Even the likes of South Park, Game of Thrones, and Family Matters can take it too far...
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00:00Look, it happens to the best of us. No matter how great a show is, if it's one known for
00:04pushing the envelope, prodding the boundaries of good taste, and needling at the censor's
00:09nerves, there will always be some moment which goes too far. Maybe this will be enough to
00:14turn audiences off wholesale, or maybe viewers will simply write it off as a bad week for
00:19the writer's room, but whatever the outcome, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these
00:23are 8 TV Shows That Went Too Far In Completely Unexpected Ways.
00:30That inexplicable incest subplot, Dexter. Dexter was never a show worried by the boundaries
00:35of good taste. Being based on the admittedly clever and original premise of a serial killer
00:41who targets other worse serial killers means that the idea of staying sanitized is thrown
00:47out the window fairly early on in development. But after years of the show developing the
00:51tender tragic connection between Dexter and his adopted sister, the no-nonsense cop Deb,
00:57who is none the wiser to his murderous pastimes at least for a while, the series picked the
01:02weirdest way to throw away seasons of character development and screw up the dramatic tension
01:08of Dexter attempting to hide his secret from the only person whose judgement truly mattered
01:13to him. And that's because, yep, you guessed it, like Game of Thrones before it, Dexter
01:18had Deb reveal that she harboured secret sexual feelings for her brother. And thus, an uncomfortable
01:24and wholly unexpected incest subplot reared its head and made a mess of the potentially
01:29promising season wherein Deb discovered Dexter's secret double life. Their dynamic never really
01:34recovered in the eyes of fans and critics alike, and the show's decline continued
01:39until its roundly reviled series finale two seasons after Deb's dramatic revelation.
01:447. The Zombie Masked Sex Scenes – The Walking Dead
01:48Like Dexter, The Walking Dead was never, from its violent pilot episode onwards, a show
01:53which shied away from the grittier and bleaker side of things. The post-apocalyptic drama
01:57saw its heroes face down not only hordes of the undead, but also the worst of humanity
02:02as well, offering a vision of the world's end which was about as optimistic as Cormac
02:07McCarthy's The Road. However, whilst the arrival of long-lasting villain and eventual
02:11deeply deeply flawed anti-hero Negan did herald some serious ultra-violence that would leave
02:16Alex DeLarge himself chugging his Beethoven records out the window, his gruesome antics
02:21were at least initially well-grounded in the show's plot and provided drama, tension
02:26and character development, along with smashed skulls.
02:30What was not so well-grounded was the same character's grotesque hook-up with season
02:3510's primary antagonist, the zombie-faced Alpha, which took place while the pair were
02:40still wearing the skinned faces of the undead as masks. And yeah, yeah, we are all aware
02:46that this one did serve as foreshadowing for later events, but you try sitting through
02:50that uncomfortable scene again and tell us that it was necessary.
02:54Number 6. No heroes in Westeros. Game of Thrones.
02:59More than any other show on this list, sorry Negan and Lucille, Game of Thrones pushed
03:03the envelope so far and so often that the show could have been called 1001 ways to guarantee
03:08the complaints department will be busy until Christmas. There was the boundary-pushing
03:13violence with heads being crushed and throats being slit in unsparing detail, and there
03:18was the relentlessly downbeat grim plot, where no character was safe and evil almost
03:23always won the day. So what could a show like this do that would be seen as an unexpected
03:30step too far? Well, it would have to be huge. Huge, like say, maybe making it's penultimate
03:36episode a claustrophobic nightmare depicting one of it's only even vaguely heroic characters
03:42losing their mind and slaughtering a city's worth of innocent civilians in brutal detail.
03:48Yes, the foreshadowing was there all along for Daenerys' downfall, but when most audiences
03:53expected the last episodes of the show would follow the defeat of the Night King, it came
03:57as a crushing blow for many more optimistic viewers to see one of the only beloved forces
04:02of nominal good on the show be corrupted by power and reducing scores of powerless people
04:08to ash over a torturous hour of television.
04:11Number 5. Tyler's Assault 13 Reasons Why.
04:15Netflix's mega-controversial mega-hit 13 Reasons Why was never shy about pushing viewers'
04:20buttons with the show's premise alone addressing sensitive issues like suicide, sexual assault,
04:25self-harm, bullying and teenage drug use. However, whilst the show's debut season
04:30was criticised for it's handling of a suicide scene which some felt was explicit to the
04:35point of being instructive, much of the first season's content was lauded for handling
04:39these intensely difficult issues with relative grace and subtlety.
04:44Once the show was renewed though, the creators surprised everyone by opting to focus less
04:48on the casual misogyny of contemporary American adolescent culture and more on the intense
04:53physical bullying which is commonplace in high schools, replacing the smug villain Bryce
04:58with his more mindlessly aggressive teammate Monty. However, viewers who presumed that
05:03this thoughtless jock would be any less threatening were left shook by the explicit depiction
05:07of his sexual assault on the unsuspecting Tyler, whose subsequent trauma leaves him
05:11traumatised and arming himself up to open fire on the school dance. The gruelling assault
05:17sequence itself spared no detail and left viewers in a state of shock. The scene was
05:23far more intense than anything the show had attempted before and understandably proved
05:27too much for many viewers.
