The 25 Worst Reality TV Stars of 2012

Reality shows rely on stars who must possess the following qualities: quirky in some strange way, easily riled up, and not afraid ruffle feathers when it comes to interacting with their fellow cast members.

Luckily, these are also the qualities of most fame-whores, so it works out well for casting directors looking for the guys that are going to get them ratings. Whereas it's a bigger stretch to find well-adjusted, likable people on reality television, finding the annoying and awful ones that everyone loves to hate—and some everyone just flat out hates—is easy because, really, it's what the genre is all about. No one likes to watch these kinds of trashy shows for the quality—they watch them for the mindless entertainment factor. It's purely a method of escape, and a good one at that.

2012 was no different. Reality shows that aired this year featured all sorts of batshit crazy people, from angry mob wives to drunken Welsh people to a teenage bride who thinks she's Erin Brokovich. It sounds crazy, we know, but that's reality television—the crazier, the better. In honor of the year's end, we sifted through the insanity and ranked The 25 Worst Reality TV Stars of 2012.

Unlike how it is with reality television's "good" people, if the world ends next week and our generation is defined by these guys, we're screwed.

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Written by Tanya Ghahremani (@tanyaghahremani)

Julia Allison was hated on the Internet years before her show, Miss Advised, premiered on the Bravo network. So one would think that, perhaps with all the time gone by, maybe she’d have gotten a little more bearable and could be mildly enjoyable to watch. Bravo must have seen something in her, right?

Turns out, expecting that is making the rookie mistake of putting too much faith in the network that’s famous for its countless Real Housewives shows. Allison is an insufferable television personality, and she makes it even worse by trying, so obviously, to be some sort of “real-life Carrie Bradshaw” in both her personal and professional lives. Unfortunately, it looks like no one told her that when women try to become Carrie Bradshaw-like, they become the most annoying people on the planet.

Case-in-point: In Miss Advised's pilot episode, Julia goes out on a date with a guy she met online. There’s not much chemistry and she realizes that from the get-go, which is fine, but then she fails to actually tell him. Instead, she asks him if he will help her move boxes the next day, because she just moved to Los Angeles and is too cheap to hire help. He does, and then when he enquires about a second date, Julia doesn’t really respond until later, when she calls him to “break-up” even though they’ve only been on one date.

These are Taylor Swift levels of dating crazy. It’s not a good look on anyone, especially someone like Julia who, at 31, is absolutely old enough to know better.

Teresa Giudice gained notoriety during the first season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey when she literally flipped a dinner table over in a rage, an action that made her the perfect new character to hate-watch every week on television. Unfortunately for her, though, the obsession was short-lived. It’s apparent, in recent seasons more than ever, that Teresa is the type of reality show fame-whore who has no problem using her kids and/or her family problems in an attempt to gain viewers’ sympathy.

Take her long-running feud with sister-in-law Melissa Gorga. A big factor in the fight is that Teresa accused Melissa of being a stripper, when in reality Melissa was just a bartender at a gentleman’s club for a week. Even if the claim had been true, it was low of Teresa to announce it to all of their friends and the entire country on cable television. Exploiting family issues for personal gain is never cool, and a surefire way for the audience to get sick of seeing you and your face on every tabloid cover for months on end.

Drama is what Mob Wives thrives on, but the two-season-long feud between Karen and Drita went stale long before it was finally resolved this year. While we’ll admit it was good TV both times they came to physical blows, there’s only so much of watching the two of them complain about how much they hate the other on camera before the urge to change the channel to another rerun of Keeping Up With the Kardashians comes into the picture.

Both Karen and Drita had recently done things they should have been sorry for (namely, trying to kill each other in their fight), but the majority of the issues they were sparring over were decades old, kept alive by grudges that were never truly let go. Both of them could have decided to chill out long before they actually did. It would have saved a lot of hours that could have been put towards giving Big Ang more screen time.

We would have included Ramona in the previous slide about her Mob Wives co-stars Karen and Drita, but after some deliberation, she's too special (read: annoying) to share a spot with anyone else.

