It’s that time again! It’s the month of March and that could only mean one thing…time for another Inside Pulse TV Tournament, while you drink green beer! The biggest and most talked about tournament during “March Madness” season is still the NCAA Basketball championship tournament, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any room for other tournaments out there. More importantly, there will always be room and time in your life to fill out more of those brackets that everyone loves.
Everyone loves brackets and television. We proved that last year when we got hundreds of thousands of votes each weeks in our “Best Show on Television Tournament”. In the end, Chuck was the surprise ultimate winner over another surprise show, Burn Notice. Neither show was a #1 seed or a #2 seed, but they took down a few of those top seeds along the way. But that was last year, lets take a look at this year’s tournament.
This year Inside Pulse has decided NOT do another “Best Show on Television” tournament, because really how much do your favorite shows change from year after year? We might do it again next year or the year after to get a broader look at things, but for this year we have decided to go in a slightly different direction. This year we are looking to crown the “Best Character on Television Today”.
Sure, you might have shows you love to watch every week, but what keeps you coming back week after week? The answer to that could be funny jokes in your favorite comedy or maybe the dramatic storylines in your favorite drama. More than likely, though, the reason why you watch certain shows is because of the characters. You might love them or hate them, but you have to tune each week to see what they do or say next. Writers can certainly have something to do with developing a great character, but the best of the best characters are created from the actors playing them. They make their characters their own and bring them to another level.
Now there are so many characters on so many television shows today that it was definitely hard to narrow things down. But I asked the Inside Pulse staff members to give me their “Top 10” list of best characters on television. I took those lists and basically created 2/3 of the field from those lists. The rest of the spots were filled by great characters from almost every show on television. We didn’t limit this tournament to 1 character per show. In fact, The Office has the most characters from one show in this tournament with 6. In the end, we came up with 128 characters that we think are worthy enough to be in the running for “Best Character on Television”. Really, though, only 16 characters stood out among the rest by appearing on multiple IPTV staff ballots. So unlike most tournaments, including last year’s, those 16 characters are the ONLY ones to actually be seeded. They each get one of the top 4 seeds in the 4 different regions based on the “Top 10” lists I got. The other characters were basically placed in the bracket in random order. Some characters had more “weight” than others, but depending on how you look at it, there might be few upsets in this tournament. The only time you could truly call it an upset is if one of the top 16 seeds lost in the early rounds of the tournament.
Before we take a look at the first round of 64 matchups, a few more notes and rules you should probably know and keep in mind. Any character on a television show that aired a new season since the summer of 2010 was eligible to be in this tournament. That means any character on a show that was cancelled in May 2010 or before WAS NOT eligible. That means you won’t find 24‘s Jack Bauer or any character from Lost in this tournament. Sorry, they just didn’t make the cut of trying to find the best character currently on TV. Also, most reality stars wouldn’t qualify for this tournament either, since most of the memorable reality stars have only been on past seasons and not current seasons of reality shows. However, there are two reality stars that did qualify and they certainly are characters of themselves.
Remember, when you do place your votes in this tournament, you should always vote on who is the best character RIGHT NOW. Some of these characters have been around for years, but if they are not at the top of their game in their current season, and a newer character is, then you should vote for the newer character. Past performance might come into play, but you should judge these characters on their merits today.
So with all that out of the way, it’s time to reveal the 128 characters that made it into this year’s best TV character tournament. Even with 128 characters, I’m sure there are still some of your favorites that didn’t make into the field. But among the opinions of various staffers with a variety of tastes, the majority of your favorites should be there. Take a look at the bracket yourself by going here:
2011 Inside Pulse Best Television Character Tournament Bracket
As you can see there are four different regions with 32 seeds each. There are no byes this year, so that means there are 64 matchups in the first round that need YOUR votes! So the time is now. Tell all your friends. It’s up to YOU to VOTE for which character you think is the best on TV. Make sure to vote for all the matchups as every vote counts.
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Each of these first round polls will stay open until 11:59 p.m. Sunday night, March 13. The next round of voting will begin on Monday, March 14 and we will continue until the final character is crowned as the best some time in May. Remember to tell all of your friends to vote as well!
