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Mary Lynn Rajskub has been on our radar for a while -- since back when she confidently declared that she could "drool better than a stupid baby" on Mr. Show (and proceeded to prove it) -- and in the meantime, she's shown up in small character roles in a whole passel of comedy films and guested on some of our favourite sitcoms, including The Larry Sanders Show, NewsRadio, and The King Of Queens. In those many roles, we always recognized her and appreciated her and thought that there was surely no actress better suited than she to play whatever crabby, socially awkward dorkus she happened to be portraying. It wasn't until 24, though, that we were really forced to sit up, take particular notice of Rajskub, and realize that she fucking rules.

Okay, seriously? I am more than a little in love with Rajskub's Chloe O'Brian, and whoever came up with the notion of creating a character like her and casting Rajskub to play her is (a) a genius, and (b) responsible, as far as I'm concerned, for saving that show from being an unremitting downer. If you watch the show, you know: it's not exactly teeming with shits and giggles. People are kidnapping Cabinet members and engineering super-viruses and taking pops at Air Force One and decapitating people...and some of those are being done by the supposed good guys. It's pretty much non-stop action, which can get exhausting, and requires occasional tension relief in the form of, say, tense keyboarding or standard inter-office squabbling. Which is where Chloe comes in. (Awesomely.)

I don't know if Chloe is supposed to have Asperger's Syndrome, but Rajskub kind of plays her like she does. She is a more effective computer analyst than anyone else in the ofice -- something of a laser-focused savant, you might say. At the same time, she has no interpersonal skills at all: she is extremely blunt in all her dealings with her colleagues and has no patience for their normal human emotions. Such as, for instance, somewhat paralyzing grief at a mother's death by nuclear meltdown. This is what makes Chloe so hilarious: she has neither the inclination nor the ability to suffer human foibles, so she spends all her time on the show in an impenetrably bitchy mood, a determined scowl permanently affixed to her face, telling everyone exactly what she thinks of them and making uncomfortable situations even more awkward by spelling out what would be, for a normal person, understood subtext. (Whereas most people are content, in a work setting, to snipe at each other passive-aggressively, Chloe skips the "passive" part.) Working, as they do, in such a high-pressure environment, most CTU personnel are portrayed as heroes, banding together selflessly to work with the most efficiency and least bullshit possible; Chloe don't play that, and is never so busy that she can't either complain about being slighted in some insignificant way or criticize someone else for feeling a slight she doesn't acknowledge. Knowing that she's pretty much indispensable, Chloe is petty, immature, and extremely hard to work with: and if we worked at CTU, we would act exactly the same way. (Except for the part about being indispensable.) Plus the show is full of absurd and unlikely siuations, which Chloe is wont to point out; in so many ways, she is our crusty little surrogate. Plus, if we recall correctly, she refused to take any crap off Kim Bauer and always seemed dubious that Kim should even be working at CTU -- again, just like the rest of us at home!

Rajskub's seemingly innate weirdness has placed her in a couple of alien-themed movies -- Dude, Where's My Car? and now Mysterious Skin. Her awkwardness has suited her to play characters physically challenged by disabilities (a blind girl in Road Trip) and conventional unattractiveness (a makeover candidate in Legally Blonde II). And her talent at scowling and seething makes her a great on-screen sociopath (as one of Adam Sandler's extremely insensitive sisters in Punch-Drunk Love, and as Squeaky Fromme in last year's Helter Skelter). Like fellow H!ITG! Rainn Wilson, Rajskub has parlayed her preternatural prickliness into a surprisingly diverse range of characters; in fact, if Chloe ever (God forbid!) gets killed off 24, she would be a perfect weirdo counterpart/love interest to his Dwight on The Office: it's not like she hasn't already proved how adept she is at, like Dwight, holding insane grudges and not fitting in -- unless you count the way she fits into our hearts.