Merc Lapidus

Merc Lapidus runs the network that has just bought Sean and Beverly's beloved British sitcom, and he could not be more thrilled about it — right up until he starts explaining all the ways it needs to change. He is effusive, needy for approval, and utterly convinced that his instincts are the reason anything works.

John Pankow plays him as a man who has mistaken enthusiasm for competence, and the comedy is in how genuinely warm his catastrophic decisions feel. He never seems like a villain, just someone whose confidence outpaces his judgment at every turn, which makes the damage he does land so much funnier and sadder at once.