Terrible TV roommates

There are many weird and wonderful characters on TV, many of whom are fascinating to explore in their complexity. However, as entertaining as they are, some of them would make terrible living companions.

Sheldon Cooper (The Big Bang Theory)

Sheldon is the epitome of the nightmare roommate. While his hygiene sense and emergency preparedness are commendable, there isn’t much else to redeem him. He would wake you up at strange hours of the night with no consideration for nine a.m. lectures; he would judge you based on your course, then be informing you thusly every time you were forced to pull an all-nighter; and you would never be able to eat in peace without wondering if he snuck ground-up moths in your food.

Forget trying anything new unless it’s Anything Can Happen Thursday, and prepare to find him beside your bed one night, folding your clothes or telling you that your hair smells wrong because you switched shampoos. Sheldon is also prone to crises, so it wouldn’t be surprising to come home and see him with twenty cats, or taking up all the space with a giant loom. Even on his best days, his extreme behaviour patterns and need to control everything would leave you with no say over your life.

If you ended up living with him, the best you could do is hope that his application to settle on Mars would pan out.

Norman Bates (Bates Motel)

For obvious reasons, Norman Bates would not exactly be the ideal roommate. Those who know the story this prequel is based on will understand why; but even if you only know this teenage version of Norman, you will know that under his seemingly sweet personality, he is troubled by mummy issues, blackouts and fits of rage. He would likely turn on you for accidentally eating some of his cereal.

Norman would also be the typical passive aggressive roommate that initially seems all right with everything. Left dirty dishes in the sink for a week? Playing loud music at two a.m.? Setting off the fire alarm every other day? Norman would secretly be bothered by it, but would bottle up his emotions to bursting point. He is so unpredictable that you wouldn’t know when or how he would take revenge; the only certainty is that he would get it somehow. You’d probably come home one day to find that it’s someone else entirely waiting to greet you.

Rebecca Bloom (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend)

Rebecca would be a hilariously awkward and bubbly person to befriend, but living with her would be a different question altogether. You would probably wake up one day to find that she moved out without telling you, because she wanted to live closer to her crush. Then she would be back a week later because she lost all faith in the relationship. She would be one of those ambitious students, insisting that she can finish reading a 200-page essay in a day… But then she would probably forget about it altogether, working on some crazy scheme involving her latest obsession. You couldn’t trust her to stick to a task; if she set off to buy a new bottle of milk and some bread, she would come back with fifty ingredients (but no bread or milk) to cook her crush’s favourite dish.

She would demand advice from you, then follow none of it. By the end of the year, you would know the ins and outs of every one of her lifetime crises, whereas she probably wouldn’t even know your surname. All in all, living with her would be a rollercoaster ride, and not one you would be tempted to try again.

Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock)

Imagine trying to revise for an exam while your roommate is shooting a gun at the wall and yelling about how bored he is. Then when it’s his turn to study, he would probably throw a book at your head for breathing too loudly.

Sherlock is the embodiment of indifference and thoughtlessness. Living with him would entail forced late night excursions into the city, incessant texting about everything being a conspiracy, and having a voice constantly in your ear, reminding you that the work that’s taking you a week took him a day. Good luck trying to lie to him; he would take one look at you and know that the ‘run’ you went on was really a trip to the pub.

Worst of all, danger not only follows Sherlock, but he invites it after him. Granted, he would risk his life to save yours. But he’d probably be the one to put you in danger in the first place.