I understand that people have problems with gore on tv shows and that context does play a lot into it.

But, honestly, I don't think that anything on prime time is as gorey as what Discovery Health channel shows during the day.

A couple months ago I was flipping through the channels and lighted on Discovery Health. It looked interesting, trauma in the ER. There's this guy on the exam table, obviously in pain and shock, he's moaning, there's blood and medical professionals all around. They say something about an accident, and the doctors are talking. And then one hands the other the guy's severed foot.

I almost threw up on the cat.

They were probably going to try and re attach it or something, I don't know, I couldn't watch anymore.

That's my bench mark for gross now. So far The Inside has not topped the severed foot and I don't think it will.

Gore doesn't bother me. I might turn away (never seen a surgery on Nip/Tuck and never will), but I'm not upset or offended that it's there.

That being said, I haven't had to hide my eyes yet.

Personally, gore doesn't remotely bother me, at all. I'm not sure why.

But, honestly, I don't think that anything on prime time is as gorey as what Discovery Health channel shows during the day.

I can't watch any of that stuff. I get completely squicked. I think it might a switch in my brain that knows: This gore is real vs. This gore is fake.

I saw one of those Discovery Channel ER shows recently, in which a college kid had burned himself severely (no idea how). So there were closeups of his burns and all, but what struck me was the person behind the diagnosis -- when they brought him in, he was trembling uncontrollably, talking and trying to get a handle on what had happened to him and trying to be responsive to all these hospital people, volunteering information. He didn't shut up till they put him on supplementary oxygen.

Later, they showed his new skin grafts on his thighs being washed and bandaged, as they are every day at first, and it's terribly painful. He would lie there, tears streaming down his face, apologizing for crying and trying to make lighthearted conversation with the nurses.

Closeups of 3rd degree burns? Whatever. I've grilled meat before. Those burns were meaningless to me. That the burns happened to a person, a real person, a person I got to know, a person I ended up liking a whole lot, that's what makes the burns matter.

The weird thing about severe burns is that it kills all the nerve cells, so the victims often feel no pain (after the initial burning). I read a book about the crash of a commuter plane - some of the survivors were all rational and pain-free, yet they knew that they were going to die as a result of their burns because their burns were too severe.

I think there was an ER episode about that at one point, where a firefighter had sustained burns bad enough that he was not going to survive them, but he was almost pain-free, and able to converse with the ER staff the whole time.

Also SLUT!

Just watched the episode (thank you, BitTorrent people). Lots of subtext. Like very much.

Jen, whose gore threshold is so low friends preview movies for her to see if they're J-rated, has no problems at all with Discovery Health-type shows and is well on her way to being a nurse. Gore squick is so subjective!

Had a totaly beamfaced, chuckle moment during the ep last night - I live on Moorpark!