The Cutprice Guignol

It’s been a quiet week blogward and, with my family visiting and just so much work to get done, the rest of August looks like it’s going to be thin on the blog-ground as well. I’m hoping to have a Quit Smoking Diaries entry and a Fifty Shades recap up in the next week, but meantime, let’s return to another addition of TV Characters I Would Fight!

1. Dale from The Walking Dead

A classic case of DaleFace

Look, I know it’s not the character’s fault that the actor playing him only had one facial expression (which you’re picturing now), but come on – Dale is just the most relentlessly annoying character in a show FULL of relentlessly annoying characters (see also: Lori, Beth, the constant looming threat of the comic book authors writing another episode). A toxic mix of condescending, smug, and irredeemably stupid, his death was the most happy I’ve ever been to see someone literally get their face chewed off.

2. Ted Mosby, How I Met Your Mother

It’s funny, because as far as How I Met Your Mother is concerned, Barney is the really nasty piece of work from the leading cast – until, of course, you actually take a look at the titular meeter of matriarchs. Pretentious and clawingly desperate, Ted is the kind of guy who’d write poetry about you and then storm off in a teary huff because you didn’t instantly compare him to Ginsberg and suck his cock. The show is ostensibly about his emotional growth, as long as you consider “emotional growth” to mean “creepily never letting go of a woman who has frequently turned you down as you continue to harangue her with declarations of love, even when you marry and raise children with another person”.

3. Rory Gilmore, Gilmore Girls

No, this one isn’t particularly original, but holy hell I’ve been rewatching some episodes of Gilmore Girls (I mean, not the reboot, because I do have a crumb of self-respect left) and Rory Gilmore is perhaps THE definition of Not Like the Other Girls. She’s quirky! She’s smart! She’s beautiful but she eats pizza! Pay no attention to the fact that literally every single one of her peers is more interesting and layered than her (I will, one day, go back in time and become best friends with Paris Geller). Don’t even think about it. Also, she dates characters played by both Jared Padalecki and Milo Ventimiglia, which I know she as a character couldn’t help but I still kind of hold against her.

Who would you get into a punch-up with if you could? Let me know in the comments below, and, as ever, if you like these posts and would like to see more like them, please consider supporting me on Patreon!