Who Is the Actual Worst?
From time to time, at happy hour or by the proverbial water cooler, the thoughts of The Atlantic’s culture team return to one timeless question: Which character in the rich, complex, antiheroic world of modern television is the actual worst character ever?
“Worst,” by its nature as a superlative adjective, should be easy to define, but TV’s Golden Age being what it is, there’s a lot to’s Ramsay Bolton, a psychopath and sadist with an almost unparalleled propensity for cruelty; or to ’s Claire Underwood, who threatens an employee with what amounts to infanticide? Or should it go to ’s Carrie, for being a terrible spy and sleeping with all her sources, or ’s Fitz, for being the worst president (and married lover) in recent memory? Is the #actualworst character someone viewers love to hate or hate to love? Is it Lucious Lyon or Piper Chapman? Hannah Horvath or Walter White?
