Loathesome!: Characters We Hate

[Fool to cry]

19 hours ago, Bastet said:

WAY better.  I had quit watching before the series ended, so I only read about them getting together, and I remain angry about it to this day.  He's pushy.

I think at the beginning we were always meant to think CJ did like him too but didn't want to get to get  because it would be unprofessional for a press secretary to date a reporter. What also put Danny in good with viewers was how much he thought awesome and hot and CJ was. Now obviously we all know that she is now but back in the late 90s Allison Janney wasn't the kind of actress you'd see on TV cast in a glamorous, sexy role. She spent a decade before the show being cast as not that.

Edited Friday at 03:39 PM by Fool to cry

[Cloud9Shopper]

I took it that way as well when I was watching the other night, and that’s fine, but that doesn’t make me a fan of the relationship. (Even Jed told CJ he knew it was never going to work.) I agree with @Bastet that he’s just too pushy for my liking. But perhaps that played better in 2000, I don’t know. I didn’t watch the original airing. All I can say is that if I had to work with Danny in 2025 and he were behaving that way on the job I’d have his ass hauled to whatever HR he reports to. But again, only my opinion. 

I also read that this happened in real life with Bill Clinton’s press secretary back in the 90s, the first woman in the role who met her husband when she was the press secretary and he was a reporter. I don’t know a lot about either of them but I hope that male reporter was less persistent and antagonistic. 

[Fool to cry]

Klyden on The Orville. He's the worst.

[Bastet]

3 hours ago, Cloud9Shopper said:

I also read that this happened in real life with Bill Clinton’s press secretary back in the 90s, the first woman in the role who met her husband when she was the press secretary and he was a reporter.

Dee Dee Meyers, who was one of the consultants for WW.  So there was always a bit of Dee Dee in C.J. - Allison Janney talked with a variety of former press secretaries about the job, but she and Dee Dee talked about doing that job as a woman in a sea of men - but I dearly wish art had not imitated life here. 

3 hours ago, Cloud9Shopper said:

But perhaps that played better in 2000, I don’t know.

He didn't bug me as much or as soon the first time around, so there is a difference.  But I always thought he was pushy; she was quite clear she liked him, but would not date him given their respective positions, and that should have been that.  The only time I truly liked Danny was when he gave her the goldfish, she cracked up (I am here for any and all scenes of Allison laughing, as she has one of my favorite laughs -- and can make her stage laugh sound exactly like her real laugh) and explained Josh was referring to goldfish crackers and he was hilariously indignant when he said "I'm not a hundred percent sure I was supposed to know that."

There could have been a real sweet dynamic there, if he wasn't so pushy, of two people who like each other and in an alternate universe would give a romantic relationship a try, but can't be together that way in the real world because of jobs that mean more to them than anything, so figure out how to be friendly. 

Edited Friday at 08:30 PM by Bastet

[Spartan Girl]

Quick question: would anyone here be interested if I started a thread for the moments—no matter how brief—where we didn’t hate a character we hate? 

[Wiendish Fitch]

5 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

Quick question: would anyone here be interested if I started a thread for the moments—no matter how brief—where we didn’t hate a character we hate? 

Eh, I say go for it!

[Spartan Girl]

52 minutes ago, Wiendish Fitch said:

Eh, I say go for it!

It’s done!

[Danny Franks]

Every time I watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I learn new things to not like about Xander.

I always thought he was dumbly oblivious to the fact that Willow had a huge crush on him at the beginning of the show but, in the first season episode, The Pack, hyena-possessed Xander is fully aware of Willow's feelings and says that maybe she'll finally understand he's not interested if he gets with Buffy.

So that means Xander has always known how she felt, and never felt like he should talk to her about it, to let her down gently, even while he was openly horning after Buffy and whining to Willow about the fact Buffy wasn't into him.

He also gets super rapey with Buffy, which is an effect of him being possessed, but really isn't that different from normal Xander. He's still saying the same Nice Guy things Xander always says - that Buffy likes "dangerous" guys and now that he's dangerous, she should be into him.

He's so gross.

 

Edited Monday at 04:15 PM by Danny Franks

[Spartan Girl]

2 hours ago, Danny Franks said:

Every time I watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I learn new things to not like about Xander.

I always thought he was dumbly oblivious to the fact that Willow had a huge crush on him at the beginning of the show but, in the first season episode, The Pack, hyena-possessed Xander is fully aware of Willow's feelings and says that maybe she'll finally understand he's not interested if he gets with Buffy.

 

Another reason why I loathe him for faking amnesia at the end so that he can just pretend it never happened instead of actually apologizing to Willow and Buffy—and Giles for agreeing to cover it up.

Some people claim we shouldn’t be so hard on him in that episode because he was “mind raped” but the hyena spell didn’t control him, it just brought out all his baser instincts. And even if it had been mind rape, it sure as hell didn’t traumatize him that much considering the love spell he later tried to put on Cordy! So no, I will NOT cut the fucker any slack!!!!