Ramona is a new cast member who's introduced as the granddaughter of mobster Benjamin “Lefty Guns” Ruggiero, as well as the childhood friend of Karen, whom she’s so close to that they refer to each other as cousins. Her first episode on the show, in true Mob Wives fashion, is explosive: She gets in the middle of a discussion between Karen and Drita at a party, which causes all hell to break loose. One of the craziest fights of the series goes down, and so begins the season-long animosity between Karen and Drita.

Ramona’s interference in the fight is really indicative of her personality—she gets involved in things that she shouldn’t be involved in (like private conversations between two people) all under the guise that she’s “standing up” for the people she loves. So much of this season's unnecessary drama can be traced back to her. And while she may think she’s doing what she needs to do to stick up for her friends, we think she’s in need of some legit anger management sessions before she goes pulling anyone’s extensions out of their scalp.

Colton Cumbie was, undoubtedly, one of the worst Survivor cast members to ever grace the airwaves. The 22-year-old Alabama native came onto the show strongly. From the get-go, he made it clear that he was a raging Republican and a raging racist, which is made even more fucked up when you find out that he’s gay. Which means he should be able to empathize with minorities for the struggles they face when it comes to acceptance and equality.

Instead of that, though, he votes out one of his fellow contestants for, it seems, the sole reason that he’s black. Colton describes the man as “ghetto trash," before adding that he doesn’t like the guy because “he’s obnoxious, he’s loud." Adding, "He’s a struggling stand-up comic. Like, get a real job.”

We should point out that Colton himself was unemployed at the time, and bragging about it on the show. Additionally, when accused of being racist, his reply is basically that he has lots of African-American people in his life, like “my housekeeper—she’s like a member of our family.”

What an asshole.

Simply put, Abby Lee Miller is unpleasant to watch. It’s hard to argue that she doesn’t do a good job teaching the kids in her studio how to dance on Dance Moms. She definitely knows what she’s doing there, so you gotta give her props for that. But surely she doesn’t have to be so terrifying when she teaches, right?

It's a problem when you become more known for being the one who yells than for your talent or good qualities. And, let’s be honest here, with all that yelling she does, Miller constantly looks like she would eat you if you got on her bad side. Good reality television doesn't include inducing fear in viewers.

Krista Stodden appeared in an episode of Couple’s Therapy alongside her daughter Courtney and her son-in-law Doug Hutchison, but it was enough to make it very clear that Krista is a stage mom on steroids x1000—she's the stage mom that Toddlers and Tiaras stage moms are afraid of. During her short appearance on the series, Krista sits in on a therapy session with Courtney and Doug, and talks about, basically, her role in Courtney’s life as manager and mother.

The conversation turns towards Courtney’s provocative image, and Krista admits that she’d love for Courtney to pose naked in Playboy because a lot of “gorgeous, respectable women” have. Having your mother talk about how she wants you to be photographed nude for a men’s magazine? This is the type of family dynamic that’s too messed up for even reality television, and that’s saying a lot.

Also, keep in mind that Krista signed off on her then-16-year-old daughter’s wishes to marry a man who's 35 years her senior. She makes Dina Lohan look like mother of the year.

Donald Trump has never been known for being a likeable, nice guy in business or on television, and his behavior this year really did nothing for his public image.

The way he conducted himself on Celebrity Apprentice was fine—same shit, different season. But off-screen is where he really stood out. It’s no secret that Trump is a Republican—he was one of those birther guys calling for President Obama to release his birth certificate—but during this years nail-biter of a presidential election between President Obama and Governor Mitt Romney, Trump really turned up the stupidity on his Twitter feed. With tweets ranging between everything from attacking Obama and his policies to musing that he may for president himself, one had to wonder if he was doing all right because he was starting to sound real crazy.

Here’s the best part, though: Reportedly, his kids grew so worried about his public image that they staged a sort of mock intervention in his office last month and told him to stop criticizing President Obama because it was hurting his career. And when these guys are telling you to be less of an asshole, you know you’ve got a problem.

