What would you call a situation where the current one sucks but you have a 'choice' to an alternative, however the alternative is not really one.
Such as,
"Sure living in an area under a monopoly internet provider sucks, but you can always live without internet"
Demonstrating an issue where one of the choices isn't really a viable choice or at least comparable alternative.
(There are more dramatic ones)
You may be thinking of a Hobson's choice:
A Hobson's choice is a free choice in which only one option is offered. As a person may refuse to take that option, the choice is therefore between taking the option or not; "take it or leave it". The phrase is said to originate with Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England. To rotate the use of his horses, he offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in the stall nearest the door or taking none at all.
Morton's fork and Scylla and Charybdis are related concepts.
You can consider the lesser of two evils (also a lesser evil).
the less unpleasant of two choices, neither of which is good:
But allowing a criminal to go free is perhaps the lesser of two evils if the alternative is imprisoning an innocent person.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/the-lesser-of-two-evils
the most common phrase for this is between a rock and a hard place:
Being in a dilemma where the only two available options are both unsatisfying or bad.
The other term is dilemma:
a situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives.
Knowyourphrase.com and Dictionary.com
Hugh Rawson, in his book Unwritten Laws, considers Shakespeare's First Law as an alternative to Hobson's Choice. It comes from The Taming of the Shrew, (1593-1594)
There's small choice in rotten apples
Plenty of alternatives in previous answers, but a modern variation would be a "sophie's choice." [Spoiler Alert] In William Styron's book (and the movie of the same name), the main character, a mother with two young children, is demanded by a Nazi officer to choose which child will go on a train to the camps, in order to preserve her own and the other child's life. (It's a choice she never really recovers from.)
'Up a river without a paddle' I wonder if pluralizing would get this done for you 'Up either river and no paddles' 'Damned if I do damned if I don't' "Between a rock and a hard place", since both objects or metaphorical choices are rough. "Between the devil and the deep blue sea" "Out of the frying pan, into the fire"
http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/up+a+river+without+a+paddle.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilemma
A fine loan-word (from German) that might be useful is Zugzwang - it refers to a situation in chess where any move a player makes will lead to disaster. The word is reasonably rarely-used but is found in English dictionaries.
A situation that sucks and only has terrible alternatives is a huge $#1t-sandwich.
I'm not sure that Catch-22 or Hobson's choice apply here. A catch-22 means that each option has the other as a prerequisite, and Hobson's choice is a "false choice", where only one option is really given (the other being to do nothing, rather than having a legitimate second option). – Adam Robinson, -EL&U
