Favorite TV Sidekicks

As I mentioned over at the mothership, the inspiration for this blog came partly from my friend Rebel Monkey's Question of the Day, which you can participate in either via the Facebook group or the new Twitter page.   A few week's back the question was "Who's your favorite TV sidekick?"  The following list was my response*

Man, there are so many cases where the sidekicks/supporting cast is more interesting/engaging than the main characters that it’s hard to narrow down. Of course the biggest problem here is deciding between just plain “supporting cast” from actual “sidekick”: for example, I love the bulk of the supporting cast on Ally McBeal, but wouldn’t categorize any of them as Ally’s sidekick**. Anyway, since I find myself unable to choose just one, here are my top 10 favorite sidekicks in no particular order

10) Sam Axe on Burn Notice – would have said Fiona, but I think she’d hunt me down and shoot me for calling her a sidekick.

9) Olive Snook on Pushing Daisies – the worst part about Pushing Daisies being cancelled is that I no longer get to see the continuing evolution of Olive Snook; Girl Detective.

8) Randy on My Name is Earl – one of the best dim-bulb sidekicks around

7) Vir on Babylon 5 – One of my more obscure choices, to be sure, but the Vir/Londo dynamic was always one of my favorite aspects of B5.

6) Amy Pond on Doctor Who – I still miss David Tennant as the Doctor, but the presence of Amy as the new companion definitely helped ease the transition.

5) Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother – One of the prime examples of a sidekick totally overshadowing the main character – Ted is a sinkhole of pretension and boredom, but Barney is a source of continual entertainment.

4) Karen Walker on Will and Grace – Another show where I preferred the sidekicks to the main characters, and while Jack was amusing at times, it was always Karen who stole the show for me.

3) Marshall on Alias – JJ’s shows have always done a great job building up an engaging supporting cast, and probably my favorite of all was Sydney’s tech-genius sidekick Marshall.

2) Wesley Wyndhym-Price on Angel – considering how much I loathed Wesley during his stint on Buffy, and how disgusted I was when he popped up on Angel, it’s a bit of a minor miracle that Joss was able to turn him into such a complex and engaging character without betraying what went before.

1) Mary Cherry on Popular – “Shut your dirty whore mouth, player player!” Need I say more?

Special shout-out goes to Wendy Watson on The Middleman: a sidekick who actually was the main character. And if you haven’t watched The Middleman, shame on you! Shame!


*Yes, I'm shamelessly posting something I wrote elsewhere just to have content; I blame it on the sleep deprivation, and not my inherent laziness.
**Yes, I can almost guarantee a "Favorite Supporting Cast" list at some point.