Who's the Best Character on TV?

Jean Yih Kingston: Coach Taylor (Friday Night Lights)

My absolute favorite character on TV?  Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) from the best drama TV has to offer, Friday Night Lights.  Set in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas, the show beautifully spotlights the intricate relationships in small town life.
 
Coach Taylor is the ideal guy who's completely dedicated to his family.  His high-maintenance teenage daughter Julie, comes to him when she’s at her lowest moment and he provides the most tender and loving shoulder to cry on.  He’s also a “sit on the floor and play” type of Dad to his baby.  And he’s the kind of the husband that’s supportive and even does “pillow talk”.
 
He’s caring, but he’s also a straight-shooter.  He says to Julie, “All right, listen up.  I’m supposed to give you some fatherly and wise advice at this time in your life.  Listen up, if you’re wondering if a boy’s thinking about you, he’s not.  He’s thinking about sex or he’s hungry, those are the only two options.”
 
Coach Taylor is much more than a football coach, but the team’s father figure.  He’s always knocking on the door of a player in need, calling him “son,” putting a comforting arm around his shoulder and saying the very thing that needs to be said, when there’s no one else willing to say it.  He has a great sense of doing what’s right and good, and when it comes to motivating speeches, they come almost every Friday – he’s like Herb Brooks on steroids.

Quotes:
Every man at some point in his life is going to lose a battle.  He is going to fight and he is going to lose.  But what makes him a man is at the midst of that battle he does not lose himself.  This game is not over, this battle is not over.
 
If you think you’re champions because you wear the Panther uniform, you’re wrong!  If you think you’re champions because they give you a piece of pie at the diner, you’re wrong!  Champions don’t complain!  Champions don’t give up!  Champions give 200 percent!  You’re not champions until you’ve earned it!
 
A few will never give up on you.  When you go back out on the field, those are the people I want in your minds.  Those are the people I want in your hearts.  
 
Clear eyes, full heart…can’t lose if you tune into Coach Taylor!

Greg Whiteley adds:

Great speech.  I think what also makes Coach T a great tv character is his weaknesses.  He loses his temper, he is obsessive about his work, etc.  As a result, you ache for him when  he loses out on his dream job at the fictitious Texas university or when he is replaced as the Panther's coach because he is not more politically savvy.  The show does such a good job of building an authentic character that when bad things happen to him you feel they are happening to a member of your own family.

(Note:  my wife in fact, thinks the characters are real.  Please keep this to yourself)

Nancy French:  Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz (Phineas and Ferb)

There’s one “evil genius” you and your kids need to meet.  Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz (though his doctorate was purchased off the internet) is the most compelling odd-ball character on television, from Disney’s Phineas and Ferb. This mad scientist is incompetent and forgetful, and his nemesis is a platypus.  Not ambitious enough to take over the whole world, he is starting with “the tri-state area” and is always making random contraptions that end in the suffix "-inator.” The mime-inator, for example, actually made invisible boxes to put around mimes so that when they are in the park, no one will realize they’re imprisoned...  since they are mimes, you see.   In one episode, he creates a "woodenator," which makes the wood in a dam disappear so he can have beach-front property.  He despises a long list of things, including pelicans, ear hair and musical instruments starting with the letter "B,” and – of course – tries to rid the tri-state area of such monstrosities. When he nervously left rambling messages on a woman’s answering machine, planned on using a giant magnet to erase the tapes of his messages. He is known to have amazing hand-eye-coordination and held the title of “Best Cup Stacker in the World” for several years.  He’s so compelling that any parent (within the tri-state area?) who hears his German-ish accent must stop and see what he’s plotting.
 
In 2009, Josh Jackson, editor-in-chief for Paste Magazine, described his inventions "awesomely designated devices of pure evil" and his complex relationship with his nemesis Perry the Platypus as "pitch-perfect."

Quotes:
"Speaking of wishes, you know what I never understood? Genies! They tell you to wish for anything you want and then they add some terrible twist. Like you wish to jump high so he turns you into a frog. Why? Who gains from this? The genie? Where's the benefit? You should be fighting genies, man, not me. I'm not the problem; genies are the problem."
 
And
 
"As a lazy tailor would say, suit yourself!"
 
and
 
"When it comes to havoc, nobody wreaks like me!"

Rebecca Cusey: Abed Nadir (Community)

After much debate in the Cusey household, I've decided my favorite character on TV is Abed (pronounced Abv-head), an half-Polish, half-Arab, slightly autistic young man in junior college Spanish class with the gang of "Community." He doesn't like interacting with real people, but has watched every TV show and movie known to man. He morphs in and out of classic characters at a whim and boils complicated human interactions down to a storyline on Three's Company. His best friend is Troy, a clueless African-American jock. He's the perfect Bert to Troy's Ernie. See?

Quotes: 

 Documentaries are like real movies, but with ugly people.

David French: Dexter Morgan (Dexter)

Who would have thought that television’s best advocate for honor, for a code of morality, and for justice would be a serial killer?  Well, maybe “best” is an overstatement.  After all, he most likely deserves the death penalty.  But if there’s one thing you get from Dexter, it’s that having a “code” matters: it’s what keeps us from the abyss.  Again and again (against the backdrop of some of the best writing and acting on the small screen) we see the contrast between Dexter, a damaged but – in his strange way – honorable individual and a collection of villains who careen, out of control into oblivion.  Dexter has a code, a set of lines he will not cross.  Do you?  Or have you crossed your own uncrossable lines?  Watch Dexter . . . unless your own code tells you that you can’t root for even a fictional murderer.

Quotes:
Dexter Morgan: People fake a lot of human interactions, but I feel like I fake them all, and I fake them very well. That's my burden, I guess.