12 TV Characters That Are Almost Too Annoying To Watch

We all know those TV characters that get on our nerves every time they're introduced on one of our favorite shows. Some of those characters, like Hazel Wassername in "30 Rock" or Bevers from "Broad City," were written to be annoying, and sometimes even unbearable, but they're also supposed to be funny enough to make up for the frustration they incite in the viewers. Other characters, like Tom Haverford from "Parks and Recreation," are also irritating, but their comedic value almost always makes up for whatever selfish hijinks they're inflicting on their co-workers and friends. 

On the other hand, some of the characters on this list are meant to be annoying, but they're the ones that usually just aren't funny enough to watch without feeling a little tempted to hit the mute button. Some of the other characters on this list, however, weren't created to be annoying, but are anyway. Some are unjustly hated by audiences, while fans have a lot of legitimate grievances with plenty of others. Here are 12 TV characters that are almost too annoying to watch.

Oliver Tyler was a later-season addition to the popular 1970s family sitcom, "The Brady Bunch." If you've ever heard the phrase "Cousin Oliver syndrome" (via Showbiz CheatSheet) or wondered what it is, it's actually a nod to this character played by Robbie Rist. It refers to a younger character being added to a show in an attempt to inject some new life into it. Considered one of the most hated character additions to a popular TV show, Oliver is irritating and clumsy, and in his debut episode ("Welcome Aboard") he even refers to himself as a jinx when he inadvertently causes unnecessary havoc throughout the house. It's not Rist's fault, he isn't a bad child actor, but the writers didn't even try to give him a three-dimensional personality. Thus many viewers ended up agreeing with Oliver himself that he was a jinx.

Cousin Oliver joined "The Brady Bunch" just a few years before Fonzie jumped the shark in "Happy Days" (wherein Fonzie literally jumps over a shark on water skis — it's widely recognized as the moment that "Happy Days" ran out of ideas and lost its shine), but "The Brady Bunch" didn't become quite the sensation it is today until its syndication in the late '70s. Together, "Cousin Oliver syndrome" and the shark jump episode marked the end of automatic goodwill from TV audiences. Oliver was brought in to save "The Brady Bunch," but really just ended up being the final nail in the show's coffin. 

Hazel Wassername, featured in the last few seasons of "30 Rock," is actually a bit of a cousin Oliver. She was clearly brought onto the show to reinvigorate the absurd humor and hijinks for which "30 Rock" was famous. It was a good idea in theory: Kristen Schaal has a history of work on off-kilter projects (like "Flight of the Conchords"), and maybe if her character had been written differently she would have been a good addition to the show. But Hazel Wassername is deeply irritating and just not funny. She takes over for Kenneth as TGS's NBC page and immediately begins driving wedges between main characters and bringing a new meaning to the word creepy. 

Obviously, every character in "30 Rock" is a bit of a disaster — Jenna is self-obsessed and psychopathic, Kenneth is a violently religious doormat, Liz thinks she's better than many but still constantly overindulges her worst impulses, etc. But they're all also hilarious. Each one of the original cast members is a comedic genius in their own right, so it was always annoying to fans (via Reddit) to have the focus taken off beloved characters and given to Hazel. Schaal's under-acted delivery of her lines was also out of step with the rest of the cast and she rarely hit her punchlines effectively.

If there's one thing TV producer and showrunner Josh Schwartz is capable of, it's infuriating audiences with new characters. For example, many folks probably remember the level of hatred that developed toward Oliver in "The OC" after only a few episodes. Schwartz's most infuriating character ever, though, came from one of his other shows, "Chuck." Brandon Routh's Agent Daniel Shaw shows up in Season 3, taking over leadership of the intersect team and pretty quickly centering his own vendetta against the Ring, one of the show's recurring villains over its five seasons. 

Setting aside the fact that Shaw comes across as completely wooden in every scene (it's not always easy to act the emotionless spy, but maybe he could have taken some notes from Adam Baldwin or Yvonne Strahovski), he also has no charisma, which means that he seems like a jerk and never stops being a jerk with no redeeming qualities. What's worse, he serves as a totally unnecessary barrier between Sarah and Chuck, a will-they-or-won't-they that went about a season too long. Shaw inevitably becomes a villain, but even his eventual defeat isn't satisfying enough to justify how annoying he is to watch.

"Broad City" is one of Comedy Central's most successful hits of the past few years. Almost every character finds a great balance between insufferable and hilarious, but the show tips the scale too far with Matty Bevers. Played by John Gemberling (who does a good job — in this character's case, the problem lies solely with the writing), Matty Bevers is the longterm boyfriend of Abbi's absent roommate. That's part of what makes it so awful to watch her deal with him; he's not actually her roommate on the lease, and yet he's at the apartment all the time! Bevers is definitely supposed to be annoying — a huge thorn in Abbi's side, to be sure — but he also plays a central role in way too many of the problems that Abbi deals with.

