10 Banned Episodes Of Beloved TV Sitcoms
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00:00 The longer that it's on the air, the more chances a show has to slip up.
00:03 The following TV sitcoms have all been hit by the bandhammer at some stage, with censors
00:07 and studios putting their foot down and drawing a line under particular stories.
00:11 I'm Scythe for WhatCulture.com and these are 10 banned episodes of beloved TV sitcoms.
00:17 10.
00:18 The Puerto Rican Day - Seinfeld
00:20 Often described as one of the best sitcoms ever, Seinfeld was a sarcastic, sardonic and
00:24 oftentimes nihilistic show about nothing in particular.
00:28 All that being said, it dared to poke fun and be outrageous in the way that real people
00:32 were, in opposition to picturesque sitcom families.
00:35 The show has a handful of episodes that wouldn't go over well today, but the Puerto Rican Day
00:39 caused enough of a stink to be taken off TV for four years.
00:43 This 1998 story sees the cast of the show caught in city gridlock due to parades celebrating
00:48 Puerto Rican Day.
00:49 Near the episode's close, Kramer accidentally sets fire to a Puerto Rican flag with a sparkler
00:54 and, in an attempt to stop the fire, throws it to the ground and stomps on it.
00:57 This induces the ire of the people around him and they chase him off the street.
01:01 The episode itself induced the ire of real Puerto Ricans and complaints about it filtered
01:06 in, including from the then Puerto Rican borough president of Bronx at the time.
01:10 There were letters and even protests outside of NPC's Rockefeller home and the station
01:14 acquiesced to their demands by removing it from syndication.
01:18 The cast and crew took umbrage with this, but the episode stayed off the air until 2002.
01:22 9.
01:23 The City of New York vs Homer Simpson - The Simpsons
01:27 Considering that it's the longest-running American animated series of all time, The
01:30 Simpsons is bound to have a handful of questionable episodes.
01:34 This season 9 edition was often called one of the best of the season, but was banned
01:37 due to very clear real-life events.
01:40 The City of New York vs Homer Simpson first aired in 1997 and it takes the family out
01:44 of Springfield for a rare visit to the Big Apple.
01:47 Thanks to Homer's friend Barney, the family car is parked, ticketed and clamped between
01:51 the twin towers.
01:52 As the family sees the sight, Homer stays by the World Trade Center waiting for the
01:56 ticket man.
01:57 Of course, after September 11th 2001, the episode was removed from the air because so
02:01 much of it centred around the location in question, with the tone exacerbated by Homer's
02:05 frustration and an unfortunate joke between two men with the punchline of "they stick
02:09 all the jerks in Tower One".
02:11 Despite the episode being well-received and even winning an Emmy for Outstanding Musical
02:15 Achievement for its comedic musical number, it remained off the air until 2006 and even
02:20 then was carefully cut down in certain regions.
02:23 8.
02:24 The One With The Free Porn - Friends
02:26 Despite being on the air for ten seasons, Friends has thankfully been a show that hasn't
02:30 encountered too much in the way of censorship, which in all fairness may explain why it felt
02:34 like it was on TV pretty much every hour of the day for many years.
02:38 Notable exceptions to this are The One With The Lesbian Wedding, which attracted some
02:41 rather silly controversy and censorship due to its focus on same-sex relationships, and
02:46 The One With The Free Porn.
02:48 The episode's title, as with most Friends episodes, is a pretty good description.
02:52 Joey and Chandler discover a free pornography channel on their TV and, fearing they'll
02:56 lose it if they turn it off, leave it on and wind up slightly addicted to it.
03:00 What's remarkable about the episode, for the most part, is how frank the show is about
03:04 pornography in 1998, where it was still quite taboo in the days before the internet.
03:09 However, Channel 4 in the UK weren't happy with its frequent references and it became
03:12 the only episode of the show that was dropped from repeat showings as it wasn't appropriate
03:17 to be televised earlier in the day.
03:19 Channel 5 continued to show the episode, but edited it to exclude any shots of the TV when
03:23 the porn was on, even though, unsurprisingly, it was never explicit.
03:27 7.
03:28 If You Can't Be With The One You Love - Boy Meets World
03:32 It might seem quaint now, but around its highest points, Boy Meets World was a cutting-edge
03:36 sitcom that navigated teenage life, relationships and self-identity.
03:40 It was created by Disney for ABC, but due to its strong viewership and name value, was
03:45 picked up for syndication on the Disney Channel.
03:47 Here, the House of Mouse rifled through the stories and took issue with a handful, one
03:51 of these was If You Can't Be With The One You Love.
