The 9 Most Cringe-Inducing Programs On Basic Cable

During World War II, Americans channeled their civilian energy into war bonds, scrap metal drives and USO volunteer efforts. Over fifty years later, our country is again in peril but we choose to take our minds off of combat with a different kind of distraction: gross-out television. In honor of this shift in wartime priorities and the upcoming Halloween holiday, Movieline has compiled some of the creepiest TV shows on basic cable today. While scanning through this article instead of reading about this weekend's Baghdad bombings, consider which is worse: knowing that pedophiles in the Southwest are pleasuring themselves to TLC's Toddlers & Tiaras or at this moment, a Discovery Health camera crew is staging a reenactment of an Arby's bathroom birth?

9. Verminators (Discovery Channel)

No bug or legion of bugs can freak me out more than the idea of having to work in the pest extermination field. Sure, crab fishermen have to deal with death, but at least they can talk about their job in mixed company. Set up like any low-budget police procedural, the verminators pull up to a client's house underneath ultra-serious voiceover: "Mike is on the other side of town, facing another rat infestation." While an ominous soundtrack plays, Mike carefully assesses the customer's evidence of pest crime (rat droppings) and comes up with a plan of attack: "This is going to be a trapping situation, we shouldn't do too much baiting." All for what payoff? To see the verminator trap the house and then brandish a few dead rats at the end of the half hour.

8. Pawn Stars (History Channel)

Cringing with boredom is a phenomenon usually reserved for visits to nursing homes or the DMV, but Pawn Stars has the ability to make viewers yawn in fear that somehow this might be a commercial-free episode. "Pawn shop in Vegas reality show" might have been an easy pitch in the room, but having to watch uninteresting people haggle over musical instruments is quite difficult. Those loggers/transcribers scanning the raw footage should be given hazard pay or a jar of amphetamines.

7. Intervention (A&E)

As if sitting through your own friend's intervention was not unpleasant enough, A&E has mined an Emmy-award winning program out of America's fascination with others' pain. The series has covered every addiction from alcohol to video games, with sufferers ranging from meth-addicted former athletes to crack whore daughters. The outcome is not always pleasant and there is a 75% chance that viewers will end up crying along with the on screen family members in between footage of the loved ones shooting up in an abandoned basement. Intervention is the epitome of Rubberneck TV. (Note, we also considered Hoarders but did not want to pile on.)

6. Man V. Food (Travel Channel)

It is bad enough that we have to endure 20 minutes of faux comedic and faux intelligent takes on food as the show builds to the ultimate hot wing challenge, but when Adam Richman doesn't complete the objective it feels dirty on a very deep level. But even when he wins, we lose, so it's not like a completing a 6 pound cheesesteak makes it all worthwhile.

5. Toddlers & Tiaras (TLC)

Just when we thought that TLC could not delve any deeper into kidsploitation programming (Jon & Kate Plus 8, 18 Kids and Counting), the network tracked down the only parents more desperate to whore their children out for cash and fame. Following a few families each season, camera crews document the bizarre lengths stage mothers go to give their seven year old daughters that extra "something," from shaving her legs in the kitchen sink so that her "tan will take," to demanding flirtatious winks while the heavily made up girl stares dead eyed into the camera.

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