We're not talking about just saying annoying things or being in Abbi's apartment when she doesn't want him there. We're talking about true gross-out humor. Throughout the course of the show, Bevers poops in a shoe, regularly gets way too comfortable in Abbi's living room, and even at one point (during a heat wave) gets naked and eats ice cream in Abbi's bed. He just does not produce enough laughs to be as disgusting and irritating as he is.

Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon) is sort of like the original pop culture representation of the "nice guy." He is one of Buffy's first friends in Sunnydale in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and he almost immediately attempts to get Buffy to see him in a romantic light. There's nothing wrong with having a crush on a friend, but Xander becomes one of the most irritating TV characters ever when he begins to truly resent Buffy for not being attracted to him. He spends a large part of Season 2 criticizing Buffy's feelings for Angel and bitterly talking about them to anyone who might listen. 

Xander later starts dating Cordelia Chase that same season, but still decides to sabotage Buffy's attempt to save Angel's life — and succeeds. Buffy doesn't stall for time because he doesn't tell her that Willow is performing a ritual to restore Angel's soul. This is not just a little bit of snark from a friend. This is a punishment by a man who is angry that his friendship isn't rewarded with romantic and sexual validation (via Paste). Xander continues to be judgmental of all of Buffy's romantic pursuits for the rest of the show, while simultaneously dating or hooking up with literally every other age-appropriate woman in his life. He's not totally without merit — after all, he does still regularly risk his life alongside the rest of the Scooby gang — but he's often a terrible friend to Buffy.

As the town selectman of Stars Hollow in "Gilmore Girls," Taylor Doose (Michael Winters) is a big fish in a very small pond. He's a part of the local color, alongside other residents like Miss Patty, Babette, and Kirk. All of them have moments where they're annoying the main characters (and the viewers), but no one creates more pointless problems for Lorelai, Rory, and Luke than Taylor. In Season 4, Episode 4 ("Chicken or Beef?"), Taylor spends the entire episode terrorizing Lorelai over the permits she needs in order to begin construction on her inn. Lorelai has no idea what she did to incur his wrath (this man has way too much concentrated power) and reaches her wit's end, hysterically confronting him after yet another setback. 

It turns out that Taylor isn't even doing this to her because she did something to him; he does this because he wants something from Luke and wants Lorelai to ask for it on his behalf. But how is she supposed to know that? At another point in the series, Taylor uses photos of Rory to sell ice cream at his store and commits her to events of which she had no knowledge and no time to attend. We could list a lot more examples of Taylor abusing his power and playing mind games with the people of Stars Hollow, but the main takeaway is that Taylor Doose is the ultimate purveyor of petty annoyances.

For a while, "Pretty Little Liars" succeeded in fooling a lot of its fans about the propriety of the relationship between high school teacher Ezra Fitz (Ian Harding) and his 16-year-old student Aria. Ezra is Aria's English teacher when she's starting her junior year. While we never hear Ezra's exact age, he has to be at least 22 to have a job educating high schoolers (and there's a good chance he's even older than that). What's even worse is that Ezra actually knows how old Aria is before they even meet in a pub near Rosewood, as we learn later in the series (via Huffington Post). 

This is certainly gross and criminal, but not necessarily annoying until you listen to Ezra talk for more than 30 seconds. He's whiny and pretentious and possessive of Aria, and (as mentioned above) he lies to her for the first two years of their relationship. The icing on the cake is Ezra's rich boy guilt. Aria discovers that his family is extremely wealthy, and Ezra acts disdainful of the extraordinary privilege he's had in his life. It's good to understand your own privilege and seek to disrupt the advantages of generational wealth, but it's not cool to pretend you have no money just because you think it makes you more artistically valid and or less accountable for benefiting from infinite financial resources. Donate to charity, Ezra! Stimulate the economy!

Chris Elliott is famous for his gross-out humor in movies like "Scary Movie 2" and his absurd turns as a guest star in shows like "How I Met Your Mother." He's a gifted comedian, but he also plays Roland Schitt in "Schitt's Creek," and he's hands down the most annoying character in the show. The Roses (the show's main family of protagonists) are not perfect or even easy to deal with, but Roland's behavior toward them, especially Johnny Rose, is egregious. Roland is the mayor of Schitt's Creek, but it's more of a family legacy that got him the position, given that he's incredibly lazy and vindictive.

