Creator's Pet/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The reimagined Battlestar Galactica

  • Anastasia Dualla. Dualla was a minor character at first, not very popular with the fans but not in the limelight so it didn't matter. All of a sudden in season 2, her relationship with Billy Keikeya came to an abrupt end (the actor left the show) and Dualla immediately vaulted into a relationship with Apollo to set up a love triangle with Starbuck, a sequence of events that seemed designed to make the fanbase hate her. And then it just wouldn't go away. The relationship was voted the "Biggest Plot Blunder" of the season on the "fan awards" show from the official forum polls. Rather than stop using Dualla, Moore had her marry Apollo, and promoted her to first officer of the Battlestar Pegasus. Ultimately the Apollo/Dualla relationship dragged on for all of season 3. Even Dualla's eventual suicide wasn't enough to endear people to the character by that point.
  • President Roslin appeared to be going this way in the first season, due to her penchant of being right with every single decision she made, no matter how insane it might have seemed on the surface, along with constantly being presented as the moral compass of the fleet. To the credit of Ronald D. Moore however, he realised how the writers had been putting her on a pedestal while rewatching the first season, and made sure to give her a more balanced portrayal in the following seasons.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

  • Kennedy - Some fans are bewildered why Willow hasn't put Kennedy out by the curb by now, what with snakebabe Saga in tow. The writers other than Joss Whedon knew how hated Kennedy was by the fans and often toyed with her almost getting killed. Joss, however, loved her, and so she stayed til the bitter end. At the end of the Season 8 comics, Willow has finally broken up with Kennedy.
  • There's also Dawn. Though she has leveled up in the Season 8 comics, fans of the show who remember her from the base-breaking seasons five and six still regard her as the Creator's Pet character. She was often shoved into every spin-off taking place before she was "born", such as a planned animated spin-off taking place before season 5, and some prequel comics showing Buffy's earliest days as The Slayer. They wouldn't be showing these stories how they actually happened, but how the characters would remember them because of Dawn being planted in their memories.

Charmed

  • Billie from the final season. The often nicknamed "Maggot Neck", "Bimbo", and "Ultimate Retard" was loathed for many reasons - creating useless subplots that were often just rehashes of previous storylines, distracting focus from the titular Charmed ones, threatening the world with a spin-off, getting a character that had been around since season one (and Piper's husband) encased in a block of ice for over half the season due to budget cuts, and breaking canon by having the ability to alter reality with her mind making her and her lisping sister the Ultimate Power - but no reason garnered as much hatred as Kaley Cuoco's inability to express any semblance of humanity that resulted in her character being alienating and just downright unlikable. Being Brad Kern's pet means you can get away with anything.
  • And prior to Billie, Phoebe herself, on the grounds of Alyssa Milano elevated to producer status. Even when the character behaved like a Jerkass.

Coronation Street

  • John Stape. He was introduced as somewhat of a Fixer Sue for Fizz which prompted her to leave her boyfriend Kirk for him so she could have what she deserved. Then of course they stuck him in an affair angle with Rosie Webster (a 17-year-old whore) which gave good payoff in the form of a brawl with her father. He disappeared for a few months before rejoining the show and winning Fizz back. But then he locked Rosie in an attic for five weeks and got sent to prison. But Fizz still went back to him and now they're married. Despite the increasing hatred for the character he is continually forced into the spotlight with his latest plot being that he stole someone's identity so he could teach again (not being allowed to as an ex-con). The writers' attempts to make him sympathetic in the eyes of the fans fail dramatically. However, more recently, the fans might have started to warm to him slightly more, perhaps thanks to his increasingly over the top storylines being played almost for laughs (culminating in his spur-of-the-moment murder of Charlotte with a hammer being a Crowning Moment of Funny).
  • Michelle Connor is another one; she was initially popular when introduced but as her character dominated more storylines including one about her son being switched at birth with another baby (her biological son was eventually Put on a Bus) the fans got bored of her and hatedom levels rose drastically. The heat on her has died down a bit since she has had less storylines recently.
  • Teresa Morton entered the show as the white trash ex-wife of Jerry and mother of his kids. She was around for a couple of episodes to give fans the pleasure of her getting comeuppance from the rest of her family but joined the show full-time and fans were screaming for her departure. Her plotlines included poisoning Jerry so he'd need her around the house and telling Lloyd he was her son's father to get extra cash out of him. She never got any comeuppance for these incidents and remained on the show while her more interesting family members were dropped one by one. She's finally off the show now but there probably will be riots if she ever returns.
  • Sean Tully is a combination of Jerk Sue and Karma Houdini as well as being the Token Gay on the show. The latter is probably the only reason he hasn't been axed. Even gay fans hate his guts for being such an over the top and exaggerated stereotype. One moment involved impersonating Liz on Facebook so he could see his son (he donated his sperm but became too obsessive and demanding about the baby so the mother took off) but he started flirting with other men while on there as her which resulted in several coming to the pub and harassing her. When she found out he turned on the Crocodile Tears and never got any comeuppance for it.

