The Top 10 coolest alcoholic characters on television
Honorable Mentions
I have been planning to do this list, and who would be in it and who in which spot, for at least two and a half years, so the honorable mentions are characters who didn't make the list because I had never watched their respective series when I first composed the list (but now I have). But they are definitely good enough that they would deserve a spot.
1. Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) on "Game of Thrones"
Everybody's favourite dwarf - actually everybody's favourite character on the show - is almost always seen with a glass, bottle or animal hide full of (Dornish) wine in his hands when he's not whoring. Or when he's whoring. As always, I'm a little bit different than everybody else and he's not my absolute favourite character of all of them in the show. He didn't mean that much to me in Season 1, but by Season 3 he had grown on me. Anyway, this little drunk has the sharpest wit in the Seven Kingdoms, he speaks the truth when others don't dare, and he really likes to party. What could possibly be wrong with that?
2. Linda Belcher (voice by John Roberts) on "Bob's Burgers"
When I first started watching this whackier-and-sicker-than-the-Simpsons but more-family-friendly-and-story-oriented-than-Family-Guy cartoon show, Linda Belcher seemed like all of the typical annoying mother characters to me, but I grew to like her and find her funny more and more in her ridiculous but loveable ways, and a lot of this comes from exchanges like these (all from memory, not quoted word by word):
(Bob just told the kids about how his father always made him work and was an alcoholic)
Bob: But I'm not my father.
Louise: That's right. In our family, Mom's the one with the drinking problem.
Linda: The problem is that I haven't got a drink in my hands right now.
Bob: Bring us two martinis.
Linda: Yes, two for each of us. Haha. (beat) I'm serious.
Bob: How did you manage to get through a whole day with Mr. Frond for all those years?
Linda: Wine in the water bottle.
Linda: Our kids are a two-people/two-glasses-of-wine-a-day job.
Linda: Mommy doesn't get drunk. She's only having fun.
The Countdown
10. The Gang (Neil Patrick Harris, Cobie Smulders, Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Alyson Hannigan) on "How I Met Your Mother"
It seems this group of ridiculously close friends spends every evening in their favourite bar (or sometimes even the afternoons, as the one guy Ted may have inspired to consider a career as an architect during the tour he gives in one episode points out), and of course they are drinking when they are there. Mostly beer, though some of the friends seem to prefer other drinks (manly girl Robin likes herself a good whisky), and noone seems to see anything wrong with that. My favourite character Lily (the brilliant Alyson Hannigan) takes the cool-looking occassional alcoholic up to eleven in the ninth and last season, when, frustrated over Marshall's late arrival, she orders the "Kennedy package" at Robin's and Barney's wedding (i.e. Linus, the waiter, has to bring her a new drink as soon as her glass is empty for the whole weekend) - of course that was only to actually completely avert the cool-alcoholic cliché, when it is revealed later in the season that she was only served non-alcoholic drinks, because she rightfully suspected that she was pregnant with her and Marshall's second child.
9. Dr. Perry Cox (John C. McGinley) on "Scrubs"
Dr. Cox is not only a really mean narcissist, who gives his secretly favourite disciple and main character J.D. (Zach Braff) female names and still calls him "newbie" after eight years at the Sacred Heart hospital, he's also a brilliant medical doctor who actually really cares for his patients. This genuine care can be really tough on a person, because sometimes hospital politics make it difficult to give a patient the best possible treatment, and sometimes patients die despite the best and most well-meaning treatment. So which viewer would really judge Perry when he goes straight to his bottle of whisky as soon as he arrives in his lonely and cold - with or without his ex-wife and permanent girlfriend Jordan (Christa Miller) - appartment after a hard day at work? To the contrary, we all understand him, don't we? Plus, he's really a smooth guy, a cool cat, a bad mother, ...isn't he?
8. Brian Griffin (voice by Seth McFarlane) on "Family Guy"
"Whose leg do I have to hump to get a drink here?"
It may be ridiculous, but you can't watch Family Guy unless you accept that Brian the dog is the most sophisticated member of this whacky family - and most of the time treated like a human character. You have to either accept it or forget it, and the character is interesting enough that one can easily do it most of the time. And he really looks even more sophisticated with a martini glass in his hands, who wouldn't? Of course the above quote doesn't sound very sophisticated, but that's the joke! Sometimes he chooses less classy drinks, like the good-old bottle of whisky, which only underlines his desparation about most of the world's classlessness and lack of understanding for his sophisticated, intellectual soul. Shame him as an alcoholic? How classless are you?! Nevertheless, he is called out for it on the show sometimes, but that only makes the whole thing feel more real.
