I have noticed that on some shows, there are some characters that I would have liked better (or even loved) if they were played by a different actor/actress. And then, there are characters are badly written so I can't like them.

For example, Rachel on Friends. I know that most people hate Ross and Phoebe, but can I say that she was also terrible? Most of the time, it would that she would want to be with Ross when he was with someone else (Julie, Bonnie, Emily). When she finally gets him, she no longer wants him. Same thing with Joey. He wanted her, she didn't the same way. A year later, he has a girlfriend, and she wants him. They get together, and the feelings are GONE? HUH? I blame the inconsistent writing. In my opinion, JA did her best to make the character work.

On the flip side, there is Marissa Cooper and Lana Lang. Now, I don't hate them like everyone else here. Mischa Barton and Kristen Kreuk try very hard with the characters in my opinion. But, I just have the feeling that if they were played by different actresses, Marissa and Lana won't be so hated.

Finally, there is the case where both the writing and the actress ruin the character. I am talking about Lauren Reed (or Moronen to some of you). I honestly felt that this character had potential. Who knows, she could have a good foil to Sydney. Melissa George tried, but she was too dwarfed by the rest of the cast and it showed. Plus, the writers made the mistake of having her be the other woman, and they didn't want Sydney and Vaughn to reunite through an affair, so they turned Lauren evil as a lame way to get her out of the way. That really turned me when it happened. Unoriginal, contrived and lame. Not to mention stupid. I sometimes feel as though Sydney and Vaughn got lucky that she was evil, or else they would have hurt an innocent woman.

Speaking of which, if different actors played the main couple on ALIAS, I would watch more. Vaughn is boring, and Sydney is very whiny and self-involved (in other words, an older Buffy). MV and JG are not helping matters much. And they have little chemistry.

I can think of several examples of characters I would hate no matter who they cast, because the writing is so bad. Top of my list, though, is Rose McGowan as Paige on Charmed. I never saw the actress before, to my recolection, but I think she is horrible. I dont like Paige's character because the writers have been progressively turning her into an idiot since she joined the show. If they had cast even my favorite actress as Paige, I still would have hated the character.

If I may suggest a third reason for hating a character, I think that overall personality is a factor. People tend to like the characters whose personality/behavior/looks/lifestyle etc. resemble their own. At least I do. For example, I like some of the L Word characters, but their whole lifestyle (LA beautiful/fitness/health stuff) bugs me so much that sometimes they just annoy the hell out of me.

And you make moral judgements - certain things that the characters do annoy you because they just seem wrong. I think very often a character is well acted and well written, yet I hate him/her. These aren't necessarily the writers' mistakes. Maybe they succeeded in what they wanted to do, and the viewers react to it on a moral level. For example, Emily on Gilmore Girls. I don't think there's anything wrong with the way she's written or acted; I just don't like her as a character. I don't understand her values, and I don't accept her behaviour. If I met a person like her in real life, I wouldn't like that person.

Isn't this Characters We Hate?

cynful7, this is different. This is about whether the writing of the characters and/or the actors who play them can have an effect on your hatred of the characters. In "Characters We Hate", you can hate anyone for any reason.

No, this thread -- as a writing vs. character study -- is fine as is. Carry on.

I think Clark Kent owns this thread. I quit watching Smallville towards the beginning of this past season, and from what I've heard the writing (never stellar to begin with) has gotten to the point where everyone hates Clark. I've always defended Clark, even through the worst of his asshattery, because...well, teenager. But in the last few episodes I saw, *I* couldn't even defend him anymore. Just think about that for a minute. Clark grows up to be Superman, arguably one of our most beloved pop culture icons...and AlMiles has managed to make a good chunk of the audience (at least the fandom) despise him.

Wait, on second thought, maybe it's bloody genius...

Part of it has to do with the writing, another with the actor's ability, but one final important key is this: chemistry with the other actors.

Taking the example of Lauren Reed, the writers had problems with the character because Melissa George was a weak actress and had little chemistry with anyone on the Alias, least of all Michael Vartan. When they saw that people weren't responding well to the character for reasons other than she was seperating Sydney and Vaughn, they were forced to give her another purpose- which made her characterization erratic at best. They were stuck in a bind though because even pairing her with Sark did nothing. The actress simply could not handle the material (or even nail down a consistent accent), and she lacked the chemistry with the stronger cast members.