03:54 It kicks off following the ongoing story, where Corey has been dumped by love interest
03:58 Topanga and is pretty miserable about the whole affair.
04:01 In order to try and perk himself back up, he attends a house party and sneaks away some
04:04 whiskey.
04:05 He even drags his friend Sean into things, but after the pair are picked up by the police,
04:09 they agree to never drink again.
04:11 However, Sean gets a taste for things and drinks the entire next week.
04:15 Jack, his half-brother, discovers this and scolds him, revealing that abusive alcohol
04:19 runs in the family.
04:20 With a synopsis like that, it's not surprising that Disney wanted to stay away from it.
04:24 It was perfectly viable on ABC, where its target demographic understood and empathised
04:29 with it properly, but the Disney Channel had a wider spread of viewer ages and thus they
04:32 refused to air it.
04:34 Surely a case of better safe than sorry.
04:37 6.
04:38 Comedians - Beavis and Butthead
04:40 Perhaps one of the most recognisable mascots of the MTV era, Beavis and Butthead were part
04:44 of the wave of culture that was all about pushing buttons, low-hanging fruit and appealing
04:48 to the disenfranchised Generation X.
04:51 With its apathy of all things right and proper - heck, one of them is called Butthead - the
04:55 show was often in hot water, and was the target for some pretty scathing criticism, none more
04:59 so than after the airing of the episode Comedians.
05:02 The story in question sees the two Texan teenagers attempting stand-up comedy, which goes about
05:07 as well as expected.
05:09 After the audience walks out of the comedy club, Beavis accidentally sets it on fire
05:12 and the two watch and laugh about how funny the situation is.
05:16 Unfortunately, an incident in Moraine, Ohio exactly a month after the episode aired dragged
05:20 the show into its most dire controversy.
05:23 Austin Messner, a 5-year-old boy, had burned his house down with his mother's cigarette
05:27 lighter, killing his young sister.
05:29 His mother blamed the show and the influence it had on her son.
05:33 Despite neighbours proclaiming that the family didn't have cable and couldn't have seen
05:36 it, MTV chose to re-edit Comedians and then eventually can it for good.
05:40 In 2008, Messner confirmed himself that not only did the family not have cable, he had
05:44 never seen the show in his life, and he didn't plan to.
05:48 5.
05:49 My Jiggly Ball - Scrubs
05:50 In 2010, Netflix and Hulu made the choice to re-examine the content on their platforms.
05:55 Specifically, they were stripping back any shows that used blackface, a low-bar gag that
05:59 has negative connotations due to its connections to performative caricatures and harmful stereotypes.
06:04 30 Rock, The Office and Community were affected, while NBC's Scrubs had three episodes removed
06:10 from streaming services.
06:11 These were Season 3's My 15 Seconds and Season 5's My Chopped Liver and My Jiggly
06:16 Ball, which just so happens to be a fan favourite.
06:19 The episode has the show's typical moral quandary about the American healthcare system,
06:23 but also centres on a gag about a fake sport that the janitor uses to lure JD out into
06:27 the parking lot to get pelted by balls.
06:30 The blackface moment, like the others in the show, is typically inconsequential and comes
06:34 as part of a cutaway fantasy where JD imagines his perfect roommate, a mix between love interest
06:39 Elliot and best friend Turk.
06:41 It's stupid, and the show's winningness to put Sarah Chalk in blackface feels hollow
06:45 and dated.
06:46 Showrunner Bill Lawrence has said that he felt embarrassed by the episodes, but said
06:49 that they would probably return to streaming services after some editing.
06:53 Over two years later, however, they still remain absent.
06:56 4.
06:57 A Royal Flush - Only Fools and Horses If you're a viewer outside of the UK, you'll
07:02 almost certainly need a primer for what Only Fools and Horses is.
07:05 A beloved sitcom that aired during the 1980s, it starred British acting institutions David
07:10 Jason and Nicholas Lindhurst as two London-based brothers wheeling and dealing and doing what
07:15 they could to make money.
07:16 Though they were often scam artists and traded in illegal goods, the show framed them as
07:20 two men just doing what they could to get by while looking out for each other, which
07:24 is actually what perturbed many about the episode, A Royal Flush.
07:28 This 1986 Christmas Day special saw Rodney get close with an upper-class family, and
07:32 his brother Delboy acts progressively more uncharacteristically aggressive.
07:36 He verbally abuses Rodney and even threatens an audience member of a theatre show.
07:40 Fans often called the episode one of the worst in the show's run, and creator John Sullivan
07:44 tended to agree.
