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Worst TV Show of the Week Brought to you by the Parents Television Council	Share |
WARNING: Graphic Content!!! Do NOT push play if you don't want to see the explicit video!!!

The Forgotten on ABC

Anyone watching enough television will notice a disturbing trend.  It seems as if each week, at least one show on network television contains a scene set in a strip club.  It’s as if the strip club has become an American institution, attended more regularly than church.  (When was the last time you saw anyone on television go to church?)  And these scenes usually have little relevance to the actual plot of the episode; they are merely an excuse to show scantily-clad women twirling around poles.  Such was the case on the February 16^th episode of The Forgotten (Tuesdays, 10:00 p.m. ET).  For airing an exceptionally gratuitous strip club scene, The Forgotten has been named Worst TV Show of the Week.

For those unfamiliar with the show – and, frankly, according to the program’s poor ratings, most viewers are – the series revolves around a band of amateur sleuths who take on unsolved murders that have gone cold (because that’s who you want on tough cases – do-it-yourself-ers).  Apparently, the networks have completely run out of forensic specialists, human lie-detectors, and psychic mediums – fake or otherwise – to base shows on. 

In this particular episode, the team investigates the murder of a woman whose body was found in the bathroom of a nightclub.  How she was discovered is also worth mentioning: an attractive couple is shown kissing on the dance floor.  The woman drags the man toward the bathroom, presumably to have sex.  She leaps into his arms; her legs straddle his waist.  As they kick open the door to the bathroom stall, they find the dead body.   

As with most crime procedurals, the story meanders a bit while the investigators follow their leads.  And wouldn’t you know it; they meander right into a strip club.  Supposedly, the dead woman’s skin contained residue of a hand stamp from a local gentleman’s club.  Cue obligatory establishing shot of nearly-nude dancers in the background sliding down poles and crawling on their hands and knees.  Team-members Candace, Alex, and Tyler visit the establishment and Tyler quickly comes to the conclusion that none of the dancers will talk to him about the dead woman unless he pays for a lap dance.  Tyler spots an alluring blonde who is grinding her hips in the crotch of a male patron. “There’s only one way we’re gonna get these women to talk,” Tyler tells Candace, “and it has nothing to do with compassion.”  He strides over to the blond with a twenty dollar bill pinched between his fingers.  The scene immediately cuts to the stripper grinding her backside into Tyler’s groin.  It is perhaps the most explicit depiction of a lap dance seen on broadcast television.  Meanwhile, Candace holds up the dead woman’s picture and asks if she has ever seen the victim.  She’s positive that she has not.  The bouncer ultimately informs them that various clubs around the city owned by the same company use the exact same hand stamp.  The dead woman, as it turns out, never even set foot inside the strip club.

The mystery takes several more twists and turns that eventually lead to the resolution.  But for the viewer, one troublesome question lingers: what the heck was that strip club scene all about? 

For airing a befuddling, completely gratuitous lap dance and other explicit sexual content that had absolutely nothing to do with plot, The Forgotten has rightfully been named Worst TV Show of the Week.