In the first episode of the show, Roland takes the Rose family's motel doors off their hinges because Johnny asked him to give them some privacy, having just arrived in town. Later on, after several years of creating obstacles where obstacles aren't even needed for the sake of the story, Roland manipulates Johnny into giving him a job at the motel only to refuse to do any of the work that he begged for. Bob (John Hemphill) is another character that drives Johnny similarly insane, but he's toned down and funny enough to be bearable. Roland is a main character who undergoes virtually no growth throughout the show and never stops going out of his way to get in people's way. His wife Jocelyn deserves better.

Moira Kelly was one of the biggest stars on Season 1 of "The West Wing," alongside Rob Lowe and (obviously) Martin Sheen. Her character, Mandy, is a specialist in public relations and new media, and as such, basically always takes the most politically advantageous position in any argument (as opposed to what might have been the most ethical one). "The West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin has received a fair bit of criticism (per Variety) in the past decade or so that his female characters are poorly written, and Mandy is definitely a great example of his failure to understand and write varied, three-dimensional women characters.

She is loud, irrationally argumentative, and basically always the one advocating for the rest of President Bartlet's staff to ignore their better angels. It's also annoying how often the male staffers in "The West Wing" talk down to the women around them, and Mandy's childish reactions and tantrums are only exacerbated by this dynamic.

The characters on the show barely humor her, the people watching the show hated her (via Reddit), and she still grates even after several rewatches. Mandy is such a failure that Sorkin didn't bother to resolve her story following the mass shooting in the Season 1 finale of the show. There isn't even confirmation that Mandy survived the shooting. Not a single person mentions her ever again, not even in flashbacks to the campaign on which she supposedly worked with them. 

A lot of characters in "Glee" are pretty annoying from the start, and even more of them got much more irritating as the show progressed. It was hard to choose just one of them for this list, but it really has to be said that Mr. Schuester (Matthew Morrison) is definitely the most annoying character (via Reddit) in "Glee." Yes, it stinks that he's in a toxic marriage and that his wife tries to trap him with a fake pregnancy, but those circumstances don't last beyond Season 1. For most of the show, Mr. Schue uses his students and the Glee club to make up with multiple romantic partners, work through several midlife crises, and relive his glory days (unsurprisingly, the guy peaked in high school). 

In Season 1, Mr. Schue hears Finn singing and then claims to have found drugs in his locker so that he can essentially blackmail him into joining the Glee club. He regularly appropriates culture both as the director of the club and as an educator, and he has the kids prepare to put on "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," pressuring Sam, Finn, and Rachel to perform just short of naked onstage, despite the fact that they're all uncomfortable and literally minors. The show thankfully does not go on because it's sexually explicit and the people who are supposed to be performing the show are, once again, minors, but it's not for a lack of trying from Mr. Schuester. 

It's actually not that rare to look back on TV protagonists from the past 30 years or so and realize that a lot of them are kind of unbearable. From Ted Mosby in "How I Met Your Mother" to Elena Gilbert in "The Vampire Diaries," many main characters have been labeled as whiny, and selfish, and display exactly the kind of behavior that folks are talking about when they reference (according to CXO Media) "main character syndrome."

One of the most hated main characters of all time (via Vice) has to be Dawson Leery from "Dawson's Creek." Dawson is a tortured artist who constantly benefits from his projected image as a nice guy. Dawson believes in his own sincerity and integrity more than anyone in his life (and they also really believe in it, because that's what the writers want).

The thing is, he's often not really a nice person, especially when it comes to his relationships with women. He plays the morality police with his friends and family and repeatedly slut-shames both Jen and Joey, the two loves of his life throughout the show. Joey is supposed to be Dawson's best friend, but by the end of the series, she's become nothing more than something to fight over with his other BFF, Pacey. When Joey finally chose to be with Pacey at the end of the show, a sigh of relief could be heard from many folks all across the "Dawson's Creek" fandom (via ShipRecced).

After Shannen Doherty burned all of her bridges in one of her most famous shows, "Beverly Hills, 90210," producer Aaron Spelling decided to give her one more chance with the role of Prudence Halliwell in "Charmed." Alongside Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs, Doherty played one of the charmed ones: three San Francisco-based sisters who discover their witchy powers and fight evil on a daily basis while also rocking some great crop tops and leather pants. Prudence is the oldest sister, so of course she is meant to be the de facto "leader" of the three. She's overbearing and controlling, and appropriately embodies the essence of the deadly sin Pride in Season 3, Episode 18 ("Sin Francisco").

Prue is often her own worst enemy, and Doherty's performance is inconsistent at best (seriously, she started way too many sentences with "um, okay"). Add to that the fact that she fought with her "Charmed" costars just as much as she did her costars on "Beverly Hills, 90210" (via E! Online) and it's not surprising that Doherty made the decision to leave the show before she could be fired because of an ultimatum from Milano. Prue was killed off at the end of Season 3.