TV Characters Who I've just Realised are the Worst.

Remember when you watch a TV show for the very first time and you love it so much that several years later you binge watch it again? The second time around is always when you realise that a particular character is honestly the worst. Why is this? Maybe you’ve matured, or you have more life experience that really allows you to see these people as the horrible personas they are.

Ross Geller (Friends)

Watching Friends when I was younger I always thought of Ross as goofy and he wasn’t my favourite character but I didn’t hate him either. However after rewatching the series later on in life it hit me that Ross Geller is the worst. Let’s begin with his relationship with ex-wife and mother of his child Carol and her partner Susan. I get it, he’s hurt that his wife left him for someone else and that makes it hard for him to interact with the two of them in a civil manner, nonetheless that’s no excuse for how he treats the couple throughout the show. His disdain that Susan will co-parenting Ben despite the fact that she’s a wonderful mother, his constant homophobic comments and his reluctancy to let Carol be happy at times all make him an asshole. Let’s face it, Ross isn’t mad that Carol left him for someone else, he’s mad because that someone else is a woman and that emasculates him. Moving onto the fact that he’s a horrible boyfriend who often treats women as objects, is possessive over them and is easily jealous. When dating Rachel he clearly doesn’t trust her around other men, even going as far as to show up at her office and send her ridiculous gifts with his face on them. To him Rachel is an object for him to own. Furthermore he deems her career less important than his and argues with her about the amount of time she spends at work which ultimately pushes her away. Instead of letting Rachel move to Paris to work her dream job he chases her through the airport and selfishly asks her to stay with him. Don’t even get me started on how he treated Emily, saying Rachel’s name at the alter and then thinking Emily unreasonable for asking him to stop seeing her. Worst boyfriend ever. Lastly, as a father Ross doesn’t seem to spend much quality time with his kids. Whenever he has custody of Ben, which is rarely, he’s often passing him off to other people so he can work or go on dates. With Emma we only really see him with her when she’s with Rachel. He also objects to Ben playing with dolls at a young age like that’s some terrible thing. He’s the worst.

Ted Mosby (How I Met Your Mother)

Honestly the worst thing about Ted Mosby is that if he was a woman he would have been slut-shamed relentlessly. He also doesn’t get the same bad rap as Barney despite treating women pretty much the same way, he legit refers to a woman he dated as Bla Bla because he can’t remember her name, and that’s because he dresses his pursuits up as a quest to find true love. Every episode he’s chasing a new girl he claims is ‘the one’ when he’s not chasing Robin. Also despite knowing that he and Robin want different things in life he still pursues her and then breaks up with her when he realises they’re incompatible. Ted is a slightly less annoying, slightly less problematic Ross Gellar, but I still can’t stand this guy.

Fez (That 70s Show)

On the first watch Fez seems like a naive foreign exchange student who is just happy to be in America but on second watch I realised that he’s a predator. He hides in girls wardrobes to watch them changing, he takes pictures up Donna’s skirt and he uses the word ‘whore’ to describe any woman he comes into contact with excessively. Part of me still sympathises with Fez, he struggles to talk to women and is the butt of everyones racist jokes however I can’t help but cringe at his creepiness. I know Jackie could have made this list but the thing about her as a character is that she’s supposed to be the worst, that was the intention of her character, to annoy the audience. Fez’s brand of creepiness is supposed to be funny however it’s just sickening now.

Howard Wolowitz (The Big Bang Theory)

He pretty much sexually harasses Penny for the first few seasons, he is endlessly creepy towards many women and he actually thinks at one point that he can do better than Bernadette. As if. In all honestly Bernadette can do way better than Howard Wolowitz the grown man baby who thinks his mother is a bother but still treats her like a housemaid.

Rory Gilmore (Gilmore Girls)

I loved Gilmore Girls growing up, Rory and Lorelai were my idols who lived like Queens, but rewatching it later on I realised that many of the characters were horrible people and none more so than Rory Gilmore herself. Ungrateful, spoiled and pretentious are just a few of the words I would use to describe Rory Gilmore and the worst thing is that these are all traits that she herself condemns over the series. Rory rejects the idea of pretentiousness by mocking her grandparents and their friends but has no issue accepting their money or living in their house. She hates rich kids, constantly frowning upon the people she goes to school with, but expects to get away scot free after stealing a yacht just because her grandparents hired her a fancy lawyer. Her mother works hard her entire life and sacrifices her own dreams to get Rory the best education and Rory drops out of Yale just because her boyfriends dad told her she didn’t have what it takes effectively proving him right. She genuinely keeps forgetting about her boyfriend Paul in the revival despite being in a relationship with him for a while. She continues to sleep with Logan, whilst both of them are in committed relationships, knowing that it can’t go anywhere. Rory doesn’t get to hate on people for all these things and then benefit from them too.

Ezra Fitz (Pretty Little Liars)

When you’re thirteen you think Aria and Ezra’s Romeo and Juliet, forbidden romance is romantic, but it’s just super creepy once you get older. Okay so I can forgive him for kissing Aria in the bar bathroom because he didn’t know her real age at that point (only he did). But the second he found out she was a sixteen year old girl (and that he was her teacher) that should have been the end of their relationship, but no, it was only the beginning. He risks not only his job but going to prison to be with some sixteen year old girl, hiding the very illegal relationship. Then we find out that he was previously in a relationship with Alison who was FOURTEEN, and had targeted Aria specifically so he could find out what happened to Alison and write a book about the event. Imagine being so messed up over a fourteen year old girl that you then date a sixteen year old girl just to write a book. This guy is a full on psychopath who belongs in prison.

Alison DiLaurentis (Pretty Little Liars)

A bully who treats her friends like shit, leads Emily on, disappears on everyone, let’s her friends be tortured by the same person who was torturing her and lets the police and the media suspect them of murdering her. Need I go on? She is the most self-obsessed, uncaring bitch in the show and they have audacity to let Emily end up with her. Alison DiLaurentis wishes she was as good as Maya St Germain.

Tori Vega (Victorious)

Honestly she just annoys the crap out of me now. She was hardly the most talented at the school, she kissed Beck in front of his girlfriend just to piss her off and then expects Jade to want to be friends with her after that. She’s a character who just has to make everything about her and doesn’t thank or appreciate the people around her for all that they do. I just really don’t understand why she was the protagonist of the show when there were so many more interesting characters that could have been featured.

Will Scheuster (Glee)

Now this is a show that I have only really seen in passing however it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Will Scheuster is way too involved in his students lives. I’ve watched him perform many inappropriate songs with underage students, including Blurred Lines a song about rape. He blackmailed Finn into joining the glee club by planting drugs in his locker, he uses racist stereotypes when performing a Spanish song despite teaching Spanish as a subject and confronts Kurt about his sexuality before he was ready to accept or talk about it. He was a genuinely horrible teacher and had very questionable morals when it came to his students.

Annalise Keating (How to Get Away with Murder)

She drags these poor innocent students into a life of hell, she cheats on her husband but also treats her boyfriend horribly. She also used her ex-girlfriend multiple times during the show simultaneously leading the woman on. She uses Frank as a hitman, acts like the people around her are replaceable and treated Wes like shit. Whilst she’s smart and strong that doesn’t make up for the fact that she’s arrogant and self-centred. By the time we reach the third season Annalise is a character that you no longer care about, she needs to get her shit together.