7 Terrifying Episodes Hidden In Unscary TV Shows

2. Dreams - M*A*S*H

Wait. M*A*S*H? As in, Alan Alda, Korean War, stuff of a million lazy rerun-filled afternoons, every American grandpa’s favorite source of laugh-track comedy and comforting morals? Surely this is the unscariest show in TV history. Where’s the spook?

In fact, the venerable M*A*S*H went dark several times, often straining against the broadcast restrictions of its time to get real about the horrors of war. Its most successful attempt is Dreams, which delivers exactly that: dreams of the main characters after a brutally demanding day.

Convincing dream sequences are hard, verging on impossible. Fiction in any form struggles to present anything that is simultaneously as coherent and as incomprehensible as a true dream. M*A*S*H succeeds on pure surrealism, presenting each vignette as complete unto itself, never cheating the viewer by pointing out the symbols or belaboring the point. As with real dreams, it’s the images that hit hardest. The arrogant and brilliant Charles Emerson Winchester reduced to a dancing clown twirling sparklers before a parade of the dead ranks with the most fundamentally disturbing moments in classic TV.