10 Worst TV Scenes Of The Year (So Far)

We’ve presented you with the year’s best TV scenes, now brace yourselves for… the opposite of that.

All TV was not created equally in 2025 and even some of our favorite shows delivered scenes that, frankly put, missed the mark by a long shot. In the list below, we’re taking stock of the 10 shows that had us scratching our heads and bursting in anger or laughter (or both!), with scenes that just didn’t make any friggin’ sense.

Ordered alphabetically below, you’ll find a couple of spinoffs that spun way out of bounds, some “Squid Game” characters we absolutely could’ve done without and a battle with technology that had our jaws scraping the floor in the worst way possible.

Also featured here are questionable tidbits from shows like “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” “Sirens,” “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon” and more. So scroll down to read our picks for TV’s worst scenes of the year (so far), and be sure to tell us all about your picks in the comments below.

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1923 Takes Whitfield Too Far

The monstrous Donald Whitfield was already pretty much the worst person in Montana by start of Season 2. A violent, devious, amoral man who put himself and his interests above all else, we hated him a lot from jump… but he really topped himself in the episode where he had Lindy and Christy, the sex workers in his employ, beat each other bloody. The scene was over-the-top, gratuitous violence that didn’t do anything to move forward the plot or illuminate anything new about Whitfield’s character. A gross fail, on the whole. — Kimberly Roots

LOVE IS BLIND: Kacie Abruptly Dumps Patrick (And He Doesn’t Get The Message)

Kacie and Patrick’s “Love Is Blind” break-up was one of the worst we’ve ever seen from the Netflix reality series. It was physically painful to watch Kacie repeatedly try to end things with her brand-new fiancé, without ever explicitly stating she wanted to break up. She told him she couldn’t proceed, but also kept saying “I love you,” which was very confusing for our Patrick. Thinking his partner was just nervous about the cameras, he kept telling her that they could skip the Baja honeymoon to help take the pressure off; their relationship could continue at a slower pace. She kept vaguely trying to lay the groundwork for a relationship, but Patrick just kept on dropping what she was putting down.

As the two communicated like two ships passing in the night, the episode kept cutting to confessionals of each contestant recounting their wildly different interpretations of the interaction, which only made our skin crawl more! Just when we thought things couldn’t get worse, once the two finally got up to part ways, Kacie ran back into Patrick’s arms, straddling him and initiating a rather passionate make-out for a girl who’s uninterested in pursuing a relationship with the guy. File that one under most bizarre break-up strategies! — Claire Franken

MOUNTAINHEAD: Going In For The Ice Cold Kill

“Succession” showed us how callous the 1% can be, but creator Jesse Armstrong’s HBO movie took that idea way beyond anything the Roys dreamed of, wallowing in the cruelty of a quartet of filthy rich tech titans on a ski vacation. It was a tough watch, with the billionaires oblivious to the feelings of anyone below their net worth, but it truly bottomed out when they turned on one of their own.

Ven, the cocky Elon Musk clone played by Cory Michael Smith, wanted to buy the AI innovations developed by Ramy Youssef’s Jeff to fix his social media platform, but Jeff refused to sell. So naturally, Ven decided to kill Jeff, joining the other two to coldly plot Jeff’s murder like it was just another corporate acquisition. Even worse, as they moved in for the kill, the three of them chanted “Khashoggi,” a reference to the Saudi journalist who was murdered in cold blood.

We get that Armstrong was trying to show us how ridiculous their quest for financial dominance had become, but it left a bitter taste in our mouths we couldn’t shake. Jeff survived the night, but the foul stench left by that scene lingered even longer. — Dave Nemetz

THE PAPER: Esmerelda Sings The Blues

Among the ensemble cast of Peacock’s “The Office” spinoff, Sabrina Impacciatore’s hopelessly self-involved Esmerelda is clearly the Mark Brendanawicz of the group, i.e., the character we wouldn’t miss at all if they left, referring to the “Parks and Recreation” character who disappeared without a trace. With Impacciatore hamming it up at every turn, Esmerelda’s bold, broad comedy style was a terrible fit from the start with “The Paper’s” subtle, deadpan tone.

She hit rock bottom in the season finale, with Esmerelda so desperate for attention at an awards show that she grabbed the mike during the solemn “In Memoriam” segment and… began singing. And not a thoughtful ballad. No, she made up a song on the spot, singing about “dead, dead journalists” while the crowd looked on in horror. Yes, we get that she’s supposed to be cringe, but this scene — and most Esmerelda scenes, really — went beyond Michael Scott-level awkward and landed somewhere around insufferable. Let’s hope “The Paper” finds a way to edit her out in Season 2. — D.N.

