The Worst TV Series Episodes (Warning: Please place any videos/pictures of disgusting or cringe worthy scenes in spoiler tags)

[Big Panda]

I can't believe how long it took me to realise how perfect this one is for this thread.

I have a confession: back when I first started watching Adventure Time (2011), I grew to hate Princess Bubblegum. These days I'm mostly indifferent to her, the few times I actually check out recent episodes that is. But in the early seasons, I really disliked her, and this episode from season 1 is a primary reason for why that was...

"What Have You Done?"

The episode starts off with Finn and Jake battling and capturing the Ice King. We find out that they were instructed by PB to do so, and she apparently didn't give a precise explanation as to why. In other words, the heroes have no idea what Ice King has done to warrent capture.

We don't find out the reason until near the end of the episode, but to give context to everything that happens next, this is why: a few days before the episode began, Ice King was "showing off" to PB a new trick where he could make snow from his beard, making it snow all over the Candy Kingdom. This act was seemingly harmless at first, and PB even says she doesn't think Ice King intended for anything to happen, but the snow ended up infecting the candy people with "Freezer Burn Flu", causing them to be hospitalised. The only way to cure the flu was to obtain the "sad howls" of the Ice King. PB initially goes directly to him to ask for help, but of course IK is a deluded old coot and he thinks she's hitting on him. Leading to Finn and Jakes mission.

Again, Finn, Jake and the audience don't learn this until later.

They bring IK back to the Candy Kingdom and lock him in the dungeon, and is set to be tortured later on. Finn asks PB what he did wrong, and she says something along the lines of "he did nothing wrong, not a thing", she's about to elaborate before she is called away to the grand hall. She departs, telling the duo to simply guard the IK. Could you...could you have not quickly reassured Finn and Jake that there was a valid reason for IK's capture, Bubblegum? Could you, like, at the very least have said something like "we need him for something"? What that have been so hard?

Ice King pleads his innocence, saying he has not committed any recent crimes. As Bubblegum would later say, he genuinly believes that, because he is unaware of what he's done. Bubblegum hasn't told him anything, nor has she told Finn and Jake anything. They've not been provided with any valid reason for why IK has been imprisoned.

Of course, this conflicts Finn greatly, as imprisoning people for no reason goes against his allignment. He decides to let Ice King go.

Bubblegum returns to the dungeon to find Ice King gone. She is enraged. She exclaims the episodes title: "What. Have. You. DONE!?" as she flips over a table.

Bubblegum...

...Finn did nothing wrong.

He followed your orders without being given a proper motive for it, and you couldn't be bothered to let him know that Ice King had a valid reason to be in custody. This whole situation could've been avoided if you were just blunt and upfront to begin with.

You have no right to be enraged, Bubblegum. You only have yourself to blame for that fuck up.

This episode was really fristrating for me, and that moment where she rages...I just wanted to bitchslap her so fucking much.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I've got a small one, but the orphan episode of DBZ.

Basically, as a piece of filler for the original Dragon Ball Z series, they decided to make an episode during the Saiyan saga where Gohan (who had been kidnapped by the reincarnated and was currently going through character redemption Piccolo) and was training for the arrival of Vegeta and Nappa on a deserted island. Basically, in the original story, Gohan remained on the island entirely, and slowly trained and learned survival techniques. 

However for this episode, they decided to ruin that by having Gohan manage to pull a raft out of his butt, escape the island, magically arrive somewhere near his home, and instead of the cool action we normally see with Dragon Ball Z, we have Gohan fucking around with a rag tag group of orphans who all end up getting sent away at the end anyway and Gohan just decides at the very end to go back to training of his own free will anyway. Not only was all of the Gohan training filler (which took up a good 10 episodes of the original Z series) completely and utterly boring but this is the absolute worst. There's no development of character, no unique or worthwhile interactions. It's just pointless. Completely and utterly fucking pointless.

Also, prepare yourself...because I do have a proper rant coming up on this piece of shit: 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Well, been awhile since this topic had a post, but I did say I would rant on a certain TV superhero show. Unfortunately, not the one I was planning to do, but hey ho, let's give it a try with a live-action episode.

I am a massive fan of this show. The Flash is one of the few Arrowverse shows that managed to get me hooked onto the series and while I slowly try to get into Arrow and Supergirl, Flash had my attention since the time-travel two parter of the first season. I watch this show every single week a new episode comes out and it's one of the few I make sure to stay up to date with as much as I can. 

Now, I could potentially just list all of my issues with Season 3 here and be on my merry way, but let's take a smaller dive into the show with the episode that made me chringe probably the hardest throughout the entire show - Girl's Night Out. 