If Lauren Reed had been played by a stronger actress (Claudia Black for example) it might have worked. But maybe not. It would depend on whether the actress meshed well with the characters too.

It doesn't matter that much to me if a character is similar to me or not. I love Paris Gellar ( Gilmore Girls and Grace Polk Joan of Arcadia even though I'm nowhere near as uptight or driven as Paris is, or as cynical as Grace. Or female, for that matter.
:-)

There is definitely a moral factor involved though. Part of the reason I hate Jess Mariano GG, again is the way he wallows in self pity so much, self pity being something I have very little patience with.

The primary importance of the actor in determining whether I like a character or not is in how believable (or in some cases, comprehensible) he or she makes the character. To the extent I "like" Tony Soprano (some definite definition stretching there) it's because James Gandolfini makes it at least somewhat possible for me to understand why Tony does what he does, thinks the way he thinks, etc.

I think I'll shut up for a while now, since this post is getting a bit prolix. :-)

OK, if this is writing vs. acting.....

Ronnnnnnnnn "Mulletor" Moss as Ridge Forrester on "The Bold and the Beautiful". A horribly written character that always gets his way, has mommy issues, and is an indecisive twit. However, lately the writing has been better for him. Ridge is shown to be more fallible, when both of his wives walk out on him on the same day.

Yet...... he still sucks. Old Ridge sucked all around because of both the writing and the horrendous acting skills of Moss. But New Ridge sucks just as much, because the "actor" just plain sucks. His definition of acting is pretty much growling his lines and pensively staring off into space.

If they recast Ridge, with the writing the way it is now, I would probably like him.

I think Rory Gilmore/Alexis Bledel is a pretty good example. OriginalRecipeRory was written as a quarky, insecure, interesting girl. AB was able to pull off insecure, but I felt like she wasn't quite capable of everything else. In the hands of another, more self-assured more actress Rory might not have been such a whiner.

Now, of course, the writer has caught up to AB's portrayal, and Rory Gilmore is sinking.

Of course you can. I hate Rachel too, and Monica. Other people also hate the guys or secondary characters like Judy Geller or even Richard.

The thing is that Rachel was really written as a spoiled, selfish person, but there was something about Jennifer Aniston's good looks and adorable delivery that made her well liked, no matter what crap Rachel pulled. In the later seasons of Friends, when JA was basically phoning it in, it became much more evident what a hateful character Rachel was. Her affair with Tag, her interfering in Ross's relationships, her neglect of her baby Emma--all these things started to grate and show how little Rachel had really grown or matured.

When I was watching Desperate Housewives earlier this year, I was appalled at Gabrielle's behavior and was frequently of the opinion that she was stupid, was asking to get caught, and deserved neither John nor Carlos. Yet other fans kept raving about how they liked her. I decided that it was the Rachel effect again; the adorability of the actress that made people willing to forgive the crap the writers had her doing.

Dana Girl, I think that in Season One Alexis benefitted greatly from getting to play someone very much like her real life self. Smart, pretty, sociable around people she knows but uncomfortable around strangers. Which minimized the damage from her lack of range. But that lack of range, unfortunately for her, could only be hidden so long.

Having her character fall for that sorry bleep Jess didn't help any, though. :-(

As far as Gabrielle Solis goes, the fact that her husband was such an SOB while John was so hunky made it a lot easier for people to understand her behavior, and that in turn accounts for a lot of her likeability.

Far be it from me to pretend that her hotness had nothing to do with it, however.
;-)

Two emoticons in one post? I must be going mush-brained.

Great topic! I think in a lot of cases it's an interaction between writing and acting -how the actor fits the role. The best example is Elizabeth Roehm. Her acting was perfectly acceptable in Angel, and the Law and Order writers have created perfectly acceptable regular characters despite their rigid format. Combine the two and you get what was cruelly described as the Rohmbot. I'd say the problem wasn't that Roehm was a bad actress, or that Selena was a bad character, but that Roehm couldn't play Selena convincingly.

