What was the most shocking/profound things you've seen on TV?

Danny Tse
Danny Tse Posts: 5,206
edited May 2010 in Music & Movies
Just out of curiousity.

For me, it was (not in any particular order)....

1. That Bank of America robbery where the police was seriously overwhelmed by the 2 bad guys with body armour and machine guns.
2. The man blocking the the path of a column of tanks at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
3. 9/11 footage
4. Drew Berrymore "flashing" David Letterman
5. The TV show "Twin Peaks"....and later on, "The X-Files".
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  • Kex
    Kex Posts: 5,205
    edited May 2010
    Janet Jackson's boob. I mean ... I totally see why the network had to pay a fine for showing that: I'm traumatized for life (and at such a young age, too).
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  • reberly
    reberly Posts: 173
    edited May 2010
    1. Challenger Disaster, when i was just a wee boy.
    2. First Gulf War. We had never had that level of coverage before and you couldn't tear yourself away from it
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  • polkatese
    polkatese Posts: 6,767
    edited May 2010
    Really, Kex? you ain't seen nuthin' yet then....pick up a copy of Fatal Attraction flick then.

    It has to be 9/11 tower II hit, for me.
    I am sorry, I have no opinion on the matter. I am sure you do. So, don't mind me, I just want to talk audio and pie.
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  • Roy Munson
    Roy Munson Posts: 886
    edited May 2010
    I think the most profound thing I've ever seen on TV was when we first landed on the moon. The pictures were crap but the impact of sending humans to the moon had a big affect on this 17 year old that had been following the space program from the beginning. I still believe that going to the moon was the greatest technical achievement in history. In the span of a little over 60 years we went from no human flight to landing on the moon!
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  • Fongolio
    Fongolio Posts: 3,516
    edited May 2010
    First moon landing and walk. I was 9 and it was magical.

    9/11. I was 40 and it was surreal.

    The first time on SNL's Weekend Update when Akroyd said to Jane Curtain "Jane you ignorant ****." I was stoned and it was hilarious.
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  • Danny Tse
    Danny Tse Posts: 5,206
    edited May 2010
    BlueFox wrote: »
    Those are all good picks. One TV show episode that really hit me was an episode of "Homicide. Life on the Streets" (I think that was the show title) where a jerk got trapped between a subway car and the platform. Basically, everyone, except him, knew he was going to die once they moved the car.

    Oh, that episode was very memorable....and the guy trapped was played by Vincent D'Onofrio. Such an ironic ending as well.
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  • nooshinjohn
    nooshinjohn Posts: 25,461
    edited May 2010
    9/11

    The Challenger disaster

    The Zapruder film,

    and M.A.S.H.
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  • piper
    piper Posts: 41
    edited May 2010
    I once saw a show on Cyrogenics on the Discovery Channel. They were talking about freezing a near dead person to fix him up later once the cure was discovered in the future. There is full body freezing or just cutting off one's head and freezing....and they showed just that, not clearly, but they did show these people cutting off this guy's head and putting it in the deep freeze.

    Dittos on 9/11.
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  • FiveORacing
    FiveORacing Posts: 105
    edited May 2010
    9/11 (far and away the worst)
    Challenger
    OJ Verdict
    Moon Landing
    JFK Funeral (I was 9 years old)
    Hurricane Katrina
    LA Rodney King Riots
    Earnhardt Sr Death (I'm a huge race fan)
    Obama Winning
    Princess Di death coverage (still don't know why that fascinated me)
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  • fatchowmein
    fatchowmein Posts: 2,637
    edited May 2010
    The most profound.
    Watching the first Space Shuttle landing live in the library when I was in grade school. April 14, 1981.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnEnaKq57Yg

    The most shocking.
    J. Geils band's "Centerfold" video. We just got cable TV and I didn't know what all the excitement was about so I surfed all the channels and stumbled upon a bunch of girls wearing lingerie dancing on MTV in its early years. I was in grade school.

    I think I caught the video around the 1:44 minute.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqDjMZKf-wg
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  • George Grand
    George Grand Posts: 12,258
    edited May 2010
    Airplanes shooting a gorilla off the top of The Empire State Building.


    Anybody else see that?
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  • warren
    warren Posts: 756
    edited May 2010
    .


    Anybody else see that?
    With just one eye..... Scarey!!!
    Some final words,
    "If you keep banging your head against the wall,
    you're going to have headaches."
    Warren
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  • Poee7R
    Poee7R Posts: 904
    edited May 2010
    It's cheesy, but watching Porky's on HBO when I was 8-9 years old. You know the shower scene. :D

    Its stuck with me all these years haha.


    Dave
    Once again we meet at last.
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  • F1nut
    F1nut Posts: 50,734
    edited May 2010
    The assassination of JFK
    Landing on the moon
    9/11
    Political Correctness'.........defined

    "A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a t-u-r-d by the clean end."

    President of Club Polk

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  • k0tuynh
    k0tuynh Posts: 143
    edited May 2010
    **** movies in my pay per view channels lol
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  • ryanjoachim
    ryanjoachim Posts: 2,046
    edited May 2010
    Real Sex (HBO) - Back when HBO was free (I was probably in middle school)
    **** PPV - back when the channels were all distorted but every now and then an image would convalesce for just a second of 2 of NAKED SEX OMG!
    9/11 - Remember hearing about this on the way to school and watching it throughout the day in high school.
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  • shack
    shack Posts: 11,154
    edited May 2010
    These are things I watched in real time...just as they happened.

