Your mileage may vary for the terms outrageously bitchy and otherwise sympathetic, of course. But let’s keep the discussion to fictional characters, not real-world figures, m’kay?
Last night I chanced to see a rerun of Law & Order: SVU on USA. In it, Olivia Benson was in a group therapy session, having nearly been raped a few episodes previous. One of the other women in the group mentioned that, after her violent rape months earlier, she always carried a gun. Immediately after the session ended, Benson accosted the woman and forced her to hand over her gun or else be immediately arrested.
As much as I generally like Benson, I was as horrified as one can be about an entirely imaginary situation. There’s no way to see what she had just done but anything other than toxic. Not only had she violated the terms under which one engages in group therapy, but she had done so in such a way that no one else in the group was ever going to trust her again. For that matter, no one was going to trust the therapist again either unless the therapist kicked her of the group.
Carmella is asking her neighbor’s sister(?) for a recommendation for Meadow for college(?). The woman was a little reluctant to give a recommendation for girl she didn’t know, but Carmella used a “do you know who I am?” influence over this woman to make her write a good recommendation for Meadow. The best part was that Carm brought her a homemade dish of pasta.
Eric Foreman on That 70s Show is generally a sympathetic underdog type, but after a few seasons he started showing flashes of total douchetude, especially in regards to Donna’s life other than as his girlfriend.
I watched that SVU episode last night and I felt the same- it was totally out of line for Benson. Although…if she was in the group because of an assault (I wasn’t clear on that point), maybe falling back to cop mode was her way of staying in control. Or it could just be that, being a more recent episode, the show was just beginning to jump the shark (anything from 2008 up to now, I say "WHAT!!! about 30 times per episode).
Oh, I’m sure it was totally about her re-asserting control. The look on her face as she listened to the other women in the group convinced me of that. But, really, I was vexed that the therapist didn’t kick her ass out of the group post haste.
The thing about SVU is that you can no longer trust it. Over half the episodes suck, but they still have random good ones. I wish they’d just go ahead and commit to being stupid, exploitive crap, as that would free them to make the blonde ADA a regular again and have her and Benson make out once an episode (twice during sweeps).
Personally, I never saw Benson as the least bit sympathetic. She’s always struck me as a bitch on wheels. (or, as a female friend of mine likes to say, she Can’t Understand Normal Thinking)
But I’d still watch her making out with the blonde ADA. Or better yet, with Abby Carmichael.
In the movie *The Pursuit of Happyness * Chris Gardner (Will Smith) is a virtual saint except for one time he acts like a petty asshole by lying to a fellow intern, making him think he has missed an exam question
Since the movie is based on Gardner’s true story it may have happened but it just seemed like a grab for a cheap laugh within the context of the movie.
Veronica Mars. I can’t remember specifics at this date, but due to her circumstances (she was date raped, her best friend was murdered, her dad’s been fired, her mom’s left them), about half the time she would be an extremely sympathetic character as a result (spunky, dedicated to the truth, loyal like anything, and still with a heart of marshmellow), and about half the time she’d be outrageously bitchy (boy problems up the wazoo; willingness to do whatever it took, breaking the law or lying to her dad or whatever, to get at the truth; too willing to say mean things to people who rubbed her the wrong way).
Then there’s Cal Lightman in Lie to Me, who I adore watching, and whom in some ways is quite sympathetic, but boy, just about every episode I remark to my husband, “Wow, he is a jerk.”
