Top TV Show-Stealers

From unclebarky.com

John McCain lately knows something about being upstaged.

The Republican presidential nominee’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate has seen to that. Jokes about the “Palin/McCain” ticket are plentiful as she packs ‘em in at her campaign events, barely survives those nefarious “mainstream media” interviews and basks in the afterglow of Tina Fey’s dead-on impressions. Is “Sarah Barracuda” the biggest political celebrity in the land right now? You betcha.

Meanwhile, McCain has company in this select grouping of Top 10 show-stealers from the TV series where they made their names.

10. EDDIE HASKELL (Leave It to Beaver, 1957-’63) — “That’s a lovely dress you’re wearing, Mrs. Cleaver.” Prime-time’s first punk kid, played by Ken Osmond, didn’t mean a word of it, of course. But big brother Wally’s sandbagging best friend made phony flattery his calling card while otherwise spiking “The Beav” as an irksome “Squirt” and worse. As in, “Wally, if your dumb brother tags along, I’m gonna– ‘Oh, good afternoon, Mrs. Cleaver. I was just telling Wallace how pleasant it would be for Theodore to accompany us to the movies.’ ” You had to love him.

9. LATKA GRAVAS (Taxi, 1978-’83) — The acclaimed ABC comedy also had strong contenders in Christopher Lloyd’s crazed “Reverend” Jim Ignatowski and Danny De Vito’s sourball Louie De Palma. But I’ll take controversy-steeped Andy Kaufman’s recurring acid-trippy turns as “foreign man” Latka Gravas. Not that he stayed in character. Latka’s multiple personality disorder gave Kaufman free reign to morph into anything his mind could imagine, including super-sexist Vic Ferrari. His death just a year after Taxi’s cancelation was widely thought to be just another trick from his gag bag. Amazingly talented and tragically flawed, he burned bridges to the end.

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