Well, yeah, in the pilot I didn't like Carlos acting like he owned Gabrielle and that she was supposed to let his boss grab her ass. So I understood why she was having an affair. I did not, though, understand why she'd kiss John inside the front door (which was mostly see-through) and where they could get caught. I didn't understand her flirting with John at the fashion show and shoving her foot into his groin while his mother was there. That's the crap I couldn't believe about Gabrielle. She was asking to get caught, and I'm supposed to have sympathy for her? Nope. No way.

I hated Buffy in season 6 and 7. And while it was mostly the writing, I was ready to wring SMG's neck if she rolled her eyes one more frickin time.

I hated almost everyone on Buffy by season seven. They didn't even resemble the quirky teens we started out with, and Anya still had not managed to give me a reason to like her. Dawn was a huge whiner who never really redeemed herself from the kitschy role she was put in, Willow was almost bipolar between her "hapiness" with Kennedy and her remnant sadness over Tara. I honestly think it was writing then, not acting, that screwed so much of the Buffy cast over. Plus, the plot didn't even exist by that time.

I think David Caruso is the perfect example of the actor/acting being the cause of hate instead of writing. I would bet that CSI: Miami would be much more enjoyable if any other older actor filled that spot and had the same lines, clothes, sunglasses, etc.

I can't really speak of Marissa because I honestly didn't pay attention to her when I watched the OC (I don't watch at all anymore). But with Lana, I started out liking her well enough because her screentime and importance in the story was commensurate with her role: That of the fantasy girl on a pedestal, loved by the hero from afar. Kreuk wasn't and isn't, IMO, a great actress, but when all you have to do is look pretty and make shiny eyes at people, she at the very least suffices.

But then after a while, the character started taking up more screentime, more focus, and was bestowed with great importance--and the writing just didn't keep up. Suddenly she was front and center, all the other characters were in love with her, but the writing never gave her depth beyond the original Fantasy Pedestal Girl. As a result, they ended up with a very shallow cypher-girl being touted as damn near the Second Coming. She could do no wrong and never got called on her crap. So for me, the vast majority of it is the writing.

However, I do think some the problem comes from how the writers perceive the actress. From their interviews, they often give the impression they can't tell the difference between her and her character.

This one is a hard call for me, since I have a tendency to watch the actors I like in just about anything, and when a bad actor is ruining good writing, I tend to stop watching the show. To me, this whole argument just goes to show how important casting is, and how you should avoid stupid stunt-casting or casting people simply because they're pretty or because their names are in the tabloids.

But I think Smallville is a good example of how different actors can work with the same crappy writing and come up with different results:

Michael Rosenbaum is a strong actor with a healthy amount of charisma, so he is actually able to rise above the craptastic writing and most people like Lex Luthor despite the things the writers make him say and do.

Tom Welling is an "okay" actor, who - while pretty - doesn't have Rosenbaum's charm or acting ability to rise above the writing. As such, we hate Clark Kent for being such a flaming butthole, and we can't forgive Clark for his actions they way we can Lex.

Kristen Kreuk is in a similar situation - pretty face, not-so-pretty acting ability - but her situation is compounded by the fact that I suspect that she hates Lana as much as we do, and that shows in her performance. The only time she shows any sort of spark at all is when Lana acts out of character because she's been possessed or she under some sort of krypto-spell. She's basically telling us "The writing sucks and this character sucks. I hate doing this." and that sucks all the fun out of it for the viewer. On the other hand, you can have an actor like John Glover (Lionel Luthor) who also knows that he's trapped in the middle of a crapfest, but by-golly he's just going to gnaw on the scenery and have fun with it, so the viewer has fun with it too.

As far as the writing vs acting thing - I think it is a lot easier for good actors to rise above bad writing than it is for good writing to compensate for bad acting. So even if an actor tries hard to work around bad writing, unless they are really good and have a quite a bit of charm to boot, they are going to fail.

I would say Kate on "Lost" is a good canidate for this thread. Evangeline Lilly, I think, just doesn't have the experience to pull her off.

I think that most of the characters on Lost are hampered by the acting and the writing. There are only two of them that I like.

