[QUOTE]Originally posted by Scout: I'm not talking about the ones we love to hate, but about those who are so annoying that we would like to see them being killed off. I'll start:
Jenny Schecter from "The L Word". I hated that annoying bith so much!
/QUOTE]
I agree
My runner up would be the whole cast of The Office
What Is The New Dress Code For Gold Derby Now?
Posts: 6876 | Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia | Registered: December 20, 2001
Brenda Chenoweth - Six Feet Under She was a B!TCH from season 2 on.
Pete Campbell - Mad Men From the first frame this ****y kid appeared in, i didn't like him. He embodies a lot of what people don't like about corporate america. However, props to Vincent Kartheiser for being able to make him somewhat sympathetic this season.
Originally posted by G.Penn: Brenda Chenoweth - Six Feet Under She was a B!TCH from season 2 on.
Brenda Chenoweth is one of my favorite characters in the history of television. She is definitely one you love to hate, but for some reason I always rooted for her.
For Your Grammy Consideration: Kristin Chenoweth - in all eligible categories
For three seasons, he was an excellent character, but eventually became so depressive, sanctimonious, and self-righteous that I couldn't stomach being asked to root for him. Brenda was always an erratic character (and I don't mean that as a negative, just to describe her nature), but she was never as self-important.
The Buy More jerks on "Chuck" -
Lester, Jeff, and Morgan invade a perfectly charming, B+ spy comedy with persistently awful, D- fratboy humor unworthy of a straight-to-DVD "American Pie" sequel.
Richard Castle on "Castle" -
Can we please just cancel this show?
Peter Griffin ("Family Guy") and Kenny Powers ("Eastbound and Down") -
The makers of their shows think it's a hoot to watch despicable people maliciously inflict pain and humiliation on themselves and others. Being asked to laugh at their behavior offends me on an almost moral level. Can we please cancel these shows too?
Charlie Harper on "Two and a Half Men" -
A notorious lech of an actor playing a nasty lech of a character. Hardy har har.
Doug Wilson on "Weeds" -
Same as the above three characters. A grotesque, hate-filled monster like Doug is not a source of comedy, it's a source of revulsion.
Captain Tidwell on "Life"
The show wasn't broken, so why did they try to fix it with the miscast Donal Logue, who has been thrust into an entirely unconvincing romance with Sarah Shahi, an actress he shares no chemistry with.
"A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it: about the way it considers its subject matter, and about how its real subject may be quite different from the one it seems to provide." - Roger Ebert, from the introduction to "Awake in the Dark" (2006)
Originally posted by 742: Nate Fisher on "Six Feet Under" -
For three seasons, he was an excellent character, but eventually became so depressive, sanctimonious, and self-righteous that I couldn't stomach being asked to root for him. Brenda was always an erratic character (and I don't mean that as a negative, just to describe her nature), but she was never as self-important.
The Buy More jerks on "Chuck" -
Lester, Jeff, and Morgan invade a perfectly charming, B+ spy comedy with persistently awful, D- fratboy humor unworthy of a straight-to-DVD "American Pie" sequel.
Richard Castle on "Castle" -
Can we please just cancel this show?
Peter Griffin ("Family Guy") and Kenny Powers ("Eastbound and Down") -
The makers of their shows think it's a hoot to watch despicable people maliciously inflict pain and humiliation on themselves and others. Being asked to laugh at their behavior offends me on an almost moral level. Can we please cancel these shows too?
Charlie Harper on "Two and a Half Men" -
A notorious lech of an actor playing a nasty lech of a character. Hardy har har.
Doug Wilson on "Weeds" -
Same as the above three characters. A grotesque, hate-filled monster like Doug is not a source of comedy, it's a source of revulsion.
Captain Tidwell on "Life"
The show wasn't broken, so why did they try to fix it with the miscast Donal Logue, who has been thrust into an entirely unconvincing romance with Sarah Shahi, an actress he shares no chemistry with.
Based on your almost moral hatred of Peter Griffin and Kenny Powers you would not make it through an episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" since I do not know of a more immoral, hateful and destructive group of people than the leads on that show. I found the first few seasons of the show hilarious personally but when people ask me what the show is about I generally say it is about a group of degenerates who own a bar.
Posts: 27215 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Originally posted by Professor Chaos: Not gonna lie, I love Scrubs to death but can't stand Elliot.
Actually, I like just about everyone in Scrubs. But I can't watch the show because I can't stand JD. He annoys me to no end. Therefore, I rarely watch the show.
****************************** LORELAI: You ruined my joke. RORY: Um, no, the punchline ruined your joke. (from Eight O'Clock at the Oasis) ******************************
Posts: 2459 | Location: Baltimore, MD (but originally from Alabama, southern at heart) | Registered: March 19, 2002
Based on your almost moral hatred of Peter Griffin and Kenny Powers you would not make it through an episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" since I do not know of a more immoral, hateful and destructive group of people than the leads on that show. I found the first few seasons of the show hilarious personally but when people ask me what the show is about I generally say it is about a group of degenerates who own a bar.
It depends. If "Philadelphia" is clear-eyed about its characters, it might be funny. The shows I referenced seem to think their characters are people I'd want to root for, which makes me feel unclean. Take "Arrested Development" -- horrible people, but we weren't rooting for them, we were rooting for the Jason Bateman character, and seeing them through his eyes made it infinitely funnier than it would have been without him. (And for that matter, we also had Maeby and George-Michael to balance the family madness.)