05:294. That Inexplicable Dramatic Domestic Violence Episode – Family Guy
05:34Seth MacFarlane's most famous animated offering isn't known for pulling its punches. Particularly
05:39since its renewal, Family Guy has been infamous for combining the family sitcom structure
05:44of The Simpsons with South Park's more risqué and irreverent elements. The show doesn't
05:49shy away from controversial topics both in its jokes and plots, however it's not actually
05:54a tasteless joke that earned Family Guy a place on this list, but rather the odd misjudged
05:59episode Screams of Silence – The Brenda Q Story.
06:03Ostensibly parodying the format of melodramatic lifetime movies of the week, at least judging
06:08by that title, the episode proper is a nearly humorless depiction of a battered wife struggling
06:13with her abusive partner until, spoilers I guess, the show's heroes kill him. To say
06:19it's a divergence from Family Guy's typical fare is putting it lightly, but unfortunately
06:25the writer's room didn't have the requisite dramatic chops to make the premise work, meaning
06:29that viewers tuning in expecting animated antics instead got a cut rate needlessly explicit
06:34made for TV melodrama.
06:363. The Terrifying Chucky Slash Urkel Hybrid – Family Matters
06:40Okay, so this one has to be the most famous entry on this list, or at least the most infamously
06:46dark. The beloved ABC sitcom Family Matters was originally envisioned as a spinoff from
06:50parent program Perfect Strangers, but the show soon became a vehicle for the character
06:55of Steve Urkel. Played in a career-best turn by Jaleel White, Urkel was the perfect intersection
07:01between hilarious and insufferable, and carried many later instalments of the long-running
07:05series on his back. And yeah, shoutout to Jim Parsons who must've had a hernia after
07:10all those years on the Big Bang Theory.
07:12However, sometimes the show's Urkel-centred approach backfired, as seen in the Halloween
07:17special where his ventriloquist's doll counterpart, uh, KILLS THE ENTIRE FAMILY. That's it.
07:24The arrival of Stevel, a scheming puppet who conspires to, successfully by the way, off
07:30the entire Winslow clan to gales of laughter from the studio audience, is one of the most
07:34deservedly infamous moments of an expectedly dark TV. And before you ask, no, the impact
07:41isn't undone by the reveal that the episode is a dream. I mean, after all, 90s sitcoms
07:46did the It's All A Dream gimmick all the time, without using it as an excuse to off
07:50the entire cast.
07:522. Homer Loses His Dignity – The Simpsons
07:56There's no denying that The Simpsons is, unlike some of the shows included on this
07:59list, a genuine masterpiece and one of the defining cultural documents of an era. So
08:05how does a show this great, at least early on, manage to go too far?
08:09Well, the fifth episode of the show's twelfth season didn't have much of the magic which
08:14used to make America's First Family so beloved. And the instalment contributed to its gradual
08:19decline as it saw the writers plumb darker depths than usual for laughs and come up with
08:23sighs in the process.
08:25In this episode, as Homer becomes Burns' prank monkey and partakes in an escalating
08:29series of public practical jokes which put his dignity on the line, the episode eventually
08:34culminates in an implied assault which didn't earn much mirth from the audience at home.
08:40The shocking scene feels out of place at best and horribly misjudged at worst, while the
08:45rest of the episode does little to alleviate this sour taste, making a point of, ironically,
08:50recycling old jokes and bits from other, better episodes.
08:541. The Murder of Drew Sharp – Breaking Bad
08:58By the time Vince Gilligan's masterpiece reached its fifth season, few viewers could
09:02argue that the propulsive, intensely dramatic thriller was a light-hearted show. By now
09:07the series had already explored overdoses, multiple murders, suicide, corpse disposal
09:12and just about every conceivable human sin in its gradually escalating, blackly comic
09:17portrait of a man driven to desperation by an uncaring world.
09:22That said though, as seen when the tortured protagonist genuinely regrets endangering
09:26the life of a child during his usual meth-making shenanigans, the story of formerly mild-mannered
09:31high school teacher Walter White did have a few lines that it wouldn't cross, at least
09:36until the closing moments of season 5's fifth instalment, Dead Freight.
09:41As relative newcomer Todd drew a pistol and murdered an innocent child in cold blood,
09:46the audience was left as shell-shocked as our pair of outlaw protagonists. Until this
09:51point Jesse and Walt had at least only encountered criminals with some semblance of a conscience,
09:56and Todd represented a darker turn for the series as a whole.
10:00However, unlike many entries on this list, the turn was seen by many viewers as a positive
10:05development, with viewers approving of the amoral new villains. You see, by leaping over
10:10the threshold of too far so early on, Todd and co. give us an excuse to revel in Walt's
10:15violent revenge later. It was clever that.
10:18So that's our list, what do you guys think about these TV moments and are there any too
10:23far ones that I missed off here? While you're down there as well could you please give us
10:26a like, share, subscribe and head over to wotculture.com for more lists and news like
10:30this every single day. Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching
10:34and I'll see you soon.