17 TV And Movie Scenes That Went Way Too Far
I'm no stranger to an uncomfy, controversial, or gory on-screen moment. Sometimes you gotta cross the line to get a point across — and that might mean including a scene that makes people squirm. As someone who worships Breaking Bad and Seven, I can understand and respect that — sometimes you just gotta put a severed head on a turtle, or in a box.
WHAT'S IN THE BOOOOOOX???
But I'm sure you can also agree that there IS a line. There's certainly such thing as being too inappropriate, too gory, or too problematic, especially when the storyline appears to lack a real purpose. And today, we're gonna highlight my picks — the TV shows and movies that went TOO. FREAKIN'. FAR.
In addition to BrBa and Seven, I'll also mention that I gave super-high ratings to toThe Silence of the Lambs and Fight Club (my fave movie of all time). If you're looking for credibility, there it is. I ain't no snowflake.
I'll start with a more recent one. We're all aware Another Simple Favor starring Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick just came out. Well, there's a totally senseless plotline in it where Blake's character Emily has a few romantic encounters with her twin sister.
Yeah, I'm serious. In the movie, the twins kiss in more than one scene. As if the first kissing scene isn't enough, later on, one sister also drugs the other, then gets on top of her and kisses her.
And speaking of incest (not a phrase I ever thought I'd write on the internet), we can't NOT talk about Saxon and Lochlan from The White Lotus. I refused to jump on the bandwagon of this show solely to avoid this storyline...but my mother described it to me as "the most disgusting thing" she's ever seen on TV.
ICYMI, we're talking about Season 3. Saxon and Lochlan are brothers, and their relationship quickly starts becoming uncomfortably close. Their first kiss is in Episode 5, and that quickly develops into a full-blown sexual relationship. AND THEY'RE BROTHERS. Mike White, I loved you on Survivor, but can I just ask...why?!
Perhaps the most upsetting scene I've ever seen on TV was the bathtub scene in 13 Reasons Why. The whole first season of the show is about Hannah Baker's suicide, and her "reasons why." But in a now-deleted scene, they depicted her actual suicide in way, way, way too much detail.
The show, which is based on a young-adult novel, appeared to have extremely negative consequences for teens as a whole. 13 Reasons Why was actually "associated with [an] increase in youth suicide rates," which is so beyond tragic. Thankfully, they deleted the scene from the show, but I really wish younger me never saw it.
Virtually every single millennial watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But perhaps you don't remember that scene in Season 6 where Spike sexually assaults Buffy. She ends up defending herself, but the whole thing is extremely uncomfortable and difficult to watch.
And it's not just viewers who hate the scene. James Marsters, who plays Spike, said the show "sent [him] into therapy," and this scene is a big reason for that. "It's a problematic scene for a lot of people who like the show. And it's the darkest professional day of my life," he said.
I could name so many scenes from Euphoria that I felt crossed the line, but as someone who 100% has emetophobia, that hot tub vomiting scene in Season 2 was just too much. This one is pretty self-explanatory — in the scene, Cassie, played by Sydney Sweeney, vomits all over the hot tub. And it's pretty revolting.
I guess you could make arguments for why this was important, but I argue it was way too much to ever justify. Sydney Sweeney herself even said the director "just wanted vomit everywhere," and she dubbed it "the most disgusting thing [she's] ever experienced."
I'll defend Glee forever and always, but I can't deny that several of those storylines were problematic. The one that consistently rubs me the wrong way is in Season 4, when Marley develops an eating disorder, largely thanks to manipulative cheerleader-slash-mean-girl Kitty. Marley ends up fainting onstage during a competition, and the whole club basically blames her for the team's disqualification.
Part of the reason why this storyline bothers me so much is we don't really get any closure — and with such a serious topic, that's a massive shame. Kitty ends up revealing she essentially caused Marley's eating disorder, and because they're in a super tense situation when Kitty spills this secret, Marley basically just forgives her, and we don't hear about the situation again.
Season 7 of The Walking Dead opens with a couple of excessively bloody kills, one being a fan-fave character since the show started. I won't name the characters just in case you're extremely behind on this show, but it definitely pushed boundaries in how brutal the kills were — almost to an unnecessary degree.
Some fans even said these deaths were some of the bloodiest ones in the history of TV, which is a LOT to say for this show and TV in general. I get that the premise of The Walking Dead means blood and gore, but at some point, it's just excessive. Especially when it's a character we all adored so much...it low-key felt personal.
Can I be brutally honest for a sec? Virtually everything in the Fifty Shades movies can be classified as "too far" in my books. But there's perhaps one collection of scenes most people can probably agree are too much: anything that happens in the Red Room (AKA basically Christian's BDSM room).
Not only are these scenes uncomfy for the audience to witness — for seemingly no reason at all — but it was also not fun for the actors themselves. "Some of the Red Room stuff was uncomfortable," Jamie Dornan admitted. "There were times when Dakota [Johnson] was not wearing much, and I had to do stuff to her that I'd never choose to do to a woman." IDK about you, but that makes me shudder.