CSI

  • Raymond Langston. It's not that all of the fans hate him, it's that he never goes away. Every other character on the show has been relegated to the background because of him. It even got so bad that one of the characters isn't even coming back for the tenth season because she got no Character Development. The fans have a problem with him because he started out as a lovable rookie and almost overnight turned into a CSI expert that goes on solo cases despite the fact that soloing at Level One has been specifically stated as not allowed. To make matters worse, The Powers That Be have said that he's going to be given more screen time in Season Ten because it's "what the fans want". Oh, really?
    • He was brought in as the Grissom replacement, so the writers must believe he's the main character. Even though the entire point of the original CSI is that there really isn't a single main character even when Grissom was there.
    • Also, when Grissom left, one of the points was that Catherine would likely get a more central role. Instead the spotlight seems to have partially passed over her and onto Langston.
  • Also from the original is Sarah Sidle. Some of the fanbase likes her, but much of the rest has always found her shrill, grating, and ridiculously annoying. And yet she's constantly talked up like she's God's gift to both forensics and love & beauty.
  • Most of the reasons why some fans and viewers hate CSI: Miami is because they believe that Horatio is one of these. He gets more spotlight than any of the characters, and all the promos focus on him.
  • Jo Danville from CSI: NY seems to be taking over the show, interrogating other people besides Flack and having several romantic moments with Mac.

Dawson's Creek

  • Joey, especially when all attention was shifted on the Dawson/Joey/Pacey Love Triangle, shoving everyone else on the sidelines.
  • To some extent, Dawson himself is a Creator's Pet, especially for the Joey-and-Pacey fans.
  • And to others, Jen. Most of the time it seemed like she was just there to throw a wrench in the plotlines of everybody else.
  • Basically, the six main characters, despite being a gang of True Companions, were so at odds with each other about everything that a viewer who likes at least one character also feels compelled to hate another character.

Degrassi the Next Generation

  • Emma was arguably the first, though Craig shared time with her in this. The difference being that while Craig was always angsty and whiny, but the writers gave him a plurality of episodes in seasons 2, 3, and 4. Then there's Emma, who was always angsty and whiny and a place to inject the writers' political views, in addition to being self-righteous and bitchy, and she was much more tsun than dere. Also, her issues tended to be things you had to be a moron to do, like go down on a guy who's already sleeping with Over Nine Thousand girls, leading to the Fanon that she just does it for attention. And she got a plurality of episodes in seasons 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6. She's also a black hole who sucks the win out of every character she's around.
  • More recently there's been Mia. She's a teen mom, a classic trait for all non-virgin Sues. You're wondering how she can afford to juggle her time between school, a baby, and cheerleading? She's also a model. She also gets close to J.T., and cements the split between him and Liberty. She's from another school, and J.T.'s love for her ultimately gets him killed. And from season 6 until she leaves, she has a huge role.

Doctor Who

  • Rose Tyler was a very strange and base-breaking case of this. During Series 1, most people liked and accepted her, but throughout the second, third and fourth the writers started putting her on a pedestal. Gradually, the writers changed her from a flawed and believable character to an infallible saint who was The Doctor's one true love, even continuing after she'd ceased appearing as a regular. Basically, the shilling was what turned her into the Creators' Pet.
  • Then there's River Song. Despite the Doctor's dislike of violence, he approves of her use of guns and rarely complains about her threatening people. However, River was quite a good example of an Ensemble Darkhorse, until the end of Series 6 where she destroyed time itself. The Doctor was furious with her, but married her anyway (and continues to act as her husband). River was sent to prison... but she is revealed to break out it of anytime she wants. Like Rose, she's an example of a character who was popular until being shilled (her arc in Series 6 alone ended up breaking the base).

Eureka

  • Zane. The writers have labored diligently to make this character likable, yet audience dislike continues, probably largely because Zane replaced fan favorite Taggart as Deputy Jo Lupo's romantic foil. Despite this pairing (or perhaps because of it) being the focal point of viewer discontent, the writers placed even more emphasis on Zane's relationship with Lupo in Season 4, rather than pursuing the slightly more successful tactic used in some Season 3 episodes of developing Zane's interactions with other characters, thus elevating Zane from a Scrappy to a Creator's Pet.
  • Except sadly he's falling right back that way now the Lupo and Zane relationship is becoming increasingly prominent and with the addition that Zoe is falling for him, it seems the writers are trying far too hard to make him likeable.
  • Coming back even more. After the Matrix arc at the beginning, he's been acting like a spoiled brat because a virtual version of his girlfriend was with a virtual version of Carter. This is apparently enough reason to treat both the two like crap. The other characters treat this as appropriate.
  • Wil Wheaton himself appears in the last season, as a deliberate parody of his own hated character.
  • Sheriff Carter's horrible sister, Lexi, also counts. She's the worst kind of Granola Girl stereotype and displays open contempt for Eureka and the town's modus operandi, deliberately undermines Carter's authority (especially with his own daughter!), is woefully irresponsible and stupid, yet -- for some unfathomable reason -- everyone in town is enamored with her. She was, thankfully, Put on a Bus, but that was after a season of being ham-fistedly jammed into episodes by the writers.

General Hospital

  • Lulu Spencer from the daytime drama used to be this, until the focus was shifted from her to Maxie Jones and she was written better. Now Maxie Jones, once an extremely popular character, has suffered from being extremely overexposed, along with Spinelli and the whole "Spixie" pairing in general, with both Maxie and Spinelli quickly become hated in the fandom.
  • The "Spixie" ship created another Creator's Pet in the form of Winifred, who was basically killed on arrival when the head writer proclaimed his enthusiasm for the chemistry between her and Spinelli...before a single episode featuring them aired. It doesn't help that she was given the same character traits as Spinelli, thus making half the fandom hate her on the spot, with the other half hating her because, well, she was breaking up their favorite ship.

