Can’t stand the characters he plays.

Whether it’s the pedophile high school teacher in The Devil’s Advocate or incompetent Deputy Andy in True Blood or the psychotic self-destructive asshole, Wild Bill, in Heels, he’s always playing pretty much the SAME wretched, pitiful loser. I understand that the scripts may call for that; but no script, no novel, no podcast should ever have a character who makes me lose enjoyment because he is in the narrative.

Think of Joffrey in Game of Thrones. Jack Gleeson made us HATE Joffrey—but we LOVED to hate him. Joffrey was evil incarnate, but he was not a pitiful, weak, impotent loser boy.

A cardinal rule in writing fiction: you can and should create a character who is supposed to be boring, but he can NEVER bore the audience. He may be evil, but he can never alienate the audience. Every character, even if it’s Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, MUST favorably engage the audience, not make them want to vomit.

As an actor, Bauer induces projectile vomiting.