Gus Frings, Ranked

We're doing a fun list about how much Giancarlo Esposito loves playing Gus Fring.

If only I could have gotten a crunchier, lower-res version of this

We are currently nearing the end of the final season of The Boys, a TV series I continue to watch, even though I don’t think it’s very good, out of some odd sense of inertia. On this show, the brilliant character actor Giancarlo Esposito plays Gus Fring, a character he originated nearly 20 years ago on Breaking Bad.

Now, do not get confused; the credits may say Esposito’s character’s name is “Stan Edgar,” and that may be how everyone addresses him, but this is assuredly Gus Fring. He is stoic, impeccably mannered, well-dressed, coolheaded, and quietly menacing. Showrunners simply cannot get enough of having Esposito reprise Gus Fring. This is perfectly understandable. Gus is one of the most iconic television characters—really, one of the most iconic villains in any medium—to debut in the new century. He’s embedded in the broader pop culture. He has become an emblem of the “sigma male” community, who see his supreme patience and subtle machinations as embodying the virtues they hold sacred.

My favorite Google Image Search result for that meme.

Plenty of actors have found themselves typecast. What strikes me about Esposito as Gus Fring is 1) how specifically he’s called upon to play the same character over and over, and 2) how extraordinarily game he is for it. He loves playing Gus Fring. If that wasn’t evident from how many times he’s played Imitation Frings, look at how badly he wants to reprise the original flavor in a third TV show—one that would, insanely, take place even earlier in Fring’s life, while Esposito is nearly 20 years older than he was when he debuted on Breaking Bad. Here, just for fun, is a tribute to the many Frings, ranked in an objective, scientifically rigorous manner.

This isn’t even a comprehensive list. I’m an Esposito appreciator, not an expert, so there may be further Frings lurking in his oeuvre that I haven’t even heard of. And then there are his arguably Fringlike characters that I erred on the side of not including, but which others could make a case for, like his turn as Mayor Franklyn Cicero in Megalopolis. There are untold layers of Fring in our culture to detangle. Here is my humble attempt.

8. Moff Gideon in The Mandalorian

I think this might technically be better than some of the higher-ranked characters on this list, but man, this show sure deflated all our expectations, didn’t it. Esposito is pretty checked out whenever he appears, and why shouldn’t he be? It isn’t a sin to cast him and tell him to be Gus Fring again—the premise of this list is that doing that is fun, both for him and for us—but that just doesn’t fit into Dave Filoni’s brand of sterile, toyetic nostalgia bait. It doesn’t help that they couldn’t even make it into the second season before their boredom with Moff Gideon was evident, since they were already setting up a big return for Admiral Thrawn.

All that said, this show/character has produced this image, which never fails to make me howl with laughter:

7. Stanley Johnston in The Gentlemen

I once had a douchebag roommate who owned a book called How to Be a Gentleman. This was the early 2010s, at the height of Reddit-style¹ “classy” young male affectations. Those guys aren’t as prevalent these days. They’ve mostly mutated into looksmaxxers or spun off into other subcultures like, well, sigma males. But Guy Ritchie has done his damnedest to keep this spirit alive well into the 2020s, even as it begs for death. I have not seen this show, but since it is a modern Ritchie endeavor, I’m fine with assuming it’s dogshit.² As for Esposito: Going by the clips I’ve watched, yep, that sure is a Fring.

6. Antón Castillo in Far Cry 6

Did you know that Giancarlo Esposito is not Latino? The man’s Italian!³ You can tell how little imagination the developers of Far Cry 6 possessed when crafting this character. They not only had Esposito reprise Fring, but they had him specifically be an Afro-Latino villain again. Most Fring copycats don’t go that far! You don’t even have to speak Spanish to grok that his Spanish in Breaking Bad is incredibly stilted, but no one even cares. That’s how much aura Gus Fring has. Moving on, I have not played any Far Cry games, but I’ve watched playthroughs of many. As far as the series’ scary kooky ethnic villains who keep invading your personal space so that the player can appreciate How Much they’re doing through the first-person POV goes, he’s no Vas.

5. The Dentist in Payday 2

I mean, that’s literally Gus Fring again. They just told him to be Gus Fring. And he did it! This man loves being Gus Fring. I haven’t played Payday 2.

