That character is bad and you should feel bad! (Worst character thread)

[Reply #160 on:]

If I were in charge of life and for some reason was forced to remove one of the primary Futurama characters, it would probably be Amy.  In my opinion she's the least consistent major character, but that gives a little leeway to the writers when it comes to putting episodes together.

I don't think she's a bad character, just not a terribly well defined one.  The character that annoys me the most is probably Flexo.

[Reply #161 on:]

Agreed there, I think her inconsistency is what bugs me, that and she just annoys me.

[Reply #162 on:]

Hey, I made this thread!

I expect you to retract that statement; Amy is almost certainly the best, most realistically portrayed charcter in futrama.

[Reply #163 on:]

I dunno, I think Amy could do with a bit more consistency but overall I find her quite stable: extremely intelligent and genius level academic, rather slow witted and naive in everyday life, due to being sheltered and rather naive and sometimes a bit... slow there.  And she is usually friendly and sociable but gets very bitchy when she and Leela are competing.

Honestly I think of Amy as being a very underutilised character.   I think that rather then have the whole PlanEx team join the main trio on many a mission or delivery, I think Hermes and the Professor work better as a duo in the office, while Amy and Zoidberg make good additions to the main trio in they bring a lot to the table.  Hermes is much more one note and less entertaining then Amy in my opinion.  He's too much of a straight man, while Amy works better as a comic foil for a number of far more entertaining character traits: her naivite and utter cluelessness with everyday money, her binge eating traits, her relationship with her horrible parents, her profoundly messed up childhood as a target of her parents constant verbal and emotional abuse undershot with lavish gifts and privileges, her nymphomania, her skill in combat and her clumsiness and her tendency to curse in Cantonese when enraged.   

[Reply #164 on:]

I don't know why I put such odd choices on the poll. Who could possibly dislike Lrrr, Scruffy or Nixon?

[Reply #165 on:]

Well I'm pretty sure  a lot of people involved in the Vietnam War aren't a big fan of Mr Nixon 

[Reply #166 on:]

I joined the military during the American War (as the Vietnamese refer to it). And no, I did not care very much for Nixon. At all. But I must give credit where it is due, and Nixon's overtures to the Chinese and subsequent opening of relations was an achievement that's difficult to overstate. And in the end, his strategy in the war paid off, and brought all the parties to the negotiating table and brought western involvement to an end. His character in Futurama definitely *has* character, for sure.

That said, the Flexo character really grates against my nerves, and not in a "good" way, like Michelle. Michelle is a deliberately annoying character, and plays off against Fry in a way that works well. It's difficult to articulate my dislike—he just seems like, idk, like a cheap character.

[Reply #167 on:]

He's the evil Bender.

[Reply #168 on:]

If Flexo were simply the Hyde to Jekyll Bender, that would be one thing. But Bender is plenty evil as it is, though he has occasional moments of weakness during which he demonstrates a tiny bit of empathy and/or compassion. It's not a "Mirror, Mirror" relationship at all, as I see it. They're BOTH evil at heart—that's why they get along so well at times!

Sure, initially Flexo is presented in a way which is clearly meant to imply that he's Bender's evil twin, and that made for an interesting plot. But in a general sense, he's not even close to being Bender's opposite.

What am I missing?

[Reply #169 on:]

Flexo is a character I like when he turns up, he's not a favourite but I enjoy what he brings.  I don't think he's enough of a prominent character for me to feel particularly strongly about him.

[Reply #170 on:]

I find the two episodes in which Flexo prominently figures to be rather mediocre, though I'm not sure it's really Flexo's fault, per se. "The Lesser of Two Evils" has a great first act, but it all goes downhill from there; "Bendless Love" has a funny subplot with the Professor's new-dangled wangle on life, but the A plot is pretty straightforward love-interest-of-the-week stuff that I never find all that entertaining in sitcoms.

Flexo's failures as a character, in other words, are probably inextricable from the failures of the episodes in which he appears. He's really more a concept than he is a character, anyway--and, as Tachy notes, that concept itself is rather vague. Flexo is basically the Good Guy to Bender's Bad Guy; however, because Bender is our protagonist and Flexo isn't, we are put in the compromising moral position of rooting for the Bad Guy's success over the Good Guy, whether the prize is a Jumbonium-topped tiara or a big-busted fembot. Which is, I guess, the "joke"...except it's not a very funny joke, and Flexo is not a very interesting "character." That said, I'm with SpaceGoldfish: Flexo is such a non-entity that I can't muster any strong antipathy for him or the way in which the writers used him.

