Ronald "Mac" McDonald

Mac is the self-appointed muscle and moral authority of Paddy's Pub, a scrawny guy who fancies himself a tough-as-nails martial artist and devout Catholic despite constant evidence to the contrary. He postures, he lectures the gang on right and wrong, and he desperately wants to be seen as intimidating and righteous — usually while failing spectacularly at both.

McElhenney commits so completely to Mac's delusions of physical and spiritual superiority that the gap between self-image and reality becomes the joke itself. The writing lets him contradict his own values constantly without ever admitting it, and that willful blindness, played with total sincerity, makes his bluster endlessly rewatchable.