The 7 Worst Fictional Towns In America
Each year various news organizations look at factors like public schools, crime rate and diversity to come up with definitively numbered lists of the best and worst places to live in America. Having grown up in a town that's one of the best is obviously bad news because it proves that contrary to all that, "Man if I could only get out of this place" talk during high school, the problem was you. If, however, you were in the enviable spot of growing up in one of the bottom feeders, well, you can go back to having sex with that microwaved jelly donut because, fuck it, you're a product of your environment.
But even if it turns out your town wasn't the school of hard knocks you'd always thought it was, you still might have an excuse. That's because you probably spent quite a bit of your time in one of these seven towns, many of which are worse than anything they can throw at you in Battle Mountain, NV (The worst town in America according to The Washington Post).
7
Cabot Cove (Murder She Wrote)
Crime Rate:
At first, Cabot Cove doesn't seem all that bad. It's an idyllic coastal community of only 3,000, so you can't complain about the atmosphere. Also, for a town in the typically unwashed state of Maine, the townsfolk are relatively attractive, consistently looking (and for some reason acting) like they just stepped off the set of a soap opera.
However, none of that changes the fact that if you lived in Cabot Cove from 1984-1996, there was a pretty good chance that someone was going to murder your ass. With a body count of up to eight per episode, Cabot Cove experienced an outbreak of no less than 800 murders during the time that Jessica Fletcher lived there. And the crimes tended to be local on local, meaning that over half of the population was involved in a murder in a twelve year span. (Hear that, Camden, NJ?)
Law Enforcement:
In a small town like Cabot Cove, you'd think that the limited suspect pool would have enabled the cops to solve murders pretty quickly. But time after time, the Cabot Cove PD would arrest the wrong person, falling for clearly planted clues like a suspect's hat being left at the scene of the crime, and ignoring obvious culprits like the guy in the corner laughing maniacally while steepling his bloody fingers.
Sure, Jessica Fletcher would set the cops straight in the end, but not before the cops would tell her to "leave this one up to the professionals." And just imagine what happened when the swinging queen of crime fiction was off on one of her many vacations. (Where people coincidentally were also always getting murdered.) If you live in Cabot Cove, you're either going to commit murder, get murdered, be falsely accused of murder, or you're a shit-stupid cop. Take your pick.
6
Smurf Village (The Smurfs)
Diversity:
With its uniform blue skin tone, Smurf Village may very well feature the least diverse population of any town in the universe. As for demographic statistics that people outside of college admissions offices care about: the male to female ratio is a cross between the worst keg party you've ever been to and a daycare center in mainland China. And the fact that there's only one female doesn't just suck for the guys either-we'd imagine that every day was about as relaxing as a walk through the prison yard at San Quentin for the perky blond Smurfette. Let's just say she probably had to lock her door when it was closing time at the local bar.
Language:
Commentators have often wondered about the drugs the show's creators must have been on, but when you get down to it, the village was a very conservative, somewhat Fascist environment. Everyone held the same values, everyone used the same language, and with its insistence on substituting "smurf" for every other word, their native tongue may very well have been the most annoying and down right confusing code of communication ever created (Other than Hawaiian. What the fuck's with all the vowels, Hawaii?) In Smurf Village, "My husband's smurfing" could mean anything from "My husband's eating" to "My husband snapped and now he's hunting smurfs!" Unfortunately, there's no way to know because Smurf language is about as clear as a Door's song.
Oh, Also, It's Basically a Cult:
If Papa Smurf had emerged from his house one episode and told everyone that he was actually the reincarnation of Christ, and that they had missed the passing comet they were supposed to catch so all Smurfs had to kill themselves, we're not sure if we would have batted an eyelash.
How the hell didn't Smallville make it on the list?
ReplyWhat about Derry, Maine?
ReplyCome on, it's way worse than any of the other fictional cities!(well... except for Gotham)
What about Angel Grove from the Power Rangers? Having numerous buildings blown up by giant monsters every week has to be painful for the people who live there...
ReplyHaving a superhero in your town is actually a bad thing, when you think about it. Superheroes tend to generate insane costumed mass-murderers in their town the way professional sports stadiums generate traffic.
