Fan Disservice/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


AAAARRRRGGGHHH!!! MY EYES! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!

  • Supernatural has developed a reputation for basically giving its fans what they want, then making them regret wanting it in the first place. The show is known for often disturbing subtext and while the chemistry between Demon!John and Dean (who's been pinned to the wall) in that scene from Devil's Trap is sizzling, it's heavily marred by the fact that Dean ends up sobbing and begging for his life while his organs practically liquefy, not to mention;

Dean: Daddy, please...

    • While perhaps not as squicky as the Dean examples, the Meg/Sam scene in "Shadow" came pretty damn close. There's chemistry aplenty (and we all know what Sam likes when it comes to sex) but if you bear in mind that he's tied up with a gaping head wound and she's pretty much molesting him with a body that's not her own... then yeah, it becomes pretty nasty.
    • And on a female side of things, Ruby's torture in Heaven and Hell. Even the fangirls who hated her would agree that the scene was going too far. Nobody really wants to see her actress tied down, naked except for the straps over her womanly parts and bleeding everywhere, no matter how much they might dislike her acting skills.
    • And apparently there is still Fan Disservice in Heaven. In the episode "Dark Side of the Moon", Mary Winchester hooks up with Zachariah. He's described as a combination of different Biblical angels with the wings of a Seraph and the faces of a Cherub. No, not at all like Cupid.
    • In "Live Free or Twi-Hard", some random greasy guy in an alley calls Dean "pretty". Dean gently rebuffs him, saying he doesn't play for that team. Guess who the vampire in charge of all the kidnappings is? Guess who violates Dean's personal space again, and again, and again? Guess who appears to be a Depraved Bisexual?
    • For the first time in a few seasons, Dean has a sex scene in the episode "The Slice Girls", and the fangirls rejoiced! Until, that is, the scene starts being interspersed with clips of another character being brutally, gruesomely murdered. And then it turns out the sex scene happened so the woman could conceive a child, wait while it grew to maturity in a few hours, and then send it to kill Dean. Fun!
  • The old series, "Lone Wolf and Cub" has a scene at a public bath that starts with a close up view of a smooth naked bottom. It gives you just enough to get into voyeur mode before the camera pans out to show that the bottom belongs to the protagonist's infant son. Then you start reaching for the brain bleach.
  • Freaks and Geeks had an episode that began with a tight shot of some white cloth with a blue pattern... pull back to reveal it's Joe Flaherty's underwear-clad butt.
  • One episode Murder, She Wrote has Angela Lansbury flashing her cleavage and attempting some form of sexy walk in order to pump information from a bartender... it's used as comic relief (she looks as ridiculous as possible), but the Squick is there.
  • "The Cameo Show" episode featured Bunsen and Beaker... in bikinis. Of course Statler and Waldorf shouted for them to try a one-piece.
  • Deep Space 9. Holosuite. Kira's body. We pan up, we pan up and... her head has been replaced with Quark's (The resident big-headed ugly (male) alien).
    • This is actually in-universe fan disservice as well - a creepy guy paid Quark very well to have Kira's figure digitized into the holosuite for... unsavory purposes. Kira found out about it. It's her revenge.
      • Then there's the episode "Profit and Lace" where Quark undergoes an Easy Sex Change to seal a business deal instead of his mother.
  • The boundary-pushing nudity of NYPD Blue cut both ways: For every shot of side-boob or shapely man-ass, there was a shot of Sipowicz with a proctologist forearm-deep up his bum, Medavoy rolling around in bed with a randy septuagenarian, or a naked, obese woman covered in flour.
  • The 'Bad Sex' sketch from Jam uses this with a sleazy love scene interspersed with the couple's bizarre non-seqiturs and occasionally impossible requests, such as "Shit your leg off! Make it come out Green!" "Introduce me to Gladstone!" "Suck my little twin" "Fuss my Polly, fuss my fucking Polly". The original radio version (Blue Jam) also had the girl's dad coming in to the room and carrying on like nothing is happening.
    • Another Jam sketch has the creepy doctor running a 'phone sex line while he's also talking to a patient. Said doctor being a middle aged man saying some quite graphic things to the caller.
    • Yet another sketch has a woman duping the neighbour into groping her to 'check' for breast cancer, then proceeding to really vocally enjoy it. Then calling the police and getting him arrested for assault.
    • Or a female boss asking someone if, instead of the raise he asked for, he'll be satisfied if she farts on a girl's head. Eh?
  • Cameron. Topless. Lying on a bed. Under John Connor. With a hunting knife...
