TV Bad-Asses (Who Just Completely Lost Their Edge)
TV Bad-Asses (Who Just Completely Lost Their Edge)
You either die a badass, or you live long enough to see yourself become completely lame, just like UGO's TV Badasses (Who Completely Lost Their Edge)
20
Cobra Commander
The Once Respectable: Chris Latta of GI Joe
At His Best: Far from the competent despot of the comics, animated Cobra Commander occasionally succeeded running his own terrorist organization, be it by cloning dinosaurs to fight the Joes or even carving his face on the moon.
At His Worst: Being the first to turn tail and retreat in battle, playing second fiddle to Serpentor...but then again, the real Cobra Commander might have been a little intense for children.
19
Spike
The Once Respectable: James Marsters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
At His Best: Tossing child vampires up into the sunlight, killing across Europe for a century having personally felled two slayers and having no regard for human life...
At His Worst: Toss in a violence-curtailing chip, an uncharacteristic love for the slayer he'd previously vowed to kill, and a general apathy toward the heroic crew that while good for ratings, de-fanged the vampire we'd loved to hate in the first place.
18
Fonzie
The Once Respectable: Henry Winkler of Happy Days
At His Best: Anti-social, cool, known for starting jukeboxes with his bare fists, making pointed use of a switchblade comb, dating twins or riding a motorcycled daringly over trash cans.
At His Worst: Well...come on. Just look at it. Look at it and remember that by the end, Fonzie was a teacher with an adopted son and a passion for civic involvement.
17
The Daleks
The Once Respectable: The long-running villians of Doctor Who
At Their Best: Terrorizing the Doctor and the universe alike, with their faceless, hate-filled cries of externimation that they may not have easily been able to traverse stairs with, but any Dalek would just as soon level the building.
At Their Worst: After sixteen years these alien trash cans have lost a bit of their menace, particularly with Davros becoming their focus, or legions of them being defeated at a time, sometimes with their own emotions.
16
Wraiths
The Once Respectable: Soul-suckers of Stargate: Atlantis
At Their Best: In the earlier seasons Wraiths represented a critical threat the Atlantis team, causing hallucinations in their first appearance, and regenerating from damage quickly as they invaded to feast on their human prey, their territory extremely difficult to traverse as well.
At Their Worst: As time went on the Wraiths became more of a nuisance, in-fighting amongst themselves or even being turned human by a retrovirus. Their hallucination powers simply disappeared, and the team grew less afraid of confronting them, particularly after the introduction of Todd.
15
Maury Parkman
The Once Respectable: Alan Blumenfeld of Heroes
At His Best: Remember "The Nightmare Man," who was supposedly much more terrifying than Sylar, tormenting young Molly Walker and only existing as a pair of eyes and a symbol?
At His Worst: Yeah, turns out he's just a fat guy who can't decide whether to save or manipulate his own son, and casually had his neck snapped for pissing off Arthur Petrelli.
14
Lord Zedd
The Once Respectable: Ed Neil of The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers
At His Best: Jeez, remember how terrifying this guy was for a kid's show? Easily more intimidating than Rita Repulsa or Goldar, one of Lord Zedd's first actions before tormenting the rangers was to exact his dominance over Rita by banishing her from her Moon Palace.
At His Worst: Until the parents complained about how frightening he was, and the character was made much goofier and less intimidating, even marrying Rita Repulsa in a reversal of his earlier decree.
13
Sideshow Bob
The Once Respectable: Kelsey Grammer of The Simpsons
At His Best: Framing his former boss for armed robbery, attempting to murder the little boy who discovered the truth, murder his wife for inheritance or even detonate a nuclear bomb in Springfield.
At His Worst: When you've had the majority of your schemes unravelled by a perpetually ageless ten year-old boy, or even a rake, we think it's time to hang up the clown shoes and slide whistle.
12
The Ferengi
The Once Respectable: The opportunistic, greedy race of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, most commonly
At Their Best: Initially introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gene Roddenberry had intended the Ferengi to replace the Klingons of The Original Series as the main villains of the Federation, with their ships almost equally matching the Enterrpise's power
At Their Worst: It didn't last, because...look at them. The Ferengi were then typically used in comedic plots, becoming regular sources of misadventure on Deep Space Nine.
11
Captain Jack Harkness
The Once Respectable: John Barrowman of Torchwood
At His Best: As an inter-temporal con man of the 51st century, Jack's original appearances on Doctor Who saw him having little problem with accidentally unleashing plagues on London, or sacrificing himself by taking a bomb into his ship, or to eliminate the Daleks.
At His Worst: Returning as an immortal and with a vastly different perspective, Torchwood seems to portray a more sensitive side to the time-traveler, worrying much more about the backstory and time spent on Earth than playing the loveable brigand we were introduced to.