As for the other options on this poll--the new run basically killed any affection I had for Scruffy. His star-making turn in "The Prisoner of Benda" notwithstanding, he's a character who works best in small doses--veritable cameos, really, and largely non-speaking ones at that--not as a PE crew member on-par with Hermes, Zoidberg, or Amy. I don't mean that in some weird classist way, like a custodian should not be on the same level as the resident bureaucrat, doctor, and grad student (for a counterpoint, consider the Janitor in Scrubs: he's one of the best and most nuanced characters on that show); I just don't think secretly-sensitive-and-erudite-janitor is all that interesting a character type. The running joke of "I'm Scruffy, the janitor" was funny enough in the old run (if, you know, unsustainable long-term), but the attempts to expand upon Scruffy and turn him into a semi-developed tertiary character in the new run just didn't do much for me.

Scruffy's case is symptomatic of the new run's problem of erring from the formula that makes the first four seasons so compelling--the trio of Fry, Leela, and Bender making deliveries and building friendships and occasionally pulling one or more of their other coworkers into their shenanigans--and while I'm not opposed to developing erstwhile two-dimensional characters, I just don't think Scruffy was the best or most necessary candidate for such development. But I digress...

[Reply #171 on:]

I was running to tell Bob Barker!

[Reply #172 on:]

Remember to vote on the poll! Results are interesting so far.

[Reply #173 on:]

To what Gorky was saying about Scruffy, it seems like the reason that Scruffy was funny, the recurring joke of that character, was the fact that he was disinterested in all the adventures and planet express in general.

It was implied that he didn't interact with the rest of the people in the company much off-screen at all (why else would noone know who he was), and even when some exciting moment was happening in front of him, he got involved as little as possible because of 'scheduling conflicts'.

Similar to the running joke in the Towlie episode of South Park, where the main characters simply don't care about the complicated story happening around them.

The joke seems like an observation that, even if the events in our lives seem important, from other points of view those same events may be completely unimportant. Almost zen-like, in a way (not that I really know anything about zen philosophy..).

Contrast that with the later episodes, where Scruffy hangs out with the gang and gets involved in the adventures, like in A Farewell to Arms, where he joins a search for Fry's pants, or Lethal Inspection, where he takes part in extra-curricular activities. Totally out of character.

[Reply #174 on:]

I believe Into The Wild Green Yonder is the last time the "Who are you?????" joke was used on Scruffy. The majority of the episodes with Scruffy hanging out with the rest of the crew were after the revival, so I like to think he started spending more time with the crew because they started getting to know him better.

[Reply #175 on:]

Ah, I like the way you think, zappdingbat--it's true that something fundamental about Scruffy's character shifted in the new run. It's possible, as UrL suggests, that this is in fact a sign of character growth, not only for Scruffy but for the rest of the PE crew...but, like, even if that is the case, so what? I guess I would've preferred that the new run lend depth to characters who were not inherently one-note, in the way an aloof mustachioed janitor was probably always destined to be.

In fact, they did that exact thing with Calculon--and in a way that built on what we'd already seen from him during the first four seasons. I mean, "The Honking" establishes Calculon as a Great Acting Robot, and "Bend Her" actually elicits sympathy for him by putting him through some serious (soap opera) pain; "The Thief of Baghead" and "Calculon 2.0" build on that existing (if negligible) inner dimension, to relative success. (I suppose you could make the argument that Calculon is a bit more of a downer in the new run than he was in the old, and that that loss of his more buffoonish qualities is for the worse, but I'd say it's a neutral-to-mildly-positive development. High praise, I know!)

[Reply #176 on:]

Looking back, it's true that the Calculon episodes of the new run more-or-less held up. They were jokes about a vainglorious actor, which is what Calculon was.

Calculon 2.0 has some genuinely funny moments (I'm thinking especially of the segment where goes from saying he's a peasant to viscount to duke). The Robot Devil was well used there, too, holding true to his smart-evil-guy-stuck-in-a-room-full-of-people-stupider-than-him shtick.

[Reply #177 on:]

Remember when we were supposed to get an episode about Scruffy's origins in the new run?

Was that an actual thing that a member of the show's crew said or was it just a throwaway-comment/rumour?

[Reply #178 on:]

Remember when we supposed to get an episode about Scruffy's origins in the new run?

Was that an actual thing that a member of the show's crew said or was it just a throwaway-comment/rumour?

They should have hyped a reveal about Scruffy's origin in and upcoming episode, and then just done a throwaway where he's drinking his morning coffee and reads a help wanted ad for a janitor in a newspaper.

[Reply #179 on:]

[Scruffy]Second.[/Scruffy]

[Reply #180 on:]

Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived.

[Reply #181 on:]

Scruffy's origins should have been a wild and epic tale, a thrilling romp through space and peril, wherein the handsome young protagonist died tragically moments before walking through the door of the PX building to interview for a position as a janitor that would have provided the perfect opportunity (somehow) to close his arc and make his tale satisfyingly complete.

Scruffy's role would have been 3-5 seconds, silent, and that of the other guy who turned up, and didn't die. Right at the end.