The annoying thing is the Yunjin Kim (Sun) initially tried out for the role of Kate. I'm annoyed with this fact because I think she could have done a far better job with character of Kate (she actually went to acting school!!!)

I think so, too. Take away the very studied mannerisms and the complete lack of emotion in his stilted delivery, the character would probably be pretty enjoyable to me. I mean, his brother was supposedly dead, he was in love with said brother's wife... It was a pretty good character background to work with.

I think the writing was so bad for most of the last season that not even Rosenbaum could spin much gold out of it. In previous seasons, Lex always had a personal motive for doing things. Not necessarily virtuous motives, but personal ones. It gave him reason to be invested in whatever was going on, and it gave me, as a viewer, a reason to be invested in him. But this past season, with everyone having the same generic motive of chasing after alien stones of vague knowledge, I felt he just blended into the background. He might as well have been any of the other fly by night baddies.

I'd chalk that one up to mediocre acting and mediocre writing that created a kind of downward spiral into suckitude. Without the talent to rise above the barely-adequate writing, she didn't inspire the writers to even try to make her more appealing. It's like they just kind of shrugged and gave up on her.

In a perfect world, good acting and good writing can elevate one another to create an increasingly well-drawn, complex character that evolves as time goes on. I'm thinking of JK Simmons on Oz as the perfect example. Here was an excessively evil, horrible character played by an actor who understood exactly how to work a wry sense of humor into his portrayal, which, in turn, was incorporated into the way the character was written as the seasons went on.

I think Willow from BTVS is a perfect fit for this thread. In the early seasons I LOVED her character -- I identified with her insecurities and the pain of her relationship with Xander -- friends since childhood, but he's always pursuing the "hot" girls and won't look twice at her. I loved when she met Tara, and I loved them together. Tara seemed like the perfect partner for Willow at that point in her life, somone even more insecure than Willow, someone who Willow could encourage to believe in herself and hopefully hear some of what she herself was saying and apply it to herself (if that makes sense). I didn't even mind so much when she fucked up the relationship, because it made sense that her basic problem, her insecurities, were becoming her albatross. What I could not fucking stand was when the writers tried to tell us "the magic made her do it". What the fuck ever. I hated her from that point on.

Dude. That would have made Jennifer Garner look like the poor actress in that context. Claudia would have stolen the whole show.

Later era Kerry Weaver on E.R. owns this.

She was the 'foil' from the 2nd season onwards, they added details and depths, embarked on a voyage of self-discovery and a sexual identity crisis, you saw a very professionally competent and confident, intelligent woman who was actually quite scared and vulnerable and really, really lonely who just wanted more than anything else for people to take her seriously and not focus on either her disability, or later, her sexuality. It would take a really good actor to pull this role off and allow her to be sympathetic, if not easily likeable, which is exactly what Laura Innes did.

What went wrong is deciding that lesser characters and actors (close to the whole cast now-a-days, I like Goran Visnjic's work but not Luka particularly, when he's depressed, which seems a lot and Sherry Stringfield as Susan is just really likeable) were more integral to the show. Soon as you start going for a younger audience to keep a dying show alive and stop paying attention to your experienced talent, you have a weak show on your hands that only devoted loyality will make you watch.

Kerry showed up in half the season last year, managing 2 minutes of sound and fury screaming at everybody or telling anybody who would listen that her son was doing okay, about 2/3rds the previous season, season 10 whilst throwing the occasional scraps like Sandy Lopez dying and her biological mother's appearance to avert attention from the blindly obvious. Pathetic!

She is a shrew, a harpy whose sole purpose is to tell everybody how terrible she is by acting like a Byzantine Emperor and fill the gap left by Robert Romano. Cheap crap! And Laura Innes acts everybody out of the park when she gets the chance. Why is she even still contracted? Gurgh....

Right, going to go lie down now....

There’s another possible interaction between writing and likability. When the writers try too hard, one way or the other, it can create a backlash. Examples:

- Fred from Angel, Lana from Smallville, and everyone on Seventh Heaven. The writers insisted that these people are perfection itself. That gets pretty tiresome after a while.

- Saint Buffy, and Miss Perfect Sydney Bristow. This is a variation on the above. They’ve been through so much that we’re supposed to keep feeling compassion for them. Earn it, sister.