I remember when I once had put myself on a certain period of complete abstinence at a time when I used to watch Family Guy every Sunday night, and I almost couldn't watch it because I thought: Why am I not allowed to drink any booze, and the f***ing dog is?!
7. Mel Burke (Melissa Joan Hart) on "Melissa & Joey"
Melissa Joan Hart used to be a teen star in the 90's, and when now a 30-something actress she got her own TV show once again in 2010, a lot of the appeal of this show came from that fact. The character she plays is very different from the ones she played before naturally, but she still wears it like a second skin. Mel Burke is a formerly hard-partying local politician, who suddenly has to be a substitute parent for her sister's teenage daughter and son. She not only has to put up with the hardships of local politics and raising teenagers, she also has to suffer through the sexual tension between herself and her male nanny Joe (Joey Lawrence) for three seasons before the show finally allows them to hit it off. Being a spoilt former party girl, she's not used to put up with a lot. So whenever she feels stressed - more often than not - she'll pour herself a glass of wine. Or two. Oddly enough, although she's the mistress of the house, she always gets called out for it. When this happens, I'll laugh at her and her weakness - while also thinking: Don't take their shit, girl: You deserve that drink!
6. Chelsea Newman (Laura Prepon) on "Are You There, Chelsea?"
Based on the autobiographic bestseller by American TV host Chelsea Handler (who plays the main character's religious sister on the show), this shortlived sitcom wasn't really very funny or interesting. However they already had me when I read that the title "Are You There, Chelsea?" is actually short for "Are you there, Vodka? It's me, Chelsea", and when the epynomous main character exclaimed that sentence in the first episode.
And I was even more hooked when she countered the following accusation that Vodka wasn't God with the following explanation: "But they're both invisible, and they're both responsible for unwanted pregnancies." When I continued to watch every episode, I didn't really pay much attention to the plot, and I didn't take much liking to any supporting characters, I only drank, and was happy to watch a character who unapologetically did the same. And on that I could count: Chelsea knew no regrets.
5. Penny (Kaley Cuoco) on "The Big Bang Theory"
Penny: "Alright, guys, we killed that bottle."
Bernadette: "I only had one glass."
Amy: "And I didn't drink anything."
Penny: (beat) "Don't judge me!"
(quoted from memory, not word by word; and I'm not sure, was it like this or the other way round with Bernadette and Amy? If you know, please comment, so that I can set it right...)
Well, Penny became my favourite character on this show early on, simply for being the one main character who wasn't a nerd. I am the kind of guy who most people would think could and should be a nerd, but I don't identify as one, and while many things on the internet do draw my attention (yes, even some so-called memes and stuff like that), too many aspects of their culture don't appeal to me, and I'm still rather alienated by the fact that all of a sudden a lot of people seem to consider "nerdism" as something that's somehow supposed to be cool... Anyway, when it became more and more of a recurring theme that Penny resorts to alcohol quite a lot to drown her sorrows or enhance her mood, that made her even more sympathetic to me. There's nothing so alarming and uncommon about it: she's just a common person, whose life and dreams just didn't turn out the way she expected. If life gives you lemons, ask for tequila, right?! And she still was given great lines and often - despite if not because of her simple-mindedness and lack of education - appeared to be the voice of reason among all those weirdos. So what harm is the occassional glass of wine or peppermint schnapps? Her habit was going on for quite some time already when it became so obvious that they started to have other characters call her out on it. While it makes you think that it must mean that this party girl is much sadder on the inside than she looks on the outside, it's still strictly played for laughs (contrast spots 3-1!), Penny's life starts to work out better while she still keeps her habit, and it's just too easy to relate.
