In which we name, discuss, and argue over television and movie characters who, while comely physically, are a mite too off in the head to date.
Note that I didn’t say “too crazy to fuck.” Discuss those if you want, but don’t confine yourself to them. It’s possible for someone to be fine for a one-night stand but impossible to imagine dating unless they underwent a lot of therapy first. And, of course, I mean fictional characters, not the actors who portray them.
I’ll open the bidding with Rory Gilmore of Gilmore girls. Is she a major hottie? Well, obviously. Is she datable? Not unless you like girls with acres and acres of unresolved daddy issues, abandonment issues, self-esteem issues, separation-from-mommy issues, and obliviously-but-obviously-in-love-with-her-college-roommate-whom-she-also-hates issues. The scariest thing about Rory is that she thinks she’s sane.
As for mine…Leonard from Big Bang Theory. I’m a closet Johnny Galecki crusher, but Leonard is just…too whiny, too insecure, too acerbic.
*I ADORE Kelly Bishop, but oh, my…I don’t think I could be in the same room with Emily Gilmore for more than 15 minutes!
Cameron, the Terminator from the television series. Summer Glau is lovely, but, well - Cameron is a Terminator, for frak’s sake. Your microwave oven arguably has a richer emotional life.
Nah. Everybody has obnoxious relatives, and the Gilmores are easy to handle if you know how. (Brevity & booze.) Alternatively, one could simply choose the time you deal with them yourself. If Lorelai had had the sense to have a semi-weekly lunch date during working hours with her mother in Stars Hollow, so that Emily wouldn’t start longing to see her and get obnoxious about it, her life would have been easier.
Yeah, this would make more sense to me if I’d ever seen the show, but my sourceless and seething hatred of the blond girl whose name I don’t know prevents me from doing so.
Most Johnny Depp characters: Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd, Jack Sparrow, etc…
James Bond- always hot, but has the Byron trifecta (“mad bad and dangerous to know”) in droves. Ditto Dexter Morgan, his sister Debra (whose boyfriends usually wind up dead) and Jason Bourne.
Speaking of Matt Damon characters (and omitting the killers like Ripley):
GOOD WILL HUNTING- while most of it was beyond his control (being the victim of abuse and an orphan and all) he’s too damaged and immature to have a relationship at the end of that movie. He might grow up one day, but meanwhile I would have no trouble imagining that characters as hyper possessive/clingy and yet constantly unfaithful at the same time.
Diane Chambers from Cheers. While Shelley Long was never my taste, physically speaking, someone thought her hot enough to cast as a hooker and put Diane in the occasional racy outfit.
But to actually date that character? Not even on a dare.
Another is Claire Dunphy from Modern Family. A fine looking woman, but not a personality I could take for even one evening.
Hookers aren’t necessarily hot. But Diane certainly was. She was fuckable but only if you had the foresight to do so on the night before you were scheduled to ship out to fight the Nazis.
I enjoyed how, by the end of Frasier, no bones were made about her being the most awful person in the world.
Summer the Terminator, Summer the Psychic Assassin, Summer the Psychopathic genius. non of her characters in any of these three tv series are quite … safe to date.
