24 Awful, Awful, Awful TV Characters That Were Unfortunately The Main Character Of Their Show When They Should've Been Killed Off In Episode 1
A while back, Reddit user u/Competitive_Owl7085 asked, "Who was the most unlikable main character of a TV show?" and people had a lotttt of thoughts. Here are main characters people wished would just straight-up leave the show — along with some more submissions from the BuzzFeed Community!
1.Galadrial from Rings of Power
Suggested by u/largemeatfries
"The show took a regal and powerful female character and turned her into a rabid war-mongering warrior."
"I’m not sure how they did it, but they managed to make her the most eminently unlikable person I’ve ever seen head a TV show. I have nothing against the actress, but I can’t stand their version of Galadriel."
2.Olivia Benson from Law & Order: SVU
"She jumps to way too many conclusions, will not give it a rest, and acts on a 'guilty until proven innocent' mindset that often gets on my wick."
3.Frasier from Frasier
"It's one of my favorite shows, but he's a narcissistic, gaslighting windbag. It's no wonder he's always alone. Here's the thing: In my opinion, the series is way more about Niles and the other characters' arcs than it is about Frasier, which is fine by me. Frasier is insufferable."
4.Mike Wheeler from Stranger Things
"He just became insufferable, whiney, and so controlling over El. Also, the way he was rude to Hopper in his own home was infuriating."
5.Hughie from The Boys
"Hughie in The Boys has become a whiny asshole in Season 3, and I can’t stand him anymore."
6.Fiona from Shameless
"She literally fights for custody, then moves into an apartment when three of the kids are still underage…not to mention she cheats on every boyfriend and plays the victim. I was so glad when she left the show."
"She really was terrible! Brought on a lot of her own problems and then felt so sorry for herself all the time."
7.Debbie from Shameless
"Damn near everyone on Shameless, but Frank or Debbie fight for the top spot."
"Debbie is by far the most annoying character since she tried to baby trap some dude, but honestly, every character sucks ass."
"As she aged she became so unbearable. All she did was scream at everyone like she was out to get the world."
8.Ellie Miller from Broadchurch
"[I] could only get through a few episodes of that show before having to call it quits because I couldn't stand her. I'm sure she gets better throughout the show (at least I think?), but I just can't get through it. She feels so entitled to the chief inspector job that when she doesn't get it, she throws literal temper tantrums and just generally acts like a 5-year-old, but she's also way too emotional for her job and lets her biases about the residents in the town get in the way of her doing actual police work. No wonder you didn't get the inspector job if you act like that."
9.Rory from Gilmore Girls...
"Both my parents love Gilmore Girls and watched it often. I only really started paying attention to it in my teens, and I couldn’t stand Rory. She was alright in the beginning, but toward the end, she just became unbearable. She didn’t realize how good she had it and how often things were just handed to her. She was so used to everything being the Rory show where she was always praised...that the moment something didn’t go her way, she flew off the handle and made it everyone’s problem. And she never learned. The revival just showed she never learned or experienced any growth. To me Rory is a perfect example of 'big fish in a small pond' not being able to cope outside their bubble and the outcome of not moderating praise and criticism of kids. There’s a reason Rory ended up the way she did, and it’s because pretty much every adult in her life acted like she walked on water and could do no wrong."
"Rory became worse in the later seasons. First, she was a girl focused on school and her mind set to reaching her goals. Then, she meets Logan, gets told she doesn't have what it takes, steals a boat, drops out, and breaks with Lorelai. She continues trying to convince herself that the reason she dropped out doesn't have anything to do with her internship, parties with Logan, and living with her grandparents until Jess comes along and tells her to get her shit together. Did the writers even know the girl from Seasons 1–4?"
10....And also Lorelai
"I would argue that Lorelai is worse than Rory on Gilmore Girls. The entire show is basically one big lesson how to NOT parent. You should never treat your child as your adult best friend in the way Lorelai did. Though, Lorelai also had horrible parents, so it's kind of a long cycle of it in that family."
"I stopped watching that show because as I grew up and became more emotionally mature, I realized how immature Lorelai was."
"Lorelai from Gilmore Girls/Sarah Braverman in Parenthood. I combine these characters into one, because they’re the same exact annoying shitty character in both shows. Just go away and stop helicopter parenting whilst being an absolute train wreck."
11.James from Twin Peaks
"He was so weak and whiny and unnecessarily put a lot of blame for Laura Palmer's death on himself but even more so for Maggie's. His character was so useless, and it just got progressively worse even into Season 3 because they had no idea what to do with him. And damn that song..."
12.Walter White from Breaking Bad
"Every choice he makes puts his family at risk, he refuses help out of stupid pride, he’s arrogant, and he wound up getting at least 160 people killed. He’s a brilliant chemist, but he’s a shit businessman and an evil person."
"One of the most frustrating moments of the show was when Hank and the DEA concluded Gale was Heisenberg, but a drunk Walt’s pride could not let someone else take credit for his illegal work."
"I'm rewatching Breaking Bad now, and it occurred to me pretty early on how much of a loser Walter White really is. The constant terrible lying, the insecure ego-trips, how much of a fucking douche he is to Jesse, and he's a dork to boot. He's such a disingenuous fucking dickhead that my biggest plot hole so far is how he pulled Skyler White in the first place. For all her faults, she's leagues better than Walt."
"He also could have taken a job offer from his old company in the first few episodes. Yes, it was pity and charity, but it would've been a meaningful job in the chemical industry and solved his problems.
That's why his confession to Skyler in the very end was so important — I did it for me. He wanted the thrill of 'breaking bad' and not quietly or competently solving his problems like a normal person, but a menace with nothing to lose."
