Commentary: ‘Bad Thoughts’ Hits And Misses With Big Swings

Shock value certainly has its place in storytelling, especially in comedy. Creating ridiculous and absurd stories in order to shock the audience into laughter can be effective. But it can also have the reverse effect. It’s certainly possible to shock the audience too much and instead of causing them to laugh, it causes them to cringe in disgust. Tom Segura’s Bad Thoughts certainly pushes this concept to the limit. As an anthology series, the show is capable of telling a lot of short stories in a relatively small amount of time, all of which utilize shock value to some degree. The level of which they are successful varies immensely.

Bad Thoughts is essentially a sketch comedy show. Each episode is divided by a loose theme that ties together all of the short stories. For instance, one episode focuses on jobs while another focuses on love. Other than that, there’s no unifying force behind any of the shorts. In addition to being a series narrator, Segura stars in almost every one as a different character, including playing himself.

The series starts off very strong as it features a short about an assassin having a very terrible day on the job. The assassin ends up killing the wrong person and the stress causes him to have an accident in his pants. It’s ridiculous, absurd, and just the right amount of silly. This kind of self-deprecating shock value can be very fun. However, there’s also a short that features a very lovely woman who wants to seduce Segura. The only problem is she has a gross conjoined twin sticking out of her back that also wants to seduce him. While it may be funny at first, the short continues to push the gag way past its limit to a disgusting degree. The entire series has these wild swings in quality that causes its success to be all over the map.

Bad Thoughts is now streaming on Netflix.