Two more of these to go.
I had a topic in mind all day, but didn’t get around to it until after midnight best coast time, because I eventually got around to walking the dog, mowing and raking the lawn, and CHASING MY NEIGHBOR’S FUCKING CATTLE OFF MY YARD AGAIN!! Â Totally my fault, of course, for having an apple tree, mowing my lawn, and not surrounding my yard with barbed wire and Bouncing Bettys.
The cattle, (2 bulls and a cow, all of whom are terrified of a leaf blower), are very nice. Â The neighbor can get fucked.
Anyhoo, last week’s art topic went pretty well, so this week I thought we’d go with one I’ve been toying with but wasn’t sure would work. Â This week we’re picking FICTIONAL characters, from any genre, (TV, movies, theater, literature, whatever), that need to leave whatever work they’re in, and the sooner the better.
Ideally what we’re looking for here is a character who adds nothing to the piece. Â You can, however, take a character you just don’t like, but be prepared to be berated for it. Â I don’t have a lot on my schedule tomorrow, and for maybe the third time in my 30 year legal career I am caught up on everything. Â I’m sure that statement didn’t just jinx anything.
For instance, I just finished ‘Demon Copperfield,’ by Barbara Kingsolver. Â Highly recommend, by the way. Â Without spoiling anything there is a character named Dori in said book. Â She should be fired into the Sun, but she is also integral to the plot. Â Yes, she could be drafted, because she sucks, but no I would not draft her, because that would destroy the book.
Now, in a completely unrelated note, (dismissive wanking gif goes HERE), I have been watching the new Justified series. Â It is…not good. Â The whole series, (technically a miniseries, and I don’t see a new series coming out of this mess), is just way, way off the original. Â In addition to a myriad of other things wrong with the show, they introduced Raglan’s daughter, Willa, as a character.
Fun fact, played by Timothy Olyphant’s real life daughter, Vivian.
Did I ask for an angsty teenager who guilt trips her father because his career, (as a US Marshall, who I’m guessing have less predictable hours than, say, an attorney), in my Elmore Leonard-based TV show about a bad-ass Marshall? Â No. Â No I did not. Â Nor did anyone else. Â Willa appears in the first two episodes, annoys the fuck out of everyone, gets shipped off to her mother in Florida, and may very well have been written off the show. Â Â The character adds nothing to the show, and indeed during her brief appearances detracted significantly from it. Â Willa Givens…
The rest of you are on the clock.
Worf in Season One of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Until Tasha got stuffed in the fridge, his only purpose was First Guy Off the Bench.
Captain Phasma.
Froggy
I mean other Froggy
Jane Payne from Ted Lasso. The chess stuff early is fine/cute but then she just sucks and other than serving as a way for Higgins to be a good friend, she doesn’t advance the plot/do anything worthwhile
I could make the same argument for Nate’s girlfriend, who was so important that I don’t even remember her name.
Jade
With the bad scrpipt writing this porcine talent was a waste, could of used a duck or a dildo for the role. Shame.
Arnold Ziffel! Noooooooòooooo! He was integral to the entire series. Nearly as important as Mr. Haney. They could have 86ed Mr. Kimball though.
If I watch Green Acres in small doses I think it’s one of the funniest programs on television. Completely surreal.
Willie Scott. Just… ugh.
Wasn’t she married to Spielberg at the time?
It would explain a lot.
(she married him after the movie, per Google)
Yes she was.
She still is, for that matter and thanks to Wiki, I discovered why an actress on one of the shows my wife watched looked so familiar .. she’s the daughter of Scottiem, I mean Mrs Spielberg
‘specially when compared to Marion Ravenwood, who was a bad ass.
Meh, both pale in comparison to the lovely Ms Elsa Schneider! Sure, she was an opportunistic Nazi, but … she was a enough of a woman that no single Jones could sate her 😀
… Plus, her actress is Irish and still looks good (she was in RRR), so that earns her extra points
That’s doing a lot of violence to the phrase, “looks good.” Joan Rivers-level botox and lip injections.