  • The aged Doctor crawling out of his tent like a dog in "Last Of The Time Lords".
    • During the 5th Doctor era, the Doctor Who Magazine said in one issue they received loads of letter from people wanting a poster of Nyssa and Tegan together. So in one issue they finally dug one out of them-looking 100 years older (having been aged in the episode Mawdryn Undead). An issue a couple of decades later commented that fans probably weren't happy about that.
    • The Third Doctor has a Shower Scene in his first serial. It Makes Sense in Context, but what possessed the writers into thinking most people wanted to see Jon Pertwee naked?
    • In the Made for TV Movie, Eight bares his chest three times. In the second one, he's screaming with pain and horror as he pulls a bloody probe out of his chest, complete with rather startling icky wet sound effect. His nipple is also in the ridiculously-zoomed-in shot of the probe.
    • The Ninth Doctor winds up shirtless briefly in "Dalek", but any enjoyment one could find in the scene dies instantly because he was stripped so he could be medically tortured.
  • Ugh, any Buffy/Spike action in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fans had been saying for years they wished the two would hook up. This became a major case of 'be careful what you wish for' as we were treated to... invisible sex, sex behind a tree, sex in the Bronze, some of the most criminal kissing on record...
    • Buffy/Spike had nothing on the scene in "Doppelgangland" between Willow and her Lesbian Vampire counterpart, which culminates in VampWillow licking Willow's neck. All it really took was the Squicked-out expression on Willow's face.
    • Willow in leather bondage gear. Except she is is pale as a ghost (as she's a vampire) and psychotic out of her gourd, and like to burn torture victims alive for fun. She's scary enough to make the most vicious vampire in history cower with fear.
    • Then there's the episode where Warren and his buddies use a mind-control device on Warren's ex-girlfriend. The scenario (including having the ex dress up in a French maid outfit and copious use of the word "Master") could have come from any number of fetish fics... up until the point she snaps out of it and declares in no uncertain terms that what they've been doing basically amounts to rape. And then Warren attacks and (accidentally) kills her...
    • Faith and her seeming obsession with sex after her Face Heel Turn. There's the infamous attempted rape scene, the episode where she seemingly sides with Angelus and how the idea of turning Angel evil would get her off. True she has a hot body and eager for it, but she is bat shit insanely psychotic, enjoys torture and killing, and treats the men she lays and keeps alive like dirt.
  • Seinfeld had Jerry dating a nudist woman. Although at first he's thrilled by it, because she does everything naked, the novelty wears off very quickly and he's eventually disturbed by it. Apparently, there is "good naked" (like hair brushing) and "bad naked" (like coughing,) and the latter involves muscles springing into action that he'd rather not see.
  • At least twice during its run, CSI has indulged in female nudity on the grounds that a) the naked party is a corpse and b) it's on the coroner's table, where something undeniably Squicky is either being described or about to take place. The grand prize was taken when the dead body of an attractive S&M dominatrix was laid on the table, and the series' well-known "TMI Cam" dove inside her breast, by way of the nipple, to show the audience her saline implants.
  • Mad Men: Nearly every sex scene (with a possible exception for some of the ones involving Don and one or another of his girlfriends), is perfunctory, uncomfortable-looking, passionless, or just plain depressing (or all of the above).
    • Special mention to anything Roger Sterling gets involved in, because, while the guy himself is pretty good-looking for his age, there's something just plain ew about watching him get naked and cuddly with a girl his daughter's age. (Or riding her like a pony).
    • Another special mention has to go Joan and her fiance on Don Draper's office floor. Seeing the normally sexually confident Joan reduced to barely holding back tears while her fiance shoves her face to the side so he doesn't have to look at her, followed by them going to dinner as if the rape never happened is absolutely heartbreaking.
  • No Reservations: One ep has host Anthony Bourdain experiencing a Turkish bath: wearing nothing but a towel, an equally nude male attendant proceeds to straddle him from behind and make very, very uncomfortable adjustments to Bourdain's limbs. Not only are the visuals and sound effects quite uncomfortable, Bourdain remarks (via the narrative) that this would make an effective form of torture.
  • Dora Mae's striptease in the fifth episode of Carnivale could be considered fairly hot. Things get bad when her encore is interrupted by a roomful of creepy miners rushing the stage en masse. Near the episode's end, one of the carnies finds her recently lynched corpse.
  • Blackadder: Back and Forth features a 'maid' wearing just an apron (well, an apron patterned like a maid outfit) near the beginning. It's Baldrick.
