13 Moments From Kids TV Shows That Made Me Super Uncomfortable As A Child
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The ‘90s and ‘00s were a unique time for TV shows aimed at adolescents. Preachy afterschool specials, which reached their peak in the ‘80s, were on a steady decline, both in production and popularity. And the 2010's shows, like Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale, which would offer young viewers pretty much zero semblance of reality, were a mere twinkle in some producer’s eye.
Warner Bros. / Via giphy.com
But kid's TV shows from the ‘90s and ‘00s were unprecedented, and they weren’t afraid to ~go there.~ They contained surprisingly dark plotlines, dealt with some pretty serious issues, and of course, included a lot of adult jokes.
Nickelodeon
Obviously, this led to some stressful TV moments — moments that were problematic, inappropriate for children, or involved a character, usually a kid, being put in an awkward, or even dangerous, situation. Moments that made me, a particularly nervous kid, super uncomfortable.
NBC
So here are 13 of the most uncomfortable, awkward, and problematic moments I remember from kids TV shows:
1.In the Hannah Montana episode, “He Ain't a Hottie, He's My Brother,” Miley finds out that her best friend, Lilly, and her older brother, Jackson, like each other. The age difference between the actors is massive.
Normally, as a teen, I wouldn’t have even paid attention to age differences. But when Hannah Montana first came out, everyone was talking about the age of the actor who played teenage Jackson. (Jason Earles was in his late 20s when the show first started). So when Jackson (played by a 30-year-old Earles) and Lilly (played by a 15-year-old Emily Osment) revealed they have a crush on each other, it made me feel super weird. The whole thing turned out to be a dream anyway, but because I was just a tad younger than Emily Osment, it left a bad taste in my mouth.
2.In The Suite Life of Zack & Cody episode, "Forever Plaid," the twins invite their friends over and charge them money to peep on a girl's soccer team through a hole in the wall.
The worst part is when Arwin, the ADULT hotel engineer, looks through the hole, unaware of what’s on the other side. It was already messed-up that the young boys were peeping, but the fact that Arwin looked, and that the girls on the other side of the wall saw him, was actually very disgusting.
3.A few years later, in The Suite Life on Deck, Zack and Cody suspect their teacher is a dancer in a burlesque show. Zack comes up with a plan which involves dressing up their friends, who are teenagers, in showgirl costumes.
Bailey tries to question the plan, and Cody yells at her. He turns to Zack at least three times during the short two-minute scene to commend him on such a good "plan," and each time, the audience laughs. The whole thing was uncomfortable to watch when I was a teen, and it's just as bad now.
4.In the That’s So Raven episode, “He’s Got the Power,” after Eddie temporarily gains psychic powers, he unknowingly predicts the winner of a horse race for an older kid, Sonny. When Sonny gives Eddie “his cut” of the prize money and shakes him down for the next winner, Eddie, now powerless, makes a total guess.
After it turns out Eddie's guess was wrong, Sonny corners him in an empty restaurant and threatens him. Raven and Chelsea come to his rescue, but it’s still such a tense scene for a kid to watch. It always gave me EXTREME anxiety.
5.In a later episode, "Hizzouse Party," Raven and Cory throw a party, and their reverend shows up.
While their parents are out of town, Raven and Cory throw a massive rager which includes mechanical bull rides. The family reverend enters just as Raven is taking her turn on the bull.
Growing up, I saw riding mechanical bulls as being something very sexual and very adult. It was one thing to see the teenagers in That's So Raven riding it, but when you add the reverend into the mix, the discomfort I felt was palpable.
6.In the Drake & Josh episode, "The Affair," Drake overhears his dad on the phone and assumes he’s having an affair.
The show usually treats the dad like he's a complete buffoon, so the fact that he even had this storyline was definitely strange. Of course, it's all a misunderstanding in the end, but we don't find that out until Drake and Josh do, with just three minutes left in the episode.
There are pretty problematic moments throughout the whole thing, and one part near the end, where Drake and Josh tell their dad not to worry because they won't tell their mom about the affair as they "got [his] back."