When the star of a show—as well as the show itself—is more known for getting into a bar fight with a guy in a bar after directing derogatory and homophobic language towards him, it’s safe to say that the show is doomed. Unfortunately, this was exactly the case for Bristol Palin’s short-lived reality series Life’s a Tripp, which followed the young mother and she and her son settled back in Alaska after living in California.

The bar fight and the fact that she’s Sarah Palin’s offspring aren’t the only offenses against this show, though. There's also an episode where Tripp, who's only four, uses a gay slur word that’s greeted with a response of hyena-like laughter from Bristol and her friend.

It’s bad, yes, but you can’t really blame the kid—he’s a toddler who doesn’t know any better. Besides, his sole parental example is out starting bar fights and throwing around those same slurs. The other mothers on this list should watch out—if Bristol keeps pulling shit like this, she’s going to give them a run for their money in the worst mothers ever awards. How that scene even made it onto the air is beyond us.

Jenelle Evans has made a lot of questionable decisions during her time as a reality television star, mainly related to drug use and her inability to be a fit parent for her child, but her actions in a recent episode of Teen Mom 2 really just put a cherry on the misguided cake. See, Jenelle is facing prison for drug charges. She's given the choice between a 16-day stint in jail or a year-long probation with frequent drug tests. Her lawyer proposes both options to her, and she’s ready to go with the former.

That is, until she realizes that the court dates conflict with a Ke$ha concert that she has tickets to, and she totally can’t miss that because she’s already spent money on clothes, hotels, and feather extensions for her hair in preparation. Also, Ke$ha is her “idol” who she watches on YouTube “30 times a day,” instead of, you know, taking care of her child. Youth really is wasted on the young.

This just goes to show that no matter what country Big Brother airs in, it's always going to attract the most annoying weirdos. This year on Big Brother Australia, cast member Estelle filled that role in the house. Though she seems to have good morals and claims to dislike anyone that’s “cruel to animals, racist, sexist or homophobic,” she managed to cancel all that out by doing stupid shit such as galloping—like a horse!—around the pool and talking to herself for no apparent reason.

As if that's not enough to affirm her weirdness, she also had a toy stick horse that she would carry around, which cast member Zoe broke in half. Because, as Zoe sees it, Estelle is a 24-year-old woman and shouldn’t be acting this way if she ever wants to function in normal society. Estelle, heartbroken over this, put a splint on it and bandage it up. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do the same to the time we lost watching her be so ridiculous and immature.

Nadia G. is one of those television hosts who is so damn perky that the mute button on your remote isn’t enough to stifle the degrees of annoyance. Her Cooking Channel series, Bitchin’ Kitchen (described as a “comedy cooking show") was picked up after producers saw her same-named web series that she launched in 2010.

That’s the thing—Nadia’s personality, as well as her obnoxiously colorful kitchen that’s decorated with things like naked baby dolls, is more fitting for a comedy web series that can be viewed in small doses. On television, where episodes are more than ten minutes long, her personality comes off as mostly grating rather than endearingly outrageous. Furthermore, the whole punk-rock Julia Child image she’s trying to emulate becomes more like an extra insufferable Rachael Ray, if Ray bleached her hair and raided Sephora’s Urban Decay aisle.

Whereas Britney Spears on The X-Factor has a certain likability despite her weaknesses in judging, Christina Aguilera on The Voice often times just comes off as an unlikeable, uppity bitch.

It’s no secret that Aguilera revels in acting like a “diva,” and that’s fine if she could maintain the title. Unfortunately, she lost the most recent season of The Voice due to bad decisions on her part when it came to assembling her team, and her most recent album, this year’s Lotus, sold the least amount of copies its first week than any of her records ever.

That, in addition to rumors of behind the scenes drama, doesn’t work in the former pop princess’s favor.

Chad Johnson was a likeable enough guy during his appearances on Basketball Wives while he was dating star Evelyn Lozada, but it’s what happened off camera shortly after they got married that earned him a spot on this list.

About a month after their July wedding, Johnson was arrested for allegedly head-butting Lozada during an argument, one that was reportedly sparked by a receipt she found for a box of condoms. He was arrested, and she promptly filed for divorce a few days later, saying that their union had been “irretrievably broken.” For a good month, he pleaded for forgiveness, and even got Evelyn’s face tattooed on him in efforts to win her back, but the damage had been done, physically and emotionally. The divorce was officially finalized in September.

