I have been watching King of the Hill on Netflix. All around I really like it. It is a great show if you just want a little light entertainment before going to bed. All in all I find most of the characters pretty funny and enjoyable, or at worst more than tolerable. There is however one notable exception. Peggy Hill is one of the most obnoxious characters I have ever witnessed. She is a deluded narcissist who has no concept of her own mediocrity. Often she doesn't take up to much screen time, so she is kept to "stab yourself in the eye while getting a root canal" annoying. However on the episodes dedicated to her she takes the monumental leap to "ear raped by a bull moose" levels of sheer unwatchable fuckery. Suffice it to say I am not a fan. This rant brings me to the FOCUS: What characters ruin other wise enjoyable television shows for you? ALT FOCUS: Do you know any people like this in real life? Do you have a group of people that you really like hanging out with, yet avoid because of one obnoxious hanger on? Does the office drama queen/king ruin an otherwise great work place?
Deb ruined it for me for a while, but she's gradually gotten more tolerable from Season 3 onwards. Madeline Weston is a constant annoyance for me while watching Burn Notice.
Michael on The Office. I get it, his awkwardness is supposed to be funny, but it's not. After a few episodes he makes the show just not worth it.
-Skylar on Breaking Bad is extremely annoying and melodramatic. -Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) on Home Improvement is the most cookie cutter character ever on a sitcom. -Sammi on Jersey Shore, she's a cunt.
Double bonus! Stu Scott and Chris Berman on ANY given show on ESPN. Stu tries too hard to be hood, and Berman flat out tries too hard. His shtick is tired and shitty.
When I watched Deadwood, the minute Martha poked her dumb horse head into the show, I wanted to punch her every time she was on screen. So color me unsurprised when I started watching Breaking Bad, only to realize Skylar (same actress) was the worst thing about it. It must be awful, being type-cast as a bitch wife with very few redeeming qualities.
I'll second this. Michael Scott pretty much turned me off of The Office. I spent the past 2 seasons tuning in to see what Dwight and Jim would do before the opening credits and then I'd take the dog outside and get on with my night. I can only assume that this new season will be better with Carell gone. As for the thread's focus... Brenda Chenowith on Six Feet Under. Brenda was a smarmy cunt from start to finish and she made me want to throw the remote through the goddamn TV more often than not.
This is my problem with virtually all prime-time TV shows. I basically can't watch sitcoms because there is ALWAYS some annoying character that pisses me off. Frequently, it's some spineless guy who won't stand up for himself or an irritating girl who thinks the world revolves around her. I know, intellectually, that these characters are fictional and are designed in to be a funny caricature. It doesn't matter, though - it isn't funny to me. It's annoying, and I spend the whole episode hoping that there is an accident involving the character getting locked in a dryer with a dozen rusty razor blades and Magic Johnson. It's bad enough that I just don't watch prime time TV anymore. I'll pick up shows if they are recommended to me by friends and the first one I watch doesn't piss me off.
King of the Hill is one of my favorite shows, but Dale Gribble almost ruins it work me. He is just fucking annoying and reminds me of someone I know and really dislike to a "T". Like Dale, he is full of conspiracy theories, UFO cover-ups, lives in a dream-like, illusionary world in which he has outsmarted "them" and to him, everyone else is just a sheep and is out of touch with "true" reality. Even dresses almost like Dale except he doesn't have the reflective sunglasses. He wears the cheap $4 sun glasses you can pick up at any gas station.
Phoebe on Friends. This is not high art television, but it entertained me. Except her, she was the death of any scene she was in. Any show or movie in the history of mankind in which a female character has said "Stop with the testosterone display" to a pair of guys having an argument about a life or death situation. Captain Janeway on Voyager was like a charicature of bad decisionmaking. Stewie on Family Guy, he jumped the shark years ago.
Senor Chang on Community. I like Pierce less, but the presence of Chang just feels insulting. Usually Ted, on HIMYM. Annoying, smarmy and not nearly as charming as the writers are trying to cram down our throats. I didn't like him when he was called JD, and I don't like him now. Andrea on Samantha Who. It's not on anymore, but I wanted my list to have 3, and she just inhabits so many hateful qualities. Deceit without guile, vanity without charm and cruelty without wit.
- Kate on Lost. About half of the crises on that show could have been averted had she not insisted on tagging along on this or that adventure or trying to "help" in a way that totally messed up everything. Besides, my heart belongs to Juliet. - Anthony Junior on The Sopranos. Bratty, self-entitled, lazy and fat is no way to go through life, son. - Tara on Trueblood. I don't think you can go 5 posts in the TB thread here w/o seeing someone bitch about her. She just grates on you. Worst of all is that she seems to contribute nothing to that show.
First one I thought of. The only time I can somewhat stand him is when they do the flashback scenes of him in college with Marshall. I wish they could kill him off. Edit: I did always like the Peggy Hill quote that I use in my signature.
