Worst acting in an acclaimed tv show

Alan Alda on MASH

Vera Farmiga in Bates Motel.

The entire cast of CSI: Miami- with honorable mention to Poppy Montgomery!

Elizabeth McGovern in "Downton Abbey"

I enjoyed watching Wiseguy, but Joan Severance did not stand a chance against Kevin Spacey. It was obvious she was hired for her looks. The series did garner a Golden Globe award for Wahl, so I guess it counts as being recognized.

Vivian Vance

William Frawley

I'm sure William Shatner deserves the prize, for some series or another.

I second the vote for Poppy Montgomery!

Also want to give a nod to January Jones.

Bea in Maude was amazing. Do not confuse different character and style with bad acting.

I find Maude a thousand times more interesting than Dorothy.

[quote]Bea in Maude was amazing

..ly bad, in that dreadful show.

Angela Lansbury's facial expressions on "Murder She Wrote" were aimed at the last row of the Winter Garden.

[quote]Alan Alda on MASH

Everyone on MASH

There. I fixed that for you.

Rico Rodriguez (Manny Delgado), Modern Family. I find his overacting a bit grating. Maybe he is bring directed to do that, though.

The entire cast of Seinfeld - especially Jerry

I don't remember which season it was in, but there was an episode of The Sopranos where Tony was in the hospital and his family came rushing in looking for him.

Meadow was obviously supposed to have some sort of dramatic moment with her line "Oh my god! Daddy! Where is he?"

Instead, she spoke the line in a rushed, bored monotone: "omg daddy where is he."

Picture a little kid who's reading the line out loud with his finger under each word, with zero inflection or indication of punctuation, and that's how terrible it sounded.

Minka Kelly, Scott Porter, and Taylor Kitsch on Friday Night Lights.

Law & Order SVU has had some awful Assistant District Attorneys. The worst was the one who played ADA Greylek. Worst actress ever on that show.

Bea Arthur was great in Maude. Perhaps you don't like her performance because the show is so dated now, which is the problem with most of Norman Lear's comedies from that era.

R13 doesn't get "fixed" at all.

Alan Alda is the first and only name that popped into my head. The rest of the cast weren't nearly as bad.

The star in nearly all shows built around standup comics (especially in the earliest episodes.)

Do cameos from non-actors count? If so, Martina Navratilova in "Will and Grace."

The guy who plays Petyr Baelish on "Game of Thrones" is jaw droppingly awful.

Pauline Collins in Upstairs Downstairs... such a respected actress... such scene chewing.

Sarah Michelle Gellar on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Do not get the Whedon fantards who thought she deserved an Emmy!

Can't believe Alan Alda and Bea Arthur are being mentioned in the same breath as January Jones

Elisabeth Rohm - Law and Order

R27 Yet she was the best part of "American Hustle." Go figure.

"Damages" would have been a decent show if not for the lead actress.

Megan Boone in The Blacklist.

Don't even know the actress's name, but the woman who played the sister of the dead girl on Murder One was embarrassing. On a show that was otherwise brilliantly acted, she stood out like a sore thumb.

Second vote for Minka Kelly - though I thought Taylor Kitsch was good in FNL, but nothing since then...

For overacting, I'd go with Vincent d'Onofrio in his L&O spinoff.

Definitely Minka Kelly

All recorded media is inferior to live performance.

That Wilfred show with Elijah Woods

Another vote for Elizabeth McGovern in Downton Abbey. She's boring and annoying (that sing-songy, murmury voice!), brings zero personality to the role, is incapable of suggesting the character's inner life. She drags down every scene she's in.

If you google "elizabeth mcgovern downton abbey" one of the selections that automatically pops up is "elizabeth mcgovern downton abbey terrible." *That's* how bad she is.

Harmony Cramp from [italic]Road to Avonlea[/italic]. Which of the producers did her mother sleep with?

E V E R Y O N E on the Netflix series " Hemlock Grove"

Vincent d'Onofrio FTW.

Zosia Mamet - "Girls"

r41, she's at least better than Allison Williams. Both of them only got those jobs because of nepotism.

Another vote for Alan Alda on [italic]M*A*S*H.[/italic]

If this topic were an Emmy category, January Jones would finally get a well-deserved nomination!

Weezy.

She sounded like she was reading a script with her finger under each word.

Jeremy Piven in "Mr. Selfridge."

I think Lady Mary is just as awful as Cora. Hers is an eye rolling, chin-jutting, one-dimensional snippy character. The engagement to Matthew scene was so awkward because the actress can barely portray anything besides exasperation.