Edited Monday at 06:58 PM by Spartan Girl

[Wiendish Fitch]

2 hours ago, Danny Franks said:

I always thought he was dumbly oblivious to the fact that Willow had a huge crush on him at the beginning of the show but, in the first season episode, The Pack, hyena-possessed Xander is fully aware of Willow's feelings and says that maybe she'll finally understand he's not interested if he gets with Buffy.

So that means Xander has always known how she felt, and never felt like he should talk to her about it, to let her down gently, even while he was openly horning after Buffy and whining to Willow about the fact Buffy wasn't into him.

 

Willow was pretty damned obvious about how she felt about Xander. FFS, Willow could have worn a neon sandwich board that read, in giant block letters, I HAVE FEELINGS FOR YOU while carrying sparklers and blowing a damn whistle, and Xander still would have been too stupid to notice.

Before anyone gives me grief about this, no, I am not saying Xander had to reciprocate Willow's initial feelings. You can't make yourself like someone, nor should you try. You like who you like, and that's all there is to it. 

But I do agree with Danny Franks that if Xander did have full knowledge of Willow's crush on him (and, if the hyena spell is anything to go by, he did), he should have just acknowledged it, set her straight, and let the chips fall wherever. 

In other words, Xander should have followed Buffy's example when he tried to ask her out: she let him down as gently as she could, was honest about her feelings, and was sensitive about his. No, it wasn't easy, but she handled it the best way she knew how (and he was still a hateful dick about it).

[Spartan Girl]

1 hour ago, Wiendish Fitch said:

In other words, Xander should have followed Buffy's example when he tried to ask her out: she let him down as gently as she could, was honest about her feelings, and was sensitive about his. No, it wasn't easy, but she handled it the best way she knew how (and he was still a hateful dick about it).

And yet it rankles that no matter how tactfully Buffy behaved in that scene, some people still defend Xander’s nasty “I guess a guy has to be dead to get with you.” I seem to remember episode earlier in that first season with Buffy going on a date with her very normal schoolmate/crush—which Xander was still a petty dick about!

[Danny Franks]

1 hour ago, Spartan Girl said:

And yet it rankles that no matter how tactfully Buffy behaved in that scene, some people still defend Xander’s nasty “I guess a guy has to be dead to get with you.” I seem to remember episode earlier in that first season with Buffy going on a date with her very normal schoolmate/crush—which Xander was still a petty dick about!

Yeah, there was an episode I caught a few minutes of the other day, also from season one. Buffy goes on a couple of dates with some bland, inoffensive guy, and Xander gets very incel-adjacent about Buffy being interested in him. I actually went and found the episode screenplay, just so I could quote it.

Quote

Buffy: Maybe I should mix and match. (Willow nods) Okay, guy's opinion.(grabs two lipsticks from her desk) Which one do you think Owen will like better? (holds them up) The red or the peach?

Xander: Oh, you mean for kissing you and then telling all his friends how easy you are so the whole school loses respect for you and then talks behind your back? The red's fine.

It's actually uncanny how good they were at writing Nice Guy tropes, but for a character that the audience was supposed to like and actually think was a nice guy.

How does Buffy not punch him after that? How is she still friends with this utter creep?

Edited Monday at 09:48 PM by Danny Franks

[Spartan Girl]

41 minutes ago, Danny Franks said:

How does Buffy not punch him after that? How is she still friends with this utter creep?

And he wonders why Buffy isn’t interested in him…

Created it myself!

[Wiendish Fitch]

16 hours ago, Danny Franks said:

  Quote

Buffy: Maybe I should mix and match. (Willow nods) Okay, guy's opinion.(grabs two lipsticks from her desk) Which one do you think Owen will like better? (holds them up) The red or the peach?

Xander: Oh, you mean for kissing you and then telling all his friends how easy you are so the whole school loses respect for you and then talks behind your back? The red's fine.

I find that attitude utterly reprehensible and disgusting. It's the same as over-protective dads who obsess over daughters' purity and don't even want them talking to boys (yet they'd wonder why their daughters aren't married yet by a certain age).

Hey, Xander? Buffy is the fucking Slayer. If some douchebag were to spread a rumor about her, she'd soundly kick his ass and just go on her merry way. And by "whole school"... I'm guessing that includes you? 

Dick.

[Spartan Girl]

2 hours ago, Wiendish Fitch said:

I find that attitude utterly reprehensible and disgusting. It's the same as over-protective dads who obsess over daughters' purity and don't even want them talking to boys (yet they'd wonder why their daughters aren't married yet by a certain age).

Hey, Xander? Buffy is the fucking Slayer. If some douchebag were to spread a rumor about her, she'd soundly kick his ass and just go on her merry way. And by "whole school"... I'm guessing that includes you? 

Dick.

This. Even if Xander had voiced his “concerns” in a more tactful manner, it still would have been none of his business. And he had no problems running his own mouth off about how “easy” Cordy supposedly was, so his White Knighting was pure hypocrisy here.