The Best of 2014: Worst Villain!

While there's something to be said for a mother's unstoppable desire to protect her child, Adalind Shade was surely an example of what not to do. She had no clue Renard had already taken steps to protect the child from his evil cousin, Prince Viktor. It didn't even occur to her until Viktor had already psychologically tortured her in his dungeon (which she cluelessly walked right into!). Adalind also used a magic spell to strip Nick Burkhardt of his Grimm powers - and this was after Nick, his mother, and his friends had gone out of their way to protect her and her baby despite all of the horrible things Adalind had done to them previously! Adalind has always been in over her head, meddling in matters well beyond her abilities; over the last year, she devolved into a completely aggravating nitwit.

Markos and his merry band of travelers was the most epic failure of a "villain" that show has ever seen. Literally so awful I've blocked it out. They had no purpose.

In season 2 of The Following, Joe Carroll was more cartoon-ish than scary. Joe manages to get himself captured for the second time by TV's most inept FBI agents after actually working with Ryan to save Claire. The twins were easily the more compelling villains of the season and with Mark still alive, hopefully season 3 focuses on him as the central bad guy and moves away from Joe.

"The Ghost Killer" on Bones! Talk about an anticlimactic story line. There was so much build up with Brennan's obsession of proving that the killer existed in the first place, especially since Pelant was the one who first told Brennan about the killer to begin with. It seemed as though "The Ghost Killer" would be more vicious than Pelant, but instead, the story fell flat. The team figured out that the killer was Stephanie McNamara after she had died. And then, on to the next thing.

Big Jim is on the town council and he will do whatever it takes to consolidate power because of "All he's done for this town." But seriously, has anyone ever been to a town council meeting or a local election forum? Anyone who cares that much about a job mediating between people's arguments over where to put a stop sign or what inches the grass should be on people's lawns, deserves a place among the lamest villains list.

International mercenary Sergei Mishnev is definitely supposed to be a Bad Guy. Apparently a close friend of Gibbs's old foe Ari Haswari, Mishnev chased Gibbs, McGee, and IT Kevin around the wilderness for nearly the entire premiere episode of NCIS Season 12, after having shot down their helicopter with a surface-to-air missile. Gibbs wanted to take him down so much that he tacked Mishnev's picture on the Most Wanted Wall in the following episode - and then NCIS promptly forgot about the character, and so did we.

Beauty and the Beast had no idea what to do with Gabe. First he was a beast, mistreated as a child who wanted to be cured, then he fell in love with Cat and was a romantic foil for VinCat and then his jealousy forced him to re-beast himself for a terribly depressing last run at villainry. They should have allowed him to ride off into the sunset as a decent guy rather than that last "showdown" against Cat and Vincent when he was dressed as a 50s James Dean type. Ugh!

I never thought I'd say this, but high expectation about Demon Dean, the actual execution was barely worthy of consideration. He should have been able to really dig into the meat of being a demon assisting the King of Hell for goodness sakes, but instead it was more about his humanity. Another great opportunity for Jensen Ackles to shine was wasted.

While it's great the show added a new original character, her campiness is often cringeworthy. It's tough to take Fish seriously (which may also be part of the show's tonal issues), but anytime she's on screen, I'm not all that excited to see what devious or villainous move she'll make. She should have, could have been a cool villain, but Fish is stuck over-enunciating and hamming it up like she's ready to take on Adam West's Batman.

The award for the most annoying and whiny villain goes to Zelena, the Wicked Witch of the West. For one, her motivation for villainry was pathetic - she was literally green with envy over everything and everyone. Secondly, she whined about everything. Lastly - honestly, if she said the word "wicked" one more time, I think we would all have collectively thrown our screens out the window.

I have to go with Kai from Vampire Diaries even though I do enjoy Chris Wood. While he was introduced as a ruthless killer, I find myself already bored with this witchy storyline. Haven't we already been here before with witches trying to get revenge? You'd think a show like the Vampire Diaries would have countless options to villains, but instead we get yet another witch who has a bone to pick with everyone. Please just end this misery!