Brenda Chenowith from Six Feet Under.
I’m not comparing Todd to Ted. I’m only saying that they are both sociopaths and all the nice little things that both of them did doesn’t change this fact. I happen to find sociopaths to be vastly more despicable than a man turning bad after being given a death sentence.
The difference between Walt and Todd is that when it came down to it, Walt tried to set things right with the people in his life that he had wronged. Todd is incapable of this. He doesn’t understand that he should. He doesn’t feel. He is straight up monster.
Do Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly count as “characters”?
He sure is. The interesting thing about him, though, is that he just isn’t a sadist. More like the opposite.
As was noted in another thread, if your car breaks down in a bad part of town, Todd is the the guy you want to have passing by. He’s the one who will stop to help you out, and he’ll be completely cheerful and pleasant about it the whole time. If you don’t have any business with him otherwise, he’s a fine young fellow. The problem is that if he has a reason to kill you, or someone like Walt or his uncle tells him to do it, he’ll go ahead and do that, and be just as chipper and cheerful. “Yup, that’s your wheel changed for you. Don’t mention it! My pleasure! Oh, BTW, just a text from my uncle here, saying I need to shoot you. Nothing personal, hope you don’t mind.” BLAM! “OK, thanks! I guess we’re done here. Nice meeting you, have a good day, um, afterlife!”
Todd is the kind of guy who would ramp the volts up to the max in the Milgram experiment, and feel good about himself for being such a fine citizen. Then he would helpfully suggest an improvement to your setup to get more juice from your generator, to zap your subject all the better. And I don’t think he would really understand the problem with that even after you explained it to him.
But not a sadist, at all. Just a nice young man, who happens to be a total monster.
My nominee is police detective Michael Tritter (played by David Morse), who appeared in seven episodes of the third season of House, MD.
I gather that many fans of the Hugh Laurie show disliked the Tritter arc, but I found it to be one of the most compelling storylines that show ever did. The character has a little bit of power (as a police detective), and he uses it relentlessly and self-righteously to get his vindictive revenge on a man who humiliated him (namely, House).
That’s a bit closer to the sort of despicable people we might have to deal with in real life, as opposed to the nostril-flaring, eye-brow arching Sadistic Villains who so often appear on television.
How about George Warleggan and Osborne Wentworth, Jr, in the original Poldark series? (Haven’t seen the new one yet.) The latter was particularly slimy.
Speaking of sociopaths, John Hurt’s Caligula in I, Claudius was great! Nero, played by the same guy who was OWJ in Poldark, was equally slimy as Claudius’s adopted son (and future emperor).
Robert Patrick Modell, from the X-Files episode “Pusher”.
He was just pure mean, and ruined a perfectly good shade of blue…
No, I won’t say which one. Too dangerous. Look it up…if you dare…
Buffalo Bill was on NBC.
I nominate Bugs Bunny. 
Yeah, I know he started out in the movies, but I grew up watching him on TV.
I remember that series, though I seldom watched it.
The one line that sticks in my mind is when he had a fat chick on the phone and told her “By the way, you are a real porker; you know that!” just before hanging up on her. 
What a cast!
Geena Davis.
Joanna Cassidy.
Meshach Taylor.
John Fiedler.
Max Wright.
Charles Robinson.
All of that talent packed into 30 minutes and it only lasted 26 episodes.
He did have information about the scientific basis of “The Whammy” though.
For some reason, I found the character of Ted (played by John Ritter) on an episode of Buffy to be deeply disturbing. When he turned out to be a robot I was quite relieved.
Maria LaGuerta from Dexter
Lori Grimes from The Walking Dead
Wesley Crusher
Sawyer from Lost
One vote for the horrible character who almost raped Edith Bunker on “All in the Family” (and would have succeeded if Edith hadn’t pushed the cake she just removed from the oven into his face). The audience was audibly shocked and repelled by him.
Apparently, the poor actor who played him was accosted repeatedly in his daily life by irate strangers who thought they recognized him as a criminal.
Laggard wrote: “Sawyer from Lost”.
If by “Sawyer” you meant the original Sawyer, John Locke’s father who stole his kidney, yeah, you’d be right. If, on the other hand, you meant the main character “Sawyer”, I’d have to disagree. His character arc, through the series, was one of redemption as he went from a self-absorbed bastard to a contributing member of a community.
And, Skinnybones Lampshade, the same thing happened to the actor, Bill Raisch, who played the “one-armed man” on the Fugitive.
Main character. And yes, he did get better
I dunno . . . of course that’s a despicable character; but a character who makes only a one-episode appearance hardly seems to count for this thread, or else every perp in every Law & Order series and every other cop show ever would.
I was going to say this exact same thing. I couldn’t even watch that show, I find nothing remotely interesting about TV series where the main character is despicable.
I have no problem with this sentiment, though I think it’s more complicated than that. But Endora was just as big a problem. Samantha did choose of her own free will to marry Darrin, and Endora constantly treated him as subhuman. The name thing is just the icing on the cake.
Personally, I don’t think Darrin made Samantha do anything. She entered in willingly. She was on a “be a mortal housewife” kick at the time. She had pretended to be mortal the entire time they were dating. Yes, I think she should have stood up for herself some, but it was still her choice, and Darrin wasn’t actively manipulative.
Well, at least, that holds until Endora came up with her most devious plan yet, and changed him to have a different face and personality. New Darrin was a smarmy ass who treated her like a child.
Jimmy Fallon. Hands down.
I dunno. Dipwad pretty much had the brains of an artichoke, so what was the difference?