The Cutprice Guignol

It’s all been a little positive around here recently, don’t you think? Time to get some bitching up in this joint. Yes, it’s that time – time for another round of TV characters I would fight! Check out the rest of the series here, and share your own punch-throwing leading men/women in the comments below. To the list!

1. Billy Butcher – The Boys

That’s it. That’s the list. That’s the whole extent of anything I wanted to say here. I considered a full review on The Boys, but really, I only had one thing to say about it: fuck Billy Butcher, man!

The most aggressively uninteresting antihero in a show full of them, the only thing that I could think of every time Billy Butcher was on screen were those Simpsons gags where Bart pretends to be a Cockney shoeshine. Karl Urban is a fine actor, but Butcher feels like a random groping for anything to hang on to: an accent that sticks, a backstory that isn’t yet another fridging, some wit that doesn’t come in the form of “he are bad man! Look at him do bad man things!” while the show chortles delightedly and slaps its own knee. I’m all for an antihero, I really am, but when they come in the form of a character who’s so utterly banal and mid-noughties cliche and draped in the vestiges of what someone once thought was coolness as is still trying keenly to sell as just that, I just want to throw some hands. It’s 2019; our antiheroes are sexy, refined, and played by Mads Mikklesen in homo-romantic love stories and extended scenes of quality cooking. Billy Butcher might be the best in all Westminster, but I don’t want anything to do with him that doesn’t involve fisticuffs down the pub.

2. Frank Rossitano – 30 Rock

Look, 30 Rock is still a fucking fantastic show, but there’s got to be a last place in an ensemble this good. And when everyone else is so brilliant, that last place feels like a pretty weighty title. I get that Frank is meant to be a jab at the uber-ironic pop culture afficionado who’s never dedicated as much time to human decency as he has to learning how to make other people feel stupid for not knowing Frasier behind-the-scenes minutae, but Judah Friedlander captures that agonising awfulness a little too well. Every time he is on screen, I can feel my hackles begin to rise as I vanish into a fugue state remembering all the times I’ve been quizzed on Doctor Who trivia by people who don’t seem to want me to like the show at all. It’s a credit to Judah Friedlander that he captures this character so well, and a credit to me personally that I don’t defenestrate my television every time he’s on it.

3. Glory – Buffy the Vampire Slayer

My partner has been relentlessly strongarming into watching introducing me to the Buffyverse, and I swear, I stumble upon more people to dislike every season. Xander, Angel, and now Glory – yeah, Dawn cops a lot of flack for this season, but Glory is just such a stupid, ennervatingly shallow character who I wish to beat out of the existence of this show once and for all. Everything about her feels so blunt-force in a season full of nuance, and the aggressive “uuuUGGGGH” I unleash every time we cut back to her earns her a spot on this list once and for all.

(header image via Comic Vine)