13.Elizabeth from The Blacklist
Suggested by u/ment_tritchell14
"Her whole role is shit. This amazing profiler who missed that she lives with a spy, does the wrong thing in every situation, and waffles between the strongest, most competent fighter and clumsy?"
"I’m a huge James Spader fan and watch everything he does, but stopped watching The Blacklist after Season 3. Just could not stand her character. And I know Agnes was just a baby, but my god, I just could not buy that Liz was that concerned about her. She was such a non-entity; the writers should have just written around the actor’s pregnancy."
14.Elena from The Vampire Diaries
Suggested by rosysage76
"Not a single other character in that show makes bad decisions not only for herself but for other people as consistently as she does."
"I hated how everyone was always protecting her, sacrificing themselves for her… but what does Elena do? Whine, put herself in dangerous situations, and just make it harder for everyone else. Also, she was a complete douche for the entire Stefan/Damon thing."
"She’s a bit bland, but the main thing I didn’t like about her was how she always made everything about herself ([for example,] Caroline’s mom is dying and Elena made it about herself [and] even has a 'romantic scene' with Damon right after). She also refuses to take accountability for her actions (she hurt her friends when her humanity was off, and when they brought it up to her when her humanity was back on, she told them not to expect an apology, because she was too busy wallowing in self pity). She also left her boyfriend for his brother."
15.Josh Lyman from The West Wing
"It's gotta be Josh Lyman. He treats his staff like garbage and is so bad at his job he becomes a liability. A big part of his character arc is that he progressively becomes so abusive that he has to take a vacation. Sorkin in general has some real awful main characters."
16.Hannah From Girls
Suggested by aleeh4b6e65068
"I watched the first episode and was like, 'Nope, not for me, life is too short.' When she told her dad that he should be grateful that she’s not a drug addict? I couldn’t even begin to understand her thought process."
"The character was not that interesting. At least to me, she seemed [like a] one-dimensional, narcissistic, privileged first world baby who flips out every time life is more complex that she had thought."
"The whole set of characters was incredibly self-centered, shallow, and uncaring. The way they portrayed friendship was disheartening; everything was about serving their own egos."
17.Rachel from Glee...
Suggested by camilladaniele
"I watched it at 12 and thought, 'Oh, poor Rachel is just a misunderstood, quirky, talented girl.' Watched again a couple years later and nope."
"I don't get how she had any friends. Especially after sending Sunshine...to a crack house...wtf was that?"
"Every time they said she was the best singer, it ruined the reality for me. MAYBE she was the best technical singer in-universe, but Mercedes’s voice was just much nicer to listen to. Everyone else’s voice was so much nicer to listen to. I hated her, but I also hated the hard-on the creators/writers had for her."
18....and also Will from Glee
Suggested by u/Famous-Honey-9331
"I loved Glee as a teen. As an adult rewatching it, and now a qualified teacher, Will’s relationships and behavior with the children makes me uncomfortable."
"Rachel was awful, and the show knew it (most of the time). Will was actually the worst. Dude was an absolute scumbag."
"His 'rapping' was a crime against humanity."
19.Piper from Orange Is the New Black
Suggested by u/Alice_Van_Osbourne
"First time I realized you could love a show and hate the biggest star of said show. The beginning is a slog on rewatches because so much of them building up the world involves Piper, and I don’t give a fuck about her character (obviously, they had to as this is based off a book)."
"God invented the fast-forward button just for Piper scenes."
20.June from The Handmaid's Tale
"She has gotten multiple people killed through her selfish actions. This current season is just a power fantasy from the writers and ends every episode with her staring at the camera menacingly."
"Season 1, I felt bad for her and wanted her to escape. After the ending of Season 2, though, I couldn’t continue watching. It’s like the writers kept forcing her to come back to continue the show, but it didn’t make sense because I feel like she would’ve been sent to the radiation mines or killed. But honestly, after all those people worked so hard for her to get her out, only to just spit in their faces? Yeah, fuck her."
21.Carrie from Sex and the City
"Unbelievably entitled, shallow, spoiled, and treated all of her friends like shit. I don't enjoy the show for what it is; it's my favorite hate-watch — just to see the new depths Carrie will sink to every episode.
Especially heinous was when she got herself into debt by tanking her relationship with the guy who bought and was renovating her apartment and turned down money offered by two of her best friends just so she could bitch out the one that didn't offer. And for some reason, that friend ended up giving her the money.
And she tried to cheat on her husband with a guy that she had previously cheated on."
22.Nancy from Weeds
"Horrible mother and clearly unstable AF. By the end of the show, I loathed her and hoped that she would fail. Poor Andy."
"Thank you. I hated her so much I couldn’t finish the show."
"I loved the first few seasons of Weeds, but Nancy Botwin was a mess and a terrible human. I can excuse her behavior initially, but damn."
"SHE WAS AWFUL. Even taking the fall for Shane was a selfish act disguised as a selfless one. She sucks."
23.Sabrina from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Suggested by u/cmalarkey90
"I had to drop that show because of her. She is the direct cause of all her own suffering and that of those around her. How many plot lines need to revolve around her being repeatedly told not to do something by literally everyone she knows, only for her to decide she knows best, do it anyway, and then have the gall to act like the victim when it all blows up in her face. She has got to be one of the most self-serving, un-relatable protagonists ever written. Without that protagonist specifically being the villain of their own story."
24.And finally, Beth from Yellowstone
"She was always a witch, but in a way you kind of wish you could be: blatantly blunt with no fucks given. They’ve made her so snarky now, I can’t even stand her. Every time she has something to say, it turns into a monologue that’s supposed to show the audience just how badass she is."
Now, it's your turn — what TV show or movie main characters do you find insufferable? Let us know in the comments!
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