- Wesley from Buffy, and Gunther from Friends. They’re clowns! They’re jerks! We’re supposed to hate them! Then why did I find myself pulling for them? For me, the ultimate example was (sorry for talking about a movie) Agent Smith in the first “Matrix”. He wasn’t a charismatic evil character; there was nothing likable about him. And I liked him.

The perfect storm is Treat Williams on Everwood. I don’t like the actor. I don’t like the character. And I think that the writers want us to respect the character as he struggles to become a better person, even though he’s just as much of a jerk as he used to be.

I think Alexis Bledel's main problem is with the use of her voice. She mumbles all of her lines and sounds like a little girl - and it doesn't help that she makes childish pouty faces every five minutes. I like(d) her character, but not the actress; it's difficult to identify with a 19-year-old who looks and sounds like a 12-year-old. But I don't know if any of this is really her own fault, so maybe I shouldn't say anything. Claudia in Party of Five had the same problem for a long time.



I think it all comes together with Gandolfini's excellent acting and the excellent writing of the show. If Tony was only portrayed beating people up, being a tyrant, and cheating on his wife, I doubt he would be likeable, no matter how well Gandolfini acted the part. I think it's very much the writing that made him multi-dimensional. However, I've heard that David Chase was shocked people liked Tony, because he wasn't meant to be a "good" guy; and in the last season, he seemed to be much darker and less likeable, and indeed, many fans turned their backs on him. Was that intentional, writing him like that? I think it was. But I still "like" him. I just identify with him - which is really something, considering I'm a 25-year-old Finnish lesbian who has nothing to do with the mafia.



Ronn Moss is indeed a poor actor. Thorne has always had the better(looking) actors, while Ridge stays the same and yet all the women like him? I don't get it. Btw, because of your post about good writing, I had a dream last night where I was watching B & B and it was suddenly really funny/interesting. I was amazed at how good the writing was. But I guess I wouldn't like it if I really tuned in again. Hate soaps.

It seems a combination of the two that makes a character unsympathetic - in the "I hate him/her" and not in the good "I love to hate him/her."

I think that being a crappy actor/actress doesn't matter if the writers are aware of the limitations of that actor, but if they spin a whole show around a bad actor and a lot of the plot and the viewer's positive emotional investment depends on this performance, then they have a situation on their hands. For example, I don't think that either Emilie de Ravin nor Maggie Grace are great actresses, but unlike Evangeline Lilly they don't get 20 minutes screen time per episode and three flashbacks that all are character exposition. Also: Kristin Kreuk or Ellen Pompeo look like they could qualify.

Then, of course, the writers can make it worse by expecting the audience to love the character in question and do everything to make him/her win the audience's sympathy. That surely can be done, but writing the character as the Most Perfect Human Being is not the way to go. The desperate attempt to make certain characters likeable is so obvious when badly executed that the audience catches quickly on and probably refuses to be manipulated like that.

And then there are roles that are just written to be unsympathetic. Alias' Lauren never stood much of chance to be liked, first being Vaughn's litte Stepford Wife, making it hard to understand why Vaughn would move on with her of all people and then by making her the psycho from hell. Although that could have been a character people could have loved to hate - maybe not unlike 24's TerrorMom - in the hands of a capable actor.

Of course, there is another factor where the writing is to blame - when people turn from loving a character to hating a character, because of the choices he made on screen. In this case the actor deserves absolutely no blame.

The really interesting question is if there ever been a role that had had the worst writing imaginable - cheesy lines, bad choices, gruesome everything - and still managed to create a very likeable character. I can't think of someone right, although there has to be someone.

That's an advantage of soaps. We can actually experience a different actor in certain roles, and that neatly clears up the question of writing vs. acting. In the case of Ridge, Ronn Moss had to take an unexpected leave years ago and viewers got the pleasure of Lane Davies acting the role during that time (I think it was when Ridge and Taylor were married and before Sheila "killed" her). Clips were available at www.starringlanedavies.com but I don't see them there anymore. I'm sure CustomofLife knows more.