This one's an unpopular opinion, so brace yourself: The Substance. I get that this movie is a body horror, but the entire last portion, where Sue and Elizabeth "fight," ruined the entire movie for me. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. So much blood and gore, so long, and all while lacking a true point or moral, it truly feels.
My disdain with this part is about more than just gore. What could've been a poignant ending that makes a profound statement about aging and feminism ended up being a blood-fight, a mockery, women's battles with aging and societal sexism reduced to a bloody outburst. And I found that even more disgusting than the blood itself.
Sorry for getting all heated!!! I still love you, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. This is just my opinion.
OK, now let's talk about Game of Thrones. You all knew this was coming, didn't you? I literally couldn't get past the first episode of this show because of all the sexual assault — not just the volume, but those scenes just seemed to last forever. Never mind all the incest, too.
Again, I understand these scenes serve a purpose, but it's the excess that bothers a lot of people. There are just so many violent sexual assault and incest scenes in this show, at a certain point, you have to consider whether it's even worth watching the show as a whole.
Game of Thrones is perhaps the most well-known show for its brutal sexual assault scenes, but not enough people talk about Outlander. There are a few sexual assault scenes in this show that fans think went too far — in particular, the scenes at the end of Season 1 were called "the most graphic and disturbing rape scenes ever to air in the history of television."
Sam Heughan, who plays Jamie Fraser, talked about how uncomfy it was for him to shoot that part in Season 1. "The cock shot was unnecessary and did betray my trust in the creative team a bit," he said. He also noted that he didn't think the nudity added much substance to the plot: "This wasn't a moment where I felt that being naked would add to the horror of what Jamie undergoes." And as a viewer, I have to sympathize.
All the sexualization of Angela in American Beauty is just awful to watch now, not least because her character is underage. Angela is supposed to be 17, a friend of protagonist Lester's (Kevin Spacey) daughter. People agree the entire movie has aged like milk, but it's especially difficult to watch Lester's dream sequence, where he fantasizes about touching Angela in ways we can all agree are extremely gross.
Can I say it again? ANGELA IS UNDERAGE. Plus, it's his daughter's friend. That's not hot, it's CREEPY. The plot of the entire movie feels problematic to many of us now, but I'd like to think we should've known better when this came out in 1999.
You is seriously one of my favourite shows of the past few years, so there's not much I can critique about it. But one part was a bit too gross for me: the montage in Season 2 that flips between Joe (Penn Badgley) putting a body in a meat grinder and Love (Victoria Pedretti) cooking a meal (yes, with meat in it). See what they did there?
Filmography-wise, I get it, and I can appreciate it. But as a viewer, I physically couldn't watch it. Like, did we really have to see the intricate process of Joe putting a literal dead body in a meat grinder? And the connotations of Love cooking a meal at the same time are...really hard to ignore.
Several of the most renowned sitcoms of all time have pulled scenes since they first aired because of characters appearing in blackface. Namely, The Office, Scrubs, and Community — but you might not know that 30 Rock pulled a whopping FOUR episodes in 2020 because of blackface, one with John Hamm as a guest star.
Tina Fey, who created the series (duh), issued an apology when the episodes were taken down. "I understand now that 'intent' is not a free pass for white people to use these images. I apologise for pain they have caused," she wrote. "Going forward, no comedy-loving kid needs to stumble on these tropes and be stung by their ugliness."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I can appreciate a raunchy joke. But I can't justify the one scene in Sausage Party that seemingly makes a sexual assault joke — with a juice box, of all things. In the scene, the bottom of an injured juice box starts leaking, and the antagonist drinks from the hole. Then he says, "If you tell anyone about this, I'm gonna deny it, bro."
This is another one that deeply offends me. Who thought it was a good idea to include a (I'm assuming) sexual assault joke in an animated comedy movie? Here's the truth: it's just not funny. That line of dialogue feels disgusting and triggering, and takes the "joke" way, way, way over the edge.
This one is kinda controversial, but I don't think I've ever been as passionate as when this came out. Years before "gaslighting" was a term everyone knew, we heard it on Season 17 of The Bachelorette. Yes, I'm talking about contestant Greg Grippo, who Katie Thurston accused of gaslighting.
The reason I feel this went "too far" is, yeah, that's someone's (ahem, Katie's) actual trauma displayed on live TV. Greg's actions hit way too close to home for many viewers. And seeing how many people were #TeamGreg after the fact was…really disheartening. TBH, this was the reason I stopped watching The Bachelor franchise. Greg later admitted he "came off like an ass," but for me, it's too little, too late.
Finally, let's chat about that absurd scene in the 2006 movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, where Sacha Baron Cohen pretends to kidnap Pamela Anderson. The whole thing is staged, but the audience doesn't know that, so they essentially fight to try and save Pam — which "accidentally injured" her in real life.
This scene is supposed to be light, and all in good fun, but clearly there were deeper consequences we didn't see at the time. In 2019, Sacha also revealed that controversy surrounding this scene might have contributed to Pamela's divorce to Kid Rock. So yeah, this one's got a lotttt of lore.
Which TV or movie scene do you think crossed the line? Maybe it was too inappropriate, gross, or problematic? Tell me in the comments below, or fill out this form to stay anonymous!
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