While it’s good that Chad was apologetic for his actions, domestic abuse is still serious and should never be swept under the rug.

Golsena Gharachedaghi is an annoying human being. For one, she thinks she’s the Persian Kim Kardashian, and, as we’ve said before, anyone who compares themselves to Kim Kardashian in any form is an asshole. Additionally, in her first scene during the Shahs of Sunset pilot episode, GG talks a lot of game about being able to shoot a gun at a shooting range, but when it comes to actually doing it, she’s hardly able to manage pulling the trigger in her six-inch stilettos that cost more than most people’s rent.

That’s the thing about GG: She’s a lot of talk. She fashions herself as this refined, society darling who’s unemployed, supported financially by her father, hates bugs and “ugly people,” and never wears the same outfit twice because what is she, a farmer?

When it comes down to it, she’s not the special, golden snowflake she thinks she is—for instance, in a party scene she claims that she can tell the difference between cheap champagne and the expensive stuff by taste, right failing a taste test in front of everyone. Cue eye-rolls. Even Reza’s mustache is more bearable.

There’s no question that Reza is the breakout star of Shahs of Sunset, but does that mean he and his mustache are any less annoying? Of course not. He’s just one of those reality stars that everyone loves to hate.

It really wouldn’t be so bad if the dude wasn’t so judgmental all the time. If you’re a random person on the street, or even a dear friend that he’s known for years, you can be sure that Reza and his '70s porn star mustache will judge you to the San Fernando Valley and back if you don’t meet his “standards.” Standards which, for the life of us, we can’t even keep straight. Rich, good-looking, well-groomed, sure, but everything else keeps changing. Homeboy just needs to chill.

Watching Married to Jonas really makes you wonder why anyone would ever actually want to be married to Kevin Jonas. No one expects the show to be quality viewing (after all, it is on E!), but unfortunately it’s so bad that it’s nearly unwatchable by reality television standards. And we as Americans watch a lot of shit.

The show follows Kevin Jonas, his wife Danielle Deleasa, and their respective in-laws. Viewers are supposed to find themselves endeared to Kevin and Danielle as they juggle their marriage, careers, and pleasing the demands of their families. It's too bad that the show manages to do the exact opposite in its 20-minute (plus commercial breaks) intervals.

The worst, hands down, is Kevin. We’re not sure why producers thought that presenting Kevin as a whiny dude who’s constantly talking about how he feels he can’t sing as well as his brothers would make any of us like him, but that was the course of action they chose to take in the editing room.

Example: One specific scene shows Danielle just getting home, exhausted from a particularly busy day, when Kevin arrives and wants to talk. Danielle listens to his problems—once again, to do with his insecurities about his ability to sing—before nicely asking if they can talk about it later because she’s tired and needs to rest. Kevin is hurt by this for some reason, and he proceeds to follow her around the kitchen, through the hallway, and up the stairs towards their bedroom asking her why she never listens to him and that he really needs her help.

No one likes a whiny bitch, especially when they’re a moderately famous singer with more money in the bank than any of us will ever earn per year in our lifetimes. No sympathy here, bro.

A lot of The Situation’s behavior during Jersey Shore's past two seasons could most likely be attributed to the alcoholism and pill addiction he finally acknowledged earlier this year. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that he acted batshit insane during the show's fifth season. He’s never been a particularly likeable character, and he was generally more known by the public for taking his shirt off and saying things like “We got a Situation!” than actually doing anything. In the fifth season, though, he really managed to stand out.

Unfortunately, it was for all the wrong reasons. Mainly, he became obsessed with ruining the happiness Snooki had found with her new, serious boyfriend Jionni, and kept threatening that he would tell Jionni about some alleged tryst they’d had at a party around the time that the two had begun dating. Snooki denied that any hook-up had ever happened, but Mike wouldn't let up. Every episode, there was just another threat to expose her lies that he never followed through on.

