15 TV Characters Who Are A Hot Mess (But We Love Them)

There is always a television character that is such a hot mess you can’t help but love them for it. You question their decisions, yet you can’t turn away from the train wreck that is their life. In fact, if you could experience it first hand you would probably jump at that chance. It’s always nice to see someone on television whose life is worse than yours – It let’s you feel that you aren’t the only one who has made those same mistakes or regretted getting involved with someone who completely screwed you over. The truly great thing about watching other people be a hot mess is that, secretly, you love that they are so unafraid (even if sometimes it’s because they are oblivious to what a mess they are). Here are 15 of those messy characters.

15. Karl Hevacheck – Workaholics

Karl is the guy who is your friend, but you never want to admit that to your parents. He is the neighborhood drug dealer and everyone knows it. Karl is a crappy friend and has the worst weed, just ask Anders. That being said, we can’t be too mad at him. He has a heart of gold and his ideas don’t always backfire, only about 90 percent of the time. Karl will tell you himself that he is a mess and that he doesn’t seem to know how to rectify all the poor decisions he has made in his life. Then again, he also doesn’t seem to care much that he’s in his 20s and his full-time job is being a weed dealer.

14. Abbi Abrams – Broad City

Abbi is a hot mess in the sense that she just doesn’t seem to have her entire life together. She is educated, kind of smart, and manages to hold down a basic job that pays her rent. Now, here’s the problem: she has no real interest in her job which is working at a fitness center; and she wants to be an artist, but from what we’ve seen so far, she is not that great. To top it off, she spends way too much of her time obsessing over her neighbor across the hall. However, we will admit that some of Abbi’s messy behavior is the trickle-downed effect of having a best friend like Ilana (who also happens to be on this list). So, we can’t be too hard on her.

13. The Clones – Orphan Black

If you watch Orphan Black you know that this show is about a woman who has been cloned, only god knows how many times. Unfortunately, almost all these clones have some kind of craziness going on. They all seem to be dealing with their own separate personal issues in addition to the mess that they are all entangled in. Yet, we can’t help but love their story. We are obsessed with their drama and their little missions to find out why someone would do this to them. Of course, we absolutely love that they each seem to have a skill that the others lack. The only clone we can’t fully co-sign on is Helena. Yeah, we feel sorry for her but we are also low key scared of her.

12. Dwight Schrute – The Office

He is insecure, eccentric and knowledgeable about the most trivial things ever. Dwight Schrute is one of the most ridiculously lovable characters on TV in the last 20 years. We laugh at his odd behavior, we root for his and Angela’s awkward relationship, and we feel his pain when he experiences personal lows. Like Michael, Dwight is not everyone’s cup of tea. In fact, according to his co-workers at Dunder-Mifflin, he is no one’s favorite person. However, there is one great thing about his erratic behavior: he always keeps a knife in his sock for those less than safe times at work.

11. Saul Goodman – Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul

Saul Goodman is a lazy, money hungry, con artist, a-hole, and coward… plus he is a shoddy lawyer. I mean we can go on and on about his questionable character really; he is all about himself all the time. However, we shouldn’t judge him too harshly, he is only being upfront where most others would hide. However, more often than not, it comes back to bite him in the butt. He can never seem to get anything right and yet we still find ourselves rooting for him. We even go as far as putting him in the underdog category. Truthfully, the bad things that happen to him are really his own fault and usually because of his selfish intentions.

10. Jenny Schecter – The L Word

As much as we all love Jenny we can all also admit that she is cray cray. She treats everyone like garbage then has the audacity to write a best-selling book (later turned into a movie) about her friend’s lives. Not to mention the fact that she manipulated the hell out of many of those “friends”. Not going to lie, we still love her and constantly root for her to get ahead. Despite the fact that her shady behavior ended up being the reason for her demise, we would still stick around if she had her own spin-off. Her drama is delicious and she herself always embraced her hot mess life. We certainly can’t hate on her. In fact, we kind of want to be her.

9. Abed Nadir – Community

Abed lacks some social skills: he doesn’t know anything about taking social cues and always speaks his mind even if it is bound to make someone cry. He is a mess when it comes to socialization, but we are thankful that he has found a group of friends who get that. On the other hand we have to be honest; not sure how long we would be able to remain friends with someone whose unfiltered opinions eventually make us cry. He is someone who has crazy ideas and the imagination of a 10-year-old (hence the fort/sleepover situation). At the end of the day Abed, in a weird way, keeps the group grounded.