Come to think of it, they're all pretty bad on that show. The characters are so one-dimensional it's embarrassing.

Jeremy Piven in a Entourage.

The worst on MASH was when Alan Alda would do Groucho Marx.

I hated Groucho Marx worse that I hated Alan Alda as Hawkeye Pierce.

Alda owns half my town. I see him around and he looks like he has leukemia, he's so white.

I don't think Manny on Modern Family is a bad actor. I think that is his character. He's supposed to be a really odd and different kid and I think he plays it well.

The kid who plays Luke, on the other hand, is appallingly bad and gets worse with every season.

Yes to Elizabeth McGovern in Abby. Add Richard Thomas in "The Americans"

The kid who played Jim-Bob Walton. None of the Walton kids were terrific actors, but they were passable — except for Jim-Bob.

Katherine McPhee, Smash

R53, finally an excellent example. She's an atrocious actor. Many of the examples listed here (including Alan Alda and Richard Thomas) are good actors who are just not liked by the posters, for whatever reason.

Was "Smash" really an acclaimed TV shows, though? It seemed like people hate-watched it and only really liked Megan Hilty.

Jamie-Lynn Sigler was awful on "The Sopranos." And Robert Iler wasn't much better. Despite the show's acclaim, it did have a lot of bad performances.

I think that Most of the performances on The Sopranos were bad. The show was sustained by really spectacular performances by a few actors (Gandolfini, Bracco, Falco).

I loved uncle Joon, Livia, Hesh and Johnny Sac on the Sopranos. They seemed real, as did Tony's insane Mercedes saleswoman gf.

Paulie, Christuphuh, Silvio, Bobby Baccala were like comic relief

I thought Edie Falco did a great job playing a mafia wife. She's pissed that her husband cheats on her, pissed that her kids don't respect her, pissed that her father seems to like Tony better than he likes her; but it's ok that her husband murders people and steals for a living. And her husband doesn't just kill strangers, he kills people that she knows, like Adrianna, Jackie Aprile Jr, Big Pussy, Tony Blundetto. She's ruthless, yet still pities herself. Edie pulled it off.

I didn't think the kids on the Sopranos were bad - they played petulant, spoiled little brats very well, which they likely were in real life (particularly the Iler kid). I think the problem was as they got older, the viewers expected them to be something more than just one dimensional brats and the actor/actress couldn't pull it off. Meadow is always petulant and never seems to grow up and that got boring.

[quote]E V E R Y O N E on the Netflix series " Hemlock Grove"

Which automatically makes it have nothing to do with this topic since it is supposed to be about bad perfomers in an ACCLAIMED tv show. Not that you are the only poster to ignore that whole premise.

The bitches in "Cagney and Lacey" and Jennifer Lugs Huge-Tits in that ghost whisperer show. In fact, Huge-Tits is THE WORST of all series stars, ever.

And R35 is quite the little teapot, isn't she, short and stout? Let's remind her that her recorded media here on the DL likely isn't any worse or better than her shrill, unfounded opinions screeched in person.

Peter Krause on Six Feet Under

Barbara Bain for "Mission: Impossible." And she won multiple Emmys for it!

Gavin MacLeod, 'The MTM Show.'

I think he owns this thread.

He was the only performer on the show never nominated for an Emmy.

[quote]Jennifer Lugs Huge-Tits in that ghost whisperer show.

That was never "an acclaimed TV show."

Read the fucking thread title, dipshit.

What about Veronica Hamel on Hill Street Blues?

I never really saw much of it but as a kid she always seemed sucky. (like the model hired among all the actors)

Hamel is a good example

Bracco runs very hot and cold in "The Sopranos". In some scenes/episodes she's amazing, in others you can see the acting - her limits are tested and she fails. I never really buy her as a shrink, either. I think it was a mistake to give such a big role to someone so well known from GoodFellas. Every time I see her I think of Karen Hill. Gandolfini and Falco were both unknown and that really helped sell the characters.

Jerry Seinfeld on his own show. The other three hold him up and Larry David deserves the credit for giving the show its unique voice and edge. That untalented asshole Jerry is one lucky SOB.

Victoria Jackson on SNL (which was an acclaimed show at one point). Regardless of her political nuttiness, she couldn't act or create characters.

Peter Krause was good on "Six Feet Under," but not nearly on the level of the other Fishers and Rachel Griffiths.

