Rankings
Characters Who Rate Below Their Own Castmates
For each episode, we compare a character's average joke quality to the rest of their cast in that same episode. Same prompt, same show, same LLM — the cleanest controlled comparison we can run. These are the recurring characters who trail their ensemble.
Below cast average · dialogue only
26
95% CI on their vs-cast delta stays negative — real finding.
Suggestive but noisy
26
Point estimate negative but CI crosses zero — within noise.
Below WAR replacement
2
Avg quality under 6.55 — WAR floors at zero here.
Headline metric: vs castmates, with a 95% CI. For every episode a character appears in, we compare their average joke quality to the rest of the cast in that same episode, then average across episodes. Same LLM, same prompt, same show context. The ± value next to each delta is the 95% confidence interval half-width — only characters whose upper bound is still negative appear here. Small-sample flukes (Erin Hannon, Toby Flenderson) are automatically filtered out even though their point estimates are negative.
Avg and peak give more context: peak is the top 20% of their jokes. A character can trail castmates on average and still have elite peaks (Michael Scott: −0.126 vs cast, 6.69 avg, 7.83 peak — the high-volume-character archetype).
Straight men and plot-drivers typically trail the scene-stealers because they deliver the setups others punch off of. This measures the bits, not the character’s value to the show.
Showing 26
Jerry Gergich
Parks and Recreation · 207 jokes · 80 eps
-0.318 ±0.15
vs cast · 48 eps
Andy Bernard
The Office · 893 jokes · 129 eps
-0.272 ±0.07
vs cast · 125 eps
Rachel Green
Friends · 1,960 jokes · 222 eps
-0.182 ±0.04
vs cast · 222 eps
Jonah Ryan
Veep · 441 jokes · 63 eps
-0.181 ±0.08
vs cast · 62 eps
Ann Perkins
Parks and Recreation · 427 jokes · 90 eps
-0.180 ±0.09
vs cast · 70 eps
Dee Reynolds
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia · 1,305 jokes · 171 eps
-0.178 ±0.06
vs cast · 164 eps
Roland Schitt
Schitt's Creek · 364 jokes · 71 eps
-0.176 ±0.08
vs cast · 71 eps
Johnny Rose
Schitt's Creek · 631 jokes · 80 eps
-0.174 ±0.07
vs cast · 80 eps
Pierce Hawthorne
Community · 710 jokes · 86 eps
-0.173 ±0.08
vs cast · 86 eps
Phil
The Larry Sanders Show · 196 jokes · 56 eps
-0.171 ±0.13
vs cast · 56 eps
Dean Craig Pelton
Community · 344 jokes · 65 eps
-0.159 ±0.09
vs cast · 65 eps
Beverly Barnes
The Larry Sanders Show · 214 jokes · 59 eps
-0.151 ±0.13
vs cast · 59 eps
Elaine Benes
Seinfeld · 1,316 jokes · 165 eps
-0.150 ±0.05
vs cast · 165 eps
Frank Rossitano
30 Rock · 221 jokes · 68 eps
-0.138 ±0.08
vs cast · 68 eps
Tom Haverford
Parks and Recreation · 1,029 jokes · 116 eps
-0.135 ±0.06
vs cast · 93 eps
Jazz
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air · 286 jokes · 45 eps
-0.135 ±0.12
vs cast · 45 eps
Will Smith
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air · 3,839 jokes · 148 eps
-0.133 ±0.03
vs cast · 148 eps
Lindsay Bluth Fünke
Arrested Development · 352 jokes · 66 eps
-0.121 ±0.08
vs cast · 66 eps
Gary Walsh
Veep · 384 jokes · 64 eps
-0.106 ±0.09
vs cast · 62 eps
Michael Scott
The Office · 3,265 jokes · 141 eps
-0.096 ±0.05
vs cast · 138 eps
Liz Lemon
30 Rock · 2,024 jokes · 135 eps
-0.092 ±0.03
vs cast · 135 eps
Bart
The Simpsons · 3,322 jokes · 424 eps
-0.087 ±0.03
vs cast · 424 eps
Kevin Malone
The Office · 506 jokes · 152 eps
-0.082 ±0.08
vs cast · 150 eps
Pam Beesly
The Office · 792 jokes · 171 eps
-0.081 ±0.06
vs cast · 166 eps
Monica Geller
Friends · 2,548 jokes · 233 eps
-0.074 ±0.04
vs cast · 233 eps
Ronald 'Mac' McDonald
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia · 2,643 jokes · 176 eps
-0.035 ±0.03
vs cast · 176 eps
vs castmates — how it’s computed
For every episode a character appears in, we take the mean quality (craft + impact / 2) of their jokes and compare it to the mean of everyone else’s jokes in that same episode. We average those per-episode deltas across all shared episodes (minimum 5 for stability). This design cancels out show-level, season-level, and prompt-level biases because both sides are scored by the same model in the same call.
Supporting metrics
Avg quality is every joke weighted equally; peak quality is the top 20% of the character’s jokes. Only main and recurring characters appear (>30% of a show’s episodes, 100+ jokes analyzed). See the WAR ranking and full methodology for context.