I think a good example of writing making us hate a character is Lynette Scavo on Desperate Housewives. I love Felicity Huffman--She's a likeable, talented actress. In the pilot, Lynette was probably my favorite character. And in many of the more everyday situations (like her fighting the PC plays at her kids' schools), I liked the character. But many of the show's plotlines turned Lynette into a selfish, bitchy jerk who used her friends (e.g., getting Bree to help her get her kids into private school) and stabbed her husband in the back just to get her own way. At first, I tried to like this character because I love the actress, but eventually the writing just took her too far. It's as pure a case as I can think of of the writing making me hate a charcter.

Will & Grace is another good example of bad writing bringing down characters. What started off as four quirky, funny people devolved into a show about four self-centered, arrogant jackasses who treat everyone around them like shit. That just takes all the humor out of the show for me, and is why I quit watching long ago.

OTOH is the oft-mentioned David Caruso. There's really nothing wrong with the way his character is written on CSI: Miami (well, at least there wasn't when I used to watch it). I just hate Caruso so much that I couldn't stomach watching the show.

I think what made it worse for me was that their ass-ish behaviour always ended up being justified in some way. Like the episode when Will and Grace have dinner with their neighbor, and then make fun of him when he's in the bathroom. He overhears and calls them on it. They feel bad (for once!) and decide to try to make it up to him. But guess what? Turns out the guy is a total weirdo and loser! It got way too irritating for me and, like you, I have stopped watching.

Same here. I like Felicity Huffman a lot but can't take Lynette 99% of the time. It's going that way with most of Desperate Housewives for me now, though. I like just about all of the actors and actresses on the show, but by the end of the season the writing had made hate just about everyone. And not in that fun "love to hate you" way, either.

I agree. EL is new. She hasn't figured out yet that acting is more than reading lines. She doesn't bring anything to the character or give it any kind of life or personality. She just blankly stares off into space.

Also from my hated characters list for Lost: Jack. In this case, it's all the writing. Matthew Fox does have talent and it even shows from time to time. But the way the writers write has actions/dialogue makes him unbearable. He acts like he's the everyone's savior and he has the right to order everyone around just because he's a doctor. He thinks he's entitled to be the leader moreso than Sayid or Locke, who do as much as Jack does, if not more. And yet the writers write him like he's the hero. I can't stand him.

And then there's one of the most infamous characters on the TWoP boards: Marissa Cooper. Here I think it's Mischa Barton's fault. Her acting is so distractingly wooden and monotoned that it completely takes you out of the moment. It's distracting and annoying. It doesn't help that all the characters on the show just LOVE her. The spoiled rich girl who's bitchy mother, mental instabilities, and inconvenient drinking problem are throwing her life into chaos had the potential to be a very interesting character... had she been played by an actress with the ability to pull it off. I probably really liked Marissa had she been played by someone like Kristen Bell, Amber Tamblyn, Rachael Bilson, or any of the young actress better than MB, which is a tragically long list.

I'm not sure. Marissa may be a nice and interesting person, but she has done things that will always bug me to no end, no matter who plays her (I know that this may contradict what I said earlier, but I came to that realization recently.)

Para, another possibility: you don't need to create a whole show around a weak actor to have a problem. Just add a weak actor to a quality cast.

I think this is what happened to the actress who played Lauren on Alias. Granted, her character wasn't the most likable, and she interfered with the show's great love story. But they brought in other evil characters, and interfered with Sydney/Vaughn. The actress just wasn't up to the challenge of being an interesting foil.

I haven't watched much of Lost, but I know that it's got a pretty inexperienced cast. Probably a lot of the hate from viewers comes from certain actors just not being as good. From what I've seen, no one complains about the knife-carrying guy (I can't remember the character's name), and he's a solid actor. There's no show that weeded out good and bad actors more obviously than Star Trek: TNG. As the seasons passed, they gave up on Riker and Troi, and had a lot of Data and Picard episodes.

ETA: Americana mentioned Mischa Barton. A great example. I don't think the OC has a lot of great actors, but Barton is so visibly worse than the others that she's the only actress you notice. There's nothing the writers can do in a situation like that.

