There was Melanie in “Gone With the Wind”, Beth in “Little Women”. Now there’s Castle’s daughter in the tv show “Castle” (but I can’t quite hate her.)
Phylicia Rashad? Bill Cosby’s TV wife?
Spenser during many of the books written during the late 80s & 90s.
Lance White
Dickens’ good characters tend to be sickeningly good. Agnes Wickfield in David Copperfield, Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities, and of course Tiny Tim.
Oh, no doubt about it. Lance is perfect. It’s his only flaw.
All good examples, but what is this type of character called? A Pollyanna.
I’m taking a class on Arthurian legends, and oy, the glut of perfect knights to contend with! I really want to punch that Lancelot in the face some time.
Don’t you mean Galahad, “The Pure”? Lancelot had a pretty serious fall from grace, which balanced out his other accomplishments.
Him, too. But Chretien’s Lancelot in Knight of the Cart is still the worse offender. Ugh.
P.S. everyone in Malory with their own sub-book (so far). I’m looking at you, Tristram.
Roger Moore’s James Bond.
The term Mary Sue would probably be used, but it is a everchanging and vague term. See the linked article. (Warning: TV Tropes!)
[Buckaroo Bonsai, Across the 8th Dimension]
Buckaroo: Okay, let’s get her out of that cell. Perfect Tommy, give her your jacket.
Perfect Tommy: Why do I have to give her my jacket?
Buckaroo: Because you’re perfect.
Perfect Tommy: (taking off jacket) You do have a point there.
[/Buckaroo Bonsai, Across the 8th Dimension]
In Top Gun, Val Kilmer’s Iceman was set up as being too perfect…but he ended deciding that Maverick could ride his tail any time…
I’ve heard tons of stuff about the gay undertones of that movie, but this reference escaped me entirely.
I think it comes from either Pauline Kael’s discussion of the movie, or that clip where Quentin Tarantino, in cameo in another movie, breaks down the gay undertones and ends his story with that line…
Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyN8VN4BSzM at the end.
I always found Hawkeye in MASH nausea inducing.
He was a brilliant surgeon, a rebel, cared about little children, cared about the Koreans, cared about the soldiers fighting the war, treated the enlisted people as equals, was fancied by all of the nurses;including army barmy Hotlips.
He was also brave, amusing…
I’m sorry, I can’t go on without a bucket.
Also George Clooneys character in some U.S. hospital soap where he played a paedeotrician and was forever agonising over the “children”, was pretty vomit inducing, though IRL he’s a really decent bloke.
I guess this is a hijack, but I have to recommend *Arthur Rex *by Thomas Berger as a palette cleanser for you. It is a strange, wonderful, and very funny version the Arthurian cycle, mostly based on Le Mort.
This. Of course, as Alan Alda wrote and directed more episodes, he became even more unbearable.
The only one even MORE unbearable was BJ!
Plenty of references to homoerotic Top Gun scenes on this very board:
And the most homoerotic movie ever made is…
Top Gun (1986)
Gayest Scene in a Non-Gay Film
Gay Subtexts I Probably Missed In Films
He did call black people “Negroes,” but that may be a sign of the times more than anything else. Sorry, I got nothin’.