8. Jughead Jones – Riverdale

Jughead in the show Riverdale is a far cry from the Jughead in the comic books. He is dark, mysterious and doesn’t consume burgers like a vacuum. His character is kind of messy physically and mentally. His dad is an alcoholic, his mom and sister have taken off, he is homeless, and his writing is very dark (he is obsessed with death). How can you not swoon over Jughead’s bad boy lifestyle and brooding demeanor? The fact that he has no home does not phase the majority of us including Betty who seems to be quite into Jughead, whether she wants to admit it or not.

7. Jess Day – New Girl

Jess is a girl with three male roommates who can’t seem to get her life together. One would think that she would be the responsible one in this setup, but that is clearly wrong. Jess constantly needs a shoulder to cry on or someone to complain to. And of course, we allow it because we just can’t get over how darn cute she is. We acknowledge that her life is a mess, but for some reason we just want to pick her up and put her in our pocket. Better yet, we want to watch her life unfold and then cheer her on while she pieces it back together. Is that insane?

6. Louis Litt – Suits

Louis is a social pariah who alienates just about everyone around him at work and in his personal life. We still find ourselves obsessed with knowing what he is doing and watching his questionable lawyer tactics. Even though he is manipulative and basically lacks a soul, we still feel bad for him when Harvey leaves him out of an office outing or steals the joy of a big win right out from under him. Louis is a mess simply because he has yet to grasp why so many people hate him or why the interns don’t want to be around him. He is oblivious to the type of person he truly is.

5. Ilana Wexler – Broad City

Ilana is the epitome of a hot mess: she has no idea how to act in public, she is horrible at every job she does, and her attire always seems to be inappropriate no matter the function. Yet, we seem to want to be her; we want to exude that much confidence and not care what anyone thinks as long as we are happy. Ilana is our spirit animal and we appreciate that her mom is just as kooky and messy. We love knowing that she gets it from her Momma. When paired up with bestie Abbi, the two bounce ridiculous thoughts off one another and go along with any crazy scheme that seems doable – #squadgoals.

4. Tate Langdon – AHS: Murder House

We sure can’t blame Tate for his crazy antics; take one good look at his mother. It sort of explains why he thought it was a brilliant idea to shoot up his school and then turn the gun on himself. He is as evil as they come and we are absolutely obsessed with his good looks and ironically enough, his good heart. Look how well he treats Violet. As crazy as he is, she fell for him so we kind of feel justified in our allegiance to him.  The fact that he still knows how to love despite his difficult past, makes us think “he can’t be that messed up, right”? Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking on our part.

3. Max Blum – Happy Endings

Max is lazy. All his friends know it. He knows it and he in no way feels bad about it. It’s always awesome when someone owns their lack of ambition and Max is king at doing that. We admit that we love how lazy he is. We love that his friends seem concerned but somewhat support whatever he does. After all, he is funny and is usually the best person to go to when they are feeling down. We can’t deny that Max’s messy lifestyle is getting him nowhere fast, but we also can’t deny that he is insanely entertaining, so we won’t knock his hustle.

2. Nancy Botwin – Weeds

Who doesn’t want Nancy as a mom? She is willing to do literally anything to make sure her family is okay. Plus, she raised three boys with no father and at least one turned out amazing so far. She has the easiest job in the world, selling marijuana. Even though it gets her into a few sticky situations, she comes out of them alive – even getting shot in the head didn’t keep her down. Okay, she’s a bit messy: she has a crazy baby father, she’s done serious jail time, and she’s a little bit psycho. She also probably loves sex a little too much, but who can blame her?

1. Charlie Kelly – It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia

Charlie can barely read, he is confused about who his father is, he gets along better with rats than humans and sometimes surprises the crap out of his friends with his musical ability. He is clearly a mess and it doesn’t help that his friends treat him like a bonehead (although we can’t blame them). Charlie lacks proper decision-making skills and because of this, he finds himself in horrible situations time and time again. But, we can’t help but want to have him as our friend, if only so we can be a fly on the wall watching his life destruct. He sure would be an entertaining person to have around.

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