This week’s question is in honor of Marvel’s new Disney+ series, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier:
What is your favorite on-screen odd couple?
What is your favorite on-screen odd couple?
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2 / 9
Mark Corrigan and Jeremy “Jez” Usborne, Peep Show
Mark Corrigan and Jeremy “Jez” Usborne, Peep Show
A truly great odd couple, to my mind, can’t simply be a study in contrasts; there has to be some underlying commonality that encourages these two weirdos to stick together beyond mere defrayed rents. When it comes to Peep Show’s Mark and Jez, that shared trait is simple: They’re two of the worst human beings in the entire fucking world. As played by long-time comedy partners David Mitchell and Robert Webb, Mark and Jez look, initially, like exact opposites: Mark as the worst possible expression of Mitchell’s tightly wound superego persona, Jez as Webb at his most id-friendly. But it’s in their shared commitment to doing the absolute worst thing in any given moment—Mark by over-thinking, Jez by under-—that the true bonds of their endlessly destructive, occasionally dog-devouring partnership are formed. [William Hughes]
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3 / 9
Nick and Schmidt, New Girl
Nick and Schmidt, New Girl
Jessica Day had many romantic entanglements over the course of New Girl’s seven seasons, but the series’ true love story is obviously Nick and Schmidt. The two met in college and stayed friends even as the roommates’ fates took disparate paths: Schmidt (Max Greenfield), the Felix, turned into a middle-manager yuppie obsessed with hair chutneys, while Nick (Jake Johnson), the Oscar, tended bar when he wasn’t procrastinating on his zombie novel and had a credit score under 100. But their vast differences somehow seemed to tie the two together even tighter. The New Girl moment that best sums this union up is season two’s “I got you cookie” scene, as Nick futilely tries to convince Schmidt that he’s putting all his stakes in the wrong guy—but of course, Schmidt has been right about Nick all along, as his eventual bestselling novel The Pepperwood Chronicles will attest. [Gwen Ihnat]
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4 / 9
Adrian Monk and Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, Monk
Adrian Monk and Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, Monk
While Sharona and Natalie on Monk are the show’s most direct stand-ins for the John Watson-type you so often see in Sherlock Holmes-y mysteries, Monk’s best odd couple is actually Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) and Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine). One’s a brilliant detective haunted by all-consuming grief and is crippled by a list of phobias that includes heights, germs, and, of course, milk. The other is a no-nonsense police officer with a bushy mustache and an anger problem. Neither one is especially good at holding onto the people close to them, but in each other they found a lifelong friendship—even if the two of them can’t really stand to be alone together for very long. [Sam Barsanti]
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5 / 9
Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson, Parks And Recreation
Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson, Parks And Recreation
I rewatched all of Parks And Recreation during early quarantine days and I grew to appreciate the strong friendship between Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) despite their polarizing differences. There are several odd couples on this show, but an enthusiastic, government-loving Leslie and a staunch, macho libertarian like Ron found ways to balance their contradicting views with mutual respect and solid trust. Their dynamic is unique and hilarious because they know how to push each other’s buttons while standing up for themselves. It’s also why their reunion in season seven (perfectly set to Willie Nelson’s “Buddy”) hits all the right notes. [Saloni Gajjar]
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6 / 9
Troy Barnes and Abed Nadir, Community
Troy Barnes and Abed Nadir, Community
I have six words for you: Troy and Abed in the morrrrrrrning! With its deep well of references and alternate-timeline spanning jokes, Community is any pop culture junkie’s dream sitcom, but perhaps the real community was the friends we made along the way? I’m talking specifically about Troy Barnes (Donald Glover) and Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi), whose blossoming friendship and eventual co-dependent bromance became one of the linchpins of the cult comedy. When the study group first formed, Troy’s alpha jock persona may have seemed at odds with the human supercomputer that is Abed. But watching them connect over shared Inspector Spacetime geekery and indulge each other’s wild imaginations has brought me a joy that has outlasted Community’s six season (and a movie, if that prophecy ever comes true). [Cameron Scheetz]
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7 / 9
Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart
Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart
As I debated between a handful of unlikely duos from the fictional, I kept returning to a real-world example that has always amused and entertained me: Snoop and Martha Stewart. What fascinates me about this unlikely pair is that they existed in their own, disparate worlds for so long before joining forces in a way that made the world go “of course this disgraced lifestyle guru and weed-loving rapper would legitimately embark on a friendship that would spawn everything from the Emmy-nominated Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party to T-Mobile commercials.” [Patrick Gomez]
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8 / 9
The Hound and Arya Stark, Game Of Thrones
The Hound and Arya Stark, Game Of Thrones
Its luster may have dimmed thanks to the reception that greeted the eighth and final season, but Game Of Thrones will always have a special place in my heart thanks to one of the best odd-couple TV pairings of the last decade: The Hound (Rory McCann) and Arya Stark (Maisie Williams). You can’t get much more mismatched than pairing the pint-sized youngest sibling of the North’s most famous family with the second-biggest son of a bitch in the South, and their journey across the Seven Kingdoms (well, some of them, anyway) made for one of my favorite parts of the entire series. It was a slow burn of mutual dislike that grew to grudging respect, and even after the Hound was stabbed and left for dead, their bond somehow survived. Give it up for that weird-ass duo. [Alex McLevy]
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9 / 9
All slides
- What is your favorite on-screen odd couple?
- Mark Corrigan and Jeremy “Jez” Usborne, Peep Show
- Nick and Schmidt, New Girl
- Adrian Monk and Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, Monk
- Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson, Parks And Recreation
- Troy Barnes and Abed Nadir, Community
- Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart
- The Hound and Arya Stark, Game Of Thrones