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My theory is this:
Lister is the cat people’s God. She must be the devil! She’s there to tempt him and draw him into evil :eek:
Actually, one of my RD books says she was brought in to make the show appeal to Americans - after all, we’re so shallow we can’t stomach a movie without at least one attractive female. The original actress wasn’t available (or wasn’t pretty enough - I don’t remember which) so they decided to make the alternate dimension Kochanski instead. But, this is just one more reason I can’t stand her. The show was great with all the guys. She threw off the whole chemistry of the show. Seasons 7 and 8 are no where near the caliber of the first 6.
Did you see Can’t Smeg Wont Smeg? She was so obnoxious. I just wanted to slap her.
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Kramer. He’s not funny. I can’t stand him, although my parents-in-law think he’s just the greatest character ever.
Third on Frank Burns. He’s just utterly hateful, so much so that now I watch the MASH credits to see if he’s on, then give it a miss.
I do despise Cartman, although I know that you’re supposed to. The thing is, when you play one note for such a long time, you end up getting sick of it. If Matt and Trey would mix it up a little with Cartman, it’d go a lot farther.
Henry Higgins (from My Fair Lady). My mom loves him, but I can’t see him as anything other than a prick.
“I’m Chip!
…I’m Dale!
We’re just a couple of crazy rascals
out to have some fun!”
Well, no you aren’t. You little bastards are sadistic thieving vandals who deserve to be tortured with red-hot knives. You, Jerry, Tweety and all the rest. But it’ll never happen because the cute little cartoon character is always the hero, no matter what. :mad:
This far and noone has mentioned Absolutely Fabulous? I am shocked and horrified. My fiancee loves the show. I’ve tried to like it in every way possible, but can’t. None of the characters are the least bit likable.
And I disagree about King of the Hill. Only Peggy Hill is too evil to like. She sabotaged Hank when he was teaching shop class just so she could win substitute teacher of the year. Khan and Dale have at least done one or two good things in the shows run. I really can’t think of anything that Peggy has done.
I don’t know about Chip and Dale but Tweety and (to a lesser extent) Jerry Mouse don’t deserve to be mentioned together. Tweety and Jerry are, for the most part, just trying to survive against predators that are not only much bigger then they are but also have sharp teeth and claws. The only thing they have to defend themselves are their wits and luck (e.g., when a complicated plan hatched by Tom or Sylvester to catch Tweety or Jerry inevitably backfires on them Wile E. Coyote-style).
I liked Saffron on AbFab, but that’s the old “smart girl in glasses” thing.
I haven’t watched KOTH in a while, but I’d like to see Peggy get into some horrible propane-powered dildo accident.
As for Frank Burns, you always know he’ll never succeed in whatever scheme he has going. He was well played. In a few instances, you found out why he was the way he was, but because he decided not to rise above it, he’s not worthy of sympathy.
Was Blackadder always evil? Or more precisely - were all the Blackadders evil? Because all four of them were very different characters. 1 and 3 were evil, to be sure: 1 was evil and pathetic, while 3 was evil and obsequious. Backadder the Scond, though, may have been a self-serving scoundrel and a total bastard at that, but he never actually did anything evil per se, despite repeated threats. The poor cad even managed to fall in love pnce or twice. Blackadder the Fourth, in turn, was just very, very cynical.
In later seasons, Mimi from The Drew Carey Show. She started out as just a minor pest, and she ended up evil enough to get Drew fired as store manager, send him to China with no way to get home (okay, that one was kinda funny, but taken with everything else…) and basically destroy his sanity, despite the fact that Drew’s always been nice to her when it counted.
And when she kept Wick in her apartment, making him think the world had ended outside or something… I guess it was kinda funny, but it was mostly creepy.
Change that to Peggie. The others on the show just crack me up. Peggie, on the other hand, has gone from mildly annoying to outright makes me want to smack her head into a brick wall irritating.
I can’t watch Will & Grace, because I hate everyone on the fucking show. I’ve watched it a few times, and while it has its funny moments, I just want to smack everyone upside the head!
Sex and the City. I saw a promo where Carrie is bitching with her friends about her engagment ring. It’s a pair-shaped diamond on a gold band. And everyone starts going eeewwww…ick!!! What? How is that funny? How does that make sense, except to make you look like a gold-digging, money-grubbing bitch? I’ve never watched this show-how is this supposed to make me want to watch it? A bunch of nitpicking, catty women sitting around meowing about everyone else’s flaws? I got enough of THAT in middle school, thankyouverymuch.
Malcom in the Middle. Lois is just a shrill bitch who hates everyone, and the boys are a bunch of idiots. It stopped being funny a long time ago-it just became, OOOh, let’s try and make Mom EXPLODE!!!
See, unlikable characters can work, but only if you make it clear you’re supposed to hate them. (Romano on ER would be a perfect example) The problem is, they try to make them hateful and at the same time, likable and popular. Like Roseanne. She’s a sassy, tell it like it is working class mom! Except she’s not. She’s just a miserable, stupid cow who goes around screaming all the time.
Damn, watching sitcoms makes me violent. Hmmm…
The Christmas Carol episode was hysterical. In that one, Ebenezer Blackadder is the saintliest and most generous man in Victorian London, the complete opposite of his ancestors (and descendants). Unfortunately, things change when the very drunk Spirit of Christmas (Robbie Coltrane) winds up at the wrong house and accidentally shows him the value of virtue (or lack of).
That was always my take on the Meathead character too. I don’t know if the writers intended for the audience to (mostly) sympathize with Archie over the son in law but I sure did.
She’s not a comedic character, but I thought Mary Jane in Spider-Man 2 was downright evil when she left John Jameson at the altar to run off with Peter. Think about the reality of leaving a guy, who by all accounts was a great guy, standing at the altar in front of his entire group of family and friends. Watch out Peter, she’s unstable!
In real life a neutrotic dorky smartass, a short fat timid bald man, a gangly unemployed psychopath, and a 30 something year old shrew might have a hard time with the singles scene in NYC.
Well, not evil, really. I guess I should have stuck more to the OP’s intent but didn’t really think about it when posting. The only characters I find truly despicable are Dale and Peggie. They’re supposed to be funny in their extremism, I guess, but I just want to murder them in cold blood.
I’ve never found her the least bit amusing. If it weren’t for the Khans and Bobby, the show wouldn’t be worth watching.
It goes further, I think. British comedy can be very black without necessarily shredding the pretense that it’s still comedy: a put-on, a “turn”. When American comedy goes black, it gets serious. Think of a coke-addled, post-Vietnam, nihilist-elitist, overeducated-Ivy-League-prick kind of humor. The active ingredient is a glimmer of straight dramatic nastiness: the water in the bucket balanced on top of the door replaced with bleach. The queasiness in the stomachs of the less hip, maybe even straight realistic fear or pain on the part of the supporting characters, becomes the real topic of the laughter (if you find laughter in it; I usually don’t). Think Michael O’Donoghue, National Lampoon, Andy Kaufman going off on one of his audience members, or Steve Martin’s character in Little Shop of Horrors.
The big difference between (say) Basil Fawlty and Mr. Mike was that Fawlty was played like a big howling slapstick caricature. Mr. Mike was played absolutely, eerily, cold-bloodedly straight.
I agree. This is the legacy of the American school of black comedy. De Niro was the right choice here because - again - he could play it with real menace.
As a tangental aside, the viewing of this show is a Christmas tradition at Casa Fidelius.
The Girls have loved it since they said “It’s Hagrid!” at Coltrane’s entrance, and I was very proud of Older Daughter for pointing out “Queen Elizabeth” in the Phantom of the Opera movie.