My Mother-in-Law is an older, racist version of Peggy Hill.
Steve Urkel, anyone?
Similarly, Screech from Saved by the Bell.
(I don’t know why those two are similar. Somehow they just are.)
Does reality tv count? Mary Murphy from So You Think You Can Dance. It is somewhat all the more horrid because you realize that she’s really like that.
I work nights, so I don’t always get a chance to catch up on new shows. The 1st time I saw Pushing Daisies, I thought it was merely bad. A few weeks later, I caught another episode.
Why doesn’t anyone bitch-slap “Chuck” Charles (Anna Friel), or at least dose her water w/some sort of sedative? She’s in-your-face annoying/pushy/chirpy. Do you think she’d understand the words, “back off, already”?
Loved, Phil
A few characters from Frazier:
His agent, Bebe Glazer
Daphne’s mother, Gertrude Moon
Food critic Gil Chesterton
Noel Shempsky
Ronee Lawrence (Wendie Malick): I just cannot stand that woman’s voice.
But I LOVE Niles!
Kathy Lee Gifford.
Katie Couric
Raymond Barone.
This guy is so gutless and emasculated, and seems to live in constant fear of his mother and his wife. The idea that a man should basically have to beg his spouse for love and affection is a comedy meme I’ve never understood. I’d shoot myself if I lived like that.
From movies, I submit Willie Scott from Temple of Doom.
Agreed that Ray Barone is despicable, but because he’s a selfish whiner whose primary concern at all times is “what can I get away with?” with never a thought for how it will affect anyone else.
I’ve only watched parts of a few episodes, but seeing him whine and bitch trying to weasel out of the promise he made to take his own kids to the park put him on my shit list forever.
I hate to think how many dads out there identify with Ray.
“Spend time with my children just because I promised to?! Fuck that! Kids are for women.”
Who even thought George was lovable? You’re supposed to hate him - that’s the point of the character. That’s why he never wins. He’s a bad person, and half the fun of the show is watching bad things happen to him.
First thing I thought about looking at the title of the OP. Jar Jar Binks hands down.
Little shits like Scrappy Do are annoying, sure, but mostly because they have some wicked, corrupted spawn of ‘hero exemption’ and ‘informed attribute’ traits and other characters behave as they were cute and encourage their inane behavior. If just single character said to, for example, Scrappy Do ‘just shut the f… up’, he would plummet from ‘wildly annoying’ to ‘mildly annoing’ or even just ‘meh’. But Jar Jar Binks is self-made. Nothing short of a bullet between eyes would stop him or made him cool… Oh, wait… There is nothing between his eyes… That explains a lot…
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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.
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In the first episodes Jason Alexander is doing a straight Woody Allen Impression. I mean- very very obvious. In the commentary he states that he auditioned that way, thinking there was no way he’d get the job. When he got it, he just kept it up. Then he got a script that he thought was ridiculous, he went to Larry David to complain that nobody would end up in that situation and if they did, would never react the way the script dictates. Larry indicated that it had in fact happened to him, and that was exactly what he did. That’s when Jason switched playing George from a straight Woody Allen impression to a straight Larry David impression.
But I agree, that part of the fun is that George is supposed to be the “loser” of the group. Whenever they look for some particularly underhanded plan, they look to George. It’s only in the episode where he goes against every instinct he has that things work out for him.
In the spirit of the OP… the character from the Soprano’s who always bugged the crap out of me was AJ. I just wanted to strangle the kid.
Fay Furillo from “Hill Street Blues.” I wonder if she was actually acting, or was that the way she screeched to then-married-to-her Bochco. I like watching the old “Hill Street” reruns, but I’d be very happy if they cut all her scenes.
Meadow Soprano grated on my nerves. But the strange thing was that I couldn’t help thinking that of course Tony & Carmela Soprano would have a pampered, spoiled brat daughter like that.
Dawn from Buffy and Conner from Angel. To be fair, at least the actress playing Dawn managed to make her slightly sympathetic. But as written, Dawn was a simpering whiny annoyance. There was no excuse for Conner.
In fact, let’s add Anya to the list as well. Tacked on to the regular cast of “Buffy” as a replacement for Cordelia, she never was half as interesting or funny as Charisma Carpenter.
The character of Diane from Cheers. Of course, her successor, Rebecca, was annoying as shit, too. I realize they were supposed to be that way, so we would laugh when they got their comeuppances, but they still irritated the hell out of me.
I’ll defend Connor – sort of. Yes, he was a horrible person–but (a) there’s a perfectly reasonable in-story explanation for even the worst of his behavior, and (b) YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LIKE HIM ANYWAY. I don’t think any of the characters liked him once he was back from Hell Dimension his evil foster daddy took him too. And that includes Angel. Oh, Angel LOVED him, and wanted his love back–but like him? Hell no. The closest he came to liking him was wanting him to change into someone who could only survive because he had super-powers.
Ross from Friends. I haven’t seen that show in years but the mere memory of that spineless, whiny wuss still irks me.
As much as Thundercats hate Snarf (and all the other snarfs, especially Snarfer, who was just like his uncle except with a higher pitched voice, more annoying mannerisms, and even less of a reason for being there), I also found Jaga to be worse. He was a smarmy half-naked bastard who’s sole purpose was the state the obvious. And be smarmy.
And from Silverhawks: Zeek the beak. He was Scrappy-Doo level annoying. Snarfer level annoying. And some of the writers loved him.
No list of annoying TV characters is complete without Mr. Haney from Green Acres.