Even the likes of South Park, Game of Thrones, and Family Matters can take it too far...
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00:00 Look, it happens to the best of us. No matter how great a show is, if it's one known for
00:04 pushing the envelope, prodding the boundaries of good taste, and needling at the censor's
00:08 nerves, there will always be some moment which goes too far. Maybe this will be enough to
00:14 turn audiences off wholesale, or maybe viewers will simply write it off as a bad week for
00:19 the writers room, but whatever the outcome, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these
00:23 are 8 TV shows that went too far in completely unexpected ways.
00:28 8. That Inexplicable Incest Subplot - Dexter
00:33 Dexter was never a show worried by the boundaries of good taste. Being based on the admittedly
00:38 clever and original premise of "a serial killer who targets other worse serial killers"
00:44 means that the idea of staying sanitized is thrown out the window fairly early on in development.
00:49 But after years of the show developing the tender, tragic connection between Dexter and
00:53 his adopted sister, the no-nonsense cop Deb, who is none the wiser to his murderous pastimes
00:59 at least for a while, the series picked the weirdest way to throw away seasons of character
01:05 development and screw up the dramatic tension of Dexter attempting to hide his secret from
01:10 the only person whose judgement truly mattered to him.
01:13 And that's because, yep, you guessed it, like Game of Thrones before it, Dexter had
01:18 Deb reveal that she harboured secret sexual feelings for her brother. And thus an uncomfortable
01:23 and wholly unexpected incest subplot reared its head and made a mess of the potentially
01:28 promising season wherein Deb discovered Dexter's secret double life. Their dynamic never really
01:34 recovered in the eyes of fans and critics alike, and the show's decline continued
01:38 until its roundly reviled series finale two seasons after Deb's dramatic revelation.
01:44 7. The Zombie Masked Sex Scenes - The Walking Dead
01:48 Like Dexter, The Walking Dead was never, from its violent pilot episode onwards, a show
01:53 which shied away from the grittier and bleaker side of things. The post-apocalyptic drama
01:57 saw its heroes face down not only hordes of the undead, but also the worst of humanity
02:02 as well, offering a vision of the world's end which was about as optimistic as Cormac
02:06 McCarthy's The Road.
02:08 However, whilst the arrival of long-lasting villain and eventual deeply, deeply flawed
02:12 anti-hero Negan did herald some serious ultra-violence that would leave Alex DeLarge himself chugging
02:18 his Beethoven records out the window, his gruesome antics were at least initially well-grounded
02:23 in the show's plot and provided drama, tension and character development along with smashed
02:28 skulls.
02:30 What was not so well-grounded was the same character's grotesque hookup with season
02:35 10's primary antagonist, the zombie-faced Alpha, which took place while the pair were
02:40 still wearing the skinned faces of the undead as masks.
02:44 Yeah, we're all the way that this one did serve as foreshadowing for later events, but
02:49 you try sitting through that uncomfortable scene again and tell us it was necessary.
02:55 More than any other show on this list, Game of Thrones pushed the envelope so far and
03:04 so often that the show could have been called 1001 ways to guarantee the complaints department
03:09 will be busy until Christmas.
03:11 There was the boundary-pushing violence with heads being crushed and throats being slit
03:16 in unsparing detail, and there was the relentlessly downbeat grim plot where no character was
03:21 safe and evil almost always won the day.
03:25 So what could a show like this do that would be seen as an unexpected step too far?
03:31 Well it would have to be huge, like say maybe making its penultimate episode a claustrophobic
03:37 nightmare depicting one of its only even vaguely heroic characters losing their mind and slaughtering
03:43 a city's worth of innocent civilians in brutal detail.
03:47 Yes, the foreshadowing was there all along for Daenerys' downfall, but when most audiences
03:53 expected the last episodes of the show would follow the defeat of the Night King, it came
03:57 as a crushing blow for many more optimistic viewers to see one of the only beloved forces
04:01 of nominal good on the show be corrupted by power and reducing scores of powerless people
04:07 to ash over a torturous hour of television.
04:11 5.
04:12 Tyler's Assault - 13 Reasons Why
04:14 Netflix's mega-controversial mega-hit 13 Reasons Why was never shy about pushing viewers'
04:20 buttons with the show's premise alone addressing sensitive issues like suicide, sexual assault,
04:25 self-harm, bullying and teenage drug use.
04:28 However, whilst the show's debut season was criticised for its handling of a suicide
04:32 scene which some felt was explicit to the point of being instructive, much of the first
04:37 season's content was lauded for handling these intensely difficult issues with relative
04:42 grace and subtlety.
04:44 Once the show was renewed though, the creators surprised everyone by opting to focus less
04:48 on the casual misogyny of contemporary American adolescent culture and more on the intense
04:53 physical bullying which is commonplace in high schools, replacing the smug villain Bryce
04:58 with his more mindlessly aggressive team-mate Monty.
05:01 However, viewers who presumed that this thoughtless jock would be any less threatening were left
05:05 shook by the explicit depiction of his sexual assault on the unsuspecting Tyler, whose subsequent
05:10 trauma leaves him traumatised and arming himself up to open fire on the school dance.
05:16 The gruelling assault sequence itself spared no detail and left viewers in a state of shock.
05:22 The scene was far more intense than anything the show had attempted before and understandably
05:26 proved too much for many viewers.