7.In the next season of Drake & Josh, in the episode, “I Love Sushi," after the boys find out that they won a contest, Drake celebrates by kissing a random stranger because…he just has to.
A lot of stuff Drake did made me uncomfortable, but when I saw this scene as a young teenager, I remember thinking “God, I hope this doesn’t happen to me.”
8.In the Full House episode, "Star Search," Joey performs stand-up on a TV competition show as his last chance at making it as a comedian...and loses.
I should preface this by saying, as a kid, I would get second-hand embarrassment from Joey's "jokes," so this episode, in particular, was incredibly hard for me to watch.
The fact that Joey's planning to perform his comedy in front of other people instead of just his “family” is stressful since we all know he’s not funny. Then he performs, and what do you know, he’s not funny. (Of course, they show people in the audience laughing to try to convince us otherwise). And to add to the uneasiness of the whole thing, he’s sweating the whole time he's on stage. And then, of course, we're forced to watch as he doesn't win, and the whole thing is just so deeply awkward and embarrassing.
9.In the episode “Babe Raider” of Life With Derek, Casey decides to do her media project on sexist video games, but then, in an attempt to get a boy’s attention, ends up dressing like the character in the video game.
When Casey came downstairs in a slightly cropped tank top, her family freaked out. I was 12 when I first saw this, and I was already trying to hide my body, so the fact that her family made such a big deal about showing the tiniest bit of skin definitely added to my own shame about my own body.
10.In Rugrats' “Naked Tommy,” Tommy convinces the other babies to free themselves by taking off their clothes.
When Phil and Lil see each other naked for the first time, there’s shock and concern in their voices. And then, when Tommy sees Lil’s body, he’s confused. This always made me feel weird as a kid. I think it has something to do with the fact that Lil's the only girl here, and she's kind of made to feel "othered," and maybe it made me feel that way, too. But even now it's still uncomfortable to watch, so maybe it's just that naked cartoon talking babies make me a little uneasy.
11.In the SpongeBob episode, “Karate Choppers,” Mr. Krabs bans SpongeBob from practicing karate because it’s interfering with his work. SpongeBob and Sandy try their hardest to not do karate, but it backfires and they “release their frustrations” in a huge karate tussle.
SpongeBob and Sandy head to the park to have a karate-free picnic. But when SpongeBob has to cut a slice of barnacle loaf, he uses a karate move to do so, and things escalate from there. They’re both so nervous in the scene, and they clearly feel some sort of shame for feeling tempted. I couldn’t put my finger on why it made me feel nervous too, but of course, there’s now no doubt in my mind that this scene is such a strong analogy for sex that even my kid brain was picking up on something.
There’s even a shot of the ocean “bouncing” while they're mid-fight, which mirrors a moving headboard or a shaking car, usually a signal to the audience that someone’s having sex.
12.In “Mugged” from Hey Arnold, after Arnold gets mugged, his grandmother teaches him karate to defend himself. He takes it a little too far and beats up an innocent guy.
The mugging itself is hard to watch as a man with yellow eyes grabs Arnold from behind, covers his mouth, and throws him into an alley. So I completely get why Arnold's always on high alert now. What happened to him was horrible and traumatic. But when this poor guy just wants to know where the bus stop is, Arnold beats him up so bad that all of his clothes just fall off. And then the guy starts crying! I distinctly remember as a kid closing my eyes during this scene on rewatches because of the way it made me feel.
13.In the Home Improvement episode, “A Night to Dismember,” after Tim and Jill sneak a peek at Mark’s unfinished horror movie, they become convinced that Mark wants to murder them.
In the later seasons of the show, Mark starts dressing goth, and his parents don’t exactly support his decision. That, mixed with his horror movie, where the character he plays wants to murder his whole family, freaks them out. The whole thing is played for laughs, but it's not really funny, and actually pretty scary that Tim and Jill think Mark's so disturbed that he would straight-up murder them.
When his parents finally confront him, the conversation is super awkward, and it never really feels like the conflict gets resolved. I was always kind of scared of Mark after seeing this episode.