Yeah, I’ll downgrade that to decently looking and append a “for her age”. In my defence, I watched RRR on a small screen, so she looked better than on my laptop’s screen when I googled her after your comment 😀 Still, in Crusade she looked fantastic 🙂
Gary Cherone (briefly of) Van Halen
Gary Cherone is real, although since autocorrect just changed his name to ‘Gary Chlorine’ I can understand the confusion.
My bad… But in my defense… it’s been 4 hours since I briefly scanned over the rules…
Whoa,whoa,whoa. I thought we as a species agreed that there were only Dave and Sammy and that Van Halen III NEVER HAPPENED.
I object to Sammy too. Diamond Dave 4evah!
… Your objection is duly noted and overruled, because “Dreams” 😉
Pistols at dawn.
Getting shot at dawn won’t change the fact that while Diamond Dave had charisma, Sammy actually had a voice to go with his. Plus, tequilla!
I’m Dave 90% Sammy 10% and Gary GTFOOH
That’s what I signed.
Constable Bob Sweeney from Justified. I like Patton, but did not like this character, and this could have been played by any of the other officers without having an extra character.
Hey, quick question: How do we go about banning someone for life?
I mean, come on.
if you mean a user here, an admin can remove the person’s rights to comment. As the site doesn’t need a login to read it, no way to prevent that. This also doesn’t prevent them from using a different email address to create a new user.*
*playing it straight to be more annoying.
/If you mean me and my bad drafting ability, then I pick Horatio Cornblower, as Lowatio is a much better thought out character
Oooooh, snap!
My character in Hard Ride To Nowhere was awesome.
And, now that I think about it, also 6″ tall. How prescient!
Tattoo. Fucking creepy. And how timely, this image showed up in my soshals just this morning!
/waits patiently for “Lowratio isn’t gonna like this” jokes
I bet Lowratio has a white suit just like Tattoo’s.
And a greasy face, from…secretions.
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
Look, man, you’re the one with the greasy sex dwarf. It’s too late to be clutching your pearls now!
GREASY WAS NOT PART OF THE CANON!!!!
I just noticed the 6’3″, 215 on that picture. I want it on record that my Cowboys preview was in before I saw this.
Pete Best
Guitar bands are just a fad, anyway.
Pete Best was real.
Real dumb.
Ok then, Stumpy Pepys
Should have been my first pick but….here ya go
And if you think it would negatively impact the “show,” I’d remind you of this masterpiece
https://youtu.be/c_CT13yyF2o?si=7whNC7BAOtJzFGYT
I realize that videotape doesn’t hold up well, but doesn’t that look like a relic from ages past? I was 20 years old. An adult, sort of! No stage of my life should look as archaic and quaint as a silent movie!
That was from a VHS recording, which destroys itself every time you play it.
This is why you should always shoot film. A ten minute load of 35mm motion picture film runs about $1500 with processing and transfer; this may seem steep for home movies but remember your memories are priceless.
I’m gonna be like the cinematographer who shot Barry Lyndon, and shoot all my home movies in 35mm using natural light.
That was a gorgeous movie.
Or you can get a good to great automatic telecine machine and go that route? Basically even if you do a couple cans of film, you’re still saving up some money (plus having seen the output of certain digitization services.. you’re not getting really that good a quality from going professional either). Also, I thought that most US home video cameras were 8mm and not 35mm?
Ha, I was thinking pretty much every football announcer ever! But he represents the absolute worst of the worst.
Well if real people (and not just fictional characters) are in play, I’ll take Trent Dilfer.
Sadly, Collinsworth is very real.
Is he though? He looks and sounds like a Disney animatronic gone rogue.
