This spring, we've combined the best of March Madness and Sochi to create the Anti-Herolympics. View the bracket, read the pairings and VOTE for the most diabolical anti-hero of all time.
Girls' Hannah Horvath VS.It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Dennis Reynolds
Hannah Horvath
Hannah Horvath: love her or hate her, she’s helped to redefine the female anti-hero. As Hannah is thrust into the frightening world of self-sufficiency, she faces adulthood the way any self-respecting narcissist would – with a pity party of one and the bold declaration that she just may be the voice of her generation.
That’s a heavy cross to bear and Hannah makes sure everyone knows it. Yes, her friends have problems too, but they’re trivial and self-created, and Hannah has bigger concerns than being a good friend. Her life is hard, okay? Yours would be too if your parents cut you off.
Like any good anti-hero, Hannah puts herself first… in life and in death. When her editor dies, she worries more about the fate of her eBook than the deceased, and she even seeks career help from his grieving widow. Granted, Hannah is the same woman who once contemplated whether or not she wanted AIDS and who told off all her GQ coworkers for not having her sense of artisitc integrity, but her self-centeredness at a FUNERAL felt like a new low for a character defined by her insensitivity.
Yet Hannah is so bad that there’s a part of her we can’t help but adore. She unabashedly embraces the most awkward sexual encounters and she defends herself with snarky retorts that flawlessly turn her friends’ arguments in her own favor. The truth is that hidden behind her neurotic narcissism is a girl who kind of hates herself… and it’s hard to hate a character who’s secretly as hard on herself as we are.
Dennis Reynolds
What happens when you combine devilish good looks and raging narcissism? You get Dennis Reynolds, Philadelphia’s resident sociopath. There is no act too despicable if it serves this egomaniac’s interests – he’ll serve alcohol to minors, use pretend polio to pick up women, and seduce his best friends’ mothers to get revenge.
His moral code isn’t ambiguous; it’s nonexistent. He lures women into bed with “the implication” of danger and then secretly films and rates his conquests. But that’s not his worst dating behavior! He has devised an entire system to attract and then abandon any woman he desires. The aptly titled D.E.N.N.I.S. system involves deceit, death threats, and emotional neglect, leaving his lady friends madly in love and as discarded as Dee after her heart attack.
Dennis thinks his presence is a gift to the world, and anyone who challenges that finds themselves on the wrong side of a temper tantrum. But it’s this adolescent insecurity that renders us as sympathetic and as hopelessly devoted to Dennis as the rest of his conquests. He’s arguably the smartest member of the gang, and his antics are so damn amusing, we find ourselves rooting for some of the worst human behavior.
He once told a woman, “The only crime that’s being committed today is the crime of ugliness. And sadly, you can’t press charges for that.” And while we can’t press charges for his lack of tact, we can declare him the dumbest downtown anti-hero. Because even if we didn’t, he’d cheat his way to victory, Chardee MacDennis-style.
Final Winner: Dennis Reynolds
This was a tough call because these two have so much in common, but at the end of the day, Hannah’s more likely to end up on the losing end of the D.E.N.N.I.S. system than to devise one herself. And there’s also a pretty good chance that Dennis is a serial killer.