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With tonight's season finale of the hit Fox sitcom New Girl, we've finally realized just how much we’re going to miss Nick (Jake Johnson), Schmidt (Max Greenfield), Winston (Lamorne Morris), and Cece (Hannah Simone). And wait, what did you just say? What about Jess? Who is… Oh, yeah. Jess. The main character. Played by Zooey Deschanel. Yeah, we’re not going to miss her at all. She’s the least interesting person on the whole show.
Why do we say that? Well, it’s simple. With Nick’s chronic poverty and neurosis, Winston’s strange viewpoint of the world, Cece’s transformation from stuck-up model to lovable girlfriend, and Schmidt’s out-of-nowhere, show-stealing likability, Jess seems to stick out as the annoying, hipster girl you wouldn’t want to invite to the party. You’d be afraid that her “adorkablility” would turn everything all weird and annoying. In short, she’s the least likeable person to watch on New Girl. If she was gone, the show wouldn’t suffer for it. They could go on quite well without her.
But here’s the thing: This isn’t a phenomenon that’s only related to New Girl. There are actually quite a few great shows with boring lead characters. Here are ten examples.
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Written by Rich Knight
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10. Hank Hill on King of the Hill
Sure, you could make the argument that Hank Hill playing the straight man is what makes him so funny, and we wouldn’t disagree with you. We loved all of his “Dangit, Bill’s” and “I sell propane and propane accessories” quotes. But when you have a cast as crazy as that of King of the Hill, Hank definitely stands out as the guy with whom we’d least want to hang out.
From Boomhauer’s bizarre, rapid-fire dialogue and stories, to Bill Dauterive’s pitiful, but hilarious, lifestyle, and Dale Gribble’s nonsensical ideas that always backfire, all of Hank Hill’s friends are far more interesting by comparison. Though, we wouldn’t mind living next to Hank as he seems to be the only truly sane one of the bunch. But we do worry about that son of his. That boy ain’t right.
9. Meredith Grey on Grey’s Anatomy
You might be thinking, “No way! Meredith Grey isn’t boring!” And if you said that, then you just outed yourself as a closeted Grey’s Anatomy fan. Don’t be ashamed. Some of us are, too.
But it’s true. She is boring. Here’s a comparison: Think about a character like Gregory House on Fox's House, and how removing him would make the show pretty much unwatchable. Now think about removing Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) from Grey’s Anatomy. See? It'd still be an enjoyable show, even her sister, Lexie (Chyler Leigh), who’s so much more down to earth.
All Meredith does is make that pouty face of hers and lash out about how “complex” she is. We get it—you had a bad past and it’s followed you into your adult life. You don’t have to drag everybody else down with your problems, lady. Even if you do have a “hostile uterus.” Is that even possible?
8. Cleveland Brown on The Cleveland Show
Granted, nobody on this mediocre show is very interesting, but what made Cleveland Brown stand out on Family Guy—his role as the colorful group's boring guy—is actually a detriment when you pair him with a sassy family, a dimwitted son, and a neighbor that’s a bear. The Cleveland Show is, truth be told, unevenly funny, but very few, if any, of the winning jokes come from its main character. He just makes things worse.
7. Angela Chase on My So-Called Life
Claire Danes actually did a pretty good job playing a vapid high school teenager on the cancelled-too-soon My So-Called Life. So good, in fact, that you kind of hated every minute of her life just as much as she did.
In truth, she was like every other 15-year-old sophomore girl back in high school, but exaggerated, which is even worse. Everything was a drag to her, and watching her every episode was like staring at that cute emo girl in the library for hours who looked like she could start religiously cutting herself at any minute.
It was exciting at first, but grew pretty sad and boring as the show progressed. Luckily, fellow cast members Jared Leto and Wilson Cruz picked up the slack, because, if they hadn’t, My So-Called Life might have received the proverbial axe even sooner.
6. Michael Bluth on Arrested Development
Admittedly, this might be cheating a bit because we really couldn’t go an episode without Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), as some of his lines—and expressions!—rank asArrested Development's funniest.
But when you have the segway riding, magician-in-training GOB (Will Arnett) as your brother, the “never-nude," blue paint wearing, “anal rapist” Tobias Funke (David Cross) as your brother-in-law, and the money-syphoning, alcoholic matriarch Lucille Bluth (Jessica Walter) as your mother, you’re really the blandest banana to everybody at the banana stand. It’s hard being the straight man, but somebody’s got to do it, even if it ultimately lands you on this kind of countdown.
5. Malcolm on Malcolm in the Middle
Freddie Muniz’s Malcolm suffered the same fate that some of the other characters on this list suffered: He played the straight man.
That being said, Malcolm is a different case in that he played an incredibly intelligent and even pedantic straight man who always blamed his terrible life on his much more interesting family. We much preferred his brothers, Francis, (Christopher Masterson, brother of That 70’s Show's Danny Masterson), for being such a huge troublemaker, Reese (Justin Berfield) for being the resident idiot, and Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan) for being so creative and weird.
We even preferred latecomer, Jamie (James and Lukas Rodriguez) for all the trouble he gave his mother. Not to mention, when you have a pre-Breaking Bad Bryan Cranston as your dad, you really can’t go anywhere but down.
4. Sookie Stackhouse on True Blood
True, Sookie (Anna Paquin) has a banging body and all, but her personality is nil. Especially when you have Bill Compton (Stephen "Sookay!" Moyer) and Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard) battling for her love.
We’d hate to compare the two, but True Blood is like Twilight in the sense that we can’t understand why either guy would really fight over the leading lady. There are plenty more interesting women in Bon Temps to fang-bang with, namely Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll).
3. Captain Planet on Captain Planet and the Planeteers
The power is yours… to cut that mullet, lameoid. When the only thing going for you is that you have a grass green mullet, you know you have problems. All of the other Planeteers, even the one with the lame heart power (Yeah, we know his name is Ma-Ti), were more interesting than him. What a bore. Give us Captain America any day.
2. Miss Carrie Bliss on Good Morning, Miss Bliss
How boring was Miss Bliss (Hayley Mills) as a character? So boring that when the show eventually become Saved By the Bell, the Good Morning, Miss Bliss title was dropped altogether in repeats and was just called, that's right, Saved By The Bell: The Junior High Years. When your whole character is wiped out to make way for a younger version of Screech, that’s pretty bad.
1. Vincent Chase on Entourage
You could make the argument that Vincent Chase’s (Adrian Grenier) entourage, as a whole, is the main character since that’s the name of the show, but no, that’s cheating. That’s like saying the main character on The Wirewas Baltimore.
Vincent Chase is in fact the main character of Entourage because all the episodes revolved around his life as a movie star—his friends just happened to fill in the gaps. But the thing is, his friends filled in all of the gaps, as Vinny was one of the least likeable and most boring characters in the history of television.
Why would anybody want to put him in one of their films? Especially Martin Scorsese. Vincent Chase is no Leonardo Dicaprio; in fact, he’s no Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven), either. Or Turtle (Jerry Ferrara). Or even Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon).
Every other character on Entourage was more enjoyable to watch than Vincent Chase. When the show ended, we weren’t sad that he was gone—we were sad that his entourage was, and that’s saying something.
