Well is it any wonder the poor dab is a wreck by the end of the series? His luck all the way through is absolutely dismal.
He's apparently been in and out of various types of penal institution his whole life and had his head fiddled with by the Federation all to try and stop him stealing. But what we see of him is that he's very very good at stealing - why did he keep getting caught? His luck has obviously always been just as bad as it is during the series.
He's clearly not cut out to be a rebel, his reaction to killing the priest on CA and his reluctance to get involved with the attempted takeover of the London show that. But he finds himself caught up in it anyway. And of course once he's caught up in it he can't simply leave as the Federation would be after him instantly without the protection of the Liberator and they'd be unlikely to accept "But I didn't really want to" as an excuse.
In general his bad luck shows up in his unfortunate teleport accidents... landing in puddles, halfway up rocks with his arm jammed, the wrong side of doors, in mid air. He's incredibly accident prone - He manages to smack himself in the head with a door, get thumped by Avon by mistake and get his fingers trodden on when he's hiding. That's without even considering all the times he gets deliberately roughed up and terrorized.
*Everyone* on the crew has a go at him verbally right from the begining, even those who aren't usually too hard on him. And in s4 they all treat him with utter comtempt almost all the time.
Tarrant's bullying in _City_ and _Moloch_ make me want to thump him, though in fairness Avon didn't exactly set a glowing example when Tarrant and Dayna joined the crew - with at least two snarky remarks at Vila's expense within minutes of them meeting him.
And of course it's Vila who get packed off in a spacsuit in _Dawn of the Gods_ and sent down to fix the glycolene ballast thingaymy-whatsits in _Animals_ He complains about it of course but is just ignored or laughed at and ends up doing as he's told anyway.
The just to make his life complete, Avon tries to shove him out an airlock.
I think I'd probably want to go and get drunk too.
Leia