Recently, I was flipping channels and saw a brief moment of a first season episode of “the Walking Dead” that I’d forgotten about. It was the episode right after the original survivor groups camp ground was attacked and half the group slaughtered. The group are cleaning up bodies, all except Andrea. Her sister was bitten and spends the first half of the episode slowly withering away and dying.
One or two people try to reason with her, reminding her that she was bitten (at that point they didn’t know they were all infected) and will become a Walker soon. She ignores everybody, just staring at her sister’s face. The bearded old hippie (forgot his name) approaches her, trying to talk to her. Without even looking up, she whips her handgun literally right in his face. She doesn’t look at him or anything, and so he just backs off.
That scene was supposed to drive home the point that Andrea was a badass chick! “Whoaa!” we, the viewing audience were supposed to remark, “She is one tough chick! Don’t mess around with HER!” We were supposed to be exclaiming.
But I didn’t. All I could think was “That it one seriously bad DICK move, you stupid, selfish b****!” I instantly hated that character and hoped she’d die soon. Yeah you’re traumatized, but everybody around you has lost people in this disaster; other folks you were camping out with just last night got chomped, and some of your fellow survivors just lost THEIR families, but do you see anybody else whipping pistols in peoples’ faces? You do realize your sister is slowly, agonizingly dying with the full knowledge that she will ‘wake up’ as a disgusting, rotting flesh-eating monster, right? Don’t you think you could better use your handgun by, say, putting your beloved sister out of her misery? And what about everybody else around there that you are endangering by allowing your sister to change into a zombie? But no, it was more important for Andrea to stare woefully at her sister while she fades away because, well, for no reason (other than to make Andrea appear badass.)
When I first saw this episode, I kept rooting for the sister to lunge up and rip Andrea’s face off. Now granted the writing and characterization on TWD is pretty dismal all around (I gave up on the show about a year ago), but that scene in completely turned me against Andrea. I disliked the character, and never felt sympathy for her again. When they killed her off for real, all I could think was “FINALLY!”
Anyway, has anybody else had the experience? Not necessarily about TWD or Andrea, but any show, movie or likewise that you followed that had a single scene that made you irrevocably hate a character?
And for this thread, I’m not talking about characters who are supposed to be villains, or are minor disposable one-shots. I mean regular featured characters who the audience is supposed to root for, or have some sympathy for, and yet they commit some act you just find unforgivably stupid, or dickish, or just plain ridiculous.