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Everyone loves a femme fatale. And Marc Hirsh of MSNBC has put together a mostly-random list of “Our favorite TV bad girls,” though you have to give him credit for not giving it some kind of superlative title like “BEST EVER.”

While classic villianesses like Amanda of Melrose Place are present, some of the ladies he’s honored with the distinction seem a little out of place.

Cordelia Chase, for one, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. While Cordelia is certainly not a sympathetic character, or even necessarily a bearable one, she’s far from evil. Hirsh writes:

Mean Girls don’t get any meaner than Cordelia, who ruled Sunnydale High School with a mouthful of blinding teeth and a head full of withering put-downs. (Not for nothing did the license plate on her bitch-red car read “Queen C.”)

Until now, I wasn’t aware that “bitch-red” was even a color. In any case, while the writer does admit that Cordelia takes a turn for the better (especially in the spin-off, Angel) he fails to acknowledge the fact that she’s essentially harmless. Snarky, sure, but sticks and stones are much more important in Buffyverse, where sarcasm rules the day. Especially as the show took a darker turn in later seasons, Cordelia started to look like Captain Kangaroo. And in any case, I think we all know that Buffy’s ultimate Bad Girl is Faith. She has all of Cordelia’s bitchy qualities, plus a complete disdain for authority that ultimately leads her to serve a demon AND commit murder. Some Slayer.

Another dubious choice is found at the bottom of the list, which features a rare glamour shot of Aida Turturro as Janice Soprano. To call any Sopranos character “bad” is difficult, since they are all so meticulously multi-layered, but Janice hardly qualifies. Both selfish and ruthless, she is nonetheless no worse than her brother, or even, occasionally, his wife. While vindictive and manipulative, she is only a pale imitation of the queen bee: Livia Soprano. Her magnum opus of taking out a hit on her own son is impossible to top.

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