In Praise of Functional Characters
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I spend an obscene amount of time in front of my television set. Smart appliances and streaming services made it easy to lose yourself in quality content. At least it’s the idea. The more I watch television, the less I seem to be impressed by what I’m supposed to be impressed with. Strong acting. Production value. Emotional writing. I mean, that is why a film or a television show should strive for. But, you can never bathe in the same river twice.
If I cried when my boy Peter Quinn died in Homeland, it doesn’t mean I’m going to cry at the end of your corny-ass espionage show.
Today, I want to talk about one of the weird, niche obsessions I developed while sitting in front of my television for too long: functional characters. Characters who exist for the sole purpose of filling a specific task. They don’t have a storyline of their own. They exist so that the show can have a baker, a laundromat operator or a familiar bartender. I find these characters interesting because they can only express themselves through their assigned function.
They enrich either the aura of certain characters or the entire atmosphere of the show. Functional characters often are the secret spice that makes the sauce taste so fucking great.
Here are three case studies to show you what I mean.
Orrin Bach, lawyer (Billions)
Orrin Bach is in ZERO scenes that don’t involve legal proceedings. Whenever he’s around, it’s because one of Axe Capital’s employees (or Axe himself) fucked up and needs to be defended in court. He has a handful of more intimate moments that involve his law school buddy Bryan Connerty in season one, but they also involve legal proceedings. We don’t know who he’s married to (although he mentions it once), what his hobbies are or what he’s afraid of.
Outside of being played by my man Glen Fleshler who looks like evil incarnate, what makes Orrin so cool is that he’s a physical representation of who Bobby Axelrod is as a businessman. He is his longest and most stable relationship. He’s always cool, prepared and knows all the possible outcomes to a situation. He is fat, but not giggly, sloppy fat. He’s a stone cold mountain of opulence, like a business Buddah. In Harry Potter terms, he’s Axelrod’s patronus.
Steve Geraci, cop (True Detective)
Geraci is the definition of a functional character. The sole purpose of his existence is to prove one and one unique point: that Louisiana cops in the nineties were fucking shitty, sloppy assholes who didn’t care about people for as long as their paperwork looks right. The first time you see him, he’s sweaty, disheveled and has undone his necktie, to symbolize his contempt for the institution he’s supposed to represent. He also gets slapped in the face by Rust.
When you see him years later, he’s profited from the system, drives a nice car and spends most of his time playing golf. I love that he’s wearing a wooden cross around his neck instead of a necktie, which ties him to another institution who’s profited from the poor people of Louisiana in the series. Geraci is barely a human being. He’s a representation of a rotten system we’re supposed to get angry at. When he shows up, you know he’s getting his ass kicked.
NoHo Hank, outlaw (Barry)
NoHo Hank is the Holy Grail of functional characters. I could write a 2,000 words essay on him. He’s almost a full fledged protagonist of the show, but he doesn’t exist enough outside of Barry’s life in order to warrant that title. Hank’s a gangster who’s doing gangster shit, because Barry needs someone frightening to threaten the balance in his life. Hank lives to serve that purpose, except he’s not emotionally equipped to. That’s what makes him great.
See, Hank is insecure. He wants people to love him. There is no tear-jerking explanation for that in Barry. The episodes are twenty-two minutes long and don’t have the time to bother with explicit exposition for a character who’s not the protagonist. So Hank expressed himself with awkward friendliness, silly voice tones and (my favorite quirk) the abuse of emojis when sending texts. He serves a more complex purpose than Bach or Geraci, though.
In Barry, the protagonist is the scary paramilitary badass and the antagonist is a silly weirdo because the world in a cold, uncaring place to exist in that doesn’t care about good and evil. It just puts people in each other’s way.