That's why "Seinfeld," despite its frequent brilliance, often filled me with a certain displeasure. They're frequently unpleasant people. What's so funny about watching people you'd never want to spend any time with?
"A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it: about the way it considers its subject matter, and about how its real subject may be quite different from the one it seems to provide." - Roger Ebert, from the introduction to "Awake in the Dark" (2006)
Originally posted by G.Penn: Brenda Chenoweth - Six Feet Under She was a B!TCH from season 2 on.
Brenda Chenoweth is one of my favorite characters in the history of television. She is definitely one you love to hate, but for some reason I always rooted for her.
I couldn't stand her after what she did to Nate. And then to Joe. And she always blamed others for actions which really frustrated me. I really don't like characters who insist on blaming their parents for all of their problems in adulthood(even though Margaret was a terrible person).
I always thought her miscarriage was a punishment for all her past sins.
Lead Actor - Joseph Gordon-Levitt, (500) Days of Summer Lead Actress - Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds Supporting Actress - Mo'Nique, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire Original Screenplay - Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber, (500) Days of Summer
Posts: 4940 | Location: Why Do You Want To Know? | Registered: November 21, 2006
Also one more, this is more of a recurring character, but Dom (played by Domenick Lombardozzi) on Entourage.
2010 Oscars FYC:
Lead Actor - Joseph Gordon-Levitt, (500) Days of Summer Lead Actress - Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds Supporting Actress - Mo'Nique, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire Original Screenplay - Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber, (500) Days of Summer
Posts: 4940 | Location: Why Do You Want To Know? | Registered: November 21, 2006
Based on your almost moral hatred of Peter Griffin and Kenny Powers you would not make it through an episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" since I do not know of a more immoral, hateful and destructive group of people than the leads on that show. I found the first few seasons of the show hilarious personally but when people ask me what the show is about I generally say it is about a group of degenerates who own a bar.
It depends. If "Philadelphia" is clear-eyed about its characters, it might be funny. The shows I referenced seem to think their characters are people I'd want to root for, which makes me feel unclean. Take "Arrested Development" -- horrible people, but we weren't rooting for them, we were rooting for the Jason Bateman character, and seeing them through his eyes made it infinitely funnier than it would have been without him. (And for that matter, we also had Maeby and George-Michael to balance the family madness.)
That's why "Seinfeld," despite its frequent brilliance, often filled me with a certain displeasure. They're frequently unpleasant people. What's so funny about watching people you'd never want to spend any time with?
I don't think "Eastbound and Down", which I like but do not love, wants you to root for its main character. It generally seems to want you to revel in his failure.
As to the point in your last character I am on the opposite end as I don't really see the humor in having nice people doing nice things. I do not even really know that comedy that would refer to in this day and age. It would apply to sitcoms back in the 50s and 60s but as for me whenever I have tried to sit through those kind of vanilla comedies like "The Donna Reed Show" or "Make Room for Daddy" I have never laughed once. I don't even understand what is supposed to be funny about them.
I do not really think it is important that characters on a show be nice or even pleasant. People who are very nice are often boring or even irritating... which is why we as an audience do not hold it against Homer Simpson for making Ned Flanders his enemy. It is far more important that the characters be interesting rather than nice.
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Posts: 27215 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Ah, but it's not black and white. Not wanting characters to be unmitigated A-holes doesn't mean that I want them to be "Leave it to Beaver." It's possible to have good characters do bad things. And to have bad characters who don't know they're bad, or who are bad despite themselves.
I can't remember the exact words, but Roger Ebert has made a very insightful observation about comedy: It is not funny to watch a character trying to be offensive, but it is funny to watch a character who is offensive when trying not to be. That's where you get Homer Simpson, who is lazy and dimwitted, but so frequently his heart is in the right place when his plans go horribly, horribly wrong, so we laugh at the conflict between intention and result.
A character like Peter Griffin is trying to be offensive, and he doesn't seem to care that he is offensive, which makes him more like a sociopath than an object of good humor. As for Kenny Powers, if we're being asked to root against him, well that's no fun either; it's just the same mean-spiritedness inverted, when the mean-spiritedness is the problem to begin with.
I return to the example of "Arrested Development." It knew how to balance the manic (Gob, Buster), the mean (Lucille, George Sr.), and the measured (Maeby, George-Michael, Michael), so that it was not simply mired in insanity. It was an observation of insanity from the point of view of characters trying to make sense of it. The conflict of the bizarre and the sensible is what fueled most of the comedy. What's more, many of those characters weren't trying to be offensive. They were behaving as they thought they should, at times trying to be helpful and failing miserably (i.e. Lindsay's culinary discovery: "hot ham water"). When Gob hits on his mother in "SOBs," it's funny because he doesn't know it's his mother. But when Kenny makes advances on a woman engaged to marry someone else, it's not funny, because he knows she's engaged and doesn't care.
Kenny Powers is a jerk. He knows he's a jerk. He has no qualms about being a jerk. He hurts people maliciously, without cause, and without consideration for them. That's the premise for the comedy, but I think it's rotten. Watching Kenny Powers makes me deeply sad. The joy drains from any room the character enters. I take no pleasure in the pain he inflicts upon others, and I can't even enjoy his failures because he is immune to comeuppance; there's no learning curve, just small setbacks in-between him behaving like a self-deluded monster.
That's supposed to be funny? I don't think so.
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"A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it: about the way it considers its subject matter, and about how its real subject may be quite different from the one it seems to provide." - Roger Ebert, from the introduction to "Awake in the Dark" (2006)
But we've only seen the pilot. Or do you just think there is no hope for it?