I’m appealing this
OOh, I know one – Kevin Sorbo as Captain Dylan Hunt of the Andromeda Ascendant. While the premise of the show was interesting, the more the show continued, it became less of an ensemble sci-fi show and more of … well, the Kevin Sorbo ego-trip power hour, going as far as having the guy the guy that created the show fired because he had the gall of actually wanting to focus on the rest of the main cast too. So, just as Xena managed to take the idea behind Hercules, jettison Mr Sorbo and be fun, so would’ve been Andromeda if they yeeted Kevin as soon as his ego outgrew his basic-cable show 😀
You had me at ‘Kevin Sorbo’
I want to attribute this to Harlan Ellison. Gene Roddenberry had one good Star Trek story idea; that the Enterprise meets God (or a godlike being), and they’re a child, insane, or both. I am not a big ST:TNG fan, but I’m not going to let that stop me from picking Q.
the Q episodes always felt like filler or we’ve run out of ideas
Cousin Chachi. Fuck him & fuck Scott Baio as well for good measure.
Oh that’s a great pick.
Pirate Prentice in Gravity’s Rainbow. In fact, 90% of the characters in Gravity’s Rainbow. You know what? Fuck Gravity’s Rainbow.
Going to over look the wife (again) but pick Sgt. Doakes from Dexter. Other than the “surprise mf” meme, the character was annoying and one dimensional. He could have been any officer and the plot doesn’t change
Tracy Partridge
The man in the yellow hat. Just let the monkey be curious.
Cousin. Fucking. Oliver.
Lil John Denver lookin’ fuck…
Bastard! Pretty sure he’s dead. Good.
He’s not dead.
Pretty sure John Denver is dead.
(yes, I know, I know, it’s a joke)
“There’s one in every bunch.”
-Alabama Family Reunion Organizers
I’ll take Moby Dick. The lack of dialogue aside, the whale could have been anything-an island, a treasure, a new pair of boots, anything. It is an object that is obsessed over by Ahab so it’s just a placeholder.
I’d like to see a new pair of boots destroy a whaling vessel.
“Eh, I’ll give it a shot.” – Kareem Hunt
“I’ll race you there.”
-Britt Reid
But, but, he was going to get destroyed by his obsession one way or another.
Tom Wambsgans ( the daughter’s bf) from Succession. I like the actor, just hate how week and whiny he is*. We watched MI5 and he kicks ass in that show. The bf character could be not there an no one would notice, also, if you look at bad caricatures of boyfriends, Tom has to be the poster child.
*Note that I have nawt seen the latest season.
MI5? Huh, I didn’t realize they renamed that show for other English-speaking markets. Why would they do that for <checks Google> Aaah, that explains it.
Me wife loves her some British Crime, so we have the “BritBox” streaming app, so in there, it’s has the MI-5 Name. Forgot it also went by “Spooks”. Good catch. Made the show extra hard to find to stream (leagally)
LOVE BritBox!
Of course legally, it’d be wrong to pirate a show that was financed by the BBC using archaic laws to strongarm the populace into giving it money, regardless of their wishes or the declining quality of the programming. That said, in the post-coof world, I’d also suggest giving Survivors a chance (the 2008 remake) if it’s available on BritBox (I’m currently rewatching its first season an’ damn.. it’s as good as I remember)
Could you imagine what would happen if the U.S. federal government tried to charge a “TV license” fee? Washington D.C. would be burned to the ground within a week.
Not too sure about that. Plus, you folks get overcharged and under-delivered when it comes to your local, state and federal taxes and outright assfucked when it comes to healthcare, so what’s one more fire-ant covered, glass-shard infused dildo for the average american 😀
You know I’m right.
Tom Bombadil
With my second round pick, I take Wonder Woman from WW84. It’s not for the accidental rape. It’s not for the hilariously shite acting on display (though I’m not sure how much that’s because of Mrs Gadot’s actual talent and how much the direction given how much better she was in something like Red Notice). It’s not even the blatant (inadvertant) racism of her character in that movie (seriously, though, how did that get that past all the levels of production to have her be ready to kill/maim the brainwashed Emir’s guards, yet tell nuCap’n Kirk’s character not to engage the equally brainwashed Secret Service in the White House). It’s as simple as if there was no Wonder Woman in the Wonder Woman sequel, we could’ve had a better movie centered on Pedro Pascal’s character’s downfall and path to redemption (fuelled by the love of/for his son).
2. And honestly this should have been my 1st round pick: Henrà from Cheers.
Who?
I’m jealous that you were able to successfully scrub that character from your memory. But seriously, you don’t remember Woody’s girlfriend Kelly?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_BMyy-0lvk
He only had 1-2 episodes, didn’t he?
Plus he gave me the “France has won! France has won!” cheer whenever some loser team finally pulls of a victory.
According to Google, he was in 5 episodes.
I’m going large here, folks.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered the greatest American novel of all time, and usually ranks up there with the world’s best
And it is indeed great, except for the end when Tom Sawyer shows up and just bogs the whole thing down. This guy has got to go and get back to his own book.
“Let’s kill off N-word Jim! In fact….
LET’S KILL ALL THE N-WORDS!”
-J Jones (Dallas, TX)
I love that book, but dead-on about Tom’s chapters at the end being a waste. At least that little shit gets shot in the ass.
getting a shot in the ass causes myocardia, ppl forget that
The wife in Breaking Bad is not only hateable, but could have been erased from the show completely. Replace her with any other random family member and you still have the guilt aspect.
I considered Skylar just because of her weight. But she really did hold back Walt.
I think Skylar, while an unlikeable character, (I love the “you just hate women” that emerged as the show went on when Skylar was written as a complete shrew in S1), was very necessary to the show as a foil for Walt.
Now, Walter, Jr., on the other hand, added nothing to the show at all. AT. ALL.
Father John from M*A*S*H. Sure chaplains are an element of every military unit battalion level and above. And especially important in medical units. But they could have made him a baptist that chased skirts at least. Would have flowed with the plot better and made the character much less boring.
I thought he was there for the gay undertones…
Could be…
I, too, am cautiously selecting PERHAPS a new recreational book to check out from the library.
I think something else will come up and step on that though.
2nd Round Pick Is In!
When will our boy come home? Rockingdog, we miss you!
Storm from the X-Men film series.
“Tell me more about this Johnny Five-Dicks character”
D. Favre.
Mark Brendanawicz
1. Feels weird burning a pick on this guy, but I’m having a hard time coming up with anything good so I’ll go with the “real” Seymour Skinner.
That’s a good pick, since the Armen Tanzarian episode is widely considered to the death knell of The Simpsons.
While it does suck, out loud, my personal opinion is that the Frank Grimes episode was worse.
Fun fact: Remember that Simpsons joke about “daddy hitting the referee with a whiskey bottle”? It’s a reference to the original “Hail Mary” game, when the referee who declined to throw a flag for offensive pass interference later got knocked unconscious by a whiskey bottle thrown from the stands. The name of that referee? Armen Terzian.
I’ll take that evil walking pile of hairy shit from “The wizard of Oz” didn’t you just want to see the flying monkeys light it on fire? In the book it had a more signifacant role but in the movie? Worthless heap of dog nothingness.
any explanation really needed? No? Didn’t think so.
The theory that Jar Jar was a Sith Lord disguising himself as a buffoon (the same way Yoda introduced himself) makes him a much less hateable character.
Plus, there’s also the sequel trilogy that immediately conveys +3 charisma for every PT character 😀
My old neighbour worked with the guy that created Jar-Jar. He was not in a good state after the movie came out and how badly Jar jar was received.
It was like that with the poor kid that got cast to play Ed in the live action Cowboy Bebop. Not the actor’s fault at all, just a character that was virtually impossible to translate into real life.
Picking up on Game Time Decision’s excellent SOA pick, my second pick is Sheriff Wayne Unser from the same show. Truth be told you could easily take 4-5 recurring characters off this show without changing anything important.
All Unser did was hit the pose above while asking one of the main characters if they were sure they wanted to do that, because there would be consequences, then that main character would basically tell Unser to fuck off and do it anyway, then they would be surprised at the consequences.