What hurts him is that his character was such an asshole, especially at the end. Every character grew as a person except for him.

January Jones may suck in other roles, but she's PERFECT as Betty Draper.

Jennifer Love Hewitt is always terrible, but has she ever been in anything "acclaimed"?

I thought Evangeline Lily was pretty bad on "Lost". I thought the Harold Perrineau guy was awful and annoying on that and on "Oz."

"Party of Five" was actually acclaimed for much of its run, so Hewitt would count for it.

The actors who play Dany and Jon Snow in Game of Thrones are appalling. I don't know why they cast legendary actors like Charles Dance and Diana Rigg in supporting roles, then give the leads to randoms fresh out of drama school.

I know the world disagrees with me, but I never liked Edie Falco in The Sopranos. She just never seemed cheap enough or Italian enough for a mob wife. The accent was all wrong and when she would try to say things like,"I'll bring the anti-PAHST" to sound like what she thought a Jersey mafia wife would sound like, I would cringe.

Larry Linville(Frank Burns) was the best actor on M*A*S*H. Alda was ok, but way overrated.

I think Lisa Bonet from The Cosby Show, would be my choice. Her worst performance being the episode where she got a job being a gopher at a recording studio. Just awful stuff.

R10 I think we have the next subject for our TV poll!

I much prefer Dorothy - she's a at more shaded character - but I would never say Maude was bad acting. It's just in that dated shouting Norman Lear style I can't really bear (for the most part - I still love Carrol O'Connor).

I agree about Sarah Michelle Gellar - she knows how to hit her marks because she has been acting since birth, but she gives incredibly stiff line readings and there's no depth there either. When you combine that with the fact that she has always been far from a great beauty, and she didn't have a famous parent, it's kind of baffling that her career took her as far as it did.

R63 replace that with Georgia Engel and I would agree with you.

Elizabeth McGovern plays Cora in Downton Abbey like she's either on drugs or had a head injury. It's a character choice, because McGovern can act, but it's one that makes no sense and has become increasingly irritating over the seasons.

Or maybe McGovern is on drugs or has had a head injury. . .

On the other hand, I don't think Michelle Dockery can act. I think Lady Mary's supposed to be the heroine of the show and Dockery's a terrible actress and the character is self-centered, entitled, and mean.

The little twins on Desperate Housewives were horrendous, but they actually have SAG Awards because Desperate Housewives won Best Cast one year when they were on the show. So they've won one of the highest honors in acting and they suck.

Connie Britton on "Nashville" truly seems to be recovering from a concussion in every scene. Put it out of its misery already.

Remember Michelle Greene on LA Law?

She sucked. And quit because of a lesbian kiss. Did she ever work again?

Jennifer Love Hewitt was not bad on Party of Five. She's not the next Jodie Foster or Streep, but she played the role well.

Betsy Brandt on Breaking Bad.

It was either her acting or the fact she seemed miscast as Hank's wife. Or both.

R79 - What is this about Michele quitting over the kiss? Got proof?

I don't she was bad. Not great, but not bad.

It was a big story at the time r82. You could google it I suppose.

R69, I don't like Victoria Jackson or her f-ed up politics, but there was a character she did that would occasionally appear on CHURCH CHAT by the name of Jenny Baker. Church Lady would rip her apart for doing the simplest things. I thought she was funny as Jenny, but thats about it.

Regina King was awful on 227, but glad she became a much better actress over time.

R83 - No, I did not know about this. I only watched the first few seasons (and am re watching the first).

I can't see where Michele says she left because of the kiss.

Jared Padalecki on Supernatural.

Years ago he used to OK (although he's always been limited as an actor) but the past few seasons he's been getting worse. Bad scripts don't help.

Not that Spn is noted for good acting. Misha Collins is as wooden as a tree and Jensen's been ringing in it.

Quinn Cummings, "Family"

I guess Greene denies it but the timing was always suspicious.

Hmm. Interestingly Greene is the only major cast member who is not discussed in the first season DVD features. Dystart is not interviewed, but he is ancient and the other cast members mention him.

We need an LA Law thread.

Ron Howard on Happy Days yelled all his lines.

Suzanne Somers and all the other famous T&As showcased during the 70s.

Started your thread r90. Have fun.

Thanks R92

Minks Kelly was NOT good at the beginning of Friday night lights and she was not an award-winning actress by any stretch when her run was done, but she did improve vastly over the course of her time on the show. I feel similarly about Taylor Kitsch --but I think he grew even more, although I do agree that that role seems the only one he really can play. Haven't enjoyed him in much of anything since, especially not The Normal Heart in which I thought the others acted rings around him---and I didn't even like the movie overall that much.