10
Scorpius
The Once Respectable: Wayne Pygram of Farscape
At His Best: Viciously tormenting the Farscape crew for three seasons to crack open John's head for all of his wormhole secret
At His Worst: Once Mele-On Grayza showed up, Scorpius quickly became subservient and even allied himself with John Crichton to rescue Aeryn in exchange for his knowledge. And let's not get started on the leash.
9
Curtis Manning
The Once Respectable: Roger Cross of 24
At His Best: Rivaling Jack Bauer in terms of competence in the field, single-handedly killing two men who'd been ordered to take him out, preventing Marwan's nuclear strike.
At His Worst: Staying mostly relegated to the sidelines in the fifth season, and breaking down emotionally in the sixth over CTU's working with former terrorist Assad, even forcing Jack to shoot him in the throat to prevent his revenge.
8
Caprica Six
The Once Respectable: Tricia Helfer of Battlestar Galactica
At Her Best: Snapping baby necks, proving instrumental in manipulating Gaius Baltar into giving her access to the defense mainframe and launching nuclear strikes on the entire human race, presiding over the occupation of New Caprica
At Her Worst: Coming to doubt the Cylon plans immediately after resurrecting, surrendering to the whims of Gaius, Three, and even Saul Tigh in an effort to lead a human life away from her race, residing in a cell on the Galactica.
7
Doctor Smith
The Once Respectable: Jonathan Harris of Lost in Space
At His Best: Traitor, criminal mastermind and saboteur who initially attempted to kill the Robinson family by damaging the ship to crash during its journey.
At His Worst: Once the writers figured out that the Robinson family logically wouldn't want to keep such a dangerous threat around, Dr. Smith promptly became more of a hapless buffoon, though why they let such a potentially dangerous strangers spend any time with their young son is anyone's guess.
6
Vampires
The Once Respectable: Vampires, or later Turok-Han of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
At Their Best: In the beginning, vampires represented a legitimate threat to the Scoobies, sometimes even overpowering Buffy. Much later, the "neanderthal vampire" Turok-Han gave her a serious run for her money, knocking her unconscious and taking days to (barely) defeat.,
At Their Worst: Powered down for the sake of story-telling, by Buffy's final battle even the humans were mowing down vampires and Turok-han alike, some with barely any training, a discrepancy even Whedon himself acknowledges.
5
Brad Bellick
The Once Respectable: Wade Williams of Prison Break
At His Best: Making life all manner of hellish for Michael Scofield as a corrupt corrections officer and enforcer of Warden Pope, going so far as to approve the transfer of inmates to known rapists, forcing Tweener to snitch for him, and even literally strangling a cat.
At His Worst: With his corruption discovered and job lost, Bellick proceeds to fall hard down the ladder of bad-assery, failing as a bounty hunter to round up the prisoners, winding up framed in jail himself, and eventually the resident punching bag of Sona prison, cleaning latrines in his underwear. Sure he wound up nobly sacrifing himself, but...
4
The Others
The Once Respectable: The island natives of LOST
At Their Best: At one time the mysteriously elusive and super-strong band of Island natives toyed with the emotions and sanities of the Oceanic 815 survivors with their rag-tag outfits, abductions, and ninja-like ability to inflict damage without being tracked.
At Their Worst: Turns out they were just a normal community of people living in the suburbs, with trust issues, a penchant for the theatrical and willingness to follow whoever could lead them to their supposed destinies.
3
The Borg
The Once Respectable: The cybernetic zombies of Star Trek: The Next Generation
At Their Best: In their initially sparing appearances, The Borg wasted no time overpowering the Federation ships that came their way, proving elusive and omnipresent threats to the entire Star Trek universe, even when united under Lore.
At Their Worst: Star Trek: Voyager. Suddenly the Borg were being outsmarted or defeated on a weekly basis, and humanized with the introduction of Borg children and several factions looking to maintain their individuality in the collective.
2
Stewie Griffin
The Once Respectable: Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy
At His Best: Baby supergenius, with a penchant for matricide and an unflinching desire for world domination through a variety of schemes, be they time travel or simply destroying the world's store of broccoli.
At His Worst: The show has taken great care to address Stewie's shift from meglomaniacal infant tyrant to the effeminate and absurdist caricature, using episodes like "Stewie Kills Lois" or the DVD movie to deal with the fallout of the character shift, but we remember the days of Stewie as a legitimate (if overpowered) threat rather than confused sociopath.
1
Sylar
The Once Respectable: Zachary Quinto of Heroes
At His Best: Sticking largely to the Spielberg-ian rule of menace being more palpable the less you see it (and also because Zachary wasn't cast at the time), Sylar was never more effective than as an elusive, shrouded figure brutally ripping the craniums off his victims regardless of age or gender.
At His Worst: Oh boy. Just...where to start? There were the numerous de-(and re)powerings, the breakneck changes between the character's villainous and noble intents, shoehorned love interests, parent issues, brainwashings, and just about everything else that went wrong with Heroes can be said to have gone wrong through Sylar.
UGO
