Brain Bleach/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of the need for Brain Bleach in Live-Action TV include:

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Frasier

  • Frasier's reaction to his brother mentioning he's only packing sunscreen for his honeymoon.
  • Frasier makes many statements like this in the series. Another example:

Roz: Gosh, mine was this lifeguard. He had long blond hair and the bluest eyes. He used to get so sunburned, I'd spend hours just peeling the skin off his back. What was his name? Rick? Nick! I know there was an "ick" sound.
Frasier: I was about to make one of those myself.

  • "Roz's Turn":

Roz: Big news. Gertie Oldson is leaving the station.
Daphne: What, from "Gertie's Grab Bag"? I love that show.
Frasier: Oh please, that homily-spouting Hausfrau? It's the most embarrassing thing on the air. So, she finally got canned, eh?
Roz: No, she got a million-dollar TV deal.
Frasier: (chokes on his sherry, then mock-calmly mutters) Well, good news for Gertie and for the many atheists who will welcome this new proof of their theory!

  • "The Wizard and Roz":

Frasier: (after seeing his mentor Dr. Tewksbury wearing only Roz's robe) I've gone blind. And ten seconds too late.

  • "Slow Tango in South Seattle":

Frasier: (reading the opening of Roz's new favorite romance novel) There are tangos that come flowing from the wine-colored seas, from the rust of a hundred sunken ships. This is one of those dances.
Roz: Well?
Frasier: There are books that make your stomach lurch, and rumble, and thrust your lunch ever upwards. This is one of those books!

  • In "Lilith Needs A Favor", Niles demands the Cafe Nervosa waiter use Brain Bleach to forget about what Niles thinks is a picture of Daphne's nipple.

Waiter: Hey, where'd you get the nipple shot?
Frasier: Good lord!
Niles: (frantic) You are to erase that from your mind!
Frasier: Is it Daphne?
Waiter: (smiling broadly) Nice.
Niles: (to waiter) You're not erasing! ERASE!

    • Later, Niles finds out that it's a pic of Martin's nipple. Niles' horror is hysterical as he tries to forget ever seeing the pic. Martin's poor choice of words doesn't help.

Martin: Oh, I can't wait to get to Bogart's. I know just what I'm going to get: the barbecue chicken breast. (Niles reacts in horror) They have the juiciest one in town. Or, or the lamb. They serve an enormous rack. (Niles cringes again)
Niles: (flustered) Great.
Martin: You might want to get an overcoat of Frasier's out of there. It's supposed to be pretty nippy tonight. (Niles cringes yet again)

  • The episode "Momma Mia" when Frasier finally realises that his girlfriend is identical to his late mother, and Martin thinks that he has further followed suit of Oedipus.

Niles: [running for his bug spray:] Frasier, you didn't do anything wrong, your feelings for Mia stem from perfectly natural Oedipal desires.
Frasier: Yes, but Oedipal desires are supposed to resolve themselves by the age of six!
[Niles starts with the bug spray.]
Frasier: Oh for God's sake, give me that, you idiot!
[Frasier takes the spray and "blinds" himself with it accidentally.]
Frasier: [screams] I've blinded myself!
[Martin enters with water and sees the commotion.]
Martin: I leave you alone with him for two seconds!

Other Works

  • iCarly: In the episode "iDate a Bad Boy":

Sam: Check out this new video I found called Neck Infection.
Carly: Okay.
Freddie: Whatever.
Freddie & Carly: AAAAAAAAAH!
Carly: EWW EWW EWW EWW!!! (Runs away screaming)
Sam: Wait, Freddie, I want to show you this next part. It's really funny.
Freddie: (screams) MOMMY! (runs away)

  • Cheers: Diane reacts to Coach's daughter Lisa's fiancé's ideal sport: "all-nude full-contact female kickboxing":

Diane: Excuse me, I have to go floss my brain.

  • On Friends, the Central Perk manager hates Phoebe's singing so much it makes him want to "push my finger through my eye, into my brain, and swirl it around."
    • In "The One with the Butt", Joey gets a gig as a butt double; he goes into Monica's bathroom to put lotion on his rear end in preparation for the "part". Chandler comes in with the phone in his hand:

Chandler: Where's Joey? His mom's on the phone.
Monica: In the bathroom. I don't think you wanna go in there right now!
Chandler: Oh come on, we're roommates. (enters bathroom, runs out screaming) GAAAAAAH! MY EYES! MY EYES!

    • In "The One Where Everyone Finds Out", Phoebe sees Chandler and Monica having sex, and screams the exact same dialogue.
  • The Class: Kat shows them pictures taken of body parts from a cadaver.

Ethan: Dear God, what is this?!
Kat: It's a tongue!
Ethan: It's not in a mouth!

  • In Supernatural, Sam catches Dean having a threesome in a motel room. Back in the Impala, he asks Dean for his knife. "...So I can gouge out my eyes!"
  • CSI: Crime Scene Investigation gives a rather chilling instance of this in Season 3, Episode 2 (The Accused is Entitled), when the killer was so disgusted by the fact that the "woman" he slept with was a man, he killed him in a violent rage.
    • There was another episode, "Two and A Half Deaths", wherein a man accidentally sees a man and a woman get down to business in front of him (he was hiding in a closet with wooden-slat doors).

