The Cutprice Guignol

Another few months go by, and another stack of TV characters appear in my eyeline who I have decided to fight with my fists, legs, and all three elbows. If you’re new to this idiotic list series of mine – well, the title says it all, really, but if you’d like to catch up on the previous installments, why not do so right here? And please, as ever, let me know who you’ve been eyeing for a good punch-up in the comments below. This is a safe space to vent your anger. I welcome your rage. It soothes me so. Anyway, to the list!

1. Sawyer – Lost

Look, I’ve just finished my Lost recaps, and if there was one thing that I want you all to take from them, it’s this: John Locke is a top. Oh, and I hate Sawyer so much that I started writhing in actual, abject pain every time he and his poisonous bleached tips crash into far more interesting characters. Josh Holloway, who plays this “character”, got the role after kicking over a chair during the audition because he forgot his lines: this is about the same level of energy that he brings to the performance, that of a petulant teenage boy who’s very keen to show you the hole he punched in his bedroom wall when he lost a game of Call of Duty. As a woman over the age of thirteen, I am unable to find him as attractive as the show wants me to – my only choice? Fists at dawn.

2. Everyone in Avatar: The Last Airbender

I finally got around to watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. Is it great? Yes, obviously. Do I love it? Evidently. Apart from one thing.

I imprinted on perma-hungry ice jock Sokka as soon as I saw him, and this, it seemed, was the wrong choice. Since the entire show, though it claims to be a fantasy about colonialism and cultural give and take during wartime, is actually just about repeatedly disrespecting my boy. Everyone who wanders into the show for thirty seconds or more will lightly roast Sokka, guaranteed, and frankly, I will stand for it no longer. I feel like Marlon Brando in the Godfather watching this fucking show: they massacred my boy! With yet another snarky comment! He means well! Leave him alone!

3. Jack Berger – Sex and the City

Look, maybe it’s just because, as a writer (I hate to say it, but like, you know, buy my books), but there is something about Berger (as played brilliantly by Ron Livingstone, who is also brilliant in Search Party, also, fucking watch Search Party) that is just a little too accurate to the Great Creative Types that I have dated (and hated) over the years. It’s probably a testament to how well-executed this character is that I want to throw hands at, on, or around him. His hatefully silly insecurity about dating a woman good at what she does (okay, yes, it’s Carrie, she’s otherwise awful, but still) is so deeply and profoundly unnappealing that he rises about even Mister Big in the grand scheme of Love Interests I Would Fight from This Show. And trust me – he’s far from the first to turn up on one of these lists.

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(header image via Tenor)