4. Stan Edgar in The Boys

One of the moments that made me feel like well-intentioned lib television writers have lost the plot a bit came in the second season of this show, in which Edgar lectures rough-and-tumble antihero Billy Butcher about how being able to “lash out like a maniac” is “a white man’s luxury.” This character runs a giant evil corporation that controls the world’s superheroes, and he’s flinging privilege discourse talking points at some guy who’s vastly less powerful than him? Anyway, “Would you ask Mario if he can whip up some of those gruyere puffs? Would you like an order? They’re worth a cheat day,” is good Knockoff Fring.

This part of the list is transitioning to more lighthearted takes on the Fring type, because I think it’s more fun and interesting to puncture Esposito’s primness. All the best Edgar moments come either when he gets to calmly defy the superpowered assholes around him⁴, or when he steps in sheep droppings or tries to drop a one-liner for characters who can’t hear him through a soundproof door. Like a lot of The Boys characters, he’s supposed to be smart but is very dumb, as a flaw of the writing rather than a deliberate choice from the writers. That’s the show we’re dealing with. Like I said, too late to abandon it now.

3. Lex Luthor in Harley Quinn

My hairline is on track to look like this in a few more years

Harley Quinn was at its best when it essentially embraced doing a Venture Brothers-esque spin on familiar DC Universe characters, and this is a shining example of that. Esposito voices Lex Luthor with an unmistakably Fringlike controlled svelteness, and the show then has a ton of fun undercutting him. It especially likes imbuing Luthor with the more unhinged health fascist fixations of billionaires like Peter Thiel. In one episode, he has “surrogate sex” with Talia al Ghul—the two of them watch stand-ins for themselves fuck—because it’s “more hygienic” … and he makes his surrogate wear a Superman cape.

2. Gilbert Lawson in Community

“HE’S SHOOTING LIGHTNING AND I’M NAKED”

Here we have the very first Fringlike, introduced just half a year after the original was killed off in Breaking Bad. There’s a purity to Gilbert. The premise of his character is: “Wouldn’t it be funny if we got Giancarlo Esposito to play an estate executor who terrorizes the study group in a video game, and he acted exactly like Gus Fring? Wouldn’t it be funny to see him grin menacingly while playing the game?” And they’re right! It’s really funny! An 8-bit cartoon version of Gus Fring shoots power beams at people. Community was a great show.

1. The Original

My second-favorite Google Image Search result for this meme.

Debate persists about how necessary it was to bring Gus back as a main character in Better Call Saul. With his fate written, his storylines are mostly variations on building the Death Star that Walter White will blow up in Breaking Bad. And of course, most of the time, what’s going on with Jimmy is more compelling—and, vitally, different from the arc of any characters on Breaking Bad. Ultimately, I find this storyline’s study of patient empire-building to be an effective parallel to how Jimmy unravels ethically and morally on his way to becoming Saul. The dramatic irony of knowing that a reckless, belligerent science teacher is going to come along and destroy everything just makes it richer.

This show is also a vital component of Gus becoming a patron saint of the sigma grindset; in fact, I’d argue it’s possible that it wouldn’t have happened at all without him being on Better Call Saul. Gus’ sigma-style ascent is evident in Breaking Bad, but exploring it so much more in depth in Better Call Saul starkly heightens his contrast with Walt. This is also a big reason (along with how sympathetic Jimmy ends up being) that the prequel show helped so many “bad fans”⁵ finally recognize Walt as the dickhead he is.

Also, without the Mike and Gus storyline, there’s no Lalo Salamanca, and Lalo’s an icon all his own. QED.

That’s all for now. Here’s an exceptionally Fring-like Tanith:

1. Mind you, this is sparkling vintage Reddit-as-an-adjective I’m talking about here, not the supremely mild social media posturing that people sling “Reddit” at these days.

2. I guess Wrath of Man was fun.

3. In Do the Right Thing, Esposito’s character, Buggin’ Out, continually harangues local white pizzeria owner Sal for, among other things, not putting any pictures of black celebrities on the walls of his establishment. Sal avows that in his shop, he’ll stick by his own ethnic pride as an Italian-American. If the movie were set today, the men could compromise with a photo of… Giancarlo Esposito. Isn’t that beautiful? I think so.

4. Most of said moments are directly transposed from a different character in the original comic, who was more directly adapted earlier in the show as a very different character with a similar name, but I won’t get into that more here, because just writing that sentence made my head start to hurt.

5. God, that was one of the more brain-dead critiques from the Television Episode Recap Golden Age.