Misery loves company,especially on Valentine's Day

Coming up this weekend is that holiday ode to romance known as Valentine's Day. That one day of the year devoted to hearts and flowers,the promise of finding your true love and so on.

While that is all well and good,some of us out there will not have dates this Saturday night and are in serious need of a serving of schadenfreude bittersweetness.

As a public service,we here at LRG now present you the Top Five Most Dysfunctional Romantic Couples in Pop Culture History. These folks may have found their soulmate but that choice doesn't give a good reflection on their inner being,to say the least:



5) BARBARA AND OLIVER ROSE

The 1989 film War of the Roses re-teamed Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner,who showed great romantic chemistry in Romancing The Stone and it's lackluster sequel Jewel of the Nile,in an adaptation of Warren Adler's dark satirical novel about a yuppie couple who are just as passionate about their divorce as they were about their marriage.

Danny DeVito joined them(as director as well as co-star)and to the credit of all three,this movie pulled no punches in getting down and dirty with the emotional and sometimes physical combat that this couple put each other thru. The Roses may have been great social climbers and the life of the party,but towards the end,I would strongly advise against trying the pate at their next dinner party:





4) MARLA SINGER AND JACK

Fight Club may not seem like a film that would showcase a love story and you'd be right. The narrator Jack(Edward Norton) finds a sick solace in the arms of Marla Singer(Helena Bonham Carter)as the two of them share a taste for feeding off the true pain of others. Things get even more disturbing when their "mutual friend" Tyler Durden enters the mix.

Marla and Jack are the worst sort of people to ever get emotionally involved with someone and perhaps it's perversely fitting that they fell in lackadaisical lust with each other. You know a couple's doomed to a sticky end when their meet-cute centers around a debate over which blood parasite group they want to attend:





3) CHRISTIAN TROY AND KIMBER HENRY

Nip/Tuck is known for it's constant parade of bad relationships,but the most persistent of them is that twisted bond between Christian(Julian Mc Mahon) and Kimber(Kelly Carlson).

From their first tryst,where Christian highlighted of all her physical flaws on her body with lipstick to their almost wedding when Kimber was kidnapped and tortured by the Carver(and somehow she blamed Christian for that)to their current connection,where Kimber is now the mother of his granddaughter(after seducing his son during a bout with Scientology and a brief drug habit),these two are determinedly destined to stay on each other's minds:






2) CHUCKY AND TIFFANY

This killer couple wouldn't even tolerate Ken and Barbie,not to mention giving Bonnie and Clyde a run for their money. Tiffany made her debut in the fourth Child's Play entry(one of my personal favorites),Bride of Chucky,which gleefully sends up the whole series and gives new meaning to the term "tainted love".

The gruesome twosome had a follow-up film(and a baby,I kid you not),Seed of Chucky,that quickly burned out their fickle fuse of passion. It's not surprising,really-despite their mutual appetite for destruction,Chucky and Tiffany have very different goals in life which only spells doom for any longtime commitment:






1) SPIKE AND DRU

Out of all the couples listed here,these two have had the longest track record together,beginning with Drusilla siring Spike in a London backalley nearly two centuries ago. For quite a while,they were the ideal vampire pairing,with Spike's impulsive violent nature and smart talk counterbalancing Dru's mental drifts into insanity and flashes of psychic visions.

All of that changed after their time in Sunnydale. Even when they left town,the seeds of their parting were already planted and in full blossom,with Dru's chaos demon dalliance being only a symptom of their doomed diseased love dying on the vine. Another chance at a reunion merely sealed the deal for their break-up to become permanent. It's just as well,since the two of them united were rather an unpredictable force to be reckoned with. Destroy their love,save the world:



So,if you're feeling a bit blue about Valentine's Day,cheer up by the fact that at least you are not in some twisted relationship that even Dr. Phil wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. Love is hard at any time and any age: