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The AfterEllen.com Huddle: Getting rid of the most annoying TV characters

This week, the showrunners of Smash announced they would be axing a few reviled characters for Season 2. Bye bye Ellis and Dev! (Also Frank and Michael – Julia’s male companions.) While this should definitely make viewers happy, it also gives us the idea that we can call the shots! So, team, who do you want to see dropped from their respective shows immediately for better TV-watching?

Dorothy Snarker: If Finn never existed, this is how Glee would have gone:

Rachel and a rag-tag group of losers and gays band together to sing elaborate show tunes and discuss Barbra Streisand. Rachel and the other losers help the gays come out in a respectful manner while embracing their individuality. The gays help Rachel stop dressing like the bait girl from To Catch a Predator. Rachel realizes the hot head cheerleader is hot.

Nobody sees Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich. No one outs anyone before she is ready. No one threatens a girl in a wheelchair. No one proposes to a girl and thereby tempers her dreams which were always bigger than a town named after a unliked bean.

And they still win nationals because now at least everyone in Glee Club can dance.

THE END.

Emily Hartl: So, I admit, I can’t bring myself to watch Smash because Katharine McPhee makes me want to gauge my eyes out but the one character who literally makes my skin crawl every time I hear her voice is the new broad on The Office, Nellie, played by Catherine Tate. While the character’s general personality is grating enough, her voice is the thing. It’s up there with Fran Dresher for me. Get out of Scranton, you’re making a show already on the downward slope pick up major speed.

TheLinster: I’d like to lose Dan, Nate, and Chuck from Gossip Girl for its last season. I know you said one character, not three, but together they form a single a-hole factor that just takes the focus off of Serena and Blair. They don’t even have to die – they can exist off-camera and return for the series finale. But let us have one grand season of the OTP and I will happily become a faithful viewer again.

Heather Hogan: First, let me applaud Smash‘s new showrunner for having the balls to get rid of Ellis; he was a pox on that entire show. I heard Dev and Michael and and Frank are also on their way out, which: totally correct. They should take Leo, too, and just call it a perfect day. Other than that rightful show-gutting, I’d like to see Community get ride of Chang.

I know, I know, times are tough with creator Dan Harmon getting ousted just last week, but if that creative genius couldn’t make Chang tolerable in the last two seasons, there’s no way a couple of showrunning newbs are going to be able to do it. Plus with Chang gone, we’d probably get more of Jim Rash’s Dean Pelton and that’s always going to be a winner. Or maybe Annie and Britta could use the extra time to makeout finally.

Dara Nai: Where to start? There are entitled twerps who don’t deserve a place at the grown-ups’ table (Wesley Crusher), nit-wit f–k ups who we’re supposed to find lovable, but make us want to stab ourselves in the eyes (Urkel and Screech: the ebony and ivory of show-ruiners), and sanctimonious ego maniacs who make life hell for everyone around them (paging Izzie Stevens and Jenny Schecter). And then there’s reality television, in which whole casts qualify as annoying, selfish and so classless and deluded, they think getting arrested is awesome because it gives the something to tweet about.

That said, my pick is Warren from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He’s everything you could want in an annoying character: selfish, bullying, relentlessly infuriating, and worst of all, uninteresting. Thankfully, Joss Whedon let Willow skin him alive. That was the most satisfying moment in television history!

Ali Davis: Through the magic of time travel and rewrites, Jenny Schecter is hit buy a bus in the pilot episode of The L Word. And the the driver backs up over her a few times. Everyone is happier for reasons they never quite understand, but no one cares. They fill the mysterious extra time by making out a bunch more and cheering on Dana, whose happiness and confidence grows well through Season 7.

Lucy Hallowell: Pete Campbell from Mad Men. He can take his greasy hair and his smarmy, stuck up, sniveling, “my family once owned half of Manhattan” Draco Malfoy impression and go away. I don’t care how they do it, but with any luck it would involve him going mad from syphilis. No wait, that takes too long. Borrow a page from Lip Service and have him run over by a car. There would be something sweet about Pete “I’m a New Yorker so I can’t drive” Campbell being mowed down by a Cadillac.

Bridget McManus: I chose Owen from Grey’s Anatomy. Adios Dr. Douche! Owen would walk in on Cristina and Meredith getting it on and finally realize he’s not needed and not wanted. With Owen leaving Seattle Grace, Dr. Cristina Yang would become the new Chief of Surgery. Even though she’s not qualified for the job this is my imagination so I get to do what I want.

Trish Bendix: She’s not on every episode, but I could really do without Martha Plimpton‘s character, Patti Nyholm, on The Good Wife. I know she’s supposed to be an annoying evil bitch, but it doesn’t make it any less cringe-worthy for me when she’s smirking on my screen. Take your kid and GTFO.

Karman Kregloe: I know I’m hoarding kills here, but Modern Family would be so much more fun for me to watch if siblings Mitch and Claire would just take a ride on a faulty blimp or something. She is the kind of bitchy, scolding and shrill TV mom/wife that makes my skin itch. I love Phil, can’t she just be sweet to him for a change? And her brother, Mitch, is no better. His husband, Cam, is hilarious, ridiculous and completely charming (even in full clown regalia). In fact, maybe Phil and Cam could hook up in their co-mourning!

Fine, I know that’s a terrible idea. But seriously, Jay Pritchett is the only member of his biological family that I can stand on Modern Family. If the showrunners could get rid of his spawn, I’d be way more likely to sit through an entire episode rather than just catch the last few minutes as I’m waiting for Happy Endings to start.

What character could you do without?

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