Spoilers from the third-season finale of The Strain below.
I guess, given the show's comically low ratings, I'm one of the last remaining people who is still watching The Strain, FX's vampire show adapted from the books of Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan. I'm not going to, like, make a case for it as high art or anything, but I find the show—which is, broadly speaking, about a vampire apocalypse set in NYC—pulpy and amusing and will almost certainly watch the fourth (and final) season when it airs next year.
I'm guessing that one of the reasons the show has dipped below one million viewers is that it has the mother of all Annoying Kid Subplots in the guise of Zach Goodweather (Max Charles). Zach is the son of Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll), an alcoholic divorcee who worked for the CDC ahead of the vampire outbreak and has teamed up with a motley band of vampire-killers to thwart the efforts of "The Master," the head vampire calling the shots and bringing about mankind's doom.
Anyway, Eph, as the good doctor is known, has spent much of the series trying to save his son from the vampires, who turned the boy's mother (and the good doctor's ex-wife) early on. And Zach's unceasing attachment to Kelly Goodweather (Natalie Brown) has been one of the show's more annoying subplots—she's a GD blood-sucking vampire, Zach, let her go! Viewers likely thought the whole Zach's Mommy Issues thing hit its nadir at the end of last season, when the boy allowed one of the show's heroes to be killed by bloodsuckers because said hero was threatening Moms.
Oh how wrong we were.
Because last night, after Eph finally—finally, after three long years—took care of his ex via a knife to the ole brainpan, Zach was so angry about his vampiric mother—who had kidnapped and imprisoned him and kept him away from his father—finally dying that he, well, set off a nuke.
A nuclear bomb.
That destroyed the Statue of Liberty.
And brought about a darkness during the day that allowed the vampires to freely roam the streets, consuming the few humans left on Manhattan.
Talk about Mommy Issues, amirite?
Zach is now officially The Worst TV Kid Of All Time. Certainly in the age of prestige cable, anyway. I know there are some who would vote for The Walking Dead's Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs), but I've never quite gotten all the hate for him. In all honesty, he was far less terrible than his mother, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), who, in the midst of the zombie apocalypse, was all "ugh, I don't feel comfortable with my little boy carrying a gun." Dope. Frankly, he's been a real trooper with the whole "eye shot out" thing. He even told his dad to cut off his arm to save the rest of the Alexandria crew at the end of last week's season premiere! He's growing into a fine young man, that Carl.
The only other real contender, of course, is AJ Soprano (Robert Iler). As I've written before, AJ is basically the ur-millennial: that is, whiny and petulant and always wondering why more isn't being done for him. And I am happy to grant that AJ was one of the most annoying characters in the history of television. But he didn't, you know, nuke the Statue of Liberty because he was bitter that pops whacked his vampiric mother.
So congrats, Zach Goodweather from The Strain! You win the prize: unending hatred for being The Most Annoyingly Terrible Kid In TV History.