I imagine a hundred dopers rushing in here to say “The Office” right off the bat. I can handle 90% of the American Office, but the original is just too intense. I can’t be amused because I’m way too uncomfortable. In the US version I’ll just fast forward through stuff that’s too much, like the wedding scene. Odly enough I was able to sit through the one where everyone said something crappy about Michael.
Curb Your Enthusiasm… ack. I generally cannot appreciate it for the humor because I’m too caught up in how horribly inappropriate he’s being.
I was prompted to think of this because of the Big Lebowski. I love Jeff Bridges, but John Goodman’s character is such a loose cannon that I cannot relax watching that film, I’m constantly tense and hiding.
In starting this thread I’m thinking more about psychological discomfort because of situations, but I guess we ought to throw the floor open for people who want to talk about some horror film they can’t watch.
So… what fictional shows-stories-performances make you so uncomfortable you just can’t stand watching?
For some reason, Frasier always made me uncomfortable. It was probably the fact that every episode had the same Three’s Company plot that involved some misunderstanding - I don’t know why, but that shit always made me anxious. Perhaps it was the utter cluelessness of the characters that bugged me so much. I have a similar (if milder) problem with Weeds, just because Mary-Louise Parker’s character’s such a selfish, absolutely moronic protagonist, but that’s more annoyance than unease, I guess.
OTOH, I have no problem enjoying Curb Your Enthusiasm or The Larry Sanders Show or things of that ilk.
Yeah, or the Mr. Hanky ones. It just gets TOO gross.
George on Seinfeld sometimes makes me feel this way. The episode where he freaks out at that woman on the answering machine and then has to sneak in to switch it comes to mind…though that episode did have a hilarious end.
Lately, a lot of the pieces done by Daily Show correspondents have just made me uncomfortable.
There’s a fine line to making a fool of someone, and being too obnoxious doing it. Jason Jones and John Oliver have crashed way over that line, just being total dicks to people they’re interviewing. Maybe other people think the correspondents have always been, but there seemed to be a delicious quasi-restraint practiced by Ed Helms and Stephen Colbert - at least they never made the interviewees hostile.
I thought Rachel Getting Married was an especially cringe-inducing film. I particularly squirmed through Anne Hathaway’s toast/9th step amendment at the rehearsal dinner. Even as she took the microphone, I thought “this is gonna be bad.”
Various episodes of *House *where people are barfing (or barfing blood), getting poked in the eye, their gut ruptures spewing the doctor with crap (this guy was dead, at least)…yeah. *House *is my favorite show, but I’m always ready to put a hand over my eyes.
Just last night, *The Simpsons *made me uncomfortable so I had to turn it off:
(Homer et al. got foreclosed, Ned Flanders bought their house at auction and rented it back to them, and then they treated Ned like crap and sued him for being a bad landlord because he wouldn’t do all the fix-it chores they gave him when they found out he was responsible for repairs. Uh…no, thanks.)
The episodes where Ned just snaps can be kind of hard to watch. The one where Homer befriends him but starts to irritate him, and Ned just goes off and screams at him at the end just felt painful. The Hurricane one was almost like that but Ned dressing down all the Springfield-ians was just too funny to make me cringe.
For some reason any kind of damage/injury to the tongue completely squicks me out. This weekend we watched a documentary about body modification. I had no problem at all with the suspension or scarification scenes, but I had to look away during the bit about people splitting their tongues (to look like snake tongues).
Edward Scissorhands. If I’m in the room and someone flips to it, I demand they change it immediately, and if they don’t, I leave. Winona Ryder and Anthony Michael Hall are just so mean to Edward – in particular, in the scene where they send him to rob Hall’s dad and he knows it’s a set-up but he does it anyway because she asked him to. Uhh, it just makes me so sad.
Paris Trout, a film starring Barbara Hershey and Dennis Hopper. Many scenes are hard to sit through (because of the actions of Hopper’s character), but the punishment scene in the store office with a bottle was, <shudder>…
Ugh, yeah. I hated the character Kim SO much for that. Yeah, she learned her lesson, etc…but come on! Some things are just too cruel.
Also hated when the dad was grilling Edward on not stealing. Though the moment is kind of cute. The dad’s all, “What should you do if you find a suitcase of money” and gives him a few choices and Edward responds, “Give it to my loved ones?” Aww.
First time took me 3 days just to gut my way through the movie. Christian Slater is brilliantly successful in the portrayal of his character. But the character is just … so … vile. The movie is billed as a comedy. I’m a sick, sick person, but every time I was ready to laugh he took the situation just enough outside of funny and into psychoville that usually my laugh turned into a horrified gasp and i felt dirty for wanting to laugh.
I tried again a few years later, just in case I was in a bad place when I watched it the first time. No go. Great film. Terrible film, but great.
I really love “Waiting For Guffman” and “Best In Show” but I experience a huge amount of sympathetic cringing in both movies, in particular for Eugene Levy’s characters…
(I also think Parker Posey is one of the most attractive women in showbiz, but she plays a bitch to perfection in “Best In Show”)
Oh yay! I was beginning to think I was the only person in the world who loved this movie. I think it’s the best of the lot (the others being “Best in Show” , the folk singers and the filmakers being the others).