When he wasn’t threatening Snooks, Mike was busy whining about how no one in the house liked him (gee, we wonder why) and how he was the villain because “someone has to be.” In a way, it was almost fascinating to watch, albeit sad. That's when it truly became apparent that Jersey Shore had finally driven him crazy. Luckily, Mike entered rehab shortly after, and has now been sober for nearly a year.

One day, there will be an E! True Hollywood story about all of this.

There are a lot of bad things said about Kris Jenner and her parenting skills—for example, she clearly chooses Kim as her favorite child. If one were to restrict the reasons for why she was annoying this year, it actually has more to do with her marriage to Bruce Jenner.

Keeping Up With the Kardashians has never been known for its organic storylines, but the drama between Kris and Bruce this season reached a new level of bad. Basically, Bruce is clearly getting to the point in his life where he recognizes how ridiculous each and every one of the Kardashians really are, but unlike Scott Disick who seems to take it in stride and judge them loudly and as often as possible, Bruce self-medicates by staying away from everyone as much as he can on the golf course.

During one of these times, he runs into his “old friend,” model Angie Everhart, and the two begin to golf together. Kris hears, and decides to go “discreetly” spy on him (along with Kim and the whole E! camera crew) because she doesn’t know what the word “discreetly” means. After she sees them getting all cozy on the course, she figures the best course of action is to meet up with her ex-boyfriend for “closure,” and considers letting Bruce out of his contract divorcing Bruce. Said meeting doesn’t go as planned, though. Her ex-boyfriend is a gigantic asshole, and Kris has the epiphany that her marriage to Bruce is awesome after all. Problem solved!

Or not. Clearly, the producers and Kris learned nothing from the fake wedding between Kim and Kris Humphries, because this whole plot was so contrived that it was painful to watch. But hey, maybe we’re wrong—perhaps the momentary breakdown of Kris and Bruce’s marriage was real. Maybe it all started when he killed her swan. We’ll never know.

We’re hard-pressed to find a more abusive, destructive couple than Amber and Gary on reality television, which is saying something considering the genre is built upon destruction and stupidity. Their tumultuous relationship has been documented in Teen Mom for years now, some episodes even featuring fights of the physical variety, in the presence of their young daughter, Leah.

Domestic abuse is a serious issue, and airing it on television for ratings is a disgusting act in and of itself. The fact that their daughter has been present for many of their altercations makes it even worse. On top of that, Amber is a mess: She's currently serving a five-year prison sentences for drug charges from last December.

We’re not going to lie—the first episode of Breaking Amish was that sort of trash television TLC specializes in that you can’t help but love. It knowingly exploited the innocence of a group of young Amish people who had never so much as been on a plane, yes, but there was something wildly entertaining about watching someone marvel at something like a clock radio because they hadn’t ever had one before. Unfortunately, TLC messed up majorly with this one, because soon after the show premiered, reports began coming out that no one on the show was actually who they said they were.

Rebecca and Abe, who supposedly met for the first time in the pilot episode, had actually been dating for years and have a child together. Kate, who wanted to pursue modeling, had actually left her Amish community years ago and is on the outs with her family after she got a DUI. Jeremiah, who claimed it was his first time leaving his family’s farm, actually left when he was 18, and at the time of the show he was in his thirties.

Most people who watch reality television don’t expect much of what happens to actually be real, but the fact that everyone basically lied about their entire lives on the show doesn’t make it worth watching anymore.

If you’ve never seen an episode of The Valleys (MTV UK’s newest attempt to recreate the success of Jersey Shore), do yourself a favor and blacklist it from your mind right now. It’s impossible to watch this show without losing a massive amount of brain cells, and you can’t argue with science.

The Valleys tweaks the Jersey Shore premise with a group of twenty-somethings from the valleys in Wales and moves them to the capital, Cardiff, to set them loose. While this concept generally works for the type of trash television that The Valleys is trying to be, it’s completely ruined by the fact that the cast is so damn insufferable. It's actually disheartening to realize that you can’t punch each and every one of them.