  • There was one House scene in "Top Secret" that creeped some people out. Now, Hugh Laurie half-naked would usually be a cause for a celebration. But not this time. You want to know why? Let's see; he's on the toilet, the scar is visible and as ugly as ever, he's in tons of pain and hearing him stick the catheter tube up his, um, manly place is really quite humiliating. Did I mention that we also have to see the bag fill up with piss? Ew.
    • Let's not forget the scene where Cameron practically rapes Chase while high on meth. A bit undercut by the fact that she MIGHT HAVE HIV.
  • Most guys would give their right arm to see Hayden Panetierre completely naked twice in one season, so that's what we got on Heroes - except once she was dead in a morgue with her torso cut open, and another time she was horribly scarred and mutilated from radiation burns.
    • And for the girls, there's Mohinder with all those oozing gross things on his body. NICE.
  • Some may be a bit disturbed to see Boyd shirtless in Dollhouse as his bandaged stomach only caused us to focus on his "man-boobs".
    • That's nothing compared to seeing Echo in what looks like space age underwear... being lowered onto needles that will extract her spinal fluid. What, they couldn't give her a hospital gown or anesthetic or anything?
    • The Paul/Mellie sex scene in season 1 that comes after he knows she's an active is incredibly disturbing, particularly because of the expression that Paul has on his face making it seem like a quasi-rape scene.
  • Torchwood: Children of Earth has a scene where Captain Jack is wearing nothing but a pair of handcuffs. He's just regained consciousness after being blown to smithereens, and his skin hasn't grown back yet.
  • Several Farscape scenes involving Scorpius. For example, a sex scene between him and Natira (a creepy blue alien with spikes coming out of her head), which looks more painful to both than pleasurable- especially given that Scorpius climaxes by having one his cooling rods burst right out of his head. Also, the scene where he sucks John's finger. Eww.
    • And when he licks Aeryn's forehead. Gross.
    • Then there's the scene in "A Human Reaction" where we see a fat old man in a Speedo. Uuuhhh.
  • Dead Like Me has a scene of Mr. Fanservice Mason completely naked... because airport security is performing a cavity search on him. Followed by an x-ray-type image of a condom full of drugs up his bum.
  • From season 4 of Dexter the very first scene is murderous naked John Lithgow.
    • Remember that freaky dream Dexter has in the first season, in which he is naked and strapped to a table with duct tape and plastic, just like his victims, with his sister standing over him (wearing the same outfit she wore when she went undercover as a prostitute) and cutting his face with a knife? Euughh.
  • Nathan and Ruth's sex scene from episode 2 of Misfits. It starts out watchable, if somewhat graphic and awkward - Nathan has a bit of a...er... sexual "dysfunction", but it's played for comedy - but soon descends into pure horror territory when it becomes apparent that Ruth (a woman who looks somewhere in her early twenties) is actually an eighty-two year-old who was magically transformed to resemble her younger self. Unfortunately, she reverts back to her "true" age at the moment of orgasm. It is not pleasant. Still, the audience's reactions were nothing compared to Nathan's.
    • Also the scene near the beginning of season 2 featuring close-up shots of Nathan stretching while wearing nothing but a speedo, and the other Misfits grimacing and telling him to stop it.
  • The Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs from Monty Python's Flying Circus. Even if watching Terry Jones perform a striptease is your kind of thing, watching him perform a striptease while discoursing on Britain's trade policy is just ridiculous.
  • The Naked Jungle, a bizarre British gameshow in which all the contestants were nude. Worse news: it was presented by Keith Chegwin. Even worse news: Cheggers was also naked. It only got one episode. Wonder why.
  • Vampires are sexy. Vampires having angry rough sex is really sexy, if you like that sort of thing. But for most viewers twisting your partner's head round 180 degrees -- without either of you stopping -- is probably crossing the line into Nightmare Fuel.
    • Bill crawling up out of the ground naked and covered in dirt. Ew. The resulting sex scene between him and Sookie two seconds later did not help either.
    • A lot of things between Tara and Franklin in season 3. Their first sex scene came off feeling more animalistic and primal than fan service. And her last one with him, where she bites, strike that, rips into his neck with her bare teeth. Him asking her to "Open me up! Feed on me!" was squicky.
  • Community. Naked guys playing pool. One of them is old. And then he kisses the other man. We see nothing below waist-level, and thank God for that.
    • In the very next episode, Britta gets spanked...by an elderly woman in a wheelchair. Who happens to be Troy's grandma.
