Me, too. It’s usually involving some wacky misunderstanding (the show was basically a better-written Three’s Company). I can’t take it. Which is weird, because I enjoy plenty of “awkward” stuff - After Hours, The King of Comedy, The Larry Sanders Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm…
Joining the pile-on for cringe comedy. It seems to be almost genetic, the divide between those who love and hate it.
The worst, for mine, was a candid camera type show where the “gag” was to have a person in a wheel chair apparently run out of control on a slope leading to a body of water and watch the “hilarity” that ensued when ordinary folks tried to save him. So…a person does something both brave and sensible and they’re made to look foolish for not recognising the “joke” about imminent endangerment?
I’ll tell you what was awkward to watch…the last three hours of Meatloaf trying to hit even one note . Oh.My.God. I read the reviews but it was too late, the tickets were already bought…from eBay no less, just to rub salt in the wound. I would have been fine to discover that he could no longer reach all those big notes, but no word of a lie, he couldn’t reach any notes. Gone from a 3 octave singer to a 0 octave singer.
The audience was incredibly kind, mostly just for sticking it out to the end. We did our best to sing along but it was almost impossible to tell what key we were supposed to be in. It was sad to watch really. I should have just let my teenage memories of Bat Out of Hell stay where they were.
One if the ways that the aforementioned Happiness is made especially awkward is that the viewing audience is basically forced to put themselves in the (spoiler alert) pedophile character’s shoes. For example, the filmmakers were faced with an interesting casting problem with the pedophile’s son’s new friend – they had to find a young actor whose physical features were such that the audience would instantly recognize him as someone unhealthily attractive to the pedophile character, even though (obviously) only a very tiny minority (one hopes!) of the viewing audience would themselves find the young actor attractive in that way. Extra awkwardness all around.
Shattered Glass, a 2003 film (based on true events) with Peter Sarsgaard about a young journalist who fakes interviews, has some supremely awkward moments, as the guy’s colleagues/boss start to confront him with their suspicions.
I looked this film up for clarification. The scene you describe was awkward (disgusting, actually) to read about. I don’t often find myself wanting to shoot people, but I would like to shoot Bill the psychiatrist.
Almost any tv show or movie where a man sings to another person makes me cringe. Especially if the other person doesn’t know how to react or doesn’t know where to look. It’s just too uncomfortable.
The Office, the Christmas special where Michael gives an iPhone and ends up making people randomly draw gifts and exchange them was one of the most uncomfortable moments I’ve ever seen.
I tend to feel embarrassed for people making fools out of themselves unintentionally so scripted awkwardness doesn’t often do it, but that episode made my skin crawl.
The F/X show “The Americans” has had a number of sex scenes that were clearly meant to be awkward viewing, and boy did they succeed! I just can’t watch scenes like this where not only is it uncomfortable for the characters, but you know the actors must have had a difficult time getting through it without laughing or dying of embarrassment or both. The last episode had a scene that went on for ages even on fast-forward, and when I read recaps and learned what god-awful “sexy talk” I missed, I sent a silent prayer of thanks to the inventor of the DVR. How that actress was able to shout such things without collapsing into giggles is testimony to her professionalism.
(Bolding mine)
Exactly! I think I’m going to start using that phrase too.
Just Married is with both Meet the Parents movie on the “can’t watch” list due to embarrassment-by-proxy. I can’t enjoy a movie if I feel bad for the main character.
The movie Dinner For Schmucks was so full of these scenes that I stopped watching it.
our not alone at all, neither me or the wife can watch them…
Many Barney Fife scenes in The Andy Griffith Show. I love the show and the characters, but Barney is just hopeless.
This reminded me that a lot of the 20/20 What Would You Do? segments are pretty cringe-worthy.
All of Dawn’s scenes in “Welcome to the Dollhouse.” Brilliant, but so painful. Also the Favreau scene in “Swingers” where he leaves increasingly pathetic messages on the girl’s answering machine, only to be cut off at the end while leaving his number - every time!
Movies like “Happiness” “Welcome To The Dollhouse” “Days of Wine and Roses” “Come Back Little Sheba” and the original “Kiss Of Death” (Richard Widmark) are what I call great movies that are ugly to have to sit through. I almost have to take a shower after watching them, but I acknowledge how well done they are, and I still tear up during “Days of Wine and Roses” especially at the final scene, however the most cringe-worthy scene in my opinion is Jack Lemmon on a bender in the greenhouse.
Comedies: Joe E. Brown was in an old comedy called “Broadminded” and the opening scene has him in a baby bonnet and acting like a total idiot; I guess that was “comedy” back in the day. As much as I enjoy watching “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein” I must admit that Lou Costello’s antics are totally cringe-inducing as I watch him as an adult (this goes for “Abbott & Costello In The Navy” and several others as well). Many jokes and punchlines from old TV shows are not nearly as funny to me as the writers probably intended them to be. FYI—while I never followed “Family Matters” my nieces would watch it when they were much younger—the Steve Urkel character was horrendous and I couldn’t believe that producers were paying Jaleel White to make an utter boob out of himself in the name of “comedy.” The same goes for anything I saw on “Diff’rent Strokes” and “Car 54 Where Are You?” Yeah I know that these are different styles of comedy, but they are all unfunny and discomforting for me to sit through.
The dinner half of the Netherfield ball scene in the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. Everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. I watched it once but now I just fast-forward through it. The people I know who like the movie also fast-forward through that scene. It’s so beautifully uncomfortable that literally no one I know sits through it.
Dirty Dancing: “Me? I’m scared of everything. I’m scared of what I saw, I’m scared of what I did, about who I am and most of all I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.”
Pretty much all of Punch Drunk Love.
Confession:
Didn’t make it to any of the redeeming ‘good’ parts of Silver Linings Playbook. I’ve been around too much dysfunction I guess. I have a nephew, in recent years, diagnosed just as the main character. I have seen up close the people I love struggle to find their way. In fact, they were all watching it happily in my living room.
I just couldn’t take it. Nothing but cringe for me, and then at a certain point I realized I didn’t really like any of these people. Went to washroom and did not return until the film ended. They assured me it was worth it, I shouldn’t have given up, etc, etc.
I remain unconvinced!