Since the beginning, I’ve done this annual countdown of the most irritating characters on otherwise good shows (so no “All’s Fair” since there’s nothing good about that show) or on series that really should’ve been better than they were, usually undermined by bad characters.
10. Ray Driscoll (Brian Tyree Henry) in “Dope Thief”…It’s pretty rare that the great Brian Tyree Henry misses with a character, but his Ray Driscoll is one of those leading man anti-heroes who respond to nearly every crisis by yelling and making things worse. By the end of “Dope Thief” (hopping on a trend of Philly-set crime miniseries to disappointing results) you’re not as invested in what happens to Ray as you are in just hoping it happens quickly and you can move on with your life.
9. The Harrington Family “Leaders” (Pierce Brosnan, Paddy Considine, Anson Boone, and Helen Mirren)…If people have any interest at all in the Paramount-Plus misfire “Mobland,” it’s surely Tom Hardy’s competent fixer Harry Da Souza, but he instead seems shackled to a crime family where he does almost all the work for very little of the money. The Harrington elder’s leadership is usually wrong, and the next generation offers up worse. By the end of “Mobland”‘s first season, when Harry is offered a much better–and potentially more stable–job by Janet McTeer’s cartel operative, you’re almost thinking he’s crazy not to take it. A show where we’re actively rooting for our lead character to betray his crime family probably means the supporting cast is a bit poorly written.
8. The bad guys (Sabrina Impacciatore, Tim Key) on “The Paper”…Sabrina Impacciatore’s Esmeralda is nails-on-a-chalkboard-irritating, and Tim Key’s dry-as-the-desert Ken feels like a half-assed riff on David Brent not even memorable enough to make you squirm. Neither of these characters feels remotely convincing to be working at a middle-American newspaper (nobody comments on why such an unlikely setting as a drab Toledo, Ohio office has so many colorful European people working there–even with Domhnall Gleeson disguising his Irishness), but even worse than being unlikely characters are being uninteresting characters.
7. George Russell (Morgan Spector) on “The Gilded Age”…Spector is an excellent actor, and it speaks to his talent that we care so much about George Russell–in fact, that’s the problem. “Gilded Age” continues the Julian Fellowes uber-conservative trend of over-identifying with the wrong people, and it’s perhaps the only 2025 show clueless enough to portray a robber baron as its protagonist. This was hard to take during the Biden years, but subtly appalling during the Trump ones.
6. Mel Cooper (Amanda Peet) on “Your Friends and Neighbors”…Similar to Spector, Amanda Peet is an effortlessly likable actress sprucing up an irritating character that’s pretty difficult to enjoy on the page as Mel exists largely to passive-aggressively shakedown our main character for money and making him feel bad he’s not “doing more” in some nebulous context. Mel is the stock character of a horrible ex-wife who cheats on her husband Andrew “Coop” Cooper (here played by Jon Hamm, perhaps enjoying the role reversal from Don Draper of himself being the cuckold) with his best friend and then gets into a serious relationship with said incompatible-friend largely just to keep the wound fresh. However, the series acts surprisingly nonchalant about this as it’s obvious we’re supposed to be rooting for Mel and Coop to get back together. There wasn’t a cell in my body that wanted that, thinking Coop would be better off with Aimee Carrero’s Elena or even Olivia Munn’s Samantha, who tries to frame him for murder.
5. Aidan (John Corbett) on “And Just Like That”…I could probably put the entire cast on this list and/or fill up the entire list with “AJLT” characters, but a perfect encapsulation of what this series does wrong could be found in Corbett’s embarrassingly resurrected Aidan Shaw, who seemed to join “AJLT” solely to obliterate the last shred of doubt that he wasn’t right for Carrie during “Sex and the City”‘s initial run. “AJLT”‘s take on Aidan shows the character hasn’t learned a damn thing, isn’t/wasn’t compatible with Carrie no matter how much direction she gave him, and made Carrie’s character’s ending unintentionally sad by having her swan around a too-big, rat-infested house wearing heels and eating pie like a modern day Miss Haversham–the entire dwelling a reminder of a man that was supposed to move in there with her (all to avoid the apartment she loved that he had baggage in) but never did. Yikes
4. Ellie (Bella Ramsey) on “The Last of Us”…At the end of the first season of “Us,” Pedro Pascal’s Joel makes the disastrous decision to spare Ellie’s life and doom humanity. In the second season, we’re constantly reminded of how bad that decision actually was as Ellie seems to go out of her way to be unlikable and put everyone around her in constant danger. It seems as though she could be killed at any time, and that even the people in her immediate vicinity would be better off–to say nothing of the planet at large.
3. Dave Gudsen (Targon Egerton) on “Smoke”…The first twist for Dave’s character was bad and meant the series was giving us a goofy villain to be baffled by (we aren’t sure if we’re supposed to laugh at Dave’s lameness or be terrified by his recklessness), and the final scene about Dave’s appearance felt even weirder–almost like the series was retroactively saying we would’ve known Dave’s dark heart all along if only we’d known how ugly he actually was. The entire miniseries of “Smoke” wasn’t what it should’ve been, but the poor characterizations and slapdash plotting are actually personified by Egerton’s Dave.
2. Ingrid Kannerman (Allegra Edwards) on “Upload”…From episode 1, Ingrid was unlikable and selfish. By the fourth season finale, she’s exactly the same except “Upload” makes the disastrous miscalculation that she’s the “core 5” character we want to see get a happy ending, as she’s the only one who does. Although the romances for Luke/Aleesha, and Real Nathan/Nora end tragically and predictably if you know Hollywood’s rarely-discussed anti-miscegenation bias, obnoxious Ingrid gets to live her dreams with the blandest Nathan possible. That “Upload” thought this was what fans wanted from an abbreviated final season makes you wish the show hadn’t returned at all.
1. Charmless goons Junior (Forrest Weber) and Babbitt (Chris Coy) on “Black Rabbit”…”Black Rabbit” was a show I wanted to like more than I did, and a big part of the disconnect was that these two relentless goons (and professional fuck ups) kept showing up every other scene to harass the two main characters we do actually care about. From the first episode, you’re wondering why Jason Bateman doesn’t just kill Junior and Babbitt–seemingly half of the entire bookie operation he’s desperate to avoid–and towards the end of the series you’re mystified as to why the two main brothers keep agreeing to pay these goobers a small fortune instead of just killing them. Of course, they wind up doing exactly that, but by that point, both brothers have lost everything, and–worse–the audience has been subjected to about 100 scenes too many of two characters we loathe being their worst selves.