Hall of Faces - Who's the Greatest Character on Friends?

Who's the Greatest Character on Friends?

10/03/19 • 114 min

25 years ago, Friends (sorry, F*R*I*E*N*D*S) burst onto the scene to hold multicolored umbrellas and dance through the water fountain of our pop-culture consciousness, becoming one of the most indelible sitcoms of the '90s. The tale of six close friends trying to make it in New York City amid the flannel-draped tumult of the Giuliani years, Friends was the yin to Seinfeld's yang, the warm, fuzzy, uncomplicated romp we turned to when the rain started to fall. Like many things in the era, it hasn't aged well: where are the people of color? How can they afford such nice New York apartments? What's with all the 'no homo' stuff between Chandler and Joey? But even with these bugaboos, it's surprisingly easy to get back into the swing of the show, especially when Netflix makes it so addictively bingeable. Over ten seasons of high ratings and dozens of Emmy nods, the main cast of Friends -- Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer -- were catapulted to near-instant stardom, becoming one of the most beloved ensembles in television history. It almost seems impossible to pluck one of the Friends out of the group and put them on the pedestal of our Hall of Faces, but boy howdy we're going to try! Reigning champion Kate Kulzick (of The AV Club and The Televerse) and frequent guest/Spool staffer Caroline Siede join us as we "PIVOT!" from Friend to Friend to see which one passes muster and earns a spot in our pantheon of great TV characters. Could it be a more contentious battle? (Hall of Faces is a proud member of the Chicago Podcast Coop. Thanks to Overcast for sponsoring this episode!)

Previous Episode

Who's the Greatest Character on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?

During Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's seven-season run in syndication from 1993 to 1999, the spinoff was never particularly popular. It didn't look like a Trek show: instead of a clean, shiny starship filled with Starfleet's best and brightest, we followed a group of disparate souls struggling to overcome conflicts both personal and interpersonal on a ramshackle space station in the middle of nowhere. Where most Trek zoomed to a new planet each week, solved the problem, and moved on, Deep Space Nine was forced to stick around and do the hard work of rebuilding the occupied planet of Bajor, all while wormholes and interstellar dominions came knocking at their door. Showrunner Ira Steven Behr, along with other head writers like Ronald D. Moore (whose Battlestar Galactica reboot carries a lot of DS9's DNA, what with its focus on serialized storylines and a greater focus on religion than most sci-fi properties), found a way not just to make their show stand out from The Next Generation and Voyager, but to interrogate the very ideals of Gene Roddenberry's Trekkian utopia by showing a Starfleet filled with ethical quandaries and realistic philosophical struggle. And on top of it all, this long-form serialized storytelling gave way to one of the best, most robust ensembles in science fiction history. For this month's Hall of Faces, Clint and guest host Kate Kulzick (of The Televerse) are joined by Vulture's Angelica Jade Bastien and Improvised Star Trek's Sean Kelley to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the show's finale! Together, we dig through Deep Space Nine's extremely deep bench of characters and find the one that best represents the show's emotional complexity and philosophical ideals. Is it Sisko? Worf? Garak? Gul Dukat? Quark?! Take a listen and find out what the Prophets decide. (Hall of Faces is a proud member of the Chicago Podcast Coop. Thanks to Overcast for sponsoring this episode!)

Next Episode

Who's the Greatest Character on The West Wing?

Politics has never been perfect, politicians even less so. But for seven long years, NBC's seminal political drama The West Wing gave TV watchers an idealized version of the White House, an administration that trudged through the murky waters of political compromise with admirable conviction and the fast-talking wit that could only come from the pen of Aaron Sorkin. The West Wing was revolutionary in a number of ways, from presenting feature-quality production values and performances on network TV in the '90s to inspiring a generation of young people to get into politics. (And the show's patented walk-and-talks forever changed the visual vocabulary of TV dialogue.) Amid all of The West Wing's flaws -- Sorkin's recurring limitations/pet concerns as a screenwriter, the unevenness of the John Wells years -- the show remains firmly ensconced in the public consciousness. Sure, some of that is a lingering desire to return to the kind of principled, service-centric political leadership we imagine we once had but never really got. But so much of it is down to the show's incredible ensemble of characters, played to a tee by a rotating cast of industry-best performers: Martin Sheen's folksy-yet-godlike President Bartlet, Allison Janney's acerbic press secretary C.J. Cregg, Bradley Whitford's prickly Josh Lyman, and a host of others. On this episode of the podcast, Allison and Clint (alongside returning guest panelists Kate Kulzick of The Televerse and Caroline Siede of The AV Club) sift through the dossiers of the Bartlet administration's brightest stars and see which one deserves to be elected into our Hall of Faces. Is it Bartlet? CJ? Toby? Leo McGarry? Mrs. Landingham? If you don't listen to the pod and find out who we pick, then God, Jed, I don't even want to know you! (Hall of Faces is a proud member of the Chicago Podcast Coop. Thanks to Overcast for sponsoring this episode!)

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