05:29 4.
05:30 That Inexplicable Dramatic Domestic Violence Episode - Family Guy
05:34 Seth MacFarlane's most famous animated offering isn't known for pulling its punches.
05:39 Particularly since its renewal, Family Guy has been infamous for combining the family
05:43 sitcom structure of The Simpsons with South Park's more risqué and irreverent elements.
05:48 The show doesn't shy away from controversial topics both in its jokes and plots, however
05:52 it's not actually a tasteless joke that earned Family Guy a place on this list, but
05:57 rather the odd misjudged episode Screams of Silence - The Brenda Q Story.
06:03 Ostensibly parodying the format of melodramatic Lifetime movies of the week, at least judging
06:07 by that title, the episode proper is a nearly humourless depiction of a battered wife struggling
06:13 with her abusive partner until, spoilers I guess, the show's heroes kill him.
06:18 To say it's a divergence from Family Guy's typical fare is putting it lightly, but unfortunately
06:24 the writers room didn't have the requisite dramatic chops to make the premise work, meaning
06:29 that viewers tuning in expecting animated antics instead got a cut rate needlessly explicit
06:34 made for TV melodrama.
06:36 3.
06:37 The Terrifying Chucky/Urkel Hybrid - Family Matters
06:41 Okay so this one has to be the most famous entry on this list, or at least the most infamously
06:45 dark.
06:46 The beloved ABC sitcom Family Matters was originally envisioned as a spin-off from parent
06:51 program Perfect Strangers, but the show soon became a vehicle for the character of Steve
06:55 Urkel.
06:56 Played in a career best turned by Jaleel White, Urkel was the perfect intersection
07:00 between hilarious and insufferable, and carried many later instalments of the long-running
07:05 series on his back.
07:07 And yeah, shoutout to Jim Parsons who must've had a hernia after all those years on the
07:10 Big Bang Theory.
07:12 However, sometimes the show's Urkel-centred approach backfired, as seen in the Halloween
07:16 special where his ventriloquist's doll counterpart, uh, kills the entire family.
07:22 That's it.
07:23 That's the bit.
07:24 The arrival of Stevel, a scheming puppet who conspires to - successfully by the way - off
07:29 the entire Winslow clan to gales of laughter from the studio audience, is one of the most
07:34 deservedly infamous moments of an unexpectedly dark TV.
07:39 And before you ask, no, the impact isn't undone by the reveal that the episode is a
07:43 dream.
07:44 I mean, after all, 90s sitcoms did the "it's all a dream" gimmick all the time, without
07:48 using it as an excuse to off the entire cast.
07:52 There's no denying that The Simpsons is, unlike some of the shows included on this
07:59 list, a genuine masterpiece and one of the defining cultural documents of an era.
08:04 So how does a show this great, at least early on, manage to go too far?
08:09 Well, the fifth episode of the show's 12th season didn't have much of the magic which
08:13 used to make America's First Family so beloved.
08:16 And the instalment contributed to its gradual decline, as it saw the writers plumb darker
08:21 depths than usual for laughs and come up with sighs in the process.
08:25 In this episode, as Homer becomes Burns' prank monkey and partakes in an escalating
08:29 series of public practical jokes which put his dignity on the line, the episode eventually
08:34 culminates in an implied assault which didn't earn much mirth from the audience at home.
08:39 The shocking scene feels out of place at best and horribly misjudged at worst, while the
08:44 rest of the episode does little to alleviate this sour taste, making a point of ironically
08:50 recycling old jokes and bits from other, better episodes.
08:54 1.
08:55 The Murder of Drew Sharp - Breaking Bad
08:58 By the time Vince Gilligan's masterpiece reached its fifth season, few viewers could
09:02 argue that the propulsive, intensely dramatic thriller was a light-hearted show.
09:07 By now the series had already explored overdoses, multiple murders, suicide, corpse disposal
09:12 and just about every conceivable human sin in its gradually escalating, blackly comic
09:17 portrait of a man driven to desperation by an uncaring world.
09:21 That said though, as seen when the tortured protagonist genuinely regrets endangering
09:26 the life of a child during his usual meth-making shenanigans, the story of formerly mild-mannered
09:31 high school teacher Walter White did have a few lines that it wouldn't cross, at least
09:36 until the closing moments of season 5's fifth installment, Dead Freight.
09:41 As relative newcomer Todd drew a pistol and murdered an innocent child in cold blood,
09:46 the audience was left as shell-shocked as our pair of outlaw protagonists.
09:50 Until this point Jesse and Walt had at least only encountered criminals with some semblance
09:55 of a conscience, and Todd represented a darker turn for the series as a whole.
10:00 However, unlike many entries on this list, the turn was seen by many viewers as a positive
10:04 development, with viewers approving of the amoral new villains.
10:08 You see, by leaping over the threshold of "too far, so early on" Todd and co give
10:13 us an excuse to revel in Walt's violent revenge later.
10:16 It was clever that.
10:17 So that's our list, what do you think about these TV moments and are there any "too
10:23 far" ones that I missed off here?
10:25 While you're down there as well, could you please give us a like, share, subscribe and
10:27 head over to WotCulture.com for more lists and news like this every single day.
10:32 Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching and I'll see
10:35 you soon.
10:35 [BLANK_AUDIO]