4. Chloe (Krysten Ritter) on "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23"
Now we come to the really "cool" characters, the ones who seemingly drink for no other reason than because they are so cool that they just don't f**king care. Like "the bitch"! Like many characters on TV, for whatever reason it seems that she doesn't have to work for a living, so she just spends her time making elaborated evil schemes just for the "lulz", bedding interchangeable members of the opposite sex, hiring an underpaid teenage orphan to help her manage her complicated social life, conducting the best example for a "Bavarian Fire Drill" the world has ever seen, criticizing her hard-working counterpart, her roommate June (co-star Dreama Walker), for working hard instead of living the vida loca, and drinking, drinking, drinking... There's an episode where she comes home every single night in the early morning hours totally wasted with another guy and doesn't remember anything the morning after, which actually makes June worry about her. But what really defined her for me was the episode in which June plans to go to the Hamptons, and Chloe invites herself and her BFF James "the Beek" Van Der Beek (playing himself) to join her on the trip, and as a matter of course turns every minute of the drive there into a (drinking) party - because why the hell not? She seems like the kind of person who just naturally spends more of her waking hours drunk than not, and appearently loves every second of it. Drinking is no question or choice for her, it's simply the way to go. But while it's great fun to watch her, thankfully one rather does it from a remote point of view than envy her or even identify with her, because she's obviously also a complete and hopeless sociopath, and you don't really want to be like that.
3. Don Draper (Jon Hamm) on "Mad Men"
Back when I was an unhappy and frustrated office worker, Don Draper and his colleagues from "Mad Men" seemed to have the absolute dream job in my eyes: they were smoking and drinking all day long in their offices(!!!). While most of his male colleagues are also married, and not taking marital fidelity too seriously, none of them has quite the hand with the ladies like Don! It seems like almost every woman he meets falls for him, and he sure enough takes advantage of it. And not only the ladies are easily impressed by his confidence and style: as pointed out in a Saturday Night Live sketch (I'd love to link to it, but in my country it's sadly unavailable on Youtube due to copyright issues), Don blows away people anytime he says anything. He seems to have everything, so what's bad about being a heavy drinker?
Well, by the end of Season 2, Don has ruined his marriage and family life. But he doesn't seem to care that much*, and it's mostly owed to his cheating ways and his other secrets, not to his drinking, so he's still a winner and there's nothing bad about his drinking, right? Then there's one episode in Season 3, in which he's winning a "Clio" (an award for advertising) which has him wake up in a strange woman's bed on Sunday morning, not remembering Friday or Saturday night. Up to this point, he seemed pretty much unvulnerable by his drinking. It comes closer to drama when, in Season 4, he writes in his journal that "when you have to cut down on your drinking, it means you have a drinking problem", but from there it's still a long way down to when he finally hits rock bottom in Season 6, when he gets arrested after getting into a drunken fight in a bar.
But though the problems that come with drinking are more and more addressed here as the seasons progress, he never really looses his cool, he never looses his way with the ladies, and there always remains hope that he may reconcile with his family. And there is never any word that he would ever stop drinking... there's only an ambiguous ending that he may have created something great within his world, the world of advertising... a world he almost left for various reasons... one of them, his refusal to bow to the system. The character of Don Draper shows the viewer many arguments against heavy drinking, but in the end... does he really?
* Sounds like a real asshole, so why do I still like the character? Well, maybe first of all because his now ex-wife Betty (January Jones) is portrayed as a self-absorbed and immature bitch. And maybe because he's still seeing his children, so one assumes he must have some kind of love for them, and they clearly seem to still love him.
2. Hank Moody (David Duchovny) on "Californication"
When Don Draper seemed pretty much unvulnerable by his drinking for most of the first couple of seasons of his show, "Mad Men", Hank Moody, to the contrary, was a wounded character right from the very start of "Californication". Like both the person before him and after him on this list, he's also not only a heavy drinker, but a real ladies' man as well. By the time we meet Hank, his habits with the bottle and the other sex have already cost him his relationship with Karen (Natascha McElhone), the mother of his only daughter, the only woman he has ever loved, still loves and will always love, and seriously put his relationship with said daughter, Becca (Madeleine Martin) to the test. These facts make him and his heavy drinking very sympathetic to the viewer. (Well, mostly the first fact, it's less sympathetic that he would further endanger his relationship with his daughter, but with her mother, it seems so hopeless that drinking kind of seems like the only way...) And hardly anyone makes regular heavy drinking look cooler than Hank. Even when his excesses don't land him in the arms and bed of some (more or less) beautiful California Girl (which they do most of the time). He just sits down on his kitchen floor casually leaning against a cupboard with his bottle o' Whisky in his hands, and drinks... until he wakes up the next morning lying on the floor. It doesn't look like he does it every day, it just looks like only tonight he spontaneously decided to just once say "screw you" to the world, and give his brain the night off. Except we know it's not just once.