Now this is a Season 4 episode, and a relatively recent one in terms of the show's entire existence. The premise is relatively simple. Barry (The Flash) and Iris are having their retrospective bachelorette and bachelor parties before their big wedding. While Barry and the male cast end up going to a strip club (Not on their choice, another character named Ralph tricked them into coming when their original plan was simply drink and remember things at Joe's (The surrogate father of Barry) house and have a tasteful dinner later.

Now this section of the story, I don't have a particular issue with. As a B plot, aside from one really bad moment, it's actually pretty funny and treated with respect. Barry and co do not want to be here, the person who forced them to go here gets comeuppance in the end, and it's treated as a regular bar more than anything. The main point of comedy in this episode comes from what the fanbase has titled as "Drunk Barry". 

However, it is in this section that we see the first major issue of the episode. You see how I mentioned above that this is treated as a regular bar, apart from one bad moment? Well that's because said bad moment ties into the major issue of the episode. It is a extremely terrible attempt at trying to display feminism while badly butchering the overall message and not having a clear understanding of what the actual message of "feminism" is. Because of this reason, it causes several characters to have extremely hypocritical stances in this episode, and makes them look pretty idiotic instead of properly conveying a good message that women shouldn't be treated as objects and they are just as powerful, if not more so than the male heroes. 

As I said, the message itself isn't bad per say. At least, the message it desperately tries to convey is good. It's how the episode tries to convey it however is where the episode falls into meme status and an absolute chringefest. We have this episode trying to empower the female cast, yet out of the entire cast, they only have four characters come together. One is an absolutely hated guest from Arrow who is hated for a whole bucket of other reasons I'll explain below. The others (and the only two who has a good bit of credibility in this episode) is Caitlin and Iris (Caitlin being Killer Frost, one of the coolest villains/anti-heroes in the show), and Cecile - who didn't get a lot of focus til this episode.

To put it lightly, the message trying to be conveyed here is confused at best. I could go on for hours about why it's not really done well (The female characters at several points are not subtle about it whatsoever and flat out claim #feminism at several points, as if to say "oh yeah, we're actually doing stuff!" despite the fact the majority of them were important and loved characters of the cast anyway who did important things for their retrospective teams weekly). However, one moment in the entire episode pushed this into awful for me.

You see, Cecile has a daughter introduced in this episode. She starts the episode being as un-subtle as possible with the message, saying "#feminism" at several points at random, and such. Now, if it was just that, it wouldn't be too bad. A bit chrigey, sure, but not that bad. It's not screwing with the message of female empowerment that bad. 

But then comes with worst moment of the episode. We cut to the B-Plot of Barry, Joe and company at Barry's party and then who comes on stage - except Cecile's daughter, who begins dancing in said strip club. Joe can't bare to look at the scene (Because he and Cecile are in a relationship) and when questioned about why on Earth she'd do the most degrading thing possible in an episode literally based around showcasing how strong and cool the female characters of this universe could be, the best explanation she can even muster is "I'm doing it for research". 

Not only is it literally the only reason the B-Plot was forced to take place in such a location that none of the characters other than newcomer Ralph showed interest in before, but it muddles the message even further by forcing a potential layer of hypocrisy to a message that is supposed to be a good message of empowerment. And let's keep in mind that one of the target audiences of the show is teens. The last thing you want to do in this kind of show for this type of audience is muddle such a important message through hypocrisy. 

Then we move onto other annoyances. We have absolutely chringey moments like the female characters fighting for a good portion of the episode with their bachelorette party outfits on, while still trying to be serious in the episode's plot, making it hard to take things seriously. We have a new villain who is pretty much an annoying villain-sue who keeps escaping by not being legitimately smart and powerful, but not only because Iris and co were stupid enough not to arrest her when they managed to defeat and outsmart her, BUT BARRY DOES THE EXACT SAME THING ABOUT FOUR EPISODES LATER.

Girl's Night Out is an episode I can't stand because I see it as a genuinely bad episode. An episode that tries to have a message that on paper is an very important message and is a really good one - that we should all be treated equally, no matter what your gender is, that female characters, and female superheroes, even with or without powers can do just as much, if not more than male heroes. And given the age group of teenagers who will be going through a ton during those years and trying to find their identity and with things like peer pressure and such, that message of everyone being equal is a good message to have.

But when you mess it up so absolutely horribly, when you introduce hypocrisy into such a message, or downright cause it to relegate into a bad joke without fully understanding the very foundation and concept the message is trying to teach, all you've done is turned the major majority of your episode into a complete boring and downright infuriating mess at points while potentially screwing up the very message you were trying to teach in the first place.