That's Rusty Shackleford to you, buddy. Focus: Ruth from Six Feet Under. I made it halfway through season 2 before I threw up my hands and said, "I quit." She singlehandedly ruined the show for me. The guy who started Heaven's Gate couldn't hold a candle to that shell of a woman's pathetic nature. I'm going to give the show another shot sometime this week, and I'm bracing myself for all the stupid that's sure to flow from her mouth. On the plus side, I heard that she does indeed get killed off on the show at some point. Buster Bluth from Arrested Development. I realize all of the characters on that show were meant to be quirky, but Buster always felt like a throwaway character to me. Everyone else in the family is capable of being funny in their own right, but Buster was just a bitchy mama's boy who complained about everything. Commissioner Burrell, Major Rawls, and Deputy Commissioner Valcheck from The Wire. I shouldn't have to explain myself here. I'll second this one. Then again, I've never found Ken Jeong to be funny, ever. On the other hand, I thought it was cool to find out that he used to be a doctor before getting into comedy, so props to him, I guess.
I hate Ted. I don't really care who the mother is anymore. Ted could fall into a pit of fire and the show could go on without pause. Carrie from "Sex and the City". I watched the show for the fashion, NYC and puns. None of the poorly written caricatures of women drove me crazy like Carrie. I hate SJP. I hate the way she speaks. I hate her huge mole on her chin. I hate the constipated expression she has on her face when she's "pensive". I hate every character she plays, but Carrie was especially annoying and stupid. Maybe with a different face I would feel differently.
J.D. from Scrubs: I love every character on that show, and I liked him at first, but they quickly turned him from just an insecure intern to a full on, appletini drinking, bitch. By the end of the series, he had more daddy issues than your local strip club. "You're the one that supposed to fail, not me." How do his friends put up with that shit? And somehow this chick is supposed to be in love with him? I don't buy it.
Oh, man, how could I forget? Elliot from Scrubs. She's cute. Whatever. I'm not attracted to her, but I can see how somebody else might be. But from a personality and characterization standpoint, she's an absolute fucking train wreck. She's prude, has never had an orgasm, and can't have sex with the lights on. No, wait, she's kinky, and role plays about apple thieves and has phone sex. She's soft and can't fight. No, wait, she's good at fighting because she grew up on an orchard. She's a pushover. She's an asshole. She's kinda racist -- no wait, well, actually she's still kinda racist. At least that's consistent. I find her utterly without charm. She and J.D. deserve each other.
Among my friends we have this guy Bryan who always latches on to whatever we are doing at night. He is a nice guy who we all can hang out with, but he is slightly socially awkward (we joke that he is autistic, but that is because we are horrible people), and if you ever bring him somewhere with people he doesn't know, he will whip out his phone and look shit up on internet rather than meet and talk with people. This isn't the worst trait anyone can have, but it sure gets annoying bringing him places. The worst is when a friend and I are planning something that night and he will walk in and ask what I'm up to that night. Initially I brought him along to the places I would go, but he would just sit there and talk to my friend or I (worse when it's just me and a girl, and then he comes), rather than anyone else, which makes it really difficult to meet anyone new. Our house has resorted to only bringing him if he knows people at the party we are going to, or else telling him that it is closed event/party. Every Friday/Saturday he will walk into our house and sit down and ask what "we" are doing/going tonight. YOU AREN'T GOING WITH US AHH. As for people on TV that ruin shows for me... Nancy Botwin: Weeds The kid with the ponytail in the 4th season of the Wire who gets adopted. Fuck that kid. Dany: Game of Thrones. Even worse in the books. I'm gonna be honest and say I skimmed her chapters in the 3rd-4th books.
Tory from Battlestar Galactica - Just seeing her face was annoying enough. Then she started the whole "One Cylon woman on a crusade" bullshit. The one redeeming quality was her killing Cally (the series ended years ago, if this is a spoiler to you, fuck yourself). Bo Crowder from Justified - Off all the hick criminals in this series, I found most of them amusing, or at the very least they added a sense of "I really can't wait to see Raylan get this guy". Not Bo, I just fucking hated that dick. A little different, but Captain America from Generation Kill. The series took some license in exaggerating things from how they were in the book, but with this guy there was no need. Incompetent, cowardly, and a fucking danger to the men he commanded. Encino Man and Casey Kasem had their faults, but CA outdid them by leaps and bounds. Tara from True Blood has been mentioned, but there can't be enough mentions of what must be the WORST fucking character in the history of television.
A lot of the characters on Glee are pretty horrible. Please don't look down on me for watching this show. There is something about it that I find entertaining. It's just, there are certain characters I find unbearable. Sue annoyed me to no end the first season, but now I'm kind of used to her. Will (the glee club "teacher") is more angsty than the teenagers. Finn has no defining characteristics. He is dull and self-absorbed. Rachel needs to get slapped. hard. Even though I hate these characters, though, I can't seem to stop watching. It's like a really perky car crash.