Chief

Chief runs Control, the secret agency perpetually undermined by the bumbling brilliance of Agent 86. He is measured, weary, and permanently caught between institutional duty and disbelief, issuing missions with the guarded patience of a man who has learned to expect disaster. He wants competence. He rarely gets it.

Edward Platt plays the only straight man in a show built entirely of gags, and that restraint is the joke's engine — his flat exasperation, the long-suffering sighs, the calm collapsing into exasperated shouts, all sell Smart's nonsense as real. He never mugs for laughs, which is exactly why he gets them.