51 GREATEST FICTIONAL BAD GUYS
#35. JOFFREY BARATHEON from GAME OF THRONES
In a show where atrocities are a weekly event, you never forget your first one (I can’t seem to remember any horses being cleaved in half on ONE DAY AT A TIME). And thanks to this little prick, the polite sanctity of television was ruined forever.
Before episode 9 of the first season, I naively believed television to be the last bastion of equalization. That’s a fancy way of saying good triumphs over evil. I mean you had shows like THE SOPRANOS, THE SHIELD and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA where the main character’s morality was in constant threat of erosion, but at least the moral code of the universe was still in play. GAME OF THRONES shows a world where the gods are completely indifferent. Hell, if they actually do exist, it’s entirely possible they may actually thrive on the misery.
If you want to go with accumulated savagery, the gold star has to go to Ramsay Bolton. Setting hungry dogs on an hours-old infant is a whole other can of fucked up. But Joffrey set the standard on a show where genital mutilation, incestual rape, and liquid gold poured on men’s heads are part of the TV Guide descriptions.
And it all comes down to this: Ned wasn’t supposed to die. He wasn’t supposed to die renouncing his honor and telling a lie. And his death certainly should have been avenged almost immediately. This kind of thing never happened before on my television screen, especially not in a fantasy world where the term deus ex machina is a genre staple. Joffrey did the unthinkable: he managed to turn escapism into the really real world. Fucking prick.
Joffrey: “I’ll tell you what. I’m going to give you a present. After I raise my armies and kill your traitor brother, I’ll give you his head as well.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOpGnwYP8PY