Whoever said January Jones may suck in anything else, but is PERFECT as Betty Draper, I could not agree more! Her icy detachment is precisely what the character needs although I don't think it's a conscious "acting choice" made by her.

R84 she also did a good Roseanne.

I actually liked her on the show. Her wingnut views are a different story.

Her views notwithstanding, Hooks and Dunn acted like total mean girl cunts to her. I doubt it was necessary.

I think Sarah Michelle Gellar is decent as an actress, but Buffy was the worst violation of this. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that, although it was a groundbreaking show, it was still just a WB/UPN show with the assets of a WB/UPN show. The casting directors did really shitty work, as evidenced by Amber Benson and 90% of the potentials from the final season. But, to be fair, these were mostly teenage girls with little to no training.

Entire casts of Good Times,Facts of Life and Different Strokes.

[quote]Peter Krause was good on "Six Feet Under," but not nearly on the level of the other Fishers and Rachel Griffiths.

He was just duller, sane...the others were all nuts and therefore much more entertaining.

It's pretty clear January Jones isn't [italic]acting[/italic]...

[quote]Pauline Collins in Upstairs Downstairs... such a respected actress... such scene chewing.

I wouldn't say that.

Peter Krause was good on Six Feet Under and very good on Sports Night.

The Golden Girls sucked. Anyone who actually laughed at that show needs their head examined. The show was camp, the characters one dimensional and the set looked plastic. Betty White was way better on Mary Tyler Moore than the Golden Girls. Bea Arthur was annoying.

Charlize Theron in Arrested Development.

Aiden Gillen on Game of Thrones.

I own this thread.

F&F + TrollDar for R102.

Adrienne Barbeau on "Maude." You got the impression she was standing alone, reading her lines from a cue card. She never related to anyone else in a scene.

The majority of the Mary Tyler Moore cast was either nominated or won an Emmy. Gavin MacLeod was never even nominated.

Gavin MacLeod was very much at home on "The Love Boat" since the permanent cast were all horrible actors. It's not an "acclaimed" TV show, so they don't qualify for this thread. MacLeod never learned anything about acting from the cast of the MTM show.

Another vote for Jamie Lynn Sigler as Meadow Soprano. She was so bad. She disrupted my viewing pleasure ever time she was in a scene. It was as if one of the producers' teen daughters had stood in for a real actress.

Also Dominic West's Jimmy McNulty. He was embarrassingly awful. That accent careered wildly from Royal College of the Dramatic Arts 'yank' to Old Etonian within the same fucking line of dialogue at times. He was especially bad at playing 'drunk' , which he had to do a lot of, unfortunately for the audience.

R74 Really? I thought she was tremendous in it and almost, if not as good as Gandolfini. Complaining about her accent or the way she looked sounds like nit-picking to me.

Now Robert Iler (AJ) is thought by many to be the weakest link in The Sopranos. Although I suppose he improved a little bit later on and AJ often wasn't that well written either.

Curb Your Enthusiasm has come great moments, but there are too many times when Larry and Jeff slip out of character and just stand there on the verge of corpsing at each other's comic genius TM.

R56 & R57 You people...

So R57 Paulie wasn't real to you? The actor playing him really was a gangster once.

R58 Actually Meadow does become a less of a bitch in the last season, though her role is a lot smaller. But yes, she's often quite irritating.

R67 I agree, I find a lot of the Melfi scenes redundant after season 1. Bracco's accent makes it hard to buy her as a well-educated, upper-middle-class person.

And the Lifetime Achievement Award for Worst Acting in an Acclaimed TV Show goes to . . . . Jerry Seinfeld!

Maybe she's not the worst ever, but Jane Leeves in Frasier can be a bit grating and her Manchester accent is bad.

Mary Fran on Newhart

Howie Mandel on St Elsewhere

also, not an acclaimed series, but Dixie Carter was just awful on Designing Women.

[quote]Aiden Gillen on Game of Thrones.

Agreed, Littlefinger is such a fantastic role and I really think Aiden Gillen has not been successful in bringing it to life.

The entire cast of Hill Street Blues

"Ron Howard on Happy Days yelled all his lines."

I think Erin Moran was the worst actor on Happy Days

That asian chick on "Twin Peaks". So annoying and SO lame.

