Do you hate Jess from ‘New Girl’? All the TV characters everyone loathes

Zooey Deschanel’s Jessica Day carried New Girl for seven seasons. Unless of course you’re one of those people who hated Jess, in which case you’d say New Girl “survived” Jessica Day for seven seasons. Who would’ve thought “adorkability” could be so controversial? And yet, what some people consider endearing quirks, others consider irritating schtick.

Jess from New Girl is not the first TV character who didn’t turn out to be as appealing as its creators intended and, spoiler alert, it won’t be the last. That’s just one of those things showrunners have to deal with from time to time. Sometimes, as is the case with Jess & New Girl, the lead character backfires. Sometimes the backfiring even has to do with a member of the supporting cast.

Let’s look at some notable instances of “You were supposed to like this character but you ended up hating it.” And, just for fun, we’ll compare their hateability against New Girl’s Jessica Day’s.

Dawson from Dawson’s Creek

Here’s the problem with Dawson Leery: he was surrounded by people who were more interesting & charismatic than him. That’s a serious problem when you’re the titular character in a show. Dawson was so vanilla, the show ended up scrapping his love story with Joey and having her pair up with scene-stealer Pacey, much to the delight of fans everywhere.

Dawson was actually the opposite of Jess from New Girl, in that he wasn’t adorkable at all – he was just bland & boring. We’re going to go with “more hateable than Jess” on this one. Stop whining and being pretentious, Dawson. It’s not cute.

Hannah from Girls

Speaking of being pretentious, let’s move on to a character who claimed to be “the voice of her generation” by the end of her show’s first episode. Man, people loved to hate on Hannah, even though, honestly, you could easily make the case that most of her friends were just as hateable, if not more so. Muddling the waters was the fact that people also loved to hate Lena Dunham . . . but that’s the subject of a different article.

A lot of Hannah haters seemed to miss the point – you were supposed to roll your eyes at her! That said, it can’t be argued that she drove people nuts nevertheless. So, again, we’re going with “more hateable than Jess from New Girl”.

Andy from The Office

The Nard Dog was loved as much as he was hated when he was first introduced in season 3 of The Office. However, once Andy took over as the new boss in the last couple of seasons of the show, fandom fully turned on him. It wasn’t just that Ed Helms was no Steve Carell (who is?), but also that Andy became dumber & pettier as the show struggled to make him another Michael Scott.

In a way, Andy’s hateability arc goes in the opposite trajectory as Jess’s: he started off with a mixed reception, then became hated, whereas Jess eventually won over most New Girl fans. For that alone, we’re going to say Andy was more hateable than Jess.

Skyler from Breaking Bad

Behind every great crime lord . . . there’s a long-suffering woman fans will irrationally hate. Well, perhaps not quite irrationally. Skyler White committed her fair share of sins during Breaking Bad’s run – chief among them was hooking up with that wet blanket, Ted Beneke. But the way people reacted, it was almost as if they’d forgotten Skyler’s husband was the one actually ruining lives via blue meth.

Skyler got somewhat of a redemption during the show’s final season, as we saw her reach her breaking point and fully turn on Walt. It wasn’t enough to sway all the haters, but the character managed to reach the finale on a high note. All in all, we have to say Skyler was less hateable than Jess from New Girl. Yes, even when considering that cringey “Happy Birthday” performance.

Come at us.