    9-11 - The second tower being hit. I could not belive it was happening. Also the people jumping off the upper floors of the tower to their deaths.

    The Challenger exploding...I was hoping it was just a small explosion and the crew survived...and of course they didn't.

    On a brighter note...

    Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon.

    The Beatles first time on Ed Sullivan

    The last episode of MASH
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  • Huck344
    Huck344 Posts: 453
    edited May 2010
    In 1983 during the height of the cold war, there was a TV movie called, "The Day After" about the after effects of a nuclear war between the US and the USSR. I was 11 or 12 at the time. It was a very controversial movie. Only a couple of kids in my class were allowed to watch it. My parents let me watch it and to this day, that movie is burned in my brain. By today's standards it's pretty tame, but it scared the crap out of me back then and I will never forget it.

    I will also never forget being woken up by a phone call on 9/11. It was just after 6AM here on the west coast. I honestly thought it was a joke or a hoax or something. I just couldn't believe it.
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  • vc69
    vc69 Posts: 2,500
    edited May 2010
    Danny Tse wrote: »
    Just out of curiousity.

    For me, it was (not in any particular order)....

    1. That Bank of America robbery where the police was seriously overwhelmed by the 2 bad guys with body armour and machine guns.
    2. The man blocking the the path of a column of tanks at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

    Those are strong with me too Danny.

    I was watching...

    When the first bombs started exploding in Baghdad, Gulf War.

    When Challenger exploded.

    When news of the tsunami in the Indian ocean started coming in.

    When Reagan was shot.

    When the P.O.W.'s started coming home from Viet Nam.

    Timothy McVeigh's execution.

    Thats all I can think of besides the obvious 9/11 stuff.
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  • heiney9
    heiney9 Posts: 25,204
    edited May 2010
    Don't foget about WACO

    Moon Landing it seems I remember watching it at the babysitters house I was about 3 or 4 years old.

    Lennon being shot.

    John Wayne Gacy a local serial molester/killer

    1st MTV broadcast

    Columbine shooting

    Regan shooting

    These are in addition to those already mentioned.
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  • nooshinjohn
    nooshinjohn Posts: 25,461
    edited May 2010
    shack wrote: »
    The Challenger exploding...I was hoping it was just a small explosion and the crew survived...and of course they didn't.

    I had a dear friend in Los Angeles, (he passed several years ago:( ) that was involved in the early design work for the shuttle. Columbia and Challenger were designed with crew modules that were intended to separate along a bulkhead and land in the water like the Apollo return vehicles did. His work was with designing parachutes and the pyrotechnics needed to deploy them. He was one of those that believed until his death that at least some of the crew survived the initial failure of the vehicle.

    His part in the program ended with the budget axe after NASA determined that any accident during re-entry or launch would be unservivable. Every time this was discussed, he wept because he knew better...
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  • shack
    shack Posts: 11,154
    edited May 2010
    heiney9 wrote:
    Don't foget about WACO.

    While I have no sympathy for the position those people took...the children(and some of the adults) did not deserve to die that way. I know it was a decision on some of thier parts...but to watch that building burn, knowing there were people inside was sickening. Starve them out...wait them out...whatever...but don't kill them out of impatience.
    "Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right." - Ricky Gervais

    "For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible." - Stuart Chase

    "Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago." - Bernard Berenson
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  • geoffr
    geoffr Posts: 22
    edited May 2010
    Some of the above, plus Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby.
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  • cstmar01
    cstmar01 Posts: 4,424
    edited May 2010
    Keiko wrote: »
    South Park :D;)

    Dave Chappelle's skit; Clayton Bigsby, Black, White Supremacist. :eek:

    so freakin' great. just love it, I can watch that and laugh every time I see it (which is countless amount)
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  • BlueMDPicker
    BlueMDPicker Posts: 7,569
    edited May 2010
    Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now" followed by his weekly, live interviews on "Person to Person" still rank highly with me after nearly 60 years of television. Ed was a no BS guy and really expanded the horizons of a kid growing up on the Great Plains.

    Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man" series on PBS ranks right up there as well. He was dying of cancer during the filming and had much he wanted to impart.

    Elvis' first live appearance on the Ed Sullivan show was shocking, simply shocking (for the time.) :D

    Jack Ruby gut shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, live in the parking garage of the Dallas PD, was an unexpected trauma for a nation already in shock and mourning. I witnessed that from our living room.

    9/11 is burned into the minds of all those who witnessed the live coverage. Like many, I saw the second plane hit live. Minutes later I saw the huge plume of ink black smoke rising from the Pentagon from my office window in DC. I really thought WW III had begun. In retrospect, perhaps it had?
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  • Roy Munson
    Roy Munson Posts: 886
    edited May 2010
    Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now" followed by his weekly, live interviews on "Person to Person" still rank highly with me after nearly 60 years of television. Ed was a no BS guy and really expanded the horizons of a kid growing up on the Great Plains.

    The "Harvest of Shame" and Murrow's outing of Joe McCarthy are just two examples of his stellar reporting.
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  • Danny Tse
    Danny Tse Posts: 5,206
    edited May 2010
    Keiko wrote: »
    Another shocker was the Jonestown Tragedy. Remember that whack job, Jim Jones and Guyana? Very sad. :(

    I remember that since this was a local story. We still get "reminders" from the local media every once in a while whenever there's anniversary of some kind. One of the survivors, I believe a Congressional aide at the time, is now a Congress member.
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