Also, the guy who played James on Twin peaks. Or maybe that was because the character was supposed to be bland?I find the asian chick more annoying.

r71, I agree about Evangeline Lilly. What's funny is that she did some interview complaining about how hard it is to be beautiful, when her looks are the only reason she has any acting career. Jessica Biel did the same thing.

Tony Sirico was so 'real' as Paulie Walnuts that he was in fact an ex-mobster and lived with his mother. He complained that the Sopranos writers were 'vampires' who would sit around with him and other cast members who were from the streets, and they would see their real-life stories written up in the scripts the next week!

A lot of the acting on Twin Peaks was pretty bad (and I say this as someone who loved the show)

Jerry Seinfeld was a non-actor, meaning he considered himself above trying, so his "performance" was some kind of cunty meta-statment about the worthlessness of even trying to entertain an audience in a sitcom format. He let his co-stars do that.

The show is becoming unwatchable over time.

Happy Days? Good Times? Different Strokes? 227? Facts of Life?

FYI: These were NOT acclaimed TV shows.

Michael J. Fox on "The Good Wife"

There have been some good actors on Justified, like Walton Goggins, Margo Martindale and Jeremy Davies, but Timothy Olyphant is so one note. He tries far too hard for a laconic young Clint Eastwood vibe, his performance lacks depth and nuance.

R127 Excellent choice!

Aidan Gillen as Littlefinger reminds me of a kid who is trying to learn to be a magician. One minute he's talking softly, the next minute he's dramatically whisking opening his cape and saying, "voila!" Only he doesn't quite have the timing or the cadence or the volume of his voice quite right. He's just "off" and winds up being unintentionally funny as the 'Great Mysterious Baelish-y, Master of the Unknown!'

It's funny how bad Ron Howard was as a teenaged actor on Happy Days because he really was a very good child actor.

Just because someone is a gangster doesn't mean they're a good actor. I wouldn't want to see Goodfellas starring Henry Hill, Jimmy Burke, Paul Vario and Frankie the Wop Manzo.

Sonny Grosso didn't play a detective very well even though he was one in real life. He decided to stay behind the scenes as a producer and technical advisor.

Tony Sirico wasn't even a very good gangster, let alone actor. He kept getting caught.

I see nothing wrong with Sirico's performance. The writers would be more to blame for the "comic relief" thing.

I always thought Francis in Malcolm in the Middle was the weak link in the show. It's bad enough that he's so whiny, in every episode he gets a whole B-plot to himself.

Almost any child actor in almost any sitcom since 1950. Most children are horrific in sitcoms. There have been a few exceptions, but not many.

Again, the key word here is 'acclaimed'. Soaps are not acclaimed.

On Falcon Crest, there was a meathead of a guy who was the boyfriend of the retarded daughter.

He was an awful actor.

[You do realize that this is a troll, right? It does not believe what it posts. It just craves attention. You might want to stop talking to it.]

I guess maybe it's just because I remember him from the Wire that I actually like Aiden Gillan. I think Littlefinger is consistently a hissing villain so there's not much complexity in the character while Tyron Lannister manages to be awful and droll at the same time.

The characters that I think are badly cast is Khaleesi & Jon Snow. They are the weak links in an otherwise strong group, even including the kids.

Any star that was ever on "Alice."

I mean back in the 70s wasn't a major city like now. And no star came in, much less would go to Mel's Diner.

What was the attraction? The Partridge's former manager? The supporting cat from Top Cat, or perhaps they heard about Tommy's big dick face.

Aiden Gillan is a DISTRACTINGLY bad actor. I remember watching The Dark Knight Rises and looking up who he was just because I was wondering how such a terrible actor made it into the movie.

All of the Huxtable children (including Sandra) on the Cosby Show.

"I think Erin Moran was the worst actor on Happy Days"

She didn't improve much on Joanie Loves Chachi. In fact, I think she got worse.

[quote]Alan Alda would do Groucho Marx.

The horror!

At least Khaleesi and Jon snow manage to keep the same accent day to day, week to week. Littlefinger's accent is all over the map of the UK and Ireland.

fat kid Modern Family--hate this show anyway

R'anne's sister on Roseanne--same in everything she does

Sally Struthers on the ancient All in the Family

young daughter on The Cosbys

Joan Collins in Dynasty

Allison Williams Girls

Derek Jacobi and Iwan Rheon in Vicious

Ice T on SVU. I watched an episode earlier where Fin had to run. He couldn't even do that without looking as if he didn't possess knees.

