Every character on 24 not named Jack Bauer. Randy Marsh in the past few seasons of South Park. I feel the same way about Randy as I do about Peggy Hill: great as a minor character but not good in episodes where the plot revolves around them.
Focus: Rily from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I didn't mind him at first, but it wasn't too long until he was either boring, annoying, or both. Nearly every character on that show added something, but he was an exception. I can deal with relationship drama on television, but his lack of chemistry with Sarah Michelle Gellar ruined a few episodes. I was so happy when they got rid of him. I'll also second AJ from The Sopranos. Who didn't want to choke that kid? However, in a way he was at least interesting, even if you hoped he died in a car crash. Alt Focus:: My last year of college there were a couple of people in one my groups of friends that I couldn't stand. One was the girlfriend of my roommate who I've posted about before that was basically a swarm of anger problems. She bitched about any and everything nonstop. Look bitch, if you hate life so much why don't you just stay in your room and stab yourself in the eye? Never had a positive thing to say ever. The other guy was in the same group of friends and was the biggest ass clown I've ever met. He was constantly accusing every guy around us of being gay (he was 25 at the time), and other miscellaneous retarded half assed insults. I can take a joke, and hell, I encourage making fun of people, but this doofus was just awkward and annoying. I don't know why anyone would want to hang out with him. I can actually get along with almost anyone if I get to know them, but those two made my blood boil. Thankfully I knew plenty of people that had nothing to with them. Edit: Maybe, but I will say as someone who isn't a big South Park fan that the wal-mart episode was fucking hilarious.
Definitely E on Entourage. By the end of that series pretty much all characters were pretty one dimensional, but even with the bar set so low E still managed to shine through as the one character without a seeming redeeming quality. He even made me hate Sloan despite her hotness.
Will Bailey from The West Wing So fucking annoying and a completely non-compelling character. The show took a serious dive when he showed up. Honorable mention to the blond conservative lawyer they hire sometime. Too busy to look her name up. The more I think about it The West Wing might be one of the most overrated shows of all time.
Oh ya, I forgot about AJ. I absolutely hated his character. Every time he opened his mouth and whined about something, I wanted Tony to beat the crap out of him. I also found Tony's sister and mother very grinding on my nerves, but I think that was what their characters were suppose to do -- piss you off. Did anyone think Kramer from Seinfeld was extremely annoying?
I'd say AJ from the Sopranos as well. What makes it ten times worse is that the actor couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. Fucking terrible. Eventually his character's waste of space attitude towards the universe really meant something to Tony's over all story arch and the shows major underlying theme of family life in modern America. Janice too was written as a pretty shitty character, her shrewness always a source of misery for Tony. I mentioned it before here but it seems rare that there is a strong wife written around a show focused on a lead husband. Most of the time they are written to be disliked and are seen as holding back the inner desires and dreams of the main character. I think Mad Men is a pretty clear example of this. Even though Don is a cheating, lying, wholly self centered person they STILL made Betty out as the bad guy and an intolerable shrew. Some have also been mentioned Skylar in Breaking Bad, Martha (Seth Bullocks wife/sister-in-law) from Deadwood. Off the top of my head, Dexter's wife, Carmilla in The Sopranos, dude's wife in Rome, Nikki in Big Love (as well as one or both of the other two wives at any given time), Julia from Nip/Tuck, the list goes on and on. ALT FOCUS: There is a guy that one of my good buddies hung out with that I always hated and wish bad shit upon. I really don't know how my friend ever became friends with said Douche in the first place. The worst kind of snowball out of control drunk you could ever meet. One of those dudes who either gets angry drunk or hyper active drunk, nothing in between and nothing below that. There is no counting the amounts of furniture and carpet he's ruined busting shit while drunk. He constantly belittles one of our more socially awkward friends like he's a middle school bully. I've told him to shut the fuck up but my awkward friend is a grown ass man. He doesn't apologize or I even think realize he's done something wrong, this is long after he's sobered up. A self entitled prick who has finished law school but can't find a law job. Not surprising I've learned his dad is a alcoholic self entitled prick doctor. His shitty personality coupled with his drinking behavior got so bad my buddy that originally befriended him has since cut off all contact and pleaded with us to not let him in on our plans when we hang out. Something I do gladly since I never liked hanging out with the guy to begin with and had zero contact with the guy outside of when they'd hang out.
