Fans Pick the Unlikely Friends Villain: Can You Guess Which Character Is It?

Sure, a few characters in the series were rather unpleasant, like Steve, the obnoxiously close-minded president of the tenants' committee, or Barry, whom Rachel left at the altar in the first episode, and with good reasons.

But if you absolutely had to pick one characters from Friends, to brand as a villain, that almost certainly would be Rachel Green's Italian boyfriend from Season 1, Paolo (Cosimo Fusco).

And why would you call him a villain, well, besides the fact that at certain moments he could look the part?

Well, his role in the series was that of a false romantic lead. He existed solely to add more drama to the relationship between Rachel and Ross.

And (like the above-mentioned Barry) he was saddled with unsavory character traits, just to make sure that fans would not start pairing him with Rachel for real.

He was not very smart. He was not actually that handsome.

Well, not that handsome by the standard of Friends, which was notable among sitcoms for having the main cast which looked like a model lineup, anyway.

He spoke English rather poorly. And most importantly, he was a cheating sleazebag, who made several passes at Phoebe – in fact, he actually harassed her, and went as far as groping and fondling – while still dating Rachel.

Which was almost certainly meant to be doubly repulsive, given Phoebe's wealth of issues. About the only good quality he had was being relatively polite, when he was not acting like a sleazebag he was.

Ultimately – and quite early on – Paolo was written out of the series, after Rachel and Ross resolved their problems with each other.

Chandler's mother even described him as "a complication you eventually kill off" (thankfully neither Ross nor Rachel had to do that literally).

But to this day, fans of Friends remember Paolo as a creep and a weasel, probably the most hated character in the series, as the number of upvotes and comments for this thread on /r/friends_tv_show evidences.