SuperHans makes me cringe. But I don’t know if he would count as a cringe character, he’s just frustrating.
At least for me, these two from much-celebrated sitcoms:
Ross from Friends
George Costanza from Seinfeld
Both were supposedly intelligent people, but constantly, when confronted with multiple choices on how to proceed in a situation, taking the choice leading to cringy outcomes.
Add Kramer and Newman.
Napoleon Dynamite. Well, pretty much every character from that movie. And I love that movie!
Tim Robinson in his sketch comedy show “I think you should leave”. The entire premise of the show is just for him to struggle and act increasingly bizarre in mundane situations that most of us experience and manage without thought on a daily basis…like trying to pull open a push-to-open door: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwdYUIQzu-o
On the great British SF show Misfits (which had its share of laugh-out loud comedic moments), Nathan on the first few seasons was pretty cringey, and then we was replaced by Rudy, who was somehow even more off-putting. Dunno how they managed that.
Not a comedy but a comedic element in a film that fails awkwardly: I can overlook and even appreciate Ewoks and Pogs and yipee young Vader for their cuteness and brevity but the yesmanship to the naked emperor than must have carried the Jar Jar Binks character to our screens is, even 25 years on, hard to understand.
Greg Focker from Meet the Parents.
Thank you! (I’d still love to be able to buy it on DVD but that wasn’t possible in the USA even a few years ago when DVDs were still being widely made and sold.)
Not a sitcom, but: deliberately-cringy characters have been a staple of SNL over the years. Jon Lovitz’ Annoying Man comes to mind right away.
The King Of Comedy (1982). But… Jerry isn’t the movie’s awkward cringy character. Robert De Niro is.
Nathan was supremely cocky, though, not really awkward (just like Sheeran’s Klaus on Umbrella Academy).
This far in and no one’s mentioned Larry David’s sitcom persona in Curb Your Enthusiasm?
Not really cringy though. More of an Everyman, really, voicing things that most of us only WISH we could say.
Post #14
Going back a bit, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em starring Michael Crawford as the character of Frank Spencer - a hapless, timid and socially inept young married man with peculiar mannerisms and a tendency to get into bizarre predicament (usually in a slapstick sort of way).
Being as it is a British sitcom from the 1970s and 80s, it probably contains some aspects that will not have aged well.
I think Frank Spencer should be assessed by a mental health professional. That would be fascinating.
Brian’s Mother in Life of Brian
Or any woman Terry Jones played, really. Always cringy. (No insult to TJ meant–it’s just that his women were more ‘ew’ than, say, Michael Palin’s women.)
This actually happened twice on the series: once over the course of an entire episode where Frank was recounting his life to a psychiatrist, and once in a flashback where he was being evaluated for induction into the Royal Air Force. Both times, the mental health professional in question ended up suffering a nervous breakdown.
I adored this series (although I thought the movie was awful…why did they even bother?) Stuart is endlessly entertaining for all the worst reasons. I thought the episode where he tries to buddy up with the blue collar workers fixing his house to be particularly hilarious. I agree the show didn’t seem to get enough attention.