The Cutprice Guignol

“Lou, why don’t you just take some time off to relax, get your head together, work out your anger issues in healthy ways?” Because FUCK YOU, that’s why, I want to screech into the void about the characters who’ve been driving me nuts in the TV that I’ve been watching recently. You can catch up on previous entries to this ridiculous series made entirely from rage right here. On with the list!

1. Rick Allen – 24

OH MY GOD. This entire entry to the series exist because I hate this man so much and yes, I am late to the game on watching 24, thanks for mentioning it. So, Rick aids in the kidnap of two teenage girls, one of whom ends up dead after he and his buddy injected her with heroin, and yet he spends the entirety of the show bloo-blooing about how he didn’t mean to get involved with this and how he wants to make things right and how he’s actually a good guy.

A good guy, bear in the mind, who is at least in his mid-twenties while pursuing an underage girl romantically, who cheerfully helps out in the kidnapping of a couple of teenagers for some quick cash, and who cheats on his live-in girlfriend for fun. I’m nearing the end of the first season and by this point every time he wanders on-screen I let out an “OhmigooOOOOUURGHH” in fury at the show attempting once more to convince me he’s actually a great old wannabe statutory rapist stand up dude.

You know that creepy twenty-something who was dating a girl in your class when you were both fourteen that you were really jealous of at the time because you thought she was lucky to have someone so “mature” but in retrospect he was actually a mega fucking creep? That’s Rick Allen, to his very soul. UGH.

2. Harald – Vikings

Why, might you ask, would you keep a character around for three seasons only to have their arc go nowhere? Why would you want someone whose development was stunted from the very second they walked on-screen? What would the point of that character be? The answer to those questions: enigmatic smiling, and sort of being able to pull of a silly hat. If Harald actually did something, anything, ever, I might feel differently, but he’s a dead weight on a show that’s already drowning under a stack of them. See also: Bishop Heahmund, Ivar the Boneless, the entirety of the back half of the last season of a show that I used to consider the best thing on TV, etc.

3. Winn Scott Jnr – Supergirl

He appeared in the first trailer declaring that the only reason Supergirl didn’t want to date him was because she was gay, and it’s been downhill from there. Look, I want to love Jeremy Jordan, and I’ve given him a fair run (all of Smash, twice), but every role he plays is just so “this fucker at the bar won’t stop bending my ear about something I clearly stopped giving a shit about fifteen minutes ago, but this queue is long and I want my fucking drink so I’m going to stand here going “huh” and “ha, no way” until I can vanish into the shadows once more”. Jeremy Jordan is frustratingly talented, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to put up with his ear-bending whining on-screen forever. Someone get that boy over to Ryan Murphy for something campy and fun, stat!

4. Cisco Ramon – The Flash

Now, I was a big defender of Cisco for a long time, I really was. There was a lot of hate for him, as the perma-geeking nerd of The Flash gang, but I found him falling on just the right side of charming with his bad Big Bang Theory shirts and cute hair. But then, and to be fair this may have changed since I stopped watching because I fell out with the show so badly after it surgically removed it’s sense of humour, they gave him a romance plot which was basically him smugly chuckling “I know you want it” at a woman who…kind of seemed like she would have just taken it by now if she did? It was super gross and a total left-turn into Douche Avenue for a character who actually seemed to represent the less slimy side of the nerdy community. Why must you ruin everything I love, CW (up to and including my desperate need to see Madchen Amick and Skeet Ulrich get it on in Riverdale, you bastards).

Who are you fighting off your television screens this month? Let me know in the comments below!

(header image courtesy of Comicbook.com)