A problem a lot of series have is that the Characters become Caricatures of themselves. The writers think that because we laugh at someone getting hit in the face once by a snapping latex glove that we'll laugh everytime they get snapped in the face. So they start making running gags where they get snapped in the face by a glove to the point where all that happens is getting hit in the face. What begins as an unsure character becomes a neurotic caricature that no longer inspires sympathy or empathy. Focus: I have been working to catch up lately, but I just cannot wait til they kill of Ms. Choksondik on South Park.
I thought Jerry was the lamest and most annoying of the bunch. Plus Seinfeld can't act for shit compared to the other cast mates. George, Kramer, and Elaine blew Jerry out of the water. His character's personality just kind of annoyed me. The OCD cleanlyness thing and his flippant shallowness towards break ups with women just bugged me. I realize he was written this way for laughs but it was harder to like him than the other characters.
How could I forget Marlo from The Wire? Oh right, because I pretend like he was never even a character. He's a fucking scavenger who thinks he's big shit, and as far as I'm concerned, Season 5 never happened.
Focus: I, too, found myself hating Skyler from Breaking Bad, until I heard a podcast with Bryan Cranston. His take on it was this: "So, wait, Walt has spent the past few months of their lives lying to her about everything he does, making Meth, and killing people, and Skyler is the bitch because she calls him on his lies?" It just brought up a good point: Walt is the protagonist of the show, but he is hardly a "good guy" anymore. Sure, Skyler is a bitch, but put yourself in her position. Her husband just got diagnosed with serious cancer, and mysteriously comes up with all this money to pay for it, but she has no idea how and he clearly lied about it. He had been lying to her non-stop for months (and poorly). What wife WOULDN'T be suspicious, angry, and probably kind of bitchy? But, that aside, I will say I found J.D. to get more grating as Scrubs progressed. Still, I think he is one of those characters who the show couldn't survive without (see: Scrubs 2.0), despite his annoyance. It just felt off when he wasn't there. I think the same could be said of HIMYM. If Ted vanished or was killed off, the show would just have a strange vibe. Annoying as they are, they hold things together, and without them, characters like Turk and Marshall wouldn't necessarily be as good. Part of the reason we love those characters, and one of their defining traits, is their undying loyalty to their friends (even if their friends are kind of douches). I'm a huge Futurama fan, but I dislike Zoidberg. Zoidberg-centric episodes are always fucking awful. The same can be said of Meg on Family Guy. Characters that exist only to be pathetic and get shit on by other characters are almost never funny. Finally, I know it is kind of old, but I could not stand Julia McNamara on Nip/Tuck. What the fuck those two successful doctors saw in that bitch is completely beyond me. I could not figure out why they were consistently fighting over her.
Breaking Bad is my favorite show, but I seriously hate Walt's retarded son, now I know he's not retarded he just handicap, but that doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that he talks so nasally and his dialogue is so boring. I get it, he's the good son caught up in the show, an innocent victim. But what I don't get is why everything he says is so cheesy and painful. Also Skylar. I feel like the show got stuck on her, she couldn't be the witless wife for ever, so they decide to put her in the middle of it and watch her fuck everything up. If Gus decides to kill those two off like the show insinuates he might, I'd be very happy.
Kind of agree with you, too bad they haven't at least tried to expand his character some. They have been really good at making other minor characters have decent fleshed out roles. Hell I even thought Hank's wife's stuff has been pretty good, another TV shrew wife. But I guess they have to reign it in a little, their new born baby is now basically a set prop.
Mia from Californication is the most loathsome character on TV. She's smug, loathsome and sociopathic. She goes out of her way to make every single life around her miserable all the while ebing a spoiled slut of a Daddy's Girl. Plus, they make her out to be this super-hot chick and she looks like a Fraggle Rock character washed in hot. In the end, she demands sympathy and recieves it. Pathetic. I really hope last season was closure never to have to deal with her hateful aura again. Rollo on the Cleveland Show is the most annoying animated character since Scrappy-Doo. Every time that show starts to get funny (and it does from time to time) he shows up and instantly it flatlines with his tired tough-talk shtick. Sookie Stackhouse on True Blood. Breathlessly snarky and mouthy, selfish, NEVER listens to ANYBODY, just skips and hops around and every guy in the entire world drools over her like starved jackals. This character is the main character of a show and brings nothing to the table, at all. By the way Anna Paquin: eat something. You were starting to look very Karen Carpenter-ish last season.
