TV Scenes We Wish We Could Unsee (2018)

Team TVLine is looking back at the grossest, weirdest and overall cringiest TV moments from the past year.

And if you're worried about spoilers, our list contains moments from 9-1-1, American Horror Story: Apocalypse, The Alienist, American Vandal, The Big Bang Theory, Castle Rock, Chicago Fire, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Family Guy, Fear the Walking Dead, The Handmaid's Tale, Legacies, Mayans MC, My Brilliant Friend, The Resident, SEAL Team, Sharp Objects and — of course — The Walking Dead.

Don't say we didn't warn you...

MY BRILLIANT FRIEND

This picture doesn't do it justice: When Lila's abusive father tosses her through the window of their Naples apartment, and she hits the stones outside like a sack of potatoes, the effect is as sickening as the moment is shocking. Even in the midst of a series where violence is a way of life, watching it turned against such a bright little badass is horrifying.

THE WALKING DEAD


Wait, that's what friends are for?!? After the Scavengers that Simon and the Saviors wasted in Season 8's "The Lost and the Plunderers" rose from the dead, the ill-fated garbage enthusiasts were led to a giant grinder by their bereft leader Jadis and turned into what for the life of us resembled nothing so much as sloppy joes straight out of the Sweeney Todd cookbook.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: APOCALYPSE

If looks could kill, Kathy Bates' terrifying Joker grin would burn us alive.

FAMILY GUY

Look, we all love Hamilton — we just don't love watching it rapped by Stewie Griffin under a hail of his own mucus. (We guess he's not throwing away his... snot.)

MACY'S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE

This haunting close-up of the Pillsbury Doughboy's deflated face made the annual holiday event feel more like a Halloween parade.

CHICAGO FIRE

We still have the heebie-jeebies from this parasite crawling underneath a woman's facial skin on the NBC drama. (Paramedics Sylvie and Emily handled the horrifying situation much better than we would have.)

LEGACIES

Small spiders are bad enough. Then Legacies had to go and give us the grotesque, nightmare fuel that is a spider monster.

9-1-1

We still haven't forgiven Ryan Murphy (or the Fox Broadcasting Company, for that matter) for making us bear witness as Buck removed a six-foot tapeworm from a guy's ass. 

FEAR THE WALKING DEAD


Sizing up a water-park pool full of wet, bloated and moldy walkers, Alicia cracked — in what just might be the understatement of the year — "That's worse than Band-Aids in the water." Nevertheless, she and June made their way through the muck to scavenge for supplies in the abandoned hideout at the top of the slide... down which of course (!) they accidentally tumbled, making the kind of splash that comes with an "Eww!" not a "Whee!"

THE HANDMAID'S TALE

Even under the best of circumstances, childbirth is a bloody introduction to the power (and limits) of human anatomy. But when the mom-imminently-to-be is a sex slave splayed out on the floor and left to deliver her own daughter in the dark, the process packs an even more visceral punch. We think Elisabeth Moss' June summed up the scene best when she said, "[grunt grunt grunt PRIMAL SCREAM]." (P.S. Call your mother.)

THE RESIDENT

Call us naive, but we assumed that Fox's medical drama would only deliver ghastly visuals related to, y'know, medicine. Instead, the most horrifying scene came from October's Halloween episode, in which a patient suffered from night terrors featuring creepy (and flexible!) ceiling walkers. Laurie may have been cured, but this image will forever fuel our nightmares.

MAYANS MC

In Episode 7 of the FX series, Coco's daughter Leticia went to extreme measures to ensure she'd never have to live with her cruel grandmother again. Her solution? Cracking her own skull against the edge of the toilet multiple times, in order to make it seem like her grandmother had hit her. The girl's got gumption, but the sound of her cranium hitting the porcelain was utterly chilling.

CASTLE ROCK

Who can we speak to about never showing dead dogs on TV again? This Castle Rock scene, which featured a long-deceased pup stuffed grotesquely into a suitcase, should have been left on the cutting room floor.

AMERICAN VANDAL

We applaud Netflix's mockumentary series for somehow turning poop-related antics into a compelling true-crime mystery. That said, the opening scene of Season 2 — in which the entire student body at a Catholic high school got diarrhea from contaminated lemonade — is one we'd prefer to forget. But thanks to the Turd Burglar, the image of teenagers pooping directly onto the floor is burned in our brains forever.

SHARP OBJECTS

The third hour of HBO's limited series ended on a horrific note: Camille's friend and confidant, Alice, died by suicide after downing a bottle of Drano. But it wasn't just the visual of Alice's vomit-soaked body that disturbed us. It was also Camille's reaction to the death — frantically carving the word "fix" into her arm with a screw — that had us shielding our eyes.

CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA

We already knew that Madam Satan was two-faced. Did we really need visual confirmation? This scene was not... appealing.

THE BIG BANG THEORY

Sheldon as Howard was hands down the scariest costume of Halloween 2018.

SEAL TEAM

The only thing more jarring that seeing Adam aka Bravo 1 get blown to smoking smithereens was watching Ray struggle to report it in to Havoc Base.

THE ALIENIST

One of multiple reasons why we try not to get syphilis.