Gossip Girl

  • Vanessa. Don't dare to visit any Gossip Girl website. Everybody hates her. And yet she's still a major character and has been paired up with almost every guy of the show. It's telling that she came to be absent from a startling number of episodes (including season finales), and was just about Put on a Bus for season five.
  • Dan Humphrey even more so. Former show runner Josh Safran openly admits he loves Dan and sees himself in him. Dan is the least popular character on the show (used to be tied with Vanessa but she's gone by now) but during Safran's reign he was pushed into the forefront and the show's Super Couple Chair (Chuck and Blair) was derailed in order to let Dan be with Blair, the most popular female character (who was drastically changed to accommodate this development). Dan became more and more of a Mary Sue each episode and has long since achieved Wesley status, earning him the fan nickname Fetch Buzzkill. Safran has given countless interviews where he paints Dan (and Dan/Blair) up in ways that strongly contradicts the events portrayed on-screen, often ascribing character traits of Chuck's to Dan with no basis in the actual show. The result of all this? Gossip Girl lost one third of their viewers during the first Dan/Blair arc and went below one million viewers for almost every episode where Dan and Blair were a couple. Safran resigned from the show and many fans are now hoping that more focus will be put on Chuck, Blair, Nate and Serena instead.

Grey's Anatomy

  • Some, especially the members of Television Without Pity, would argue Izzie Stevens is this. No matter what Izzie does, be it cutting LVAD wires or stealing hearts or spending several self-absorbed episodes moping, she is the Shining Light and Most Human of the interns.
  • The other half instead focuses on the equally self-absorbed title character, whiny Meredith Grey, as a character that absolutely must go.

Heroes

  • West Rosen.
    • Tremendous effort was placed into getting viewers to gush over his and Claire's extremely forced romantic relationship, probably to help fans forget about the unfortunate chemistry between Claire and Peter, her biological uncle.
    • He's also a Replacement Scrappy for Season One's Zack, who despite his role as merely being Claire's best friend, was Put on a Bus because of Thomas Dekker's agent and other commitments - even though Zack was possibly more likeable than half the main cast in the first place. That West shares many personality traits but - somehow - makes them all grating, only makes it worse. Fortunately, Tim Kring acknowledged West's failure as a character and he was promptly Put on a Bus. When West returned in the spin-off comics, it was discovered that he's much less irritating when he is 2-D and not being played by someone of questionable acting talents
  • Wonder Twins. Someone high up must have loved them to let them stick around so long, Maya even came back the next season (without her accent) just to help derail Mohinder. It doesn't help that the power is cool in theory but their characters seem to be plucked right out of a Spanish soap opera.
  • There were also a number of fans who actually didn't like the focus on Sylar as the series went on, especially after he killed off Elle.

House

  • Dr. Allison Cameron was the original Creator's Pet. However, her storylines and character gradually grew less obnoxious, so of course she was then pushed aside in favor of a new Creator's Pet, Dr. Remy "Thirteen" Hadley. Ever since Hadley appeared, she's getting more and more airtime (especially concerning her personal life and diagnosis), while much of the show's fanbase seems to despise her utterly.
  • The problem is aggravated by her Huntington's allowing her to take more screentime as patient as well as doctor. Alas, Poor Scrappy doesn't really work on the installment plan.
  • And now we got yet another Creator's Pet in Martha Masters, Thirteen's replacement.

Mad Men

  • Megan Calvet Draper is one of these, especially in season 5. She was added in season 4 as a secretary, and she quickly became the second Mrs. Draper. Even though fans hate her for her vapid character and transforming Don Draper from a likeable manwhore into a boring newlywed with no fire in his belly for his career, Matthew Weiner insists on giving her more and more screen time. It also doesn't help that the hogging of screen time by Megan is at the expense of developing the storylines involving the rest of the cast.
  • Creepy Child Glen keeps showing up long after he stopped serving any clear purpose, just because he's played by Weiner's son. It really doesn't help that according to some interviews with Weiner, he's actually not supposed to be a creepy child; the kid just can't act, and Weiner can't accept that.

Project Runway

  • Gretchen. Judging by the uproar over her winning the whole show, it seems like the only people who actually liked Gretchen (her clothes or her personality) were Michael Kors and Nina Garcia. Yes, even Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn hated her.
  • Irina was this in Season 6 as well.
  • Anya Ayoung-Chee of Season 9 is this. She won every single challenge that involved a monetary prize. Ignoring the "win" itself, every time a challenge had money involved (and we're talking tens of thousands each), she either won or was on the team that did; even if she had lost the final, she still would've walked away with more than half of what the winner did.
  • Daniel Vosovic - while he didn't win his season (2nd), he was clearly the judges favorite to win, with the editing playing him up. He failed to bring a show that even they could justify giving the win, and were crushed when they had to settle for "best of the moment" Chloe. However, they were able to redeem themselves (not really) for this "mistake" in the two-hour special, All-Star Challenge (basically season nine in... two hours), where they wasted no time giving him the win (and a fairly big prize package for such a small show).

Star Trek

SF Debris: Whatever you might say about George Lucas, when audiences said they didn't like Jar Jar, he dialed the character down to a few cameos throughout the rest of the films. When the Voyager producers were told that the audience didn't like Neelix, they decided to get rid of Neelix's beautiful, smart, competent ex-girlfriend, and let him hang around to remind the audience of how much they hate you, personally.

