Top TV alpha males

From unclebarky.com

After a long strike-imposed layoff, Fox’s action-oriented Jack Bauer returned to the playing field in a two-hour 24 movie that sets the stage for January’s rock-around-the-clock return.

Meanwhile on FX, rogue cop Vic Mackey pounds his beat for the last time Tuesday (Nov. 25) on the series finale of The Shield.

Both justice-seekers — although you might want to argue with their methods — make our Top 10 list of TV’s all-time, old-school alpha males. But where do they fit in among their peers? Let’s get to it.

10. BEN CARTWRIGHT (Bonanza) — The Old West’s ultimate single dad had a far tougher assignment than Rifleman Lucas McCain with his pesky kid, Mark. Big Ben presided over the sprawling Ponderosa while also reining in three unruly grown sons — Adam, Hoss and Little Joe. Pa Cartwright occasionally bent but never broke. In the end it was his way or the highway, which in those days were dirt roads.

9. DEAN MARTIN (The Dean Martin Show) — Always in a tux and seldom without a cigarette or drink in hand, “Dino” never met a woman he couldn’t leer at. And his playful longrunning variety hour always had an ample supply of amply endowed handmaidens, with a bevy of Golddigger dancers eventually morphing into four Ding-a-Ling Sisters. Politically incorrect? Luckily for him, the term hadn’t been coined yet.

8. VIC MACKEY (The Shield) — FX’s bald-headed raging bull broke new ground and many a skull as head of the LAPD’s rattiest Strike Team. Vic more or less plays on the right side of the law, but no TV cop has ever gotten away with his kind of murder. Cross him and you’ll be crossed off, whether you’re drug-dealing scum or just happen to be wearing a badge.

7. ANDY SIPOWICZ (NYPD Blue) — He set the mold before Vic Mackey broke it. Sipowicz wasn’t a sipper. Battling alcoholism, a trigger-temper and numerous personal travails, he doggedly pursued New York’s vermin with both a passion for justice and a penchant for bending the law. Superior officers mostly just got in his way. And he never tired of telling ‘em that.

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