Nick Andopolis

Nick is one of the freaks who hang around the McKinley High burnout corner, a sweet, shaggy stoner with a drum kit in his basement and enormous, undisciplined dreams of rock stardom. He falls hard and fast for Lindsay Weir, wearing his heart so openly it borders on embarrassing, and he means every overblown declaration he makes.

Jason Segel plays Nick's earnestness completely straight, which is what makes him funny and touching in the same breath — the drum solos, the Styx devotion, the puppyish romantic sincerity never read as a joke to him, even when the show gently lets us see how much he's overreaching. That gap between his confidence and his talent is where the tenderness lives.