  • A setting example in Voyager is Janeway's Victorian Holonovel. Several episodes contained a small short at the beginning of a continuing story in a holoprogram that Janeway was enjoying. However, most people don't tune into Star Trek: Voyager to watch Victorian fiction. It was eventually dropped without conclusion, but it lasted way longer than it should have.
    • The creepiness of a Starfleet Captain spending her off time roleplaying as a maid might have had something to do with it. They eventually changed her Holodeck pastime to having conversations with Leonardo DaVinci.

Survivor

  • Russell Hantz applies, given that he was practically the sole focus of Samoa and Heroes vs. Villains.
  • In Tocantins, this was Coach, though the editors seemed to go out of their way to make him look like an idiot at every turn. However, he was redeemed in Heroes vs. Villains where he was actually a much better player - and this wasn't because he was alongside Russell; he was actually becoming good at challenges and thinking about the game. He was the Creator's Pet of Tocantins, but you at least wouldn't watch Tocantins and wonder who the winner was.
  • Richard Gutierrez, the temporary host of the Philippines' Celebrity Edition, after the original host Paolo Bediones left the network, also making the former a Replacement Scrappy. Fans of the show already warned the network since Gutierrez's Stage Mom uses her connections to put her son in the job, thus, fans made a Big No after the announcement. To make him look credible, the network made him host many programs and re-aired his past programs with promotions of his new hosting gig.
  • Rob Mariano. It's obvious every time he's on the producers just LOVE him. For Marquesas, we thought he was interesting. For All-Stars? Yeah he was the star - and the editors even made the season revolve around him and Amber. Heroes vs. Villains? We were bored of him and noticed that the producers were wanting to keep him and Russell on as much as possible, since they were trying very hard to fix the season so that Rob and Russell would be on as much as possible. Note that Rob is good at Puzzles...and watch the immunity challenges. Puzzles. Then after Rob is voted out? No more puzzles. But if you want a very good example of how the producers can slant a season at an almost 90-degree angle, look no further than Redemption Island. Things to take note of are the most imbalanced tribes ever, the dumbest cast ever (And after Samoa, that's saying a lot!), the editing team completely forgetting there are people other than Rob, Matt, and Phillip in the game until the final episode, [1] and most notably, the challenges. Note that again, Rob is good at puzzles, and note that this season's individual immunity challenges (read: Challenges that Rob had to compete in) consisted of only one endurance challenge and had four puzzle challenges in a row - even with the final endurance challenge being replaced with another puzzle.
  • Depending on what part of the season you're watching, the Pearl Islands Creator's Pet was either Rupert Boneham or Jonny Fairplay. Both men got over the top edits, had more confessionals than almost all the other players, and for years were generally the faces of Survivor. Before Russell came along, Rupert was unquestionably the most popular player ever, and Fairplay was unquestionably the biggest outright villain of the show (Richard Hatch from the first season being somewhat Vindicated by History). The attention these two got caused a backlash from some fans who preferred the older style of editing where the whole cast got approximately a decent amount of airtime.