[quote] Littlefinger's accent is all over the map of the UK and Ireland.

Assuming this is true, how many people would notice? I know I don't. He has a look, sort of star quality, the gleam in his eye, whatever. He stands out. And he keeps getting hired.

Regarding the posts about The Sopranos: I don't think Bracco was bad. I think in some instances her character was written off-character, hence why you couldn't buy her. And if you know the story behind the Sopranos and her character, it's easy to see why that happened. They just didn't have a clear idea of who the character was and they wrote it "in progress". Something that usually happens with secondary characters unfortunately.

About Tony's children: I don't think they were bad. It's that they characters were supposed to be "one-dimentional" in a sense. Many people in real life are not deep.

About secondary characters that some people defined for comic relief: I don't agree. They were just "simpleton", like many people like them are. We were supposed to laugh at them, just like we are supposed to laugh at them in real life.

The Alyssa Milano show Mistresses is NOT an acclaimed show, but the Asian actress who plays Karen is soooooooooo bad (inappropriate reaction shots, mouth full of marbles, sounds like she learned her lines phonetically) that she makes Alyssa look like Meryl.

R151 - She was in Lost as well. She was slightly better in it than in Mistresses.

It might not have been acclaimed, but The O.C was actually pretty well cast. All the actors were fairly good, except for Mischa Barton. She was just dreadful. I remember everyone getting mad when she was killed off, but I felt the show actually got better. A shame that's what killed the show.

R3, Poppy Montgomery wasn't in CSI: Miami; she was in Without A Trace.

Agreeing with R87 about JP on Supernatural, particularly about him getting worse over the years. I do not know WTF is up with that.

R117 It just doesn't make sense with what he's doing with the role. An Irish accent? A charmless, pervert vibe? He needs to die.

R149 = Aiden's agent.

R153,

I never saw The OC, but Rachel Bilson in Hart of Dixie is atrocious.

Whoever played Eddy on Frasier just stunk.

In Aiden Gillen's defense…

He was superb in the original "Queer as Folk", very good in "The Wire", and also excellent on stage in "The Caretaker", for which he alone in a good cast (Patrick Stewart and Kyle MacLachlan) received a Tony nomination.

That said, some of his accents in "GOT" are warbly at best. You can't win them all.

I thought Peter Krause was perfect as Nate on Six Feet Under.

r45 nailed it.

R150 Indeed, I saw the documentary "The Real Sopranos" about the New Jersey mafia, and in real life these gangsters can be pretty inept. So Paulie and co's blundering wasn't just for "comic relief".

Joseph "Donnie Brasco" Pistone said outside of their world in New York they were like fish out of water and he had to teach them how to book an airline ticket.

Laura Fraser in BREAKING BAD.

R161, no.

Ronn Moss, Drake Hogestyn

R137 you mean Daniel Greene, who was in Elvira's first movie. I thought he was sweet and funny, but yeah not capable of any emotion.

I've always thought Morgan Fairchild relied too much on obvious camp. She's not a good actress. Nostrils flair too much.

Just got done watching dvd Season 5 of 8 is Enough and Susan Richardson, Lani O'Grady, Laurie Walters(a total ham) are horrible. Betty Buckley looked bored. Connie Needham was given nothing to do and Dianne Kay is a walking/talking model.

the child actors on "Everybody Loves Raymond" were notably awful!

[quote] also, not an acclaimed series, but Dixie Carter was just awful on Designing Women.

I just can't......There are so many brain dead people on this thread.

Y'all have watched too many reality TV shows.

Everybody on Full House. Was that show acclaimed? I don't know, I just know I find it way more annoying and lame than The Cosby Show.

Another reason to hate the show: Candace Cameron is the sister of Kirk Cameron.

Elizabeth Banks on "Scrubs". Actually, the entire cast of Scrubs makes me want to vomit.

[quote]Everybody on Full House. Was that show acclaimed?

I never came across a good review of it. I watched plenty of sitcoms in the 1980s and was at the right age to love all the child-centric ones, but even then I could not bear to watch anything with the stench of Miller-Boyett emanating from it. And John Stamos' years with The Beach Boys were their professional nadir.

David Zayas on "Dexter".

R170, it was the epitome of 80's crap sitcom television.

There were some weak links on ER, Abby in particular, talk about a flat , dreary performance. I mean, I know the character wasn't exactly upbeat, she was a recovering alkie, but Maura Tierney really lacked the ability to project any emotional depth or range.

