Well Dawn made the list...

[frelling_tralk]

21 Most Annoying TV Characters Ever


I never got what people found annoying about Dawn in season 5 really, I thought that Real Me was an awesome intro for her character, but I've seen so many people talking about not being able to stand her from the beginning. Honestly I think that some people just hated the whole concept of a 'cute younger character' being added, they were coming at the idea from what they'd seen in other tv shows, and so were already predisposed to find Dawn annoying?

Hmm how would people have corrected the writing of Dawn if you were working on the show, or did you think it was fine just the way it was? I might have changed her age and made her more obviously younger, instead of 14/15/16 over the course of the show. I always thought that was waaay to close to the age that Buffy had been at the start of the series to then make such a big deal about how young Dawn was and how she needed babysitting. If they wanted to write her as such a little sister then I think it would have been a better idea to at least introduce her as 12 or 13 years old, it's not like the other actors were playing their ages either.

Also I think season 5 was Dawn's best season because she was such an important of the main plot, so maybe they could have done more with her powers as the Key after season 5, instead of immediately making her a normal teenage girl?


Oh and I really think her screaming is overstated, she yelled 'get out' just twice. I'm not saying that it wasn't high-pitched and annoying, but from the way people talk you would think she had been screeching like that at least every 4-5 episodes!

Comments

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

Dawn was much less annoying than Harmony if you ask me. Sure, she was trying at times, but nowhere near enough to rank her up there in terms of "characters ever".

And Kennedy, really? Why?

Janice Soprano? I wouldn't call her annoying.

Bah to that list. Where's DJ Connor? Walter "Flynn" Jr? Dawson?

[legendarytobes.livejournal.com]

I'm a huge Dawn fan. She was annoying in s6...but who wasn't?

I do agree on Kennedy = HATE

[legendarytobes.livejournal.com]

Also, seriously, where was Nois :P

[mcjulie.livejournal.com]

I like Dawn, but think she is annoying -- just like your own younger sibling, right? She's there to create tension. And a lot of the time I think it's obvious that she's being annoying on purpose -- a lot of her interactions with Buffy feel that way. You can see she's fighting for her own power and the only way she can think to do that is be a pain in the butt.

But I think her being annoying is funny. There's an implication when people say "ugh, Dawn, so annoying" that it's a flaw in the show, and that's where I don't agree.

She does scream a lot when startled or scared -- more of a yelp, really -- and it's very high-pitched, so it really stands out. I think that's what fosters the impression that she's always screaming. By season 5 the other characters don't really scream anymore.

[12-12-12.livejournal.com]

I think the problem with the writing for Dawn was that there was a disconnect between what we were told was the other characters' level of investment in her--as far as they could remember, they had known her their entire lives and had a whole lifetime's history of memories and emotional attachment to her--and what the audience viscerally felt was OUR investment in her, because she just showed up on our screens and we were expected to respond to her not as if she were a new character, but a character who'd grown up along with Buffy and the Scoobies. But the show had never cultivated that investment in us the way it had with the other characters, through us getting to know them from S1-S4. In retrospect I can enjoy her more as a character and as a storytelling device, but I think at the time much of fandom rejected her because of this, because she was supposed to be important to us but the show hadn't bothered to make her important to us.

[sum1-different.livejournal.com]

Dawn was great. I can think of a bunch of Buffy characters that belong on a list of most annoying -like Andrew, Xander, Faith, Willow and Anya. But Dawn? She was great. She was relatable, sympathetic and funny. And she interacted marvellously with Spike, until the writers decided to destroy that. It really pisses me off when people do the big hate-in on Dawn. It's really a baselss hatred. And it's all the weirder considering the show really did have some seriously annoying characters, which people for some reason don't find annoying. BTVS actually had more annoying characters than likable ones, but Dawn wasn't one of them. She was one of the good things about the show and along with Spike she helped to raise the quality when it was declining in the last three seasons.

[sum1-different.livejournal.com]

Trachtenberg's character in Gossip Girl is in there too. Why don't they just come out and say they hate Trachtenberg? That show was shallow crap and Trachtenberg was the only good thing in the parts of it I saw that she was in.

There's an endless list of characters that should be included on that list. From the Buffyverse, the most purely annoying character by far is Andrew. I still cringe whenever I hear Tom Lenk's voice in a film. He turned up in Argo. I wanted a warning put on the dvd box. Tess from Roswell should be on that list. She annoyed me so much. And maybe DeRavin's character (Claire) from Lost should be on the list too, along with her boyfriend (whose name I luckily can't remember now, but the actor was a hobbit in LOTR). But the worst from Lost is a toss-up between the revolting Anna Lucia and that sanctimonious poser Sayid. Those two were HORRIBLE. Camelot was a ten-episode show, but its King Arthur (played by Jamie Campbell Bower) has to rank pretty high among annoying characters. He was the small-screen equivalent to Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker in the last two Star Wars prequels (Anakin was the main guy in Revenge of the Sith, the only Star Wars film you've seen). I wish I could add Anakin to the list even though he was not tv.

[sabotabby]

I thought "Real Me," and the revelations that followed, were awesome in the way that they played with the "suddenly introducing a younger character" trope. But I agree; Dawn was mainly annoying because she was supposed to be 14 but acted and was treated like a much younger child, and the audience had a baseline for how teenagers acted within the context of the show's universe. (I work with teenagers, and I can attest to the fact that Dawn is not an inaccurate depiction of a 14-year-old, but there's real life and there's what's actually entertaining to watch.)

[stolenglimpse.livejournal.com]

Dawn never annoyed me. I got tired really fast of Kennedy, however. OMG! Pushy, better-than-you kinda girl... I get that she knows who she is and what she wants and she goes for it but.... sheesh...

I think Dawn would have worked better if she had been younger, like 12 or something as I saw mentionned. And after the s5 finale, she felt more filler in season 6 and then still kind of that in 7 so they made Potential and Him (I think those were the only one's) so it'd be more centered on her and they probably dropped the whole key thing a bit fast even though Glory wasn't there anymore. I mean, she was this big mystical green shining energy called the key for the Goddess and then, oh, you're just a normal teenager... I don't know... Too easy, maybe?

She matured a lot in season 7, though, gotta give props for that and I didn't dislike her at all. There actually wasn't enough after season 5 to really form a true feel of her, if you get my drift.

Kennedy was way worse. And Harmony. But then, I felt bad for Harmony. She's a follower... a sheep, as Cordelia once called her. I liked her better in Angel, as weird as it sounds even though there wasn't all that much aside from "Harmony".

Anyway, I kinda get how Dawn could be on a list like that but at the same time, I really don't. Okay, she came in way late in the series and she was kinda there to have people be iffy about her until the big reveal but then she was left in the background again... She did get better and I like her.

Babbling done *laughs*


Edit to add: if they had had some sort of flashbacks of memories the gang felt about Dawn, it might have helped the majority understand more. What everyone felt towards her was different for us, the viewers because she only showed up fr us in season 5 while she felt lways there for everyone else. IDK.

[chloris.livejournal.com]

I agree that the disconnect between Dawn's age and they way they wrote her age is the biggest problem with the character. I can't say I ever had any particular problem with her but it was annoying how the writers used her in season 6 to drag Buffy down. I'm sure they would have found another way to keep her down since that is where they wanted her but Dawn was a convenient plot device for that.

[silverusagi]

They should have either cast a younger actress like they originally planned, or they should have upped the age of the character in the writing. I don't find Dawn annoying, but I am annoyed by the weird disconnect of how the show treats her and how the show treated the Scoobies when they were only 1-2 years older (depending on what season of Dawn you're talking about).