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Cherie Johnson
For every hero or lead character out there, there is someone identifable backing them up; a sidekick, if you will. Sonic has Tails, Sportacus has Stephanie (or the other way around, depending on who you talk to); even Superman teams up with Batman every once in a while. Punky Brewster broke a few traditions of the sitcom, but it wouldn't ignore all of the rules; Punky would have her best friend/partner in crime in a chipmunky girl named Cherie Johnson.Cherie, right from the start of what we know about her, has more than a few similarities to Punky. Cherie lives with her grandmother Betty, her natural parents having died in a car accident. (We don't find out much about this until Season Three's "The Anniversary".) She is the first in the apartment building to find Punky and hear about her situation, though this is all done off-screen; we only see the last day of Punky's "freedom". We know that she was sneaking food in to her and getting to know her pretty well, and oh yeah, she gets her caught! Not intentionally, but it's thanks to Cherie leaving the abandoned apartment at the wrong time that alerts Henry to it and its occupant. You'd think Punky would be a little miffed knowing that information, but maybe not, given how it turned out. And for the first few episodes, Cherie gets to spend a lot of time just being around. I got why she didn't get a lot of time on-screen in the pilot; after all, there's a lot of father-daughter bonding to get done in three episodes. But there's a lot of times after that where she's an extra set of hands, another body to fill the group, or in one notable case, an exposition partner. (Check the "'Cause they're our best friends!" scene in "Walk Pool".) I'll grant that it's hard to stand out when you're a relatively normal girl along a spunky orphan, a so-stereotypical-it-hurts blonde, and a enormous dimwit, but you'd think the longer friendship with Our Heroine would've helped. While Cherie does spend an awful lot of time being "the normal girl" in many episodes, she eventually begins to show a few of her own colours. The biggest thing to know is that, ultimately, she's a slacker. School is mainly a way to kill time, watching the late-night shows is always fun, and the homework is just there. In fact, Cherie's natural state seems to be passive, as she tends to be the one tending towards the catious approach. Too bad that most of the time she tries that approach, she's trying to talk Punky into it. Look up "losing battle" in the dictionary, and you're sure to get a description of trying to talk subtlety with Punky in the examples. The flip side to this, however, is that she by far is the character to benefit the most from the change of format going into the later seasons. Okay, so Allan gets dropped because of this same switch, and that's going to cause a few rants when Season Three finally makes it out (c'mon already...), but Cherie getting a few leading roles isn't bad. Heck, the writers even finally deal with the issue of her long-dead parents, giving that storyline a response time of about two-and-a-half seasons. Okay, you can't deny that she's definitely Tonto to Punky's Lone Ranger, but she complements Punky well. What more do you want from a best friend? 
Cherie Johnson... yes, that's her real name. In fact, the role was based on this girl (show creator David Duclon's niece; I don't know how that works either), but it wasn't originally casted for her. She decided to audition for it anyway, though, and as you can see, got the part. After Punky, Cherie is best known for her part in the 90s, er, classic Family Matters, playing Laura's friend Maxine. After the wrap on that show in 1998, she has mostly worked guest appearances and has just finished work on a movie called 7eventy 5ive.
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