  • An interesting case is Robin Hood and the "courtship" between Guy and Marian. Richard Armitage is on record as saying that he "wanted the audience to squirm" every time Guy got near Marian, what with his leering glances and oily smirks, and the entire relationship played out as an immensely dysfunctional one of threats, deception, intimidation and violence.
    • After the Sheriff of Nottingham has his 'Festival of Pain' ruined, Little John nearly kills him but relents for his son's sake. So what do the guards find when they come running to save their boss? One of them pulls off a sheet to reveal the pudgy shirtless Sheriff strapped upside-down into one of his torture devices.
  • The Wizards of Waverly Place episode "Dude Looks Like Shakira", as the name implies, guest-stars Shakira, who wears a tight-fitting, partially midriff-baring outfit. However, in-universe, Shakira is actually a stage persona created by Uncle Kelbo; he transforms between his normal form and Shakira at random, wearing the same outfit between transformations. Uncle Kelbo is an overweight middle-aged man. It's about as disturbing as you'd expect it to be.
  • Cordelia and Connor on Angel during Season 4. The knowledge that it was Jasmine-possessed Cordy did not ease the ick for some people. Double ick since both the viewers and Angel had to see it.
  • Russell Howard on Mock the Week did a jock on Anne Widdecombe playing naked table tennis with her... assets. Argh!
  • The season 3 premiere of the Battlestar Galactica reboot has a scene in which Apollo is shown topless. The catch? He gained quite a bit of weight since the last time we saw him.
  • Early episodes of Six Feet Under contain mock advertisements, one of which shows a very attractive young man in his boxers lying back in a chair as the narrator runs her fingers all over his chest and abs, and even his face--his eyes seem to be closed in pleasure. She coos seductively:

"Soft, supple skin that begs to be touched. Living Splendour Embalming Fluid--only real life is better."

  • Hole In The Wall requires all contestants to wear skin tight silver spandex along with shockingly dorky helmets. You can see every bulge and roll of fat displayed in glorious silver, and yes, the crotches are not spared. To make matters WORSE? Cartoon Network picked up the show and now the contestants wear the same outfits, but are children.
  • Anybody who has been on Survivor is quick to set fans straight when the mention that the show looks like Baywatch, with some very attractive people shirtless and in swimsuits. Alicia from the Australia season summed it up nicely: "No soap, no toothpaste, no toilet paper, NO SEX!!!"
  • All Creatures Great and Small occasionally features the very pretty James and Tristan getting shirtless. They then almost invariably jam their arms up the business end of a cow.
  • Many probably considered seeing Kirk's naked skinny body in Gilmore Girls a disservice but after they did it the first time loads of people were requesting them to do it again and again.
  • The Christmas special of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia featured a very sweaty Danny Devito in the nude.
  • American Horror Story, arguably, is all over this trope. You have a hot, naked guy masturbating, then crying over his history of infidelity with his wife when she needed him the most, then trying to burn his hand over the stove, a ghost rapist in a rubber suit, beautiful people getting murdered... ugh.
  • The Curb Your Enthusiasm episode "The Bare Midriff"; Jerry Seinfeld's assistant wears midriff-baring shirts, and has a bit of a belly. Larry and Jerry are disgusted, as are the audience.
    • Larry, who is unattractive and old, in a swimsuit or shirtless.
  • While A Game of Thrones rarely shies away from nudity in any situation, Joffre's reaction to Tyrion's "name-day gift" is singularly distressing. His treatment of the two women is taken far beyond sadism.
  • Played straight by Alex Zane's fake Game Show Alex Zane's Sex Contract Game, a parody of The Dating Game where the winner is allegedly contractually obligated to have sex with their new bachelorette after the show. The two victims were intentionally allowed to sneak a peek at said bachelorette before the show, but before she is finally revealed at the end of the game, she is replaced by someone who, is, well, Fetish Retardant
  • Orange Is The New Black has quite a few nude scenes, but not all the actresses who do so conform to conventional ideas of female beauty. Even those who do have some nude scenes not designed for fanserivce. For instance, Piper shows full frontal nudity when Pennsatucky walks in on her in the shower. She threatens Piper by cutting her hand and spreading blood on her chest. She then promises to get more "creative" next time.
  • In an episode of Too Close for Comfort, Sara and Jackie score tickets to a revival of Oh! Calcutta!; Ted is already upset that his daughters want to see such a “disgusting” play (in his words) but Sara is mugged and her purse - with the tickets - are stolen. Later, Ted’s boss offers to help find the mugger, adding that he’s already seen the play - and that Ted’s daughters should be glad they missed it.
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