Second. If any character merits the OP’s brains-on-my-brass-knuckles treatment . . .
Jack Byrnes from Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers. Greg should’ve spat in his eye and smashed his mother’s crematory urn over his head within an hour of meeting him. I hope I would have.
This thread has been something of a revelation to me. I never realized that computer-game characters had achieved the status of “fictional characters.” Nobody ever thought of Pac-Man that way.
I felt a certain resentment towards Fran – but that’s because I really identified with Harold!
Don’t know how I forgot these loathsome characters earlier: The two main characters in “Bridges of Madison County”. Stupid tripe of a book, and main characters you want to kick out the door.
Basil Fawlty.
Maybe he figured more people would identify with the Prodigal Son than with his dutiful brother. Was he wrong?
Here’s another take on the PS, from Kipling: http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1026.html
If they were a present-day band rather than one from the 60s, yet still looked like that, they could muster up some cool-factor, but as it is I’m not impressed.
Okay, I’ve got a specific character: Arthur Spooner from The King of Queens. He’s petty, inconsiderate, materialistic, dishonest, self-centred, loud, abrasive, and pretentious despite being totally impoverished. I am truly glad that he exists only in fiction.
While I’m at it, I also despise both of George Costanza’s parents on *Seinfeld * (and I don’t mind the main characters).
Right on top of her already defenestrated whiny selfish conceited arrogant ass of a husband Paul.
Apparently Murray would have to do the honors.
GOOD call. I hated the second movie and haven’t seen the first, but he is a despicable character. He’s an overly-paranoid psychopath, a liar, a victimizer, and a bully. I hate bullies in fiction, much moreso than gangsters or hitmen or assorted criminal types. I guess it has to do with the combination of fear and hatred I have for bullies in real life.
Lucille Bluth from Arrested Development, played by Jessica Walter. She is the ultimate WASP snob, a manipulative, spiteful, spoiled bitch who delights in insulting her children and grandchildren and pitting them against each other. She even cheated on her husband with his twin brother, while he was in jail (and then later while he was on the lam and presumed dead). The entire Bluth family is made up of some heavily damaged and disturbed individuals (with Michael, George Michael, and Buster coming off better than the rest of the clan), but I think Lucille is the worst of the worst – a horrible wife and mother and a shitty person.
Yes, but… but…
she’s so FUNNY!
Jack Nicholson’s character from As Good As It Gets: Helen Hunt marrying that obnoxious bastard is supposed to be a happy ending?
Darrin Stephens- either one of them. His wife had powers thousands of times beyond his but he was too insecure to either 1) let her exercise them or 2) set her free. She could dine at on hummingbird tongues dressed in silks and he yells at her when she magically flips a pancake over while multitasking in the kitchen, then accuses her of using witchcraft when she had an intelligent idea, and he belittled her family every chance he got. I always wanted Endora to turn him into a suppository and zap him into the Kravitz’s medicine cabinet.
I was going to mention Archibald Cunningham from Rob Roy, but I think he falls more into the “love to hate” category . . .
In James Clavell’s novel Shogun, almost every upper-class Japanese character, except for Mariko, is a worthless, lying, scheming, cold-hearted sack of shit. Especially Toranaga. How are we supposed to sympathize with him against Ishido, when we can read their respective interior monologues?
Seriously? You liked both *Of Mice and Men * and Titus Groan? Heck, those two books make me angry *now * and it’s a good 14 years since I read them. 
Both Carrie and George’s father were played by Arthur Stiller. Apparently he can really portray a petty, inconsiderte, materialistic, dishonest, self-centredsic, loud, abrasive, pretentious despite being totally improverished father.
Whoops! Jerry Stiller. I’m confusing characters and actors’ names.
helpless giggling
You realize that magic and witchcraft in “Bewitched” were supposed to be direct metaphors for money and class? Why do you think Samantha’s parents disliked the “mortal” (i.e., middle class) Darrin so much? On the surface, it may appear Darrin was petty and insecure with regard to Samantha’s use of her powers but, substitute money and inherited privilege for magic and witchcraft, it’s a lot more understandable. Basically, once you remove the veneer of fantasy, “Bewitched” is really a show about the domestic class struggle between Samantha, a child of an aristocratic family of the idle rich, and Darrin, a child of a middle class family that’s likely only one or two generations removed from the working class, in a society that values egalitarianism. In this context, Samantha’s reluctance to use her magic was really about her not wanting to flaunt her wealth and status.
I think I liked it better when it was just about witches with goofy husbands and annoying neighbors.