5 Most Disturbing Unknowns In Television

4. Dinosaurs Killed The Dinosaurs-Stars

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwxUdyvSxg Show: Dinosaurs Episode: Changing Nature (S4 E7) The well-known, well-loved, (semi-remembered) show from my generation's early years actually had one of the most subtly disturbing endings of all time. After four seasons of wittily exploring issues including but not limited to environmentalism, women's rights, civil rights, and body image using the main cast of the leathery-skinned Sinclair family, the show ended with what would essentially be the end of the species. Perhaps this isn't surprising, as most viewers past the age of three understand that dinosaurs no longer walk the earth (nor do their puppet doppelgangers), but what was disturbing about the extinction of the creatures was its self-inflicted nature. In an attempt to stave off a swarm of "Bunch Beetles" eating some of the species' main vines, Earl Sinclair decides to spray the planet with a "defoliant." This chemical, however kills off all plant life on the planet. Thinking that clouds will bring rain and thus resuscitate plant life, the dinosaurs decide to drop bombs into volcanoes, but this in turn causes global cooling - ie. The Ice Age. The community understands what this winter will last for tens of thousands of years (Ned Stark was right!), and the show ends with Earl apologizing to his family and dinosaur-kind for killing them off. The most disturbing implication of this finale is, for me, not the idea of our beloved dinosaurs slowly freezing to death, but the suggestion that any species €“ including ours €“ will eventually find a way to extinct ourselves via the misuse of nature. The episode of course was written to teach viewers an important lesson about environmentalism, but leaves audiences with feelings of doom: one misstep, one wrong diagnosis, one wrong suggestion from one wrong pseudo-scientist and we're all goners. That's a pretty disturbing moral lesson, if you ask me (Thanks ABC!).