There’s Jenna, who thinks she’s the Welsh Kim Kardashian. There’s Lateysha, who thinks she’s the “Beyoncé of the house,” and that fellow cast member aspiring rapper Leeroy is her “Jay-Z.” Which is untrue, however, because Beyoncé has more class in her pinkie than Lateysha has her in entire body. Plus Leeroy is a shitty rapper. And there’s also Carley, who probably has a serious drinking problem because she spends most of her time walking around with a bottle of Rosé in her hand. Lastly, don't forget about Nicole, the one who drunkenly peed on her roommates in the shower.

These kids make the cast of their Jersey counterpart series look refined. That should never happen.

Courtney Stodden was annoying long before she began her stint on reality television. She became famous at 16 when she married the dude who played that creepy mutant serial killer Tooms on The X-Files, Doug Hutchison—who, at the time, was 51 years old. They did tons of interviews shortly after the union was made public, most of which consisted of Stodden making really weird facial expressions while staring at Doug, but, other than the occasional picture of Stodden prancing around LA in ridiculous outfits and stripper heels with her pink dog, for the good chunk of 2012 they were fairly quiet.

Until Couple’s Therapy. Both Doug and Courtney joined the cast for the VH1 show's second season citing marital problems attributed to Courtney’s provocative sense of style. Almost immediately after entering the house, Courtney began whining that everyone was judging her for dressing the way she does, and that she’s not going to change because this is her expressing herself and she’s astrong independent woman. No, she fashions herself as the modern-day Erin Brokovich—if Erin Brokovich had been all about wearing just enough fabric to cover her nipples and crotch instead of protesting against the chromium levels in a southern California town’s drinking water.

In a later episode, she and Doug were briefly kicked out of the house for not adhering to a dress code, like wearing shorts long enough to cover her ass cheeks. In her eyes, though, she’s not “a librarian,” and that’s just the system trying to, you know, hold her down.

Couples Therapy continually reaffirmed how creepy the Stodden/Hutchison union really is. In one session, she admits to sometimes accidentally calling him “daddy,” and he jokes that he’s “raising his wife” with a chuckle that signifies he’s joking, but not really at all. There’s also a scene where they’re walking into the house and Hutchison asks her if she needs to use the bathroom, like a parent would to a young child before a road trip.

There aren’t enough synonyms of the word “creepy” to describe these two. It really just attests to the obvious fact that she’s too young to be married, so it makes you feel bad as a viewer who's watching this show and finding it hilarious. Is she still too young to know any better if she’s been able to make a decision as serious as marriage?

OK, we can understand the nation’s obsession with seven-year-old pageant queen Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson. She’s endearing, in a weird, fascinating way—she’s still irritating, of course, but it’s entertaining because she doesn’t know any better. Being a kid gives her a free pass.

While Honey Boo Boo is too young to know any better, her mother, June Shannon, isn’t. The matriarch of the Shannon-Thompson clan, June is obnoxious and seems to have no semblance of manners or hygiene when it comes to how she presents herself on television.

The whole point of their series is to showcase a family so simple and close that they don’t care about refined behavior, like, say, conducting themselves with a little grace. But there was a plot line in an episode that literally just surrounded a bit of “crust” on June’s neck. No one could figure out what it was until the end of the episode, and it turns out that it was just dirt. She didn’t wash her neck correctly, and dirt crusted on there.

…and now she’s richer than all of us. Life really is a bitch.

Gallery Girls was so awful that you have to wonder what Bravo was smoking when they picked the show up, just so you know to never try it yourself.

Unlike most shows where the protagonists are terrible, love-to-hate-them people, the girls on this show were so beyond unlikeable that it was enraging. Take a group of New York women who all seem to fit a different stereotype of pretentious city girls, have them talk about their #firstworldproblems a lot, add in a weird and pointless Manhattan vs. Brooklyn rivalry that doesn’t exist in the real world unless you live outside of the five boroughs and/or have seen tons of Gossip Girl episodes. There, you've got Gallery Girls.

See? Enraging, right? The only remedy was to change the channel, which people did, because the series was thankfully canceled at the conclusion of its first season. Note to Bravo: We do not need another reality series about entitled rich people unless it includes them stabbing each other with their $600 stilettos while double-fisting flutes of Dom. We'd totally watch that.