I think that pathetic characters CAN be used to great effect, but only when used sparingly, They provide a momentary relief from the funny, and that in and of itself can be funny when used correctly. If you make an episode consisting wholly of or mostly involving that character, then the episode is depressing, not funny. For example, Meg Griffin. Meg would be funny as hell if she was just a chick in the school. Instead, she's a member of the family, and she gets a LOT more airtime than she should. My own personal opinion: EVERY main character should have their good and bad points. Even the antagonist. Otherwise, no one gives a fuck. If you watch a good movie or TV show, most of the drama is caused by the characters' flaws and their attempts to use their better nature to grow beyond them. For example, when I was watching House, I found that the most gripping moments were when House realized that he needed to change himself. It then got boring after the writers started using his misanthropy as either just a depressing "Oh, poor me" thing or just a way to get some cheap laughs. Hahaha, he's fucking with people in the clinic again. No one cares if a character is depressed or crippled or killed his own kid with a pool cue. The drama comes from what they do with it. Focus: Anthony DiNozzo from NCIS. I like every character on that show except for this fucking retard. He's annoying, clueless, and arrogant. All of the traits I despise in a man, he's got them. If they wanted to make him better, they should have made him much more competent. That way, he's a necessary evil rather than a grating thorn in the team's side.
You shut your fucking mouth. Emmanuelle Chriqui is perfect (besides her ridiculously difficult to spell name). Focus: I can't believe no one's mentioned Snoop from The Wire. Now don't get me wrong, I finished the entire show last week and it is probably my favorite show of all time. Season four was basically the crowning achievement of entertainment. However. I couldn't fucking STAND Snoop. Fuck that 12-year-old-boy-looking-bitch. It had nothing to do with her character or her scenes - it was purely her delivery of lines. For some reason, her slurring bothered the shit out of me. A friend of mine informed me that the girl they cast as her was, in fact, a real drug dealer in Baltimore. And is now in jail. I don't think I've ever been happier when I heard something like that related to TV, movies, etc. than when I heard that bitch is locked up and can't slur in public or ruin incredible television anymore.
Characters in tv shows that are intentionally written to be annoying and/or shitbags don't bother me much. I would take a hundred AJ Sopranos and Peggy Hills over one Meg Griffin or Marge Simpson. Characters that the writers clearly have no idea what to do with so they shoe horn them into really stupid situations that make them insufferable. Focus: I have always found Kevin from The Office really annoying. The way he talks isn't funny and he hasn't made me laugh in about 3 seasons. Although, the same can be said for Stanley, Phyllis, Kelly, Angela, Pam, Erin, and Oscar. Jesus, why the hell do I still watch that show?
I can't believe any of you are daring to shit on any of the characters in The Wire. Every single one, as well as all their dialogue, delivery etc. is crafted from pure fucking gold. It's the greatest piece of art to grace television and none of you are fit to lick the shit and broken glass from Bubble's shoes. Seriously though, I liked all the characters on the show, except maybe the 'unit killer' guy who got Kima and Freamon to flee to homocide. He seemed unusually shallow/cliched. Totally agree with the JD hate, though, the character (like all of the ones on Friends) became unfunny caricatures of themselves. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about Scrubs characters and we agreed that the only main character who'd be tolerable to know in real life would be Turk. Everyone else is too pathetic, ball-busting, crazy, controlling etc.
Jon Lajoie's character in The League. I've refused to remember his name, but I believe it's Cuntface. I get that they're trying to capitalize on his internet fame, but there's no reason to have songs in the middle of an otherwise enjoyable show. I keep praying that the next episode is the one where he gets AIDS and dies in the middle of a song while someone shits in his open, gaping, slowly fading from life mouth.