PULSE: School Bus Sinks, CGI Stinks

Honestly, we’re sort of impressed: The opening scene of Netflix’s now-cancelled medical drama clocks in at less than a minute long, but for better or worse, it stuck with us all year. In the scene, a high school soccer team is on its way to a match, but the rain from an incoming hurricane causes a multi-car crash, and the team’s bus careens off a bridge into the water below. For one, the CGI here misses the mark badly; the establishing shot of the school bus driving through Miami looks entirely computer-animated, and the distance between the road and the water underneath it appears to be constantly changing. Worse yet, the scene is stuffed with forced, quippy dialogue (“Bro, according to your average on penalty kicks, I think you should work on your aim every chance ya get!”), and the dialogue replacement done in post-production makes it look like these actors aren’t even the ones saying their lines. — Rebecca Luther

SIRENS: Wife Swap

Netflix shows love to throw a huge twist at us, but sometimes, those twists can feel contrived and calculated, like the showrunners are consciously checking off the “Big Twist!” box on their to-do list. That’s how it felt when this luxury soap starring Julianne Moore and Milly Alcock drew to a close. Alcock played Simone, the loyal assistant to Moore’s ultra-wealthy socialite Michaela, and the two of them had a creepy bond. (They even shared gum!) All series long, Simone wished she could be as poised and polished as Michaela… and in the end, she got her wish.

Simone also bonded with Michaela’s husband Peter, played by Kevin Bacon, but we didn’t think much of it until the final moments of the finale, when Peter abruptly divorced Michaela… and took Simone as his new girlfriend. While Michaela had to take the ferry home (the indignity!), Simone slipped right into Michaela’s role as the picture-perfect girlboss, and the party guests didn’t even seem to mind that Simone had taken Michaela’s place at Peter’s side. Now we don’t doubt that a man like Peter would trade in his wife for a younger model, but the rushed way it all went down felt phony, like the writers were grasping for a shocking ending to get people buzzing. Not a good look. — D.N.

SQUID GAME: Very Irritating People

Season 3’s golden-masked VIPs were anything but “important” to the story. In fact, they were pretty annoying! Some of the most irritating characters of the year, even. (We could go on.) And we get it. Someone had to finance this death-trap of a game, with its 45.6 won (~$34 million) jackpot, and its wildly pricey sets and murder weapons. So sure, giving them a front row seat to watch the games makes sense, in theory.

But boy, did the quips from the peanut gallery get old fast. (One of their eyeroll-worthy lines: “This is a bigger twist than the resurrection of Jesus!”) The included commentary was so abysmal, we would’ve rather listened to Muppet hecklers Statler and Waldorf — even they probably could’ve made all this senseless death at least a little bit entertaining. And while we know this list is about the worst TV scenes of the year, we simply cannot pick just one. This grievance stands for all of the scenes starring these horrible, poorly written, tension-busting “VIPs.” If an American spinoff should ever occur, let’s just not, OK? — Nick Caruso

THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY: Jeremiah And His Groomsmen Practice Their Weird Wedding Dance

If “The Summer I Turned Pretty” Season 3 taught us anything, it’s this: There is nothing worse than having to watch six men in Bermuda shorts do body rolls to a cheesy pop song by former One Direction singer Zayn.

In Episode 7, Jeremiah rounded up his groomsmen to practice a dance — and we use the term “dance” loosely — for some kind of ritualistic performance he planned to bestow upon his future bride at their wedding. The rehearsal culminated with the boys swarming Denise, the stand-in for Belly, until they got down on the ground, crouching with outstretched hands as their faces beamed — ta da! She gave them a half-hearted applause, the way a babysitter might encourage a toddler after the baby bangs around on some plastic cups. We are only thankful that Belly didn’t go through with the wedding, so she didn’t have to witness this catastrophic mess. Couldn’t Prime Video have spared us, too?! — C.F.

TRACKER: Colter And Russell Defeat An Algorithm — With Bullets!

Look, we don’t want to tell the fine folks over at “Tracker” how algorithms work. Clearly, they possess technology beyond what we plebes have access to — hence how Randy was able to bypass security and access an apartment complex’s tenant list by entering the uber-specific code “getTenantList” into the dark-web app “Crib Deets.” But we’re pretty sure Colter and Russell’s efforts to shut down “The Process” in Season 3’s second episode — by firing bullets into a bunch of computer monitors — wouldn’t actually destroy any information, which is most likely stored on cloud servers in the year of our Lord 2025. (Also, what a waste of perfectly good ammo!) It was an incredibly dumb moment in an otherwise above-average episode of the Justin Hartley procedural, which would be wise to avoid any specific techno-mumbo-jumbo in future installments. This was… not the show’s finest moment. — Ryan Schwartz

THE WALKING DEAD: DARYL DIXON: Lifeboat, Begone!

Now we weren’t really expecting Daryl and Carol to get their happy ending already on AMC’s “The Walking Dead” spinoff, since we still have a fourth and final season to go. (Plus, this franchise doesn’t really do happy endings.) Still, we were expecting that the show wouldn’t foil Daryl and Carol’s plans with such a boneheaded plot twist.

As the Season 3 finale drew to a close, Daryl and Carol were all set to sail back to America in the boat they repaired, but the villainous Fede stopped them, pointing a gun at Daryl. Carol tackled Fede before he could shoot her friend, but the errant bullets hit the boat… and somehow set off a massive blaze that engulfed the boat in seconds, completely destroying it. (Did we miss the scene where Daryl packed lots of highly flammable liquids onboard?) To rub more salt in the wound, Fede somehow escaped in the chaos so he can continue to be a thorn in their sides. It was a cheap way to keep Daryl and Carol in Spain for another season, and they seemed to sense it too, as they just stood there watching the flames, dumbfounded. Yeah, we couldn’t believe it, either. — D.N.

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