I dunno, maybe Unser was a stand-in for the audience constantly asking themselves “how do these idiots not see how badly this is going to backfire?”
The Disbelief Suspender.
I thought Unser did what he did because he had an unrequited crush on Gemma. Dude, she ain’t sleeping with you.
Tara Knowles ( Jax’s wife) from Son’s of Anarchy. (spoiler) They eventually got rid of her, but no change in the plot after it. She stuck out like a sore thumb with the rest of the characters
Great pick. That show was a glorious, glorious train wreck.
With one of the worst endings of all time
/took this in a previous draft
Best pick there could possibly be.
I kind of had a little crush on Tara. Tara got back.
Tara was smoking hot. I remember a hilarious comment from back in the Warming Glow days about her being something like a pediatric neurosurgeon who got all her clothes from ‘Cycle Sluts ‘R Us’ or something similar.
Which is another hilarious aspect of the show. There’s one episode where Jax is telling Tara that no wife of his is going to support his family and I’m thinking “Dude you are a dirtbag motorcycle outlaw who in his best year might earn half of what your pediatric neurosurgeon wife is going to bring home, legally and after taxes, so maybe shut the fuck up, do the dishes and learn to cook.”
By the way, if it isn’t obvious by now I will go on for hours about how bad SOA was, and I never missed an episode. What a demented genius Kurt Sutter was.
I miss the “We Need to Talk About Last Night’s Episode of Scandal” series that Danger Guerrero did. I miss everything about warmingglow, really.
It went to shit season 3? 4 sucked for sure. I watched all of it.
I think Ireland is S3, so yes, but then they pulled an amazing ending out of their end. They did that for a couple of seasons, then just shit all over everything in the last one.
It was awesome. I laughed so hard at so much stuff. And RTD’s right, discussing that show on Warming Glow the next day was so much fun.
Ireland. How did they get their choppers to Ireland? Yeah yeah just go with it.
You can ship those rather easily – both using normal vehicular transports and via general cargo. If you don’t mind paying premium, you can also use an airborne vehicle transport service (or could, I’m not sure if those aren’t currently making a killing shipping cast-off military gear donated to Ukraine)
IIRC, the Sons were on the clock, and had to get to Ireland NOW to get Jax’s kid back I think. I didn’t think it would have been impossible, I thought it would have been to expensive to do. And Harleys over there are probably thin on the ground, and expensive to rent.
They should have put them on tricked-out scooters, a’la scooter gangs over there.
Everything that the Sons did had to be done NOW! Get to Ireland to save Leba? NOW!
Have the Tacoma chapter drive all the way to Charming for back up? NOW!
Run to the grocery store for milk and hair product? NOW!
Not really, Harleys are pretty common over here too and are bought by the same types of people. In fact, it’d appear that outside Limmerick, the big cities in Ireland have at least one official dealer. As for rent? Same dealerships are an option, plus there are some services as well (if I remember correctly, up north in Belfast you can hire one of ~200$ a day, which was like BMW X3/5 money.. and the Beemer’s more appropriate for our weather :D)
Cool!
I just noticed that spell-check changed ‘Raylan’ to ‘Raglan’ and I found that so funny I’m not going to change it.
Ross from Friends. If you removed him from the series, would anyone really notice?
Ross is a great example of ‘detestable character but integral to the show’, since the whole “will Rachel and Ross get/stay together. Although if you rewatch the show at any point the best characters are clearly Joey and Phoebe.
I thought Monica’s apartment was the worst character. Like any of those slackers could afford a place in New York that big, that didn’t have Rottweiler sized rats.
That was explained early on as they had somehow inherited Monica’s aunt’s rent-controlled apartment and then I don’t believe it was ever mentioned again.
“for maybe the third time in my 30 year legal career I am caught up on everything. I’m sure that statement didn’t just jinx anything.”
/Opens up computer, 16 emails, 17 pieces of mail.