ReplyAnd because a hero has to have multiple rogues to deal with, a single hero means a dozen or more psychotics that the hero tends to catch only after they've committed a series of crimes that draw the attention of the hero.
A superhero in your community is like legalizing gambling and prostitution - it's like an invitation for organized crime, except that now the criminals have superpowers and like to kill people just to piss off the hero.
You forgot Townsville from the Powerpuff Girls
ReplyWhat about Sparta, Mississippi? Thats the small, small town from In The Heat of The Night (movies and show). There is like a murder a week there. Also prostitution, drugs, hate crime is ramp0ant there.
ReplyCharming, CA. Bunch of f uck up bikers committing all sorts of crime in broad daylight and never getting caught, a thriving porn industry, bean er and when I say bean er I mean Mexican but I prefer to say bean er (f uck you Cracked censorship) drug cartels, Russian mob, Irish gun-runners, and some colored gang too.
ReplyFrom my understanding Charming is a small town not too far away from the San Francisco Bay Area. In real life, a lot of biker gangs actually base their operations out of small towns near metropolitan areas because the police forces have less resources and it is easier to bribe the someone as high up as the chief of police. Also, the Russian mob, Irish terrorists, and Cartels don't actually inhabit the area, they just pass through to do business or fight with the Sons of Anarchy. The only other gang that has an actual presence in the area are the neo-Nazi group. Not even the Mayans (the Mexican bikers based off the real-life Mongols) have an actual presence in the town, just that due to the mobile nature of bikers, they tend to cross each others paths.
I should note that the areas around biker clubhouses tend to be relatively safe since most established gangs don't like to s**t where they eat (outside from the occasional brawl or assault on a rowdy guest) and they let other criminals know not to f**k with the area.
That "first season" of Saved by the Bell was actually an entirely different show, called Good Morning, Miss Bliss. It was a flop, but network execubots thought that repurposing it with Zack as the main character rather than Hayley Mills was a good idea (and, I guess they liked Belding too). The "Saved by the Bell" credits that those dozen or so episodes have when they pop up in syndication are a retcon.
ReplyFYI Springfield was also the name of a town , somewhere in the US , that Cobra used as a base in the early part of the marvel GI Joe series. The Joes did not know which Springfield (apparently there was at least one in several states ). So if you lived in that fictional Springfield there was the chance that you would be awakened early one morning to find hordes of GI Joe soldiers storming your town.
ReplyTwo words: Bat signal.
ReplySunnydale has already been mentioned a million times, how about Angel Grove from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers? Every day a giant monster, or the teenage -piloted robot that's fighting said monster, stomp all over the city. Plus all the putties...
ReplyI would add Southpark, CO, but it's bad by design.
ReplyAlso the Simpsons are still good!
Liberty City should have been on this list.
ReplyMaybe I just pay to much attention to little things but did anyone else notice the frame of smurf village has at least five smurfettes? And is right next to the paragraph where the author writes about what its like to be the only girl in the village.
ReplyMaybe I pay too much attention, but you used the wrong "too".
What? No Springwood, or Crystal Lake? The homes of the 2 most infamous serial killers in movie history aren't worse than the Smurf Village?
ReplyWhat about Perfection, Nevada? Home to giant underground reptilions that happen to be endangered species. The last known survivor of which is the only reason the town doens't get bought out for a housing development, and who is just as likely to eat the residents as any of those Graboids who were killed over the years. Also, there's a virus equivilant of The Thing loose and the only non-lethal mutant it's created is a bat with visual stealth.
As for an update suggstion: Eureka. The town full of supergeniouses regularly relies on the sherrif (who has no real scientific knowledge) to keep saving the town from all manner of world-ending scientific disasters at the last second. In one instance, he had to resort to ramming his jeep into a weapon of mass destruction to throw off its aim.
No Sunnydale? Really?
ReplyThe Smurfs aren't in America. If you've watched just one episode, it's obviously in medieval Europe. In fact, I believe it's in Belgium.
ReplyThis kind of thing is why Europeans hate us.
Is the smurfs town actually in America? Or is it included because it's an american cartoon?
ReplyActually, it's a french cartoon. That's why it's so weird.
VladYvhv: No and no.
Smallville. Meteor-freaks.
ReplySurprised Sunnydale from Buffy didn't make the list lol
Reply