I just started watching The Sopranos about nine years behind everyone else. Netflix rules. Anyway, it’s a great show, but Jesus Christ! I want to strangle Tony Soprano’s mom!
Another serious contender for the crown would have to be King of the Hill’s Peggy Hill. People who are that full of themselves should at least have something - anything - to be proud of, shouldn’t they?
Who bugs the hell out of you?
FWIW I like Peggy Hill, I think she’s a genuinely nice person who just wants to see right for her family.
My nomination would be Charlotte from Sex in the City. I would happily continue punching her in the face long past the point where my hand was broken. She represents everything that I hate about the kind of women who live in some alternative fantasy version of reality where people live happily ever after, and then continually bemoan the fact that it’s not happened to them.
Marie Barone from Everybody Loves Raymond.
In a family of total dysfunctional people, it is totally amazing that anyone could emerge a clear winner. But Marie does it.
She’s a pseudo-intellectual (with extreme emphasis on the “pseudo”) who thinks she’s freakin’ Einstein, and assumes everyone else feels the same.
Her ego is so huge that it would be irritating coming from a pro football player/astronaut/president of the United States, but she’s just a substitute Spanish teacher who barely knows a word of the language and won’t go back to school to get a certificate to teach full-time because, in her own words, “I’m a teacher now! I’m done learning!”
When confronted with her stupidity, she shifts the blame to whomever is handy. There was one episode where she said a Mexican’s Spanish was rusty!
She tries to take credit for other people’s achievements. She gets jealous over the attention her own son gets, for crying out loud! Just plain despicable, IMHO.
Spa-Peggy and meatballs…
I quit watching King of the Hill because she got on my nerves so badly. Every time she came on the screen, I was too blinded and deafened with surging hatred to follow the plot any longer. She really reminds me of some of the people I grew up near, and I sincerely hope that the series finale involves Cotton shooting her in some sort of hunting “accident.” I cannot express the sheer glee which overcame me for the precious few moments of the series during which she was in a body cast, and immediately after, enduring one failure after another. If there is ever a spinoff of the show, the entirety of the plot should be the various ways in which she could plausibly be dragged behind a bus for twenty minutes.
Sorry, that’s been building for a while. This whole job search thing isn’t going well, and I have a lot of extra time to get angry at the TV.
That episode was the absolute low point of the show. But it’s gotten better since then because now the focus has shifted away from Peggy and onto Hank and Bobby. Thank god.
I’m at an intermission while watching Star Wars Episode I with my kids (their first time).
And the winner is:
Jar Jar Binks, the Jamaican frog-monkey from space.
He’s really bad, and sadly, I don’t think Lucas really wanted him to be annoying 24-7 like he turned out to be.
Intentionally annoying was Ruby Rhod from The Fifth Element. I really had problems liking the film the first time I saw it because of how obnoxious he was, but the experience for me has improved a lot on repeated viewings.
About Peggy Hill. She is someone who I’d really hate if I met them in real life. And I’ve met a few like her.
However, I like her as a character. Her awfulness is a good source of humour in the show. It would be a worse show without her.
Now, Adric from Doctor Who is unredeemable. As a person, he’s a whiney brat. As a character, he mostly just caused problems for The Doctor and other characters.
Any character played by Gilbert Gottfried.
Alf.
Scrappy-Doo.
The entire cast of Cop Rock.
And, on exactly the same (painful) note, any character played by Fran Drescher.
I loved Olivia! She was deliciously diabolical. Janice, on the other hand – grasping, greedy, self-centered, manipulative – she was even mean to little kids. Then she claims Bobby’s dead wife’s zitti as her own – how low can you go?!?
George Costanza from Seinfeld. I find it incomprehensible that people complain about Woody Allen’s neurotic comedy but don’t seem to have problems with Jason Alexander’s fifth-rate Woody Allen impression that is George. He’s stupid, whiny, and about as funny as a labor camp. He consistently acts in incomprehensible ways for poorly defined reasons and, for some reason, everyone seems to think he’s loveable. He can’t be on the screen for more than three seconds before I feel the urge to kick in him the crotch just on general principles.
Actually, she didn’t claim his wife’s ziti as her own–she got him to finally eat it. She claimed someone else’s dish…possibly chicken marsala (I think maybe Carmela’s?) as her own. The way she treated poor Bobby’s children was horrid…I feel so bad for those kids, losing both their mom and then their dad, and being left with that for a stepmother.
Livia was diabolical…she was hilarious to watch. Nancy Marchand (RIP!) played her to utter perfection.
You win.
Ah, well, bear in mind that I’m only on the fourth episode of the series, so whatever diabolical schemes she cooks up, I guess I haven’t seen them yet. All I’ve seen is her bitch about everything humanly possibly and not know how to work a telephone.
Actually, Cotton died this season. On his deathbed, he said to Peggy, “It should have been you!” 
I know I’m going to catch a lot of flak for this one, but the main one that comes to mind is Peter Griffin.
I haven’t been a fan of The Simpsons for awhile, either, but at least Homer had some “lovable schlub” moments. Peter, on the other hand, is just a dick. And not even in a “oh look, he’s so stupid, isn’t that funny” way–just an absolute, total, dyed-in-the-wool dick! I wouldn’t watch at all if it weren’t for the fact that the other characters almost make up for him (especially if I know that Adam West will be on.)
Peggy Hill was pretty annoying, to be sure, but she was nothing compared to Lu Ann.
The Q. They/it were so effing annoying, I made a promise to myself during the first season of ST:TNG, if it/they came back, I was gone.
They did, and I left.
And I love tricksters. I just hate sanctimonious, all-powerful pricks.
Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen – Cotton passed away earlier this season, in an episode broadcast on Veteran’s Day. Besides, Peggy survived a failed parachute – she’s pretty tough, and could probably take out Cotton if it came to that.
FWIW, Peggy does seem to be a bit less obnoxious lately, but that may be because she’s now working as a realtor, so her obnoxiousness doesn’t stand out as much now that she’s working with other obnoxious people.