[jekylljuice]

There is an extent to which character hardships are to be somewhat expected - conflict and tension are pretty staple elements in the creation of drama, after all, and I guess it's all a matter of how the episode uses it and how the injured party is shown to come through it in the end. A lot of those episodes I can't say that I have any real problem with - Mr. Herriman was publicly humiliated in "World Wide Wabbit", but found a way of using it to his advantage and thus was ultimately able to deal with it successfully. I was a bit galled by Bloo's insensitivity toward Coco in "Cuckoo for Coco Cards", but that was clearly the intended effect, and we did get emotional satisfaction and closure at the end when Bloo is brought back down to earth and apologises. In these episodes, and countless others, there was a kind of balance and dramatic or narrative purpose to the suffering which was definitely lacking in the two current (and, I suspect, perpetual) front-runners to this poll, "Imposters" and "Surprise".

Of the two, I voted for Mac in "Surprise", for reasons which Mr. M has pretty much already covered. At the end of "Imposters", there is some slight consolation in that Frankie does at least receive a little emotional closure, if not compensation. "Surprise", meanwhile, ends very abruptly with Mac's humiliation, along with the knowledge that all his friends, 'cept Eduardo, have willingly conspired against him (wow, what did Mac ever do to them?), and that left one heck of a bad taste in my mouth. We're talking about his birthday, after all - this should be the one day of year that a kid should always look forward to, not be made to live in total terror of.

Keep in mind that I've still yet to see "Bloo Tube", so I have no idea if Bloo's suffering therein comes up to that.