Perfect Characters Are Boring

It feels like we’ve collectively moved on from characters we’re supposed to admire… to characters we’re supposed to understand.

Lately, the shows that stick with me aren’t built around perfection. They’re built around people who are capable, smart, and even successful on paper, but internally? A little off. A little reactive. A little too human to have everything under control.

Take Shrinking. You have a therapist, someone whose job is to help other people process their emotions, but he is completely unable to manage his own grief. He crosses boundaries, says things he shouldn’t, and makes objectively questionable decisions. But that’s exactly why it works. He’s not operating from a place of authority; he’s operating from a place of pain. And that makes every choice feel real, even when it’s messy.

Then there’s High Potential, where the main character doesn’t fit the mold of what we expect from someone solving crimes. She’s brilliant, but she’s also unpredictable, emotionally driven, and constantly at odds with the system she’s working within. She’s not polished. She’s not trying to be. And that friction between her intelligence and her impulsiveness is what makes her interesting to watch.

And Running Point leans into interpersonal mess. The tension doesn’t just come from plot; it comes from ego, power dynamics, and relationships that don’t neatly resolve. Characters say the wrong thing. They push too far. They misread each other. And instead of smoothing over those moments, the show lets them sit.

Messy characters create movement. They want one thing and act on another. They make progress and then undo it. They evolve, but not in a straight line. That unpredictability is what keeps an audience engaged, because it feels closer to how people actually behave.

There’s also a level of trust happening between shows and their audiences. They’re not trying to make their characters universally likable. They’re not tying everything up neatly at the end of an episode. They’re letting people be complicated, and trusting that viewers will stay with them anyway. And right now, audiences are.

I think part of that comes from where we are culturally. There’s less interest in the idea of having everything figured out. People are more open about uncertainty, about growth being nonlinear, about not always getting it right the first time, so when a show reflects that back, it resonates differently.

As a writer, it’s a lot more exciting to work in that space. You don’t have to sand down every edge of a character to make them “work”. You can lean into the contradictions. You can let them make mistakes and actually deal with the consequences. You can let scenes breathe in the discomfort instead of rushing to resolve it.

Because the truth is, audiences are choosing to give their attention to characters who aren’t the ones who have it all together.