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

Worst TV Show of the Week

Harper’s Island on CBS

After a gruesome, tedious slog the lackluster run of CBS’ slasher mystery Harper’s Island (Saturdays, 9:00 p.m. ET) finally nears its inevitable end.  Good riddance!  With only two episodes left, the killer that’s been terrorizing the island has been indentified.  But the remaining survivors wonder if he has an accomplice.  Meanwhile, viewers wonder why no one on the island can shoot straight even when the killer is standing perfectly still.  This stupid, ridiculous series can’t end fast enough.  But before it does, there are plenty of characters in the vast, extensive, and utterly expendable cast to keep the body count mounting.  So for extreme violence and gore, the June 27^th episode of Harper’s Island rightfully deserves the title Worst TV Show of the Week.    

The murderer, John Wakefield, continues to pick people off at will even though most of those left on the island are armed to the teeth with 12-gauge shotguns.  (A word of advice to would-be victims: invest a little time in some target practice.  It’ll pay off in the long run.)  A group of people are huddled in a bar when Wakefield enters.  The bartender aims her shotgun at him, but he grabs it from her and stabs her in the abdomen with his foot-long knife.  The others scramble out of the room as Tricia, the bride that invited her guests to the doomed island, grabs - what else? - a shotgun.  Shane, however, stays behind and inexplicably tells Tricia to run for it.  Yes, tell the woman with the shotgun to run while you stay behind and fight a serial killer with your pocket knife versus his machete.  Obviously, this does not end well.  Wakefield toys with Shane, hacking intermittently at the weaker man’s limbs.  Eventually, Wakefield jabs his knife into Shane’s stomach.  The tip of the blade can be seen poking through the other side while blood gushes from Shane’s mouth. 

Later, Wakefield kidnaps Chloe.  Her foppish boyfriend, Cal, frantically scours the forest in search of her.  He eventually finds her being held captive behind a drainage grate.  He liberates her, but soon realizes that they have fallen into one of Wakefield’s traps.  Luckily, Cal is armed with a shotgun.   Unfortunately, Cal can’t shoot to save his or his girlfriend’s life.  He meekly flails his gun until ultimately Wakefield tosses it over the bridge and slowly drives his knife into Cal’s chest.  Blood oozes from Cal’s mouth and Wakefield dumps Cal’s body into the river below.  Knowing that she’s doomed to suffer the same fate, Chloe refuses to give Wakefield the satisfaction.  She jumps into the river and plummets to her death to join her lover in the icy waters.  

There are about half a dozen survivors, one accomplice, and the killer left on the show.  With just two episodes remaining, that leaves many more quarts of blood for the carnage to continue.  But no amount of gore will reverse the fate of this show.  CBS’s experiment into the torture-porn genre was an utter failure.  Perhaps CBS has learned a valuable lesson: less is indeed more.

For graphic violent content Harper’s Island has been named Worst TV Show of the Week.