07:45 When it came to 2005, when the show was being remastered for DVD, Sullivan personally saw
07:50 to it that a whole 18 minutes of the 76 were cut, and a laugh track recorded by an audience
07:55 of fans was added to soften Delboy's harsh behaviour.
07:59 This writer's cut version replaced the original in syndication and all future releases for
08:03 15 years, all the way until 2021 when the original was also supplied alongside it on
08:09 the latest Blu-ray release.
08:11 3.
08:12 201 - South Park
08:13 Just to prove how bizarre South Park's history is, this banned episode was actually nominated
08:18 for a Primetime Emmy, and in all fairness, it was a good time to honour the show's
08:22 achievements as it was celebrating its 200th episode.
08:25 One of the most controversial shows of all time, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey
08:28 Parker drew from as much of their previously contentious content as possible for this double
08:33 bill episode.
08:34 200 was the set-up - Tom Cruise leads a legion of mocked celebrities to the town of South
08:39 Park and promises a class action lawsuit unless they can produce the prophet Muhammad.
08:44 201 sees the second half of this and features many religious figures, including Muhammad
08:49 himself, a hugely divisive choice considering that previous cartoon drawings of the prophet
08:53 in newspapers had resulted in riots.
08:56 Threats to the studio and the lives of Parker and Stone were pretty prevalent before the
09:00 episode even aired, but it did get one showing on April 21st, 2010.
09:05 However, 201 was heavily censored.
09:07 Black bars obscured Muhammad and all of his dialogue was bleeped, which rendered the show's
09:12 final moments a mess, but a statement in itself.
09:14 However, 201 was never shown again, not on TV or on the South Park website.
09:19 2.
09:20 I'll See You In Court - Married With Children
09:23 Michael G. Moe, creator of Married With Children, calls I'll See You In Court the lost episode
09:28 of the show on two fronts - one because it never aired, and two because the team behind
09:33 the show lost control of the situation around it.
09:35 In this proposed 1989 episode, Marcy Rhodes recommends that the Bundys rekindle their
09:40 love life by having sex in a seedy motel room.
09:43 However, here they discover that the Rhodes' own game of horizontal refreshments has been
09:47 caught on film.
09:49 Regardless, the Bundys have sex anyway, and together the couples attempt to sue the Moe
09:53 motel owner.
09:54 Like most great sitcoms, Married With Children was a boundary pusher at the time and was
09:58 no stranger to controversy.
10:00 However, this episode's dialogue and subject matter in 1989 was too much for Fox.
10:06 Where the studio typically asked for one or two changes per episode, the list for I'll
10:10 See You In Court had over a dozen requests.
10:13 Edding it down would have left very little.
10:15 It took a full 15 years for this episode to be released to the public, only for intrigued
10:19 fans and critics to find it rather banal and not all that titillating.
10:23 The episode had developed an unknown allure that was more exciting than its so-called
10:27 misgivings.
10:28 1.
10:29 Partial Terms of Endearment - Family Guy Family Guy has always been a show that isn't
10:34 afraid to be crude, insensitive or just simply challenging, and has gotten into trouble a
10:38 few times for it.
10:40 However, there have only been two episodes banned in the US.
10:43 The first is pure unfortunate happenstance.
10:45 Turban Cowboy features a cutaway gag where Peter competes in the Boston Marathon with
10:49 his car, knocking down runners.
10:51 A month after the episode aired, a bombing at the competition caused this episode to
10:55 be pulled, but it eventually returned years later.
10:58 However, despite being aired overseas, Partial Terms of Endearment has never been shown in
11:02 America and it's a long way from ever having that opportunity.
11:05 The reason being that the episode handles the rather controversial topic of abortion.
11:10 Lois reconnects with a college friend and her partner and they ask her to be a surrogate,
11:14 preparing a child to terms for them as they cannot conceive themselves.
11:17 Despite Peter's arguments otherwise, she agrees.
11:20 Later the parents are killed in an accident.
11:22 Following this, Lois has to make the hard choice about what to do with the baby.
11:26 Fox refused to show the episode and even Adult Swim, who carried the more controversial stories
11:30 that Fox didn't, wouldn't touch it.
11:32 It was eventually released on DVD, but the episode has never been shown on TV and it
11:36 remains the only Family Guy story missing from Disney+.
11:40 And that's the list.
11:41 Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below.
11:44 Which of these banned episodes have you seen and which do you think didn't deserve the
11:47 treatment they got?
11:48 Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends, subscribe and hit that notification
11:52 bell and head over to whatculture.com where you can get more content like this every day.
11:56 I've been Syfer Whatculture and have a good week.
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