Other Series

  • Babe Carey from All My Children. She is introduced as the new wife of JR Chandler, son of Adam Chandler, one of the richest men in Pine Valley and a common antagonist. Up to the day her character was killed off she was hailed by the residents of Pine Valley as a sweet, wonderful person. One character even described her as a “walking miracle”. Well, this walking miracle was exposed for being a slut, a gold-digger, a bigamist, but worst of all a kidnapper. Because when she realized the baby she’d thought was hers was in fact her best friend Bianca’s child, she decided to keep the child anyway and not tell Bianca her dead baby was still alive. She only gave the baby back to Bianca when she found out her own thought-to-be-dead child was still alive. By this point a whole year had passed with her keeping this secret. But then she proceeded to tell JR that their child was dead and then ran off with Jamie with her newfound child. Not only did several people in Pine Valley support Babe and Jamie with their crimes and deception, but the ENTIRE TOWN actually rallied around them against JR when he dared to try and fight for his son. INCLUDING BIANCA. What stands out most is when everyone had thought Babe had been the victim of a serial killer that had killed other more predominant characters. With the exception of Erica Kane, everyone grieved for her passing as though she was an important family member to every character. And everyone rejoiced when it was revealed that she was actually alive, to the point that Bianca actually begged for Babe’s forgiveness for not forgiving her.
  • Bela Talbot from Supernatural was a smug, annoying, irredeemable bitch, and yet managed to work her way all through season three before being dragged off to Hell. It's a shame, because the actress seemed cool enough.
    • Actually, this was more of a case of Executive Meddling , as apparently, the network executives were insistent on having a female character on the show, despite Kripke's objections.
  • For season eight of 24, Dana Walsh became this in record time. Her beyond stupid exploits during the first half even put Kim's ridiculous season two plotlines to shame (and when that included a cougar chase, that's saying a LOT). Dana suddenly becoming the mole did nothing to change this. By the time that Jack finally executed her, the fans wanted it almost as badly as Jack did. Katee Sackhoff herself disliked the character and felt she got what she deserved.
  • In Chris Lilley's new series Angry Boys has African-American rapper S'mouse who was hated by all critics and fans, some said he was racist, some said he was 2 dimensional, others found it plain not funny. Unfortunately, there wasn't really anything that could be done to write the character out of the show.
  • Sesame Street: Many grownups today despise Elmo for this reason. The writers never allow him to be smart about anything since he's supposed to be representative of the audience's youngest age bracket, not to mention that he's given way too much to do, and the rest of the show suffers for his now-constant presence.
    • Made worse by the last fifteen minutes of every episode now devoted to the segment "Elmo's World." That's a full quarter of the show dedicated to Elmo, even after he's taken over the rest of the show.
  • Isobel Sutherland from Hamish Macbeth. In the final episode of season 1, she threw a massive temper tantrum, nitpicking the title character (apparently owning a dog and being friends with TV John is a bad thing), earning her more than a few Scrappy points. Then when she starts crying and announces that she's in love with Hamish, he forgets all about his previous love interest (who was in fact based on Hamish's love interest from the original books, earning Isobel hate from fans who got into the series through the books). The first half of the second season was pretty much Hamish struggling to choose between the two women, and they even dedicated a whole episode to Isobel's journalistic career. He eventually chose Isobel, despite the fact that they didn't really spend much screen time together. Then the writer decided to kill Alex off so that Isobel could have Hamish without any competition, and retconned Hamish's entire relationship with Alex to make his return of Isobel's affection seem less of an Ass Pull. And in the one episode of season 2, where she *gasp* wasn't in (?!), she was given a "Where's Poochie Isobel?"
  • In Lost, Kate existed pretty much to create a Love Triangle between her, Jack, and Sawyer. She didn't contribute anything towards helping the Islanders, and frequently came off as needy and codependent. She would cause moral dilemmas that would leave everybody worse off. Her backstory wasn't any worse than anybody else's, but it made her look more edgy than she acted on the island. But worst of all, and this is what really made her the Creator's Pet and not merely The Scrappy, was that while other, more interesting female characters, even ones that existed as love interests, succumbed to Anyone Can Die, she hung around until the very end as a main character. And ended up being the one to kill the Man in Black, despite the significant amount of screen time devoted to the development of the conflict between him and Jack, and the significantly less (read: hardly any) devoted to any conflict between him and Kate outside of the general trying to kill everyone thing.
  • Lana Lang from Smallville:
    • She was kept on way past her usefulness as obligatory love interest from the early seasons. No amount of retooling could save her in the public eye and some people marked her as the greatest reason the ratings were dropping. Nonetheless the writers seemed invested in her, inserting her into every storyline they could, if only so she could keep pulling in the teenage girl demographic, even if much of that demographic wanted to punch her in the throat. The writers' persistence could be chalked up to the fact that Lana is traditionally the girl in Clark's past... if Smallville hadn't made far bigger breaks with tradition, particularly by introducing Lois Lane.
    • What arguably made it even more annoying for fans was that the show constantly had other characters rave about how awesome Lana supposedly was. There were plenty of times when Lana did wrong to Chloe, only for us to see Chloe blindly praise Lana later in the same episode, and times she toyed with Clark's emotions only for him to willingly continue to be her doormat. Even Tess Mercer, a tough-as-nails corporate executive and occasional Dark Action Girl who is usually the Snark Knight, practically declared her undying love and hero-worship of Lana in Season 8.
    • And now she's back for three episodes in Season 8 with faux-Navy SEAL training and superpowers sending her beyond Creator's Pet and well into Canon Sue territory. God Mode Sue even. She's just all kinds of Sue. But what would you expect from a woman whose first name is "anal" said backwards?
    • The saddest Lana arc was in Season 6, when Lana started to show flashes of Luthor-like evil. For a few brief, shining episodes, it looked as if Lana was actually going to achieve the coolness as a villain that always eluded her as The Chick. But, of course, wonderful kind sweet Lana Lang would never actually turn to the Dark Side; she was just trying to protect Clark.
  • Dylan Hunt in Andromeda:
    • He, from the second half of the second season onwards, came to dominate the plot and had by Season 5 turned into a hero-worshipped Marty Stu, Chosen One, and Savior of Mankind, to the extent that all other characters were only allowed significant screen time if their scenes also involved Hunt in some way. While Hunt was the main character, the writers seemed to forget that "main" does not mean "only", and that Andromeda was supposed to have an ensemble cast.. It got to the point where enormously more interesting characters were arbitrarily rendered into drooling idiots, then destroyed, then written off the show, then brought back and destroyed further, and then literally dropped off a cliff while the entire rest of the cast mocked their former comrade-in-arms mercilessly and metaphorically spat upon his grave, simply because that character was growing to be more popular and interesting than Hunt.
    • The rumor was that Executive Meddling had something to do with it, releasing executive producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe after he refused to accept such meddling and replacing him with someone else who would reformat the show for more "casual viewing".
    • Not to mention that Kevin Sorbo was made executive producer, at the same time the Andromeda show pretty much became the Dylan Hunt Hour. Even the actor playing Tyr decided to leave because he got tired of his character derailment to build up the legend of Dylan.
  • Megan of Drake and Josh is supposedly cast as the antagonist of the show, but a combination of being a particularly grating Bratty Half-Pint, the extremeness of her "pranks" (some of which are unambiguously criminal) without any hint of remorse, and a total lack of any repercussion to her behavior rubbed a great many of the viewers the wrong way. The writers obviously loved her, however, and portrayed the very few genuine bad actions to affect her as completely terrible (lying to her to prevent a wrongful jail sentence is bad, but it's okay for her to physically assault them on a regular basis). They were probably aiming to Cross The Line Twice via Mood Whiplash, but they either fell way short of the mark or were trying it on the wrong genre and audience to begin with (she seems more suited for an Adult Swim Sadist Show than a Nickelodeon sitcom).
  • Despite being unbearably pretentious and annoying, The L Word's Jenny Schecter was so beloved by series creator Ilene Chaikin that she kept getting more and more screen time devoted to her creative-writing exercises, no matter how wanky they got.
  • The newspaper staff during the fifth season of The Wire. While the show always expanded its focus in each season, fans knew that the season was the show's last and that the newspaper staff would take time away from the resolutions of the established characters. It didn't help that their arc is shoehorned into the narrative by an implausible plot involving Detective Jimmy McNulty faking murders to get more funding for the department. Furthermore, the lead character of the reporter arc, Gus Haynes, is an obvious Author Avatar of David Simon, who worked at the same newspaper. Everything Gus says seems to come directly from Simon's mouth.
  • Franklin on My Wife and Kids. A kid genius (or, in others words, knowledgeable and masterly skillful at EVERYTHING) who made guest star appearances a couple of times before getting promoted to the main cast. Afterwards, he started getting shoehorned into every single episode, which almost always involved at least one of the Kyles (usually the father) asking him for help and/or advice. Essentially, the character himself was an Overused Running Gag that many fans of the show got sick of after awhile. Also, ABC Family and Nick@Nite, the two channels that normally air the show, seemingly won't show too many episodes that Franklin isn't in.
  • Jennifer Keller on Stargate Atlantis; since her inclusion in the fourth and fifth seasons, she has become the writers' favorite character. It has even been speculated that a few writers even use her to live out their fantasies. The writers are insanely defensive of this character, and it was even revealed by a producer that the more people complain the more she will be included in the episodes in an effort to make her appeal more to fans. With the exact opposite effect.
  • Irish drama The Clinic has this with Dr. Dan. He started off as a corrupt third-string cast member, then got found out and left. A year or so later he came back, began going out with the lead character. Then when she died he became the lead. Through all this he never reformed, constantly seemed to be lying for no good reason, trying to scam people, and generally being a total douche and never reforming, even after a bout of life-threatening illness. The character has no depth, they stop him being an outright hero by making him do bad things, stop him from being an outright villain by making him seem joyless. The end result is he's a boring would-be anti-hero who gets all the plot lumped at his feet.
  • Kate from Robin Hood, who was introduced after Maid Marian was killed off. As that character's Replacement Scrappy, she was destined to be hated (why the hell would you kill off an essential piece of the legend in favor of a completely irrelevant Original Character?) and somehow she kept getting worse and worse. Her first appearance consists of her doing one stupid thing after another, culminating in her brother's death. Despite never being officially declared an outlaw and having no useful skills to contribute to the team, she's inexplicably invited to join anyway, and spends the majority of the following episodes getting captured or injured. At one stage she needs to be spoon-fed back to health, and yet despite her inherent helplessness she rips into anyone who takes the trouble to rescue her. She becomes a Clingy Jealous Girl the very second that Isabella turns up, a character who is derailed in order to start the pointless Robin/Kate relationship. She gets a huge amount of nonsensical shilling from the other outlaws (apparently walking through a door is "amazing!") who all fall in love with her, even though she's a complete bitch to Much and Allan, insulting them regularly on everything from their physical appearance to their annoying habit of saving her life every twenty minutes. She never manages to do anything that could not have been achieved just as easily by one of the other outlaws, and ultimately her only purpose on the show is to be the the Token Girl, the Damsel in Distress and the Shallow Love Interest, all in the most obnoxious ways possible. Throw in a few Trapped by Mountain Lions plots, the Informed Ability of an imagination, and dialogue that contained nothing except moaning, crying, whining, screeching and gushing over Robin, and you have a character that seems to have been designed for the sole purpose of being loathed by the audience. Ticking off the last box of this trope, actress Joanne Froggatt gets the coveted "And" before her name in the opening credits, and she's prominently displayed on all the merchandise (her image is even bigger than Richard Armitage's on the DVD box set).
  • Many iCarly fans feel this way about Sam. She bullies people, especially Freddie, on a regular basis, and no one calls her out. Carly doesn't bother stepping in with so much as a "Stop It" on the guy who has a canon crush on her, and who was the reason for them starting the webshow that made them famous. Every character enables her behaviour, even Freddie, who has said that it would be 'weird' if she didn't hurt him.