Could be way worse y’know. I just got my travel itinerary for September for my day job and while I was digesting that*, I “quite coincidentally” got a summons to show up for briefing about my extra-curricular activity.
*Amusingly, I have less issue with noted tourist hot spots like Riyadh, Tehran and Lagos than I have with a 3 day trip to the Bay area, or the “week+” I’m going to be stuck in the general DC area. On the plus side, my glorious faceless multinational corporate overlord also seems to be ramping shit back up in Russia (because only Euro-based corporations were stupid enough to actually leave that market, lol), so yay for that 🙂
Here’s one that’ll start a fight. I’m drafting Indiana Jones from Raiders of the Lost Ark. That fucker didn’t do a single thing to affect the plot; every single thing that happens in that movie would still happen whether he was there or not, and I think he could play a decent tight end.
Well, without Indiana the Nazis would have won, so…
Without Indy, WW2 might have been averted
Who are you, Neville Chamberlain?
Nah man, Wilt Chamberlain, Neville was my father
Well, without Indy getting involved, they would’ve taken the Ark to Berlin and opened it in front of the entire Nazi Party.
Fuck, that’s a great point.
I may have to retract my objection.
Ah, would that be the same wacky Nazis that weren’t even digging in the right place?
No. Bellocq wasn’t gonna open it without a trial run first.
That turns out not to be the case. Assuming no Indy, the Nazi’s are just gonna say fuck it, and dig up everything. They’ll get the Ark sooner or later, run it out to their secret island, and blow themselves up with it through incompetence. The Ark is still on the secret island, and eventually someone in a sub or at Nazi HQ is going to wonder why they haven’t heard from the secret island lately.
Of course, this also kinda ignores how George Lucas and Steven Spielberg neglected a tiny bit of trivia that would’ve rendered the plot of the movie outright impossible. Egypt was under BRITISH MILITARY OCCUPATION at the time (a common occurance pre-1945) from the late 1880s to all the way to the Suez crisis, so having a massive dig site staffed by Nazis (and conveniently wearing Nazi uniforms) would be about as likely as the White House allowing a Sino-Russian military expedition in goddamn Puerto Rico (or Alaska, or Hawaii).
It was in Italian-controlled Ethiopia! That’s not Cairo – that’s Addis Ababa.
Unless Georgie boy decided to tweak Raiders the way he did the OT and changed some place names, no it’s not in Ethiopia. The excavation was in Tanis (in Northern Egypt), which is nowhere near Ethiopia. In fact, you might argue that it’s on the opposite side of the country from Ethiopia 😉
Redshirt
Nah, he’s a keeper.
Rubble fucking sucks.
https://assets.nickjr.com/uri/mgid:arc:imageassetref:shared.nickjr.us:6ed8289d-ed59-4b3d-8a1e-cde14224eafc?quality=0.7&gen=ntrn&legacyStatusCode=true
Know what? THIS OFFSEASON SUCKS!
Buncha dicks…..
For a second, I thought you meant Barney Rubble, and shit was about to get REAL!
.
.
DIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDI… I mean fantastic pick, we can all call it a draft since you win by default here 🙂
Yeah, my taking Willa here with he first pick is the same as Portland taking Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan.
In honor of the banner image, and because I wanted to be mocked relentlessly, I am picking Turtle from Entourage. Completely useless character. Didn’t contribute anything. The show would have been the same with a group of three friends instead of four.
I recall a brief story arc on that show where they explained his presence and why he was important to the group and it was so obvious they were trying to explain why this absolute zero had anything to do with the show.
With the second overall pick, I pick Wesley Goddamn Crusher. I struggle to think of a single episode of TNG where his presence was a net benefit to the plot or vibe of the show.
I’m struggling to defend him because I like the character but you’re absolutely right.
I’d wager a guess that it’s less “the character” you liked (since Wesley was little more than “generic boy wonder… IN SPAAAAACE”), but the actor playing him having enough charisma to at least elevate the character above someone like Boo’s pick for example.
“Wesley Crusher, report to the Captain’s ready room immediately for the strapping of your life”