Goran Visnjic was flat as a pancake too but he was scorching hot to look at.

Peter Krause and Dixie Carter were both very, very good and believable in their signature roles.

I forgot how horrible Full House was--NO ONE on that shit show had any talent, except the dog.

DITTO EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND--what a shitfest.

Everybody Loves Chris was a much better show and should have lasted longer. Good writing and scrumptious Terry Crews!

Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf, Agents of Shield.

Candice Bergen in Murphy Brown.

David Caruso in CSI Miami came to my mind immediately. He's one of the worst actors I've ever seen.

All the kids in The Brady Bunch & Partridge Family...not one of them could act for even a second.

Whichever cop show Ice T is on. He's one splinter short of being as wooden as David Caruso.

Hey, why haven't any of you stupid gavones mentioned me yet?

Ice T owns this thread by a mile

"All the kids in The Brady Bunch & Partridge Family...not one of them could act for even a second."

Danny Bonaduce tried. You can see him struggling to land a punchline correctly.

David Cassidy was just on the show for the sexual factor. He didn't have to act, he had hair.

All the rest, you are correct on. Some were worse than others. I'm looking at you Cindy Brady, who got worse as she got older.

Don't blame the kids for the lousy scripts. I could have pulled a better one out of my ass.

I agree with R161, and Walter Jr. couldn't act either. Cute kid though.

I absolutely hate Manny on Modern Family, but I don't think that show has deserved acclaim since the second season or so anyway.

Cameron Monaghan is the weakest link on Shameless, but he's cute enough that I can give him a pass.

"Don't blame the kids for the lousy scripts. I could have pulled a better one out of my ass.

by: Robert Reed's ghost"

Alice made it work. What was your problem?

And I'm sure that was not the only thing you were pulling out of your ass.

[quote]I can't believe nobody has said Roseanne yet, especially in the early seasons. All she does is goof around and her line deliveries are terrible.

When she had a funny line to deliver, you always knew it was coming because she would laugh at the joke in advance.

R184 That was sort of covered by R22. As were the comments about Jerry Seinfeld and Ray Romano.

Estelle Getty on The Golden Girls. Her line readings were all the same and she never looked at any of her castmates.

Loretta Swit on MASH made everyone else look like John Gielgud and Vanessa Redgrave.

Her famous speech where she yells at the nurses for excluding her because she was a raving bitch lunatic who they did not trust - "Did you ever invite me in for a cup of coffee?" - is one of the worst scenes in the entire series.

I laughed at the scene R187.

R187 Loretta Swit wasn't bad, but toward the end of the series she started to bear an uncanny resemblance to Miss Piggy.

I have to agree about Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke on GoT, they are painful to watch onscreen. I see Aiden Gillen mentioned on here and I think the show's take on Littlefinger is so bad, it does not help his performance in the role at all. I do have to second or third Evangeline Lilly on Lost, she was not good and Kate was so badly written as time went on, that did not help. I thought I read somewhere that she actually spit on some scripts she received for Lost. I was a big fan of ER back in the day and I couldn't tell you if Goran V. was a good actor, it seemed like the writers were always flip flopping on the characterization and his performance was not enough to overcome it.

Die hard Lost fan here. I thought Ms. Lilly actually improved as the show went on. Same for Josh Holloway, who was more beefcake than actor for the longest time, but by the end was better. It helped he was paired by then with one of the best actors on the show.

The two out of nowhere characters who were instantly hated by the audience and rapidly killed off were by far the worst actors ever on that show.

Most episodes of Murder, She Wrote.

[quote] Do you expect quality acting from a dinner theater production? Because that's pretty much what MSW was.

[quote] It's that they characters were supposed to be "one-dimentional" in a sense.

Oh, dear

Aiden Gillan's problem on GoT is that horrible voice he decided to use for the character that always sounds like he should clear his throat. He should have given it up years ago.

Emilia Clarke is the weakest major actor on Game of Thrones. But she's beautiful and has a great commanding voice, so it's possible to forgive her.

It's amazing either how brilliant or how lucky the casting director was in terms of the child actors. Maisie Williams in the best child actor since Kiernan Shipka (and she's even better), and Sansa and Bran are fantastic too (though Bran's tallness is offputting).

The Brady Bunch?

Vampire Diaries??

Teen Wolf???

Full House?????

NONE of these were "acclaimed tv shows."

It's as if many of you were severely mentally challenged.

