NEW YORK — Critics say we’re in an era called Peak TV, with hundreds of original scripted streaming, cable, and broadcast series competing for eyeballs. But even in a peak era some peak characters emerge. These are some of the fictional folk that we’ll look back respectfully when we think of the 2010s.
DON DRAPER
Only a month after “The Sopranos” ended, AMC took a chance by debuting a ’60s period piece set in a New York ad agency filled with guys who took three-martini lunches and had trysts with secretaries. It was “Mad Men” and its anti-hero was the manly, forever mysterious Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm. The show was an indictment of the soul-crushing nature of commercialization set in the Eisenhower years, before the counterculture and the sexual revolution. Soon after it debuted, men across the country aped Draper by wearing slim suits with skinny ties and knocking back whiskeys. Watching the world change around Draper was one of TV’s pleasures of the decade.
WALTER WHITE
Six months after Don Draper showed up, AMC took another risk with Bryan Cranston’s Walter White, who transformed over five seasons from a decent guy in a desperate situation into a cold, vengeful, murderous drug lord who said things like: “I am the danger. I am the one who knocks.” The show won 16 Emmys, including multiple acting wins for Cranston. Even more than Draper, White took the baton of the anti-hero lead actor from “The Sopranos” and ran with it, becoming a monster and sprinting into an era of Prestige TV.
BARNEY STINSON
Another noted TV Lothario lit up the screen for nine seasons aboard CBS’ “How I Met Your Mother.” That would be Barney Stinson, the high-fiving seducer of women fond of saying “Challenge accepted!” The role reinvented Neil Patrick Harris, who made the transition in the nation’s psyche from child star Doogie Howser to someone who looks up to the sky and says: “God, it’s me, Barney. What up? I know we don’t talk much, but I know a lot of girls call out your name because of me.” The Barney Stinson Effect also was born — it claims men are more attractive in suits — but he’d be held up as an example of toxic masculinity by the end of the decade.