  • Harriet Hayes from Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, with heaps of Informed Ability (mostly about her supposed comedy skills, which we saw on screen were lacking) to boot.
  • On Everybody Loves Raymond, Debra is this to a good portion of the fandom. Many fans have observed that the character is a rather misandrist Karma Houdini, who gets away with smacking her husband, encouraging his own children to think lesser of him ("is daddy zipped up today?"), declaring herself in one episode to be intrinsically superior to the rest of the characters, and generally acting like a hypocrite. She show still gave the character sympathy (like the rest of its bizarre cast), and the worst she tended to get was others calling her bitchy, and making fun of her overly-glamorous clothing.
  • Cook from Skins could be considered this, as he was rather unpopular in his first series, but Jamie Brittain, co-showrunner of Skins, still more or less admitted he worshipped the ground the character walked on and he was injected into just about every storyline. This became less of an issue in Series 4, though, when he was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap and his role overall decreased in prominence. Fans are much less split, though, on their opinions of Tony from the American version of Skins, who didn't seem believable as the most popular guy in school and overall just came off as a whiny little twit, especially with James Newman's terrible acting. Yet, the writers kept shoving him in the viewers' faces, with him even getting it on with the show's resident lesbian.
  • Judie Byrd receives this from many Family Net viewers due to the channel's insistence on considering her show 'Judie Byrd's Kitchen' to be one of their most popular shows. It has gotten to the point that the only 'special' programming that they air on Thanksgiving is a 14-hour marathon of Judie Byrd's Kitchen on Turkey Day. That being said, many Family Net viewers are SICK of Judie Byrd!
  • Dr. Zee in Galactica 1980, a Teen Genius as annoying a plot device as Wesley Crusher would later be.
  • Matt joins the cast of Primeval in its fourth season to fill the hero role left by Danny (and previously, by Cutter). Within half an hour, he's shown outclassing and humiliating everyone else, all while making smug remarks.
  • The Filipino Christian drama "May Bukas Pa" (There's Still A Tomorrow) had the rare case of the main character being the Creator's Pet. Santino is a good kid with healing powers and Incorruptible Pure Pureness who changes the lives of everyone around him. But later story arcs showed him getting involved in increasingly improbable situations. He averted a civil war by getting himself shot (Don't ask how how that happened), saved the town from the 10 plagues of Egypt, gotten kidnapped by Communist rebels and testified in a Congressional hearing involving corruption in government. When he dies, all the people who met him (a veritable All-Star Cast) mourn him but he comes Back from the Dead because the Virgin Mary (played by the show's producer!!!) said it wasn't his time yet. And at six years old, he's racked up a rogues gallery with a size that rivals Batman, one of whom is the town mayor who is also his father. And everyone there always asks "Where is Santino?"
  • Gilly from Saturday Night Live. A ridiculous waste of Kristen Wiig's talent and widely believed to be her least funny character and one of the least funny sketches the show continues to do. And they keep doing it over and over again! Gilly even got a freaking holiday special! All at the expense of genuinely funny Kristen Wiig characters like hilariously nervous Judy Grimes or competitive Penelope.
  • Olivia in The Cosby Show was dangerously close to being this. Lampshaded in the episode "Nightmare on Stigwood Avenue."
  • Zoey from Zoey 101. Canon: Popular, Nice, Smart, fun, leader, annnnnd every single boy on the show is attracted to her in some way. Fanon: Annoying, Annoyingly Perfect, Sue, Static Character, wish-fulfillment character, and... isn't it obvious that the writers adored her?
  • Will Schuester, from Glee, gets this big time. He takes screentime away from the kids, blatantly plays favorites, refuses to address the kids' bullying problem (even when the bullying takes place right in front of him between members of his own Glee Club), and is, by all accounts, a terrible teacher and role model. Yet the characters (and the writers) treat him as if he can do no wrong. In the New York episode, he leaves the kids alone and unsupervised to come up with their Nationals performance, only to go off and sing a Matthew Morrison song (available now on iTunes!) and contemplate leaving the kids to go on Broadway. When he ultimately decides not to, the kids all give him a big group hug and act overjoyed, despite the fact that he has literally not helped them at all through the entire episode and, indeed, much of the season. There's a reason his nickname is Mary Schue.
    • You know it got bad too when the writers created a Romantic False Lead to keep him and Emma apart, and much of the fandom was actively rooting for the False Lead to actually keep Emma in the end.
    • For some fans at least, the ridiculous amount of time and attention lavished on Rachel Berry's angst, misery, ridiculously stalkery bad behaviour and obsession with getting a 'do-over' after she choked on her drama school audition in the final arc of Glee Season 3 - combined with a completely meaningless Prom Queen win gifted to her by Quinn and Santana who actually campaigned for the crown, several episodes worth of characters from perennial quiet girl Tina Cohen-Chang to rival show choir coach Jesse St James going out of their way to talk up Rachel's talent to the drama school Dean, and New Directions' entire Nationals setlist being framed as 'Rachel's second chance' even by Will Schuester - dumped Rachel firmly into Creator's Pet territory. They tried to save it with Dean Tibideaux's cool, cuttingly accurate assessment of Rachel's sense of entitlement and appallingly unprofessional behaviour, but the need to shoehorn Rachel into a victory moment and a place at NYADA no matter what caused more problems than a little Lampshade Hanging could solve.
      • Not to mention the fact that they completely shafted the show's original Ensemble Darkhorse, Kurt (who aced his audition), in order to give Rachel a happy ending that most feel she did not deserve.
    • Blaine also looks to be heading this way: two important plot points (Dave's suicide attempt after being outed and Quinn's car crash and resulting reliance on a wheelchair) were shoved aside in favour of a badly written filler episode about Blaine's relationship with his Big Brother. Also, several of his actions towards his boyfriend Kurt have been borderline abusive, not to mention highly hypocritical (he picked a fight with Kurt over texting another boy, when in the same season he did the exact same with Sebastian). No matter what Blaine does, someone else is always to blame.
  • In the American Big Brother, the editors tend to pick their favourites out of the cast and show them off to us. The problem is; they think we'll like them to and if we don't, we'll Love to Hate them. But we'll often just hate them instead. Most often, it's a Showmance couple who get the lion's share of screentime on the highlights just kissing and hugging each other.