"Some things, once you see 'em, you can't unsee."

  • NCIS has an episode, "Dead and Unburied", where Tony asked to see the body of a deceased Casanova to determine whether the man had had a large penis. Ducky obliged. Unfortunately for Tony, that particular body part was in an advanced state of decomposition.

Tony: Is there a way you can psychologically unsee something?

  • There aren't enough handywipes in the world to clean Monk's brain after reading the innuendo-filled memoirs of an actress from the only TV show he ever watched as a kid. A certain page is so disgusting his assistant rips it out before he can read it and at the end Monk returns the book, the page replaced with a page from Charles Dickens.
  • In Hannah Montana, after finding out that the reason Oliver calls Lily "Lilypop" is because he liked her even when she had a pimple, Miley replies, "I could have lived my whole life without knowing that."
  • A 2004 episode of Saturday Night Live featured Lindsay Lohan in a Harry Potter sketch. Lohan played Hermione, who had obviously "blossomed" over the summer away from Hogwarts, which Hagrid notices, to his chagrin:

Hagrid: (to Hermione) Hello, who are you?
Hermione: Hagrid, it's Hermione.
Hagrid: (eyes widen) Yikes. What happened? Take it out of my brain, take it out! Doot-doot-doot-doot-doot! Okay, well, all right, I'd better go out to the woods and tame my dragon.
Harry: Ah, you got a new pet?
Hagrid: (pause) Nope.

  • Web Soup offers a "Palate Cleanser" clip (usually cute animals acting cute) to serve as much-needed Brain Bleach following the disturbing "Things You Can't Unsee" segment.
  • Whose Line Is It Anyway occasionally featured calls for the brain bleach:

Greg has just performed a song about vacuum cleaners as a German cabaret girl
Drew: $1,000 to whoever can find me a brain scrubber, so that I can get the image of that tongue-wagging out of my head so I can sleep tonight...

  • The Office: Michael, after having walked in on the hospital room where Pam is giving birth.

Michael: Gotta go wash my eyes...

  • True Blood: Tara, faced with watching a doctor aspirate Jason to treat acute priapism (i.e. stick a big needle into his swollen pee-pee), informs the world at large that "I ain't never gonna be the same after this."
  • Tensou Sentai Goseiger has the Mind Wash card, exclusive to the Blue Ranger, which functions in the same context as neuralysers in MIB (both are uniformed groups who must keep large-scale activities secret from the public). One difference though - a small boy named Nozomu is immune to it, which kicks off the series proper.
  • Wizards of Waverly Place: Everyone's reaction when they find out that Shakira is really a man.

Max: Our dad kisses your poster!

  • The Doctor Who episode "The Beast Below" had the characters receiving horrified messages from themselves, recorded just before they applied Brain Bleach to themselves. The ship they were on could only keep its inhabitants alive by torturing the last surviving Star Whale, and anyone who got in trouble in sight of the Monster Clowns, not including children, was fed to the whale to keep on a perpetual motion device of suffering.
  • At one point in Married... with Children, Al accidentally sees Peg's mother naked. His response is to stumble backwards, clutching his eyes. "I've gone blind!"
    • Another episode sees Al after a seeing a fat woman's underwear at the shoe store.

Al: First thing they teach you when you're a rookie salesman is never look up. I looked up, Peg. I saw underwear. It said Saturday.
Peg: So what?
Al: TODAY'S WEDNESDAY!

  • On The Daily Show, during a January 2011 segment on how all the zodiac signs have changed, Jason Jones reveals a rather...Um...Revealing tattoo. Jon Stewart replied that he'd probably have to get the image burned from his brain by laser.
  • In an episode of Being Human (UK), upon visiting a vampire party, full of humans willingly offering themselves as food sources to rather underdressed vampires, George turns to Nina and requests that when they get home, she remind him to "gouge out his brain, with a spoon".
  • Everybody Loves Raymond: Upon hearing about his father swimming nude at the lodge, Ray says, "I'm gonna gouge out my eyes." Which in turn prompts Robert to reply, "But you can't gouge out your mind's eye."
  • Quoth Sean of Hustle, after seeing Eddie pretending to be a stripper: "I'm gonna wash my eyes out, with mouthwash."
  • Community: Annie wishes she had some after questioning a lawyer about which room his office is in.

Annie: First, he said it was 69. I wanna rub Purell on my brain.

  • Dollhouse recruited its doll volunteers from people who were desperate to forget something.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Willow's offhand statements start coming true - so Giles is struck blind, and Spike and Buffy start making wedding plans. Xander sees the two all lovey-dovey and asks "Can I be blind too?"
  • Scrubs - This dialogue between Dr. Cox and Carla:

Dr. Cox: Just the organs, Bob, don't need the visual of old men with erections.
Carla: And now it's in my head forever.

  • That '70s Show: Eric Forman walks onto his parents having sex, and spends the rest of the episode acting like a zombie.
  • The L Word: Final Season. All the brain bleach on earth...

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