Top 10 Tumultuous TV Couples
Top 10 Tumultuous TV Couples
In honor of the second season of Sundance Channel's Push Girls, we're bringing you our favorite dysfunctional television couples of all time. Of course, totally functional couples never make for great TV -- we're in it for the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the break-ups and the make-ups. So here are the best tumultuous TV couples: the friends, the lovers, the co-workers, the band-mates, and the we-don't-know-whats.
And if you enjoy watching passion and tumult, then maybe check out Push Girls -- the story of five smart, sexy, dynamic women, who want the world -- and who also just so happen to be in wheelchairs. They aren't going to let anything hold them back, including love -- just like the couples on this list.
Relationships unravel, love blossoms, demons emerge and careers take hold. Getting what you want out of life isn’t easy – especially in a wheelchair. Don’t miss the all new season of Push Girls, Mondays at 10pm.
10. Louie - Louie and Pamela
"Pamela, I'm in love with you." (She groans.) "Yeah, it's that bad."
Nothing ever goes right for Louie; but then, that's the point of the whole show. And Louie's desperate unrequited love for single-mom Pamela has never gone even close to right. From her horror at Louie's confessing his love, to Louie's missing out on his one shot at having sex with her, it's been a failed love affair based on a perennial misunderstanding... and a perennial secret affection.
Relationships unravel, love blossoms, demons emerge and careers take hold. Getting what you want out of life isn’t easy – especially in a wheelchair. Don’t miss the all new season of Push Girls, Mondays at 10pm.9. Battlestar Galactica - Lee and Starbuck
"There must be some kind of way out of here."
The star-crossed space lovers Lee and Starbuck were too passionate to settle down with one another. But we got some good fights out of the whole deal; including an actual physical brawl which took place in a boxing ring. And after Starbuck finished beating up Lee in the ring, she leaned over and said this: "I've missed you." You can't get much more sexy than that.
Relationships unravel, love blossoms, demons emerge and careers take hold. Getting what you want out of life isn’t easy – especially in a wheelchair. Don’t miss the all new season of Push Girls, Mondays at 10pm.8. Flight of the Conchords - Bret and Jermaine
"If it's cool with you, I'll let you get naked too/ It could be a dream come true; providing that's what you're into."
Bret and Jermaine had love affairs with many women who were drawn in by the seductive power of their... sort-of-okay music. But despite the presence of these female interlopers, the pair always stayed true to each other. Each girlfriend had to adapt to the power of the Bret-Jermaine relationship -- though sometimes, if they were lucky, they were invited to take part in a threesome, if they were "into it."
Relationships unravel, love blossoms, demons emerge and careers take hold. Getting what you want out of life isn’t easy – especially in a wheelchair. Don’t miss the all new season of Push Girls, Mondays at 10pm.7. Arrested Development - Buster and Lucille
"And I'm going to continue dating, Mom." "...It sounds a little bit like 'dating Mom.'" "...It's starting to feel a little like it."
Over-mothering can lead to strange tendencies, and in the case of Buster and Lucille, it led to... some very weird things indeed. Buster is the only person on our list (and maybe in sitcom history) who was secretly in love with his own mother, but that's just where the strangeness kicks off. Amidst his many attempts to prove himself as a man, and his on-agin off-again relationship with neighbor Lucille 2, Buster always falls back into Mother's vicious, suffocating, "withholding" arms.
Relationships unravel, love blossoms, demons emerge and careers take hold. Getting what you want out of life isn’t easy – especially in a wheelchair. Don’t miss the all new season of Push Girls, Mondays at 10pm.6. The Larry Sanders Show - Larry and Hank
"Hey now!"
Host Larry and sidekick Hank Kingsley had a love-hate relationship, but then, everyone else on The Larry Sanders Show had a love-hate relationship too (that's show business for you). Sycophantic Hank was always looking for a way to suck up to Larry, while also secretly dreaming of stealing his show away from him. But in the end, the pair's crushing insecurities always brought them crashing back together (because that's also show business for you).
Relationships unravel, love blossoms, demons emerge and careers take hold. Getting what you want out of life isn’t easy – especially in a wheelchair. Don’t miss the all new season of Push Girls, Mondays at 10pm.5. Lost - Kate and Jack
"We either live together, or die alone."
For six seasons, Jack and Kate struggled to have a relationship, forming a complex love triangle with fellow castaway Sawyer. Once they got off the island, the pair even got engaged to get married. But then -- they had to go back to the island, as Jack so memorably proclaimed -- and that was the end of their relationship, sort of, or maybe not, or was it really? You'll be excused for not following all the details - Lost can get a little complicated at points.
Relationships unravel, love blossoms, demons emerge and careers take hold. Getting what you want out of life isn’t easy – especially in a wheelchair. Don’t miss the all new season of Push Girls, Mondays at 10pm.4. Star Trek (Original Series) - Kirk, Spock, and McCoy
"To boldly go where no man has gone before."
Space... the final frontier -- of love. In the original Star Trek, we saw the unbreakable friendship of three very different men. Spock: representing emotionless logic. McCoy: representing passionate emotion. And Kirk: a mixture between the two. The men bickered constantly -- and were occasionally distracted by sultry space hussies -- but in the end, they always came back together. In the end, the final frontier was the platonic love affair of three different men... who needed each other to survive.
Relationships unravel, love blossoms, demons emerge and careers take hold. Getting what you want out of life isn’t easy – especially in a wheelchair. Don’t miss the all new season of Push Girls, Mondays at 10pm.3. Seinfeld - Jerry and Elaine
"I mean, really, what is the big deal? We go in there. (He points to the bedroom.) ...We're in there for a while. We come right back out here. It's not complicated."
One of the greatest non-love stories of our time, Jerry and Elaine made it through nine seasons without ever having anything close to a normal relationship. Ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend at the beginning of the show, they stayed ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend to the bitter end -- with a couple of doomed attempts at sexual intimacy. But Jerry and Elaine's bizarre, neurotic friendship was better than any romantic relationship that they could have ever had, at least, comedically speaking.
Relationships unravel, love blossoms, demons emerge and careers take hold. Getting what you want out of life isn’t easy – especially in a wheelchair. Don’t miss the all new season of Push Girls, Mondays at 10pm.2. Friends - Ross and Rachel
"You're not an idiot, Ross. You're a guy very much in love." "...Same difference."
Perhaps the most famous sitcom couple, the duo brought us many memorable ups and downs (and two famous 90s haircuts -- "the Rachel"… and Ross's Caesar-bowl-cut). The couple hooked up, took a very well-known "break", got drunk-married by mistake, and were as well-known for their breakups as for their time as a couple. But whether you were on Ross or Rachel's side after a breakup, one thing remained the same; we always wanted to see the pair reunite for another round of love, heartache and laughs.
Relationships unravel, love blossoms, demons emerge and careers take hold. Getting what you want out of life isn’t easy – especially in a wheelchair. Don’t miss the all new season of Push Girls, Mondays at 10pm.1. Cheers - Sam and Diane
"Are you as turned on as I am?" "...More!"
The jock and the intellectual. The Ying and the Yang. The ultimate dysfunctional couple. Sam and Diane split up, got back together, split up again, then returned for the series finale. And then... the show ended. Despite the pairs' reappearance on Fraiser, we'll never truly know what happened with the relationship. But that's the power of good writing -- and of great couples; even if we don't know, we want to imagine the pair of them together, having ever more dysfunctional adventures for our amusement.
Relationships unravel, love blossoms, demons emerge and careers take hold. Getting what you want out of life isn’t easy – especially in a wheelchair. Don’t miss the all new season of Push Girls, Mondays at 10pm.
