Shining moments for mediocre characters

S

simple yet astonishing

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For every memorable and well developed cartoon character out there, there's others that simply didn't live up to their potential. Whether because of bad casting, cheesy lines, or just a completely wrong direction, some characters rarely get to shine like they could have. However, ocassionally, there are times when a character that generally is mediocre manages to rise above his or her's faults and please the audience far more than usual. So, my question for everyone is, has there ever been a time when a character you generally don't enjoy surprises you with unusually good writing or characterization?

For me, the best example that I can think of has to be The Batman's Joker and his starring episode "The Laughing Bat." Now, I've never been as hard a critic of this shows version of Batman's biggest enemy as most people have, but even I realize that generally he's just not portrayed nearly as good as he could have been. Instead of being a psychotic arch-nemesis to the Bat, he focuses on silly clown related plots and never manages to become any more threatening a villian than the rest of Batman's rogues.

However, Season upended his generally poor characterization for one episode only, and that episode is The Laughing Bat. Here, Joker is protrayed as a truly great threat to both Batman and Gotham, dealing out his own twisted and crazy sense of justice against innocent people. Sure, he may be accomplishing this by dressing up as his arch-foe, but he still does it with true villanous style, and for once his characterization is right on the mark. No longer is he just another average villain - he is a true nemesis to Batman, and nearly manages to end Bat's life as a crime fighter in the process. Of course, this episode really makes me wish that the rest of Joker's time on The Batman could have been as cool as this, but it also is relieving to me that he got at least one crowning moment of awesome on a show that otherwise tarnished his record and diluted his character.
 
Well, we've been talking about Futurama in another thread...I'd have to say that Fry, who initially struck me as a bland mediocre Homer Simpson clone, has really shone in some of his moments with Leela. He'll do anything for her (much to her discomfort), and his obsession with her gives him a comic and sympathetic dimension he wouldn't have otherwise.

Probably his self-sacrifice in the episode "The Sting" was his true shining moment. Really, both he and Leela were outstanding in that episode.
 
There was that episode where Pip single-handedly defeated a Chinese dodgeball team after his teammates tricked them into calling him French.
 
There was also an entire episode dedicated to Pip that turned out to be a Great Expectations parody.

For other shining moments, Meg from Family Guy had a phenomenal singing voice---> it soothed rioting prisoners and she became the top star in the family's singing group. Other than that, she still remains the show's punching bag.
 
Mmm...

Sokka. His fight with the swordsmaster at the end of the episode "Sokka's Master." It came from nowhere, it lead to nothing. But for those three minutes, he was a badass sword-fighter with some cool moves and some nice animation.


And to be a little old-school, Tien vs Cell. It wasa simple scene, but it was a very pleasant surprise to see an otherwise worthless characer (well, at least during that era) stop the big villain dead in his tracks.
 
Well, if you want to go into the realm of anime with this question then I would have to say Sakura during the chunin exams in Naruto.

I like it was around episode 32 or something like that. The episode is called Sakura Blossums. She fought to save Saske's life and she ended up getting beat up pretty badly. I did not care that she lost the fight and was actually more shocked and pleased that she actually did something.
 
Er, she didn't lose the fight. Nobody really won that fight; Sasuke went temporarily nuts and the Sound ninja called the whole thing off. But yeah, the Sakura hair-cutting scene was very powerful and really marked a turn for the better in her character.
 
Choji from Naruto had a great effort in the Sasuke Retrieval Arc. Before and after Full Throttle Power: Choji Ablaze! andGoodbye Old Friend...I'll Always Believe in You, Choji was just comic relief, but for those two episodes, he was a hard-fighting ninja that I rooted for from beginning to end.

The moments after the fight were both sad and noble.
 
I do not want to cause a flame or anything but I have to kindly disagree with that statment. She had nothing left, and the only reason the Sound Ninja did not kill her is because Ino and her squad got in his way.

The reason that the sound ninja called the whole thing off is because people kept showing up, then sasuke woke up and pretty much put one of them out of the fight in 20 seconds by tearing his arms out of his sockets. The girl was already taken out by Ino's mind transfer Jutsu and the only one left realized what was going on and knew that he was not a match for sasuke at that point. He showed intelligence there and then goes and gets in a fight with Gara, go figure :)

Still, that episode is my favorite in the original series, and it also has my favorite line in all of the series as well.

"All this time....you've all been teaching me something.....It's about time I learned the leason." -Sakura episode 32
 
I didn't say Sakura won, I said she didn't lose in terms of her side. She wasn't the only combatant on one side; there was Rock Lee, Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji there too, just like there were three different people on the sound side. No side really won that fight because a cursed Sasuke screwed things up for both of them and continuing the battle would be pointless.
 
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