Lenny Briscoe on Law & Order.
I love Briscoe, but he’s a minor leaguer in the game of sorrow. I mean, he was a recovering alcoholic, he was long estranged from his daughter, he was in the car when a coworker was killed, his daughter was murdered, and he himself died. That’s journey suffering.
You’re being flippant, of course, but David Banner’s life was terribly bad after his accident, and it was all the worse because he so clearly didn’t deserve it. I recall an episode when he was considering suicide, and my first thought upon seeing the preview was, “Well, that’s not a little bit surviving.”
And, of course, when they finally killed him off in a made-for-tv movie, his last expression was a smile, and his last words were “I’m free.”
And Dr. Weaver put Romano’s name on a part of the hospital he would have hated.
Jesus fuck, really? I never saw that. My son went through a HUGE Hulk phase as a toddler; I had to watch all the old shows I could find. That is so sad. It actually made me tear up a little.
I feel silly. 
sniff
I’d have thought Dr Who would be a candidate
George Costanza would claim he was the one with the most, as he used his sad-sack story life to try to convince an apartment board he was deserving of more pity than the other applicants.
i would say duncan macleod and the rest of his lot would have suffered the most.
DING! DING! i win. thread settled.
my second would be nicholas knight. how many lady friends did he lose to vampires?
I would say that over 20 years, Matt Dillon got shot the most times on Gunsmoke.
Scratch a sitcom character and a Shakespeareian tragedy bleeds out.
Phoebe Buffay (Friends): father deserts her, mother commits suicide, lived on the street, estranged from her twin sister, only childhood friend is a smelly cat.
Barney Stinson (How I Met Your Mother): doesn’t know his father, mother regularly deserted the family to follow rock bands, in love with Robin but unable to commit.
Ralph Kramden (The Honeymooners): lives in a tenement, dreams perpetually foiled, weight problems.
Marge Simpson: knocked up by the only man she ever had sex with, loser husband, rarely seen father who may even be dead, demon-spawn firstborn, gambling problem, sisters who actively try to destroy her marriage, natural talents in art, photography and writing thoroughly repressed.
Your definition of tragedy seems overbroad to me.
Sydney on Alias used to get tortured about every episode.
Since Buffy Summers and her sister Dawn have already been nominated, let me add to the Whedon-verse hit list with Cordelia Chase.
She’s been run through with rebar, kidnapped and tortured by Marcie the invisible girl, terrorized on Homecoming and kidnapped and tortured by demon worshipping frat guys, and that’s before she joined Angel for similar hijinks in LA, where she was impregnated by demons a couple of times, kidnapped by eyeball plucking lawyers and put into a coma, among other incidents.
Debra Morgan from Dexter.
[spoiler]Engaged to, kidnapped and almost murdered by serial killer
Her father always favored her adopted brother, had an affair, committed sucide, brother is serial killer
She gets shot and her coworker/boyfriend shot and killed in front of her
Another boyfriend gets kidnapped and skinned by serial killer
She sees a woman blast her own brains out in front of her
Her sister-in-law gruesomely killed by serial killer
Probably more, I forgot…
[/spoiler]
How about the little boy that Lassie lived with?
Starbuck also had more than her fair share of indignities visited upon her in the newer Battlestar Galactica. Among them;
- A constantly absent father
- A mother who abused her and broke every one of her fingers several times
- Got her student/fiancee killed by padding his grades in flight school
- Kidnapped by Cylons and had her ovaries removed as part of their breeding experiments
- Mind-fucked by Leoben into believing she had a half-Cylon baby
- Lost contact with said child forever when her real mother wanted nothing to do with her
- Shown up at the thing she does best by a drug smuggler who stole the identity of a fighter pilot
- Died
- Came back unaware of this fact until she discovered her own charred corpse in the wreck of her fighter
- Poofed out of existence forever after fulfilling her “special destiny” to lead the human race to Earth
Veronica Mars endured alot for a teenager. I think any real teenager would be a serious suicide risk if they had to suffer her life. Since it’s television, she obviously takes it all in plucky stride.
Wow…I just realized, that if you want to count the Jasmine-controlled-pregnant-with-itself thing, Cordellia had three demon pregnancies…
Continuing with the Whedon-train…Lorne.
His whole life was a shit-fest of never being accepted in his home world, until finally he came to Earth and was happy that we had Broadway. But then his bar was destroyed…and then again…and again…etc…all because of people who, while technically his friends, were essentially just using him most of the time (and this was true even years later…) They never cared for his stories or antics, even though most of the time he was only doing them as a method of coping with all the death he was surrounded by and hated.
Of the two friends that were arguably the closest to him, one is possessed by said demon and goes into a coma, only to come back for one measly day and doesn’t even get to say goodbye, and the other is ALSO possessed by a demon and dies. Then, he gets convinced by his boss/“friend” that he has to betray an ally (admittedly a brief ally that probably will turn on them later,) and murder him.
There’s more stuff after that in the comics, too.
The bit I bolded is clearly untrue, because you’re leaving out Fred. It was clear that she loved him, and clear that he knew that.