Still, Californication would absolutely look like it wants to tell the world that alcoholism is cool and glamorous, if it weren't for one fact: that there is never the slightest doubt left that Hank is terribly sad and unhappy on the inside, pretty much every minute of his life, no matter how relaxed, cool and glamorous he appears on the outside. Much of the appeal of the character comes from the actor David Duchovny, who first of all came out as a sex addict just before the start of "Calli" (which some think was a publicity stunt to sell the show), giving the womanizing of his character a feeling of ironic and unsettling authenticity. Secondly, he is famous for "The X-Files" which has given him an incredibly big, - not only but definitely not insignificant - female fanbase, making it not so hard to believe that this "American Heathcliff" has an appeal to almost all females he meets. And thirdly - like Don Draper, but unlike the person at #1 - Hank Moody is not only a heavy drinker but also a heavy cigarette smoker, which is too funny when you remember the X-Files' Fox Mulder's attitude towards smoking. And if I still have not convinced you that Hank's appearance is ultimately and perfectly cool: he wears totally pitch-black sunglasses, pretty much all of the time!
1. Charlie Harper (Charlie Sheen) on "Two and a Half Men"
(Charlie's housekeeper Berta comes back from grocery shopping with a lot of alcohol, to the astonishment of his new girlfriend Michelle, again quoted only from memory)
Michelle: Is there a party?
Berta: Every day at 4 p.m.
In a way both Don Draper (#3) and Hank Moody (#2) are kind of spiritual successors of Charlie Harper, therefore no other than Charlie Harper, the real deal if you want so, could possibly make #1 on this list. (For the record, both "Mad Men" and "Californication" premiered in 2007, "Two and a Half Men" in 2003.) Charlie drinks every drink, beds every girl, lives in a luxurious beach house in Malibu, hates his mother who is probably really to blame for many of his issues, hates his brother Alan (but really doesn't), loves his nephew Jake, and masks all his insecurities with his cool, laid-back appearance and lifestyle.
I could write a lot about it (e.g. about how Charlie Harper is probably an actually toned-down version of the real Carlos Estevez)... But what's really interesting and curious, and thus worth mentioning - and I'll restrict myself to that - is the fact that in Season 8, the shortest season and last season with Charlie, the tone of the show really changed. There was a glimpse of it in an earlier episode in which Jake (Angus T. Jones) had gotten drunk for the first time in his young life and had to "hug the toilet", in which the following exchange happened:
Charlie: This is your body telling you that alcohol is poison.
Jake: If it's poison, then why do you drink it all the time?
Charlie: Because there are certain things inside me that I have to kill.
True words, but they do not make us fear for Charlie, they make us sympathize with him more, because to a certain degree most people can understand this, and with Charlie... well, look at him and his lifestyle. Then there's the episode where he decides to "stop drinking", by which he actually means he only drinks beer from now on (i.e. no more vodka, whisky, ...) - but still one after the other. And funnily, "he really believes he has stopped drinking", according to Alan (Jon Cryer). But nethertheless, before Season 8, his drinking is portrayed motsly in an almost positive light. It only makes his life more fun, more worthwhile, more careless, and there is no real reason whatsoever for him to stop, because everything seems to work out more than fine for him all the time.
Then we suddenly start to see him *really* drunk, babbling, not able to speak clearly (or at least not able to make any sense), not able to walk properly, not able to remember things for even 30 seconds, in serious danger of hurting himself (which triggers the invention of the "drunk helmet"), making embarassing and stupid phone calls to random companies about total non-issues, and we see his not too bright but beloved and usually loving teenage nephew Jake feel seriously embarassed by him. I wonder if this almost 180 degree turn was already a foreshadowing of the growing tensions between Charlie and the showrunners. Either way this sort of did put the seven previous years of total irresponsible fun and coolness in perspective, but it didn't ruin them. Charlie is still fun to watch in reruns, and there will always be just a little part of me that wishes I could be just a little bit like him.
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