'The Missing' And Our TV No-Go's

For weeks the screener sat on my desk, taunting me. There was every reason to think Starz’s new drama The Missing (premiering on Nov. 15 at 9 p.m.) was worth checking out: It’s got a pedigreed cast (including James Nesbitt of The Hobbit and Frances O’Connor of Mr. Selfridge), and it was met with glowing reviews when it premiered last month in the U.K. (The Guardian called it “hauntingly brilliant television.”) The problem is, The Missing is about the abduction of a little boy — and I have a really hard time with shows that feature kids in peril. It’s one of my TV no-go’s — along with prolonged torture scenes, gratuitous vomiting, and shows where everyone is dirty because there’s no running water (think Deadwood). Seriously, check out the clip of The Missing below, and try not to hyperventilate.

While I did eventually watch the first two episodes of The Missing — which, by the way, was an intensely stressful experience and yet I’m hooked and am now dying to know what happens next — the whole thing got me thinking. We all have a TV no-go — subject matter that we just find really hard to watch. One of my former colleagues at Entertainment Weekly, who shall remain nameless, had no trouble watching the goriest zombie show imaginable, but as soon as you showed him the teensiest bit of fake blood during an appendectomy on Grey’s Anatomy, he’d have to turn the TV off or risk fainting. So in honor of The Missing's Saturday premiere, we present our TV no-go's.

Chrissy Le Nguyen, Yahoo TV
My No-Go: Dirty (literally) sex scenes
Why I Just Can’t: Sex on TV is pretty unrealistic, but the keyword here is pretty. Heck, even the awkwardly uncomfortable sex scenes are watchable. But when things get (literally) dirty, there is no amount of chemistry that will keep me tuning in. After witnessing Sookie and Bill’s cemetery romp, True Blood immediately joined my no-go list. Gross. I mean, the dude rose from the grave, naked and covered in soil, and proceeded to have sex right there and then with Sookie. UTI, much?
No-Go Shows: True Blood

Dave Nemetz, Yahoo TV
My No-Go: Animals in peril
Why I Just Can’t:I can watch a hundred human beings get hacked to bits and not bat an eye. But once I see a poor doggy or kitty in danger, I have to look away. I’m still traumatized by what happened to that horse in the pilot for The Walking Dead, and Game of Thrones almost lost me with all the direwolf death. And what about Duck Phillips abandoning his dog, Chauncey, on Mad Men? Sure, cheat on your wife, ignore your kids, drink until your liver swells… but you don’t abandon a dog!    
No-Go Shows: Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, The Leftovers

Kerrie Mitchell, Yahoo Movies
My No-Go: Violence Against Women
Why I just can’t: For years, there wasn’t a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode I wouldn’t watch, no matter how grim or gruesome the storyline. At a certain point though, I realized some of the increasingly violent imagery I was watching on TV — much of it directed at women — was sticking with me in ways that felt less and less healthy. For instance, did I really need to see Taryn Manning play a grownup child pornography survivor who’s stalked and drugged by an obsessed pedophile in the 2011 SVU episode “Possessed”? Probably, sadly, no. 
No-Go Shows: Law & Order: SVU, Stalker, The Fall

Josh Wolk, Yahoo Entertainment
My No-Go: Dope-filled reality TV shows
Why I Just Can’t: In my 20s and early 30s I used to love The Real World, not just for the moral superiority it filled me with, but also because it filled me with relief: “Look at these idiots who I never have to confront in my regular life!” It was like watching a nature documentary about really, really immature killer whales who regurgitate half-digested sharks and don’t clean it up because they’re “keepin’ it real.” When the reality-TV boom started in the early aughts, I embraced all the new shows that thrived on adults acting like idiots, whether a competition, dating show, or celeb-reality. Joe Millionaire? Bring it on! Breaking Bonaduce? Yes please! But then I had kids, and the shows instantly lost their appeal for two reasons. 1) I now lived with two (very small) roommates with hair-trigger tempers and an inability to rationally problem-solve or compromise. And 2) When watching young adults act like complete tools, I no longer smugly think, “Boy, what kind of self-absorbed morons act like that.” I think, “Am I doing everything I can to make sure that my children do not grow up to be the kind of self-absorbed morons who act like that?” Parenting is hard enough without opting to watch The Worst-Case Scenario power hour.
No-Go Shows: The Real World, Bad Girls Club

Breanne L. Heldman, Yahoo Entertainment

My No-Go:

Snakes and spiders!

Why I Just Can’t:

Here’s the thing about television — it’s not subtle. They want to scare us, so they’re not just going to give us

one

slithering snake or

one

two-legs-too-many spider.

That

I might be able to stomach. But no, they’re going to give us a whole gaggle of hissing, creeping, living nightmares. Gah! I’m getting the chills just thinking about it right now.

No-Go Shows:

Penny Dreadful

,

The Strain

,

Fear Factor

Victoria Leigh Miller, Yahoo TV
My No-­Go: Way too personal reality show scenes
Why I Just Can’t: Some things should be kept behind camera-free closed doors, because it just feels really, really wrong to watch them: You know, like Tori and Dean’s painful therapy sessions where they give us TMI about their sex life (FYI, he’s “insatiable.”); a suicidal Danny Bonaduce’s on-camera meltdown over his crumbling 17-year marriage (truly train wreck TV); and perhaps the worst offender, Anna Nicole Smith’s sad, slurred stint on a show that was really just the exploitation of a woman crying for help. (And we all know how that turned out.)
No-­Go Shows: True Tori, Breaking Bonaduce, The Anna Nicole Show, any pre-rehab Kim Richards scene on the first two seasons of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills

Matt Whitfield, Yahoo Entertainment
My No-Go: Laugh tracks
Why I Just Can’t:These days, I don’t need anyone — let alone writers of predictable (read: lazy) punch lines — telling me when and how hard to laugh at jokes. I much prefer to save my giggles and guffaws for smarter, single-camera comedies (NBC’s Parks and Recreation, FX’s Married) that have to earn them the old fashioned way — with good writing.
No-Go Shows: The Big Bang Theory, 2 Broke Girls, The Millers… basically every sitcom on CBS.

Wook Kim, Yahoo Movies
My No-Go: Intubations
Why I just can’t: As a longtime fan of medical dramas, I’m inured to depictions of bloody surgeries. (A tolerance severely tested by the Stone Age state of hospital care as seen in The Knick). But I do have a problem watching any scene involving intubation — that emergency airway-clearing procedure in which a plastic tube is forcibly inserted into a trachea. This is one horrifyingly invasive medical-show trope I’d just as soon not have shoved down my throat.
No-Go Shows: Nurse Jackie, Grey’s Anatomy, and most especially, reruns of ER.