Fansided

15 most likable TV leads

By Reed Gaudens

Jane The Virgin -- "Chapter Forty-Seven" -- Image Number: JAV303b_0344.jpg -- Pictured: Gina Rodriguez as Jane -- Photo: Patrick Wymore/The CW -- © 2016 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Jane The Virgin -- "Chapter Forty-Seven" -- Image Number: JAV303b_0344.jpg -- Pictured: Gina Rodriguez as Jane -- Photo: Patrick Wymore/The CW -- © 2016 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved. /
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POSE — “Love Is The Message” — Season 1, Episode 6 (Airs Sunday, July 8, 9:00 p.m. e/p) Pictured (l-r): Mj Rodriguez as Blanca, Angel Bismark Curiel as Lil Papi. CR: JoJo Whilden/FX
POSE — “Love Is The Message” — Season 1, Episode 6 (Airs Sunday, July 8, 9:00 p.m. e/p) Pictured (l-r): Mj Rodriguez as Blanca, Angel Bismark Curiel as Lil Papi. CR: JoJo Whilden/FX /

6. Blanca Evangelista on Pose

Think of the best TV mom ever. Do you have a character in mind? Well, she’s great, but she’s no Blanca Evangelista. Okay, sure, you’ve caught us in a technicality since she’s not really a mother. In FX’s Pose, the excellent and incomparable MJ Rodriguez plays Blanca, the mother of the House of Evangelista, which she runs with much more compassion, care, and constitution than most of the houses in ball culture, at least as juxtaposed by Elektra’s House of Abundance.

If you didn’t watch Pose last summer on FX, you missed out on one of the hands-down best new shows of the year and one of the most likable characters on television. In fact, you missed out on a lot of likable characters. The series, from executive producers and co-creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk (you might have heard of them), handles its transgender and queer characters of color with care and respect, telling their stories with truth rather than fabricated drama.

Blanca rises from the lower ranks of the House of Abundance to start her own house and foster her own group of children with love. She never allows her HIV positive diagnosis, which she keeps hidden, to interfere with being there for her chosen family. She fights for Damon to get into a prestigious dance school, she offers Pray Tell a shoulder to cry on, and she even shows up for estranged former house mother Elektra. No one deserves Blanca, a woman who’s had a difficult run of it and could have lost all sense of hope. But she’s the moral center that makes Pose can’t-miss TV.