I also think that, particularly in the case of "girl everyone is in love with" characters like Lana, Rory, Joey, Kate, etc., sometimes the weak acting is compounded in part by how the other characters are written in response. I haven't seen a lot of Smallville, but my perception of what bugs people about Lana is not just she 's annoying, it's that she's annoying and all the other characters are constantly telling the viewer how awesome she is. It's a classic case of telling us versus showing us. What I liked about, for example, Joan on Joan of Arcadia, is that the show had characters call her out on her behavior, at least some of the time, and they could do that because the character and the actress were solid enough to withstand it. In other cases, the writers seen to simply label someone "main female character," and we're supposed to love her no matter what. So I guess my point is that hateability of weak acting can have as much to do with how other characters are written as with anything.

A closely related phenomenon that's common on soaps is the it's okay that he shoots/poisons/bribes/robs, he's a good guy. Why is he a good guy? Because we told you so. No, it doesn't matter what he actually does. Oh, and that guys? Is BAD. So it's okay to condemn him for doing the same thing.

Rather similar to the reason for all the Archer-hate among Enterprise fans. We were forever being force-fed the idea that Capt. Jonathan Archer was the greatest, most adventurous, most altogether hoopy guy that the Universe would ever know (at least until the advent of Jim Kirk), but not once - not once - did Archer do anything to reinforce the notion. Instead, he was a bigoted, nepotistic jackass, with a warp nacelle jammed right up his ass.

I think that was about an even divide between the writing and the acting there - I know Scott Bakula can play a more sympathetic character than that!

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. I don't like being told, ad infinitum, that what I'm seeing is not the truth. It's like the writers saying, over and over again, that the viewer is not smart enough to judge a character on his or her own. "So we'll tell you what you should be thinking!" I can see she's a passive-aggressive two-timer, but they tell me she's a wonderful, strong, loyal person. The mediocre acting lacks layers, so it can't make up for the flat storytelling.

I will say, though, that it was different early on. Lana did get called out on her crap now and then, and even though Kreuk's acting was worse, I still liked the character a little. Let that be a lesson to you writers! The way to compensate for iffy acting is not to have everyone be in love with the character.

I really have no idea why Archer sucked so much. I loved SB in Quantum Leap. I didn't think he was Olivier, or anything, but good, able to evoke sympathy, layered acting. Then suddenly as Archer it's all rigid pompous furrowing, and the writing just keeps saying how wonderful he is.

I'd go for Pheobe Halliwell for writing, surprisingly and not acting. I liked the character to begin with although I thought Alyssa probably could have done a better job, but the character has rapidly decreased due to the terrible writing, rather than the fact that Alyssa can't really act. My point is that she could never really act, but the character was bearable to begin with.

By no means do I think she needed an Emmy nom, but I actually think Eva Longoria plays Gabby much better than written. She's definitely grown a lot over the season, but early on, when she was characterized as shallow and one-dimensional, you could see that the actress knew that something more was going on there thanks to Eva's comic timing.

Meanwhile, Susan is written as more and more pathetic and Teri Hatcher hasn't figured out how to do anything new with the character.

Actually, I think both situations can be applied to Lauren. Not only was a weak actor (Melissa George) added to a quality cast, but the majority of Season 3 seemed to be created around her character and her deceit. Which is why that season sucked so hard. The show moved away from its fundamental premise - Sydney the spy and her Spy Daddy and the CIA gang going on missons - and became the "Lauren The Evil Villain Making Fools of the CIA" show. What really pissed me off was the rest of the characters were either pushed to the background so that Lauren could be centerstage, or, they were written to be oblivious, clueless morons so that Lauren could look brilliant in comparison. Season 3 of Alias was simply one big writing disaster.

Okay, obviously from my handle, I'm a Susan fan, but I agree to an extent. Susan started off very funny and endearing (to me, anyway), but the writers made her incredibly boring when her mother joined the show for way too many episodes, and made her inconsistent and lacking a brain when she refused to read Mike Delfino's letter explaining everything, because somehow she had to find out herself or something?? No sense.

Here's one that can be argued: Jack from Without a Trace.

On paper, the guy could really come across as a a jackass. He is kind of a hardnosed jerk to a lot of people, is a workaholic, and probably the most unforgivable thing of all, he had an affair with one of his co-workers while married, and now that he's divorced is currently pining away now that she's with someone else.

