I’m talking about characters that are barely in a movie or TV show but because their presence is so memorable, you would like to see more of them.
We are re-watching “The Night of”. Such an amazing production. On the surface, it’s a ‘police procedural/who-done-it’ but it’s done very well.
It’s rolling along fairly standardly when they interview an ominous mortician and hearse driver. He is kind of jarring as he (at least to me) goes against the all of the other “normal” people in the show. During the trial, he becomes a person of interest. He is notorious for his menacing demeanor and for spouting biblical references about women being the root of all evil. But he’s impeccably dressed and speaks well.
I always found Brienne of Tarth to be one of the more interesting characters in Game of Thrones. I wish she got her own spin-off. I’d much rather watch her do her thing rather than another bunch of annoying Targaryens…
I recently read the dystopian sci-fi book “Station Eleven,” which is (mainly) about a community that forms in a Michigan airport after a mysterious virus kills off most of the human population. One of the pilots was on a flight from Boston to San Diego when his flight was grounded, and his home base was in the L.A. area and he wanted to go there, which he eventually did with 21 of the other airport residents, or at least he took off from the airport.
The idea of whether he made it, and what happened to him when and if he arrived, and the other people, many of whom were Chinese, Japanese, or Korean on that flight, piqued my curiosity. Did he find anyone he knew alive? Were any ships available that could take the Asian passengers home? etc.
Vincent Cassel’s “The Night Fox” from the 2nd and 3rd Ocean’s movies (casino hijinks). Yeah George Clooney owned him in both films, but as a standalone character with his own stories I think that he could be rather compelling and entertaining.
Graham Greene’s character in Maverick.
Graham Greene’s character in Thunderheart.
Cheech Marin’s and Salma Hayek’s characters in From Dusk til Dawn.
Captain Needa in The Empire Strikes Back. (“Prepare my shuttle. I will take full responsibility for losing them, and apologize to Lord Vader personally.”)
Ever since I was a kid, I’d watch the Bond movies and see Q help 007 for a moment — before the minor character gets back to making sure a sharp-edged and magnet-powered serving tray will be ready in time for Achmed’s tea party. Or field-testing a piece of jewelry that makes slot machines pay out. Or doing a little surveillance in disguise, with a mundane-looking device in hand. Or getting swarmed by grateful women right after he swoops in to incapacitate a bad guy.
And, well, I wanted to see what else that guy got up to.
It was so cartoony how Q would give 007 a gizmo that was so tailor made for the situation when it was used, as though he knew in advance what was going to happen
I never read the Bible, so I don’t know, but it seems to me a pregnant Bronze Age girl can’t get away with claiming she’s a virgin and expect the story to gain traction without an expert’s opinion. So, I want to know more about Mary’s gynecologist.
Nothing with just the two of them, but there is a short story, “Zoo Day”, where the same events are told from the point of view of three different characters, one of whom is Mouse.
Unsurprisingly Harry is the least perceptive of the three, and Mouse is the most.
From Star Trek the original we were teased about future adventures of Gary Seven, Roberta Lincoln (Teri Garr) and a shape shifter black cat time traveling through history. I wish they could have done that, it would have been cool for sure.
In college, a friend and I worked up a story board for a comic book featuring the toothless carny who (kinda) saves the day in Strangers on a Train. He even had a fun house lair for his HQ.
Back in the 1980s, there was a comic book series called Jon Sable, Freelance, written and illustrated by Mike Grell. Sable was an equalizer, a mercenary for hire, the guy you call when you don’t know who else to call.
Every now and then (maybe a half-dozen issues), he’d cross paths with Lady Margaret Graymalkin, who was an elegant British noblewoman by day, and Maggie the Cat by night. A cat burglar, she didn’t bother with the family silver in your house; no, she went for jewels in museums and such. And she was very good at it.
A “Maggie the Cat” spinoff would have been great, and Grell did do a couple of one-off issues, but suddenly stopped with no clear reason. Still, I think there was enough there, and the character had been shaped so nicely in the pages of Sable that a series concentrating on Maggie the Cat would have done well.