    • Brendon and Rachel in Season 12 and 13, but especially 13. The eight new houseguests have had virtually no screentime whatsoever unless they were Dominic or Kalia, and Kalia only because she was aligned with Daniele who turned traitor to the "Veterans Alliance". 50% of the screentime is dedicated to Brendon and Rachel, while 40% is dedicated to Jeff and Jordan, 5% is dedicated to Daniele and Dominic but later Kalia (only because she won a Head of Household competition and aligned with Daniele). The remaining 5% is split between the rest of the cast, with Porsche and Lawon hit the hardest. (Don't know who they are? Well, you're not alone - The editors seem to have forgotten they were cast too.)
    • Some see Jeff and Jordan as the Creator's Pet because BB's producers want to make a good show, which means putting in a bunch of safeguards and slanting the show so that Jeff and Jordan will be on as long as possible, at the expense of the other extras on the show.
    • Mike "Boogie" Malin. It's obvious the producers love him, but they like Dr. Will more and the only reason he got on in the first place was because Dr. Will wouldn't come on unless they could ask Mike to come on as well.
  • Stacey Slater from Eastenders. Seriously, she is Walford's answer to Lana Lang. She even got her own Psycho Lesbian stalker for a while who was actually much hotter than Stacey but the plotline ended undramatically. First introduced as an expy for Kat Slater, Stacey quickly became the creator's favourite character. Despite being a shrill, perpetually Wangsty Jerkass who didn't know how to smile and just SHOUTED ALL THE TIME, everyone in Walford adored her and usually ended up sleeping with her. She was such a spoilt brat that she turned up to her boyfriend's work party which was crucial to his career and because she was annoyed over not being invited, got completely drunk and made a complete fool of herself before being forced to leave. Outside, Bradley laid a savage Reason You Suck Speech on her. In revenge, Stacey then seduced Bradley's dad. Even after their affair was exposed on Christmas Day and everyone's lives were ruined, Bradley still got back together with her and after she killed Archie Mitchell for raping her (okay, that she can be applauded for), Bradley took the rap and a nose dive off the Queen Vic to his death. When Stacey nearly did the same thing, you could practically hear the audience chanting "Do it you bitch!" But she didn't. Even after everything she'd done, the writer's still loved her too much to either kill her off or send her to prison which in Walford, left only one way of leaving open to her: going to Spain. And there she remains but the writer's still sent her off with the touching jingle that they only play at the end of a really sad or moving episode.
  • Inverted on Peep Show. The fanbase loves Matt King's character Super Hans and actually want more of him but the writers are resistant to do so. It helps that They have a high degree of awareness that Super Hans is similar to Jeremy (He's basically Jez with no positive traits) and are wary of him becoming unfunny too quickly. He has been appearing a bit more often recently though.
  • Averted in Father Ted with John and Mary. They appear in almost every episode of season one and are quite popular with fans but Graham Linehan used them far less as the series progressed, feeling they were a bit of an Overly Long Gag (they absolutely loathe each other and are constantly inflicting emotional and physical abuse on one another).
  • In the Game of Thrones adaptation of the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the creators added the character of Ros, a recurring prostitute whose purpose serves little more than being naked, appearing in awkward and silly "sexposition" scenes, wasting screen time, and is generally hated by all the fans, yet the creators love her so much that they feel the need to give her more screen time than more popular characters such as the Hound and invent more scenes with her.
    • Of course, being adapted from A Song of Ice and Fire, it turns out that all this character buildup was just to give some emotional punch to something horrible happening to her. Really, anyone who didn't see that coming is perhaps not as big a fan of the books as they claim.
  • In the early seasons of Holby City the character of Victoria Merrick was often seen by fans as the creator's pet. She was imcompetent in the extreme, supercilious to the nurses, became addicted to drugs and generally whined every single week about how hard it was to be a junior doctor, yet still they kept her on. Even the perfectionist Anton Meyer kept forgiving her. Yet another character, who played a quite competent young female cardiologist was immediately 'sacked' by boss Anton Meyer for a much lesser crime. Fans often wondered if Merrick was his love child and this was Lampshaded in the first episode of the third series when Merrick was sent off to another department, and one character said 'There goes the theory that she's Meyer's secret love child'. Ironically, the actress who played her, Lisa Faulkner, went on to star in Spooks as an equally incompetent young spy, but was then dipped head first into a vat of hot oil. Holby City fans, who had often written stories killing off Victoria Merrick in increasingly bizarre ways, cheered (and wished they'd thought of it).
  • America's Next Top Model has had a few of these from cycle to cycle, including Bianca from Cycle 9 for bullying an autistic girl, and Shannon upon her return for the All-Star Cycle due to her Insane Troll Logic and refusal to pose in underwear when she was happy to be photographed in much skimpier swimwear... because only her husband is allowed to see her in her underwear. Wait, what? But the best example might be Cycle 11's Tahlia. This is probably Tyra's fault for casting a girl on the basis of her own morbid fascination with tragic backstories: Tahlia was a burns victim and gifs of Tyra asking her how she got her scars at her first audition shows her wearing a creepy Slasher Smile. Nevertheless Tahlia received heaps of praise from all the panel for pictures that were patently horrible, constantly whined about not wanting to be in the competition to the point that the other contestants complained about her to the panel, and took screentime away from fan favourite and Ascended Meme Allison.
  • Det. Olivia Benson from Law and Order SVU. Her Serious Business and Straw Feminist attitudes have had a long history of rubbing viewers the wrong way, yet Dick Wolf seems to have no problem making her the series' primary sociopolitical mouthpiece (as opposed to Det. John Munch, whose Cloudcuckoolander rants usually designate him to Butt Monkey status). Not only did she gradually replace her more well-received partner Elliot Stabler as the face of the series in both advertisements and the show itself, but with Stabler now out of the picture fans have all the more motivation to throw ire and bile her way.
Back to Creator's Pet
  1. ↑ According to the cast, the plan to get rid of Russell was engineered by Sarita, Kristina had found the hidden immunity idol within the first three days with no clues, and Dave was very good at puzzles and competitions. Watching the season, you'd probably be surprised to figure out who these people even are.
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