. Blume always matches his bright ties to his dress shirts, presenting an outward sense of completeness and order to mask how chaotic he actually is. Even after getting kicked out of Rushmore, Max still wears his uniform to camouflage himself with the prestige and promise that he now lacks.*

In a way, that’s what I did with the movie Rushmore itself, which ended up being seminal in my own development. Whatever I felt when I first saw this at fifteen, I wanted more of it, and it was my gateway to films that are amusing but not funny, with characters who are sort of annoying, with plots that don’t really go anywhere. In some ways, it helped me to evolve. I can think critically now, and there aren’t many opinions I stumble over. In other ways, it became an escape and a disguise, a distraction from all of the aspects of myself that I need to inspect and improve.

By the end of the film, Max takes responsibility for his actions, and he shows progress through his accomplishments. Just as importantly, however, he does things for the right reasons. He dedicates his play to Cross’ dead husband, and he uses the performance quite unselfishly as a vehicle to promote reconciliation between Cross and Blume. He even gives acting opportunities to those who have wronged him in the past. His works exist for something more than defining himself, and in that way he has truly matured.

As my mom would have told you exiting the theater that night, as any reader of this blog will tell you, I’m still a work in progress.


*- In one of the most satisfyingly surprising scenes of the film, Max introduces himself to his public school classmates with a speech. We expect a quick cut of people kicking his nerd ass after class, but instead he gets polite, deferential applause and is quickly forgotten. It’s a warm but subversive moment.