However, ALP is such a gifted actor that he is able to sell it to the point that people either a) forgive him for his mistakes or b) hate his character, but continue to watch because they are wondering when the writers are going give ALP material that improves the character. Jack is completely watchable even when he shouldn't thanks to ALP's performance.

Para wrote:


Can I nominate Peter Wingfield as Methos on Highlander? I mean, I love Highlander as much as the next gal, but let's face it - there was a reason they never won an Emmy for writing, people. When you put some of Methos' lines down in black and white, they can look fairly silly, ex. (In response to "Who are you?") "Someone who was born long before the age of chivalry." Or "You're all dying, Joe!" And he was, canonically, a rapist and murderer. During the Bronze Age (uh, did I mention this show is about immortals?) he was Death, one of the Four Horsemen, and he and his "Brothers" killed, raped, and destroyed everything in their path.

And yet those two lines above are, respectively, one of my biggest "Hell Yeah!" moments and one of my biggest heartbreak moments on any show. And Methos is, generally speaking, beloved. People frequently cite him as one of their favourite characters (usually on Highlander, but I've heard him cited as people's favourite character period), Four Horsemen and all. And yeah, part of that's the writing - Methos was all about the shades of grey in a show that was drowning in black-and-whiteness - but a lot of it was about how Peter Wingfield could sell any cheesiness they gave him, and make me believe he was totally in love with Alexa the Bar Waitress He Met Thirty Seconds Ago, and show me just how tormented Methos was over his Horsemen past, even though the script leaves his motives vague, and even though he never actually expresses remorse. Wingfield's Methos is like Rosenbaum's Lex - except instead of just understanding why the character did terrible things, people often actively seek excuses for him ("It was a long time ago! He was tormented!") because they just like the character so damn much, almost in spite of writing and content.

Can any other HL fans tell me if that made sense at all? I'm a little brainfried today...

That made total sense. There are many Highlander episodes I still have not seen and don't necessarily plan on seeing, but I HAVE watched every Methos episode. And for what it's worth, my favorite character on Smallville(when I still watched it) was Lex. Adrian Paul and Tom Welling are, technically speaking, far more attractive(ie. far prettier) than Michael Rosenbaum or Peter Wingfield, but I find the latter pair much more attractive because they have both better acting chops and loads of charisma.
And to be honest I think that Lex and Methos got the better part of the writing. I like Duncan and Clark, but at their worst, they are both superior, narrow-minded and judgmental. And I say that as someone who hates to use the phrase 'narrow-minded.'

I like some of his scenes with his father, because I love Martin Landau, but Jack on his own... I quit watching WaT because of him. I can't figure out of it's the writing or the acting, though.

Over in the Actors we Hate discussion, Khandi Alexander was brought up. I loved her on News Radio, but hate her character on CSI:M. So that, for me, is a case of the writing rather than the acting. Who thought it was a good idea to make her some kind of... down-home weird borderline necrophiliac? It's one thing to have respect and sympathy and empathy for a dead person but petting them and cooing at them... it creeps me out.

CSIMiami is one example of how much a role bad writing and bad directing play in actors performances in a negative way. I swear that show employs the cheapest, bottom of the barrel, castoff writers and directors. Caruso and the producers have come out and said that his character and acting choices are all him but he seems to be the only one that tptb listen to.
CSIMiami is a perfect example of a show that can make actors I normally love unwatchable. I love Khandi Alexander, I've seen her do some amazing work, and I loved Emily Procter on The West Wing and her guest appearance on Just Shoot Me but some of their performances on CSIM are bad. Their characters are one-dimensional, the dialogue and plotting laughable and in Calleigh's case inconsistent, they've yet to settle on a consistent personality for her going into their fourth season and Alex's work with the dead bodies is just creepy.
I wonder if anyone could make it in that environment for any length of time, especially with Caruso setting the tone for the show, and not give bad performances, not pick up bad habits or even just end up giving up since they're all locked into 5-7 year contracts. That's gotta be depressing.

Diane Neal is an example of bad acting ruining a character. I can't stand her character on L&O:SVU, she just kills the energy and flow of any scene she's in.