Housing more than home renovation content and 90 Day Fiancé, Discovery+ has proven itself to be a haven for the world's healers. Pairing camera-friendly personalities with the viscera of the operating table, viewers aren't just exposed to some of the world's most peculiar ailments, they're strapped to the surgical blades and Pulsed Dye Lasers as they're set to skin.
Covering all ends of the medical world, there are few journeys too intimate, or explicit, for the platform to share. From excess skin and projectile cysts to accidental impalement and necrosis, Discovery+ offers an unflinching (and sometimes gruesome) look at injuries/conditions and the people fighting to overcome them.
Skin Tight
As rewarding as it is watching those struggling with obesity reclaim their bodies, there's a less uplifting aftermath that's often overlooked. Once the weight is gone, the skin that expanded to accommodate the body is left as an unsightly reminder of what was overcome. Skin Tight is the next and last step in that journey.
Skin Tight does an unparalleled job of showcasing the emotional torment people experience because of their excess skin. Alongside bariatric surgeon and My 600-lb Life staple Dr. Nowzaradan, the show literally excises the source of their sorrow. While it's gratifying seeing everyone regain their lives/confidence, the large slabs of skin laid out on display afterwards aren't the easiest thing to stomach.
I Was Impaled
As the name would indicate, I Was Impaled features the stories of patients that had something unexpectedly lodged into their bodies and the doctors that treated them. While the show does show the injuries in all their gory glory, most of the procedural work is addressed through interviews and X-rays.
Despite the lack of real-time surgical procedures, the severity of the injuries that are overcome speak for themselves. From a fully conscious woman with a Shepard's hook planter hooked through her eye socket to a surfer with an 11.5" long piece of fiberglass stuck through his cheek and into his throat, the only calming thing about the show is that everyone survives.
Save My Skin
Set in dermatologist Dr. Emma Craythorne's private practice in London, Save My Skin highlights the extreme skin conditions haunting the patients willing to fly across the U.K. for her services. Not unlike Dr. Pimple Popper, cysts, tags, bumps, lumps, keloids, abscesses, and mysterious growths all meet their demise through Dr. Emma's arsenal of lasers, cautery pens, and surgical blades.
While the ailments are aggressive, Dr. Emma calms the air with a soft touch, warm assurances, and a disarming "wriggle your toes" before her numbing needle sinks into her patient's skin. As positively uplifting as Dr. Emma is, there's something about watching her burn and scrape off 17 brain-shaped skin tags that's more than a little unsettling.
This Came Out Of Me
Narrated by Austin based Dr. Ruby Rose, This Came Out Of Me takes place in a variety of emergency rooms across the great and injury prone state of Texas. While the show does deal with extraction, the gruesome injuries, abscesses, infections, and paraphimosis that are shown/described in excruciating detail make the secondhand pain nearly palpable.
There are few things more difficult to watch than a man having his foreskin fenestrated while being held down by three nurses...and that's just a portion of the first episode. Other stomach churning procedures on the show include removing metal from an eyeball, glass from a mangled hand, and puss from a dental abscess.
Stuck
The latest entry into the world of painful penetrations, Stuck's debut episode is certainly an attention grabber. Titled "Vibrator in the Rectum," the episode plays out like a real life episode of The Magic School Bus. With a camera strapped to his laparoscopic bowel grasper, viewers watch Dr. George Crawford retrieve the sex toy lodged in his patient's rectum as if they were attached to the grasper themselves.
While the show does shift away from rear entries, it doesn't get any less shocking. From a bicycle brake handle lodged into a young rider's thigh to a woman with a 6 inch stiletto heel stabbed through her eyesocket during an altercation, Stuck features a variety of jarring and violent insertions throughout its brief 3-episode run.
Trauma: Life In The E.R.
A former TLC mainstay, Trauma: Life In The E.R. offers up-close and fast-paced access to level one trauma centers as the emergencies rush in. A dizzying look in real time at the doctors, nurses, and staffers tasked with stopping life-threatening injuries, the drama in Life In The E.R. is as real and raw as it gets.
With every episode featuring a different medical center, the fleeting MDs treat everything from stabbings and gunshot wounds to impalings and overdoses. With nothing but blood-soaked patients clinging to their final tethers of life, few shows are higher stakes or harder to watch.
Body Bizarre
Airing for 7 seasons, Body Bizarre travels the globe to shed light on the rarest and most peculiar afflictions known to man. A testament in courage, perseverance, and medical ingenuity, the stories are as deeply affecting as they are impossible to forget.
Some of the remarkable journeys include a man whose hand was surgically inserted into his abdomen to regrow flesh and nerve tendons, the reconfiguring of a baby's face that fused together in the form of a trunk, and a baby born with a parasitic twin and eight limbs that are removed through a nail-biting 20-hour surgery.
Dr. Mercy
A new face in the familiar world of televised dermatologists, Dr. Mercy Odueyungo specializes in the extreme. From her Chicago practice, she not only removes the giant growths, cysts, and "armpit fingers" that affect her patients, she rebuilds them emotionally as well.
Where other doctors tend to shy away from more voluminous removals, Dr. Mercy pushes forward. From removing 42 neurofibromas in one sitting to cutting off a series of keloids covering most of the back of a patients head and suturing it back together, Dr. Mercy is able to do extensive amounts of work while never losing the affable demeanor that makes her so beloved by her patients.
My Feet Are Killing Me
Dealing strictly with podiatry, the curious cases that are covered in My Feet Are Killing Me are broad and shocking. From ectrodactyly and Elephant Man's disease to melting skin and the bark like growths synonymous with the Tree Man, the show presents unimaginable conditions, the people living with them, and the doctors tasked with making them manageable and/or fixing them.
Under the care of Dr. Ebonie Vincent, Dr. Sara Haller, and LGBTQ+ trailblazer Dr. Bradley Schaeffer, the show follows each patient from their homes, into the doctor's office, and onto the operating table. With large chunks of the show taking place in surgery and involving drilling into bone, the reconstructive process isn't exactly for the faint of heart.
Dr. Pimple Popper
Led by the inimitable Sandra Lee, MD, Dr. Pimple Popper is quintessential "don't watch this while you're eating" TV. Turning her viewers into amateur dermatologists that yell out diagnoses alongside her, the fun isn't just in watching her patients reclaim their lives but seeing what comes out of them.
From removing massive lipomas that look like uncooked chicken breasts to popping cysts that can either shoot across the room or ooze out like bad mashed potatoes, Dr. Pimple Popper is a visceral experience that's as grossly inviting as it is nauseating to watch.