As the title says. Who irked you the entire series? Which character got under your skin or felt useless or just gave you the perception that they made the show worse by being present?
Then, how do you feel you'd make the character better? Not simply removing them from the show but making them more...
Xander and Williow were quite pathetic, needy characters and terrible friends.
I would make them less "me me" towards Buffy.
You, a salty water ocean wave.
Knock, me down and kiss my face.
Yeah, after Dawn, Xander was my second most disliked character. He was so wishy-washy and I kept wanting him to grow some balls and eventually become a man but it never happened.
My fiancee used to say it was disturbing how I kept rewinding that part in the last season when Caleb gouges out Xander's eye but I used to tell her how Xander's spent season after season making me hate him, that I can't help but feel entertained seeing him take some serious abuse.
So, my least favorite character is actually Andrew. You see, when first watched Buffy, I only watched Season 1-3. Then, I went on to Angel and watched that from beginning to end. While watching Angel, I stumbled upon the Season 8 comics thinking that I was never going to get around to watching Season 4-7 (I didn't have Netflix at the time, folks). One of the characters I grew to like was Andrew, mostly because he reminded me a lot of me as he used his pop-culture mindset to invent certain things. For example, the iron man gloves and the Captain America shield.
However, once I got around to watching Season 6, I hated his character. He was a whiny little twerp. Personally, within the trio, I liked Jonathan a lot more and wished he redeemed himself. He does so in S7, only for Andrew to kill him off.
Personally, I would've combined both Andrew and Jonathan. Towards the end of the season, have Jonathan switch sides and inform the scoobies about Warren. I would also have him help them during the episode. In S7, I would also make Jonathan a part of the Scoobies and maybe have a friendship with one of them (maybe Spike, for instance). He would also help out in fighting the First Evil with Giles.
I realise it’s an unpopular opinion, but my least favourite character was Anya (specifically from Season 4 onwards). I could go into detail, pointing out all the times she annoyed me/explaining all the reasons why I disliked her so much...but that would take paragraphs, so I’ll just sum it up by saying that I didn’t find her constantly saying inappropriate things funny at all, I felt what she contributed to the group could’ve come from any of the other characters (Giles and his books, for example), and whenever she got snide with Buffy, I was always on Buffy’s side (I felt she and Willow merely tolerated Anya because of her being with Xander and even when they tried to make some friendship moments happen between Anya/Buffy or Anya/Willow, I never really bought them).
If simply removing her from the show after Season 3 isn’t an option, then I’d say my way of ‘improving’ her would’ve been to write her more consistently with how she was portrayed in Season 3 (and I don’t just mean ‘character consistency’ like with how in ‘Graduation Day, Part 1’ she said she had a car, but in Season 5’s ‘Triangle’ she was apparently only just learning how to drive). I didn’t mind her in Season 3 (I actually found her somewhat amusing back then, like in ‘Dopplegangland’, with her “I'm 1120 years old, just give me a friggin' beer!” outrage), she wasn’t overused, and although she did have some of those ‘saying inappropriate things’ moments (like telling Xander the head explosion story in ‘The Prom’), it didn’t feel as though they were overdoing it/relying on such things so heavily at that stage.
In Season 3, she had some ‘serious’ moments (like when she was telling the gang about witnessing an Ascension in ‘Graduation Day, Part 1’ or her begging Xander to go with her and telling him he’d die if he stayed). Yes, there were parts in both those scenes where she had a ‘jokey’ moment, but the transition from serious to funny seemed a lot more smoother/subtle/less obvious (I remember in Season 6, with the episode ‘Older and Far Away’ – which I had to look up the title of, as I’d forgotten it because the later seasons' episode titles were more forgettable to me/blurred together – Anya seemed to be acting quite differently to how she normally did. Now, obviously some of that could be attributed to the situation they were all in, but the problem was we’d seen so little of her acting like this previously, that the ‘shift’ in how she acted seemed abrupt and was quite jolting, imho).
I’m sure there’s plenty who will disagree with me, but if they’d kept Anya how she was in Season 3, I might’ve been able to tolerate her more from Season 4 onwards (and my enjoyment of the later seasons may have improved also). This is all just imho, of course.
Jack Sparrow: "Look." [shoots the monkey] "An undead monkey! Top that!"
Anya's comedy bordered on some of what we got in the original movie at certain moments.
shareAnya is my least favorite character as well, and I agree with everything you wrote.
shareI did not like Anya, either. I didn't hate her but by S7 her schtick had really gotten old. I think the actress felt the same way.
I'd fix her by having her and another annoying character, Xander, get married and leave Sunnydale. Maybe make cameos once in awhile, but that's it. Neither character did anything that wouldn't be better served coming from a different character. It would allow S6 to focus on Buffy and Willow instead of wasting time with the wedding crap.
Mine is Kennedy. I would not make her Willow's girlfriend in S7 and have her learn to be more agreeable.
shareMy fix for the potentials (all of them, not just Kennedy) would be mostly to give them much less room in the story and to add more episodes that are about our core characters.
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A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
Riley
I would give him a better personality, make him less insecure and needy and give him a mind of his own so he could do things with his life without needing people like Maggie and the Initiative to tell him what to do.
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Fun Fact of the Day: Debbie loves cute animals and Beccy and her have 🐶🐇🐇🐖🐴🐠
Rhona, she could only be redeemed by giving her life to save Amanda.
shareKennedy. As far as potentials go, she was one of the more useful ones but her relationship with Willow was awkward and forced.
I would have changed it so that her and Willow simply became friends, maybe even have her hit on Willow but get turned down because it's too soon after Tara. Leaving things open for the future wouldn't have bothered me though.
What I would have changed completely was Kennedy's attitude, we had Rona for that and it made sense because Rona was so young. I would have liked Kennedy more if she looked up to Buffy and respected her as her leader. I also didn't like her calling Chloe a maggot.
Erase dawn.
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