Someone start a best acting on Awful Tv shows. That would be more interesting.

What, did everybody forget about me AND MY BIG FOREARMS?

I think David Cassidy had good timing and Susan Dey could deliver a put down pretty well. But Suzanne Crouch and Brian Forster were just retarded.

I think Josh H. was the most improved actor on Lost.

Roger C Carmel on any show he ever appeared in.

William Schatner and Deforrest Kelly on Star Trek.

Any "Special Guest Star" who ever appeared on Batman along with Burt Ward.

Pamela Anderson on anything she's ever done.

Farrah Fawcett- see Pamela Anderson

I have TWO Emmys!

If that's your best defense, R202/Loretta, you're going to have to do better. They are the most meaningless of the major awards. Candace Bergen has 93 for Murphy Brown and no one is running around calling her a comic genius these days.

If "70's Show" was acclaimed, I nominate Laura Prepon, who seemed to be starring in a "very special episode of Facts of Life staring Geri Jewell."

Don't know if this has been mentioned but isn't SJP simply playing herself on Sex & City.

no r205. SJP is a nasty brittle uptight bitch. She is no Carrie. She's more of a Miranda.

Kristin Davis was the worst on Sex and the City

Michael Richards as "Kramer" on Seinfeld. His entire acting consisted of pratfalls. Very annoying and I understand his had no patience with the other cast members flubbing their lines.

[quote]and I understand his had no patience with the other cast members flubbing their lines.

Most of the Seinfeld bloopers are really uncomfortable to watch because of this. He sort of slaps Julia Louis-Dreyfus in one of them and she hits him in the balls. All played for laughs but it is cringeworthy.

Emilia Clarke. She is so bad, I usually mute her scenes.

Kellie Martin, ER>

Ice-T or Ice Cube or Ice Milk or whatever the fuck his name is on SVU.

Every damn line reading ended with him punching the emphasis on the last WORD.

Swit thought she was an Actress because she could cry on cue. The rest of the time she was a screeching harpy.

R213, you've just described all my coworkers.

I love R214!

Yes to Seinfeld, Roseanne. But they are laughing as they count their money.

If you know anything about the era and the landed gentry, Michelle Dockery has nailed Lady Mary. The character is aloof, elite, spoiled, superior and she looks down her nose, very carefully, at the world. She does create this sort of avove it all character pretty well.

The attention to detail on DA is pretty amazing. If you look at photos or even paintings from that era, every detail is perfect. I recently saw a photo of a painting in a book, and one of the women looked exactly like the Edith character.

Still a great show. Beats watching the garbage on Bravo.

^ Downton Abbey is just a soap.

"Kellie Martin, ER"

Kellie Martin on The Patti LuPone Show. Especially when they introduced the Jesse character and made him HIV+. Holy Christ, Kellie just gave up even attempting to act.

Emilia Clarke can't control her voice. Aiden Gillen either.

Patti-Lou Pone on It's Corky!

Whatever became of the updated version of "Upstairs/Downstairs" they were planning to do? Is this "Downtown Abbey" the present incarnation of that show? By the way, all the actors on Upstairs/Downstairs were brilliant!

I didn't care for Kellie Martin on The Patti Lupone show aka Life Goes On or ER. The producers of ER killed her character off because the majority of the audience hated her character.

I didn't watch ER but I liked Kellie Martin on Life Goes On

R221 It was on PBS for two seasons but it flopped.

Tori Spelling on 90102

Both Meadow and AJ on The Sopranos were pretty awful. Robert Iler became a little better towards the end. Jamie Lynn-Sigler? Not so much. They stuck out even more since most of their scenes were with James Gandolfini and/or Edie Falco.

[quote]Katherine McPhee, Smash

In what universe was Smash an acclaimed TV show?

[quote]Charlize Theron in Arrested Development.

Great example. I can barely watch the episodes with Rita, because Theron is so bad.

On the reboot Battlestar Galactica--and yes, it was acclaimed--there was a lot of bad acting, but as for the worst, it's a toss up between Edward James Olmos and James Callis, who played Baltar. Maybe it's just because Baltar was such a horrible character..but Callis didn't bring any charm to it.

It's only really "acclaimed" on DL, but EVERYONE sucked on US Queer as Folk.

I think Sarah Michelle Gellar is actually a pretty good actress.

"I think Sarah Michelle Gellar is actually a pretty good actress."

Joss Whedon, is that you?

Emilia Clarke - Game of Thrones

Minka Kelly on Friday Night Lights