Today, I want to know what you think is the best villain team-up on a live action TV series.
Pop Culture Theme Time is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.
One of the classic tropes in comic books is the idea of supervillains teaming up with each other. That happens a lot on cartoons, as well, but it is LESS common in the world of live action television, so I thought it’d be interesting to find the best examples of it in the world of live action TV.
The only requirement is that the villains have to be introduced separately. In other words, if they’re introduced working together, then they’re not a team-up, that’s just a villain duo. For it to count as a villain TEAM-UP, they have to both be independent villains before teaming up with each other.
With that in mind, my pick is Mayor Wilkins (Harry Groener) and Faith (Eliza Dushku) in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3. Their fascinating twisted father/daughter routine was FASCINATING. It made them both much more interesting.
Okay, that’s my pick. How about you?
And feel free to suggest future Pop Culture Theme Time topics to me at my new, much shorter e-mail, brian@poprefs.com!
I think you’ve got the proper answer here. The mayor was certainly charming, and it was easy to see how he was able to get re-elected so many times, but his twisted father/daughter relationship with Faith kept him grounded. It also led to the excellent season four episode “Who Are You?” that helped start Faith on the road to redemption.
my first thoughts were of the two 3-part Batman stories of which I prefer “Penguins are a girl’s best friend” (though “The Zodiac crimes” was a more even team-up).
But, then again, I have a fondness for the Knight Rider story “Goliath Returns” in which Adrianne (who has changed her last name since her previous appearance but is still stated to be the same person) uses her resources to rebuild Goliath and break Garthe Knight out of prison so they can work together.
However, I think I will choose Highlander “Unholy Alliance” a 2-parter in which Xavier StCloud (one of the few bad guy immortals to survive their first appearance) teams up with Horton and his hunters