10 Banned Episodes Of Beloved TV Sitcoms
There's one Family Guy episode that you'll NEVER get to see...
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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 ban hammer at some stage,
00:07 with censors and studios putting their foot down and drawing a line under particular stories.
00:12 I'm Sye for WhatCulture.com and these are 10 banned episodes of beloved TV sitcoms.
00:17 Number 10 - The Puerto Rican Day - Seinfeld
00:20 Often described as one of the best sitcoms ever, Seinfeld was a sarcastic, sardonic,
00:25 and 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 were,
00:32 in opposition to picturesque sitcom families.
00:35 The show has a handful of episodes that wouldn't go over well today,
00:38 but The Puerto Rican Day 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. Near the episode's close, Kramer accidentally sets fire to a Puerto
00:52 Rican flag with a sparkler and, in an attempt to stop the fire, throws it to the ground and stomps
00:57 on it. 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 in,
01:06 including from the then Puerto Rican borough president of Bronx at the time. There were
01:10 letters and even protests outside of NPC's Rockefeller home and the station acquiesced
01:15 to their demands by removing it from syndication. The cast and crew took umbrage with this,
01:19 but the episode stayed off the air until 2002.
01:23 Number 9 - 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,
01:31 The Simpsons is bound to have a handful of questionable episodes. This season 9 edition
01:35 was often called one of the best of the season, but was banned 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 of
01:45 Springfield for a rare visit to the Big Apple. Thanks to Homer's friend Barney, the family car
01:49 is parked, ticketed and clamped between the twin towers. As the family sees the sight,
01:54 Homer stays by the World Trade Center waiting for the 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". Despite the episode being well-received and even winning an Emmy for
02:14 Outstanding Musical Achievement for its comedic musical number, it remained off the air until
02:18 2006 and even then was carefully cut down in certain regions.
02:23 8. The One With The Free Porn - Friends
02:26 Despite being on the air for 10 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. Notable exceptions to this
02:39 are The One With The Lesbian Wedding, which attracted some rather silly controversy and
02:43 censorship due to its focus on same-sex relationships, and 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,
02:55 fearing they'll 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 the only
03:13 episode of the show that was dropped from repeat showings as it wasn't appropriate to be televised
03:18 earlier in the day. Channel 5 continued to show the episode, but edited it to exclude any shots
03:23 of the TV when the porn was on, even though unsurprisingly it was never explicit.
03:28 7. 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 sitcom
03:36 that navigated teenage life, relationships and self-identity. It was created by Disney for ABC,
03:42 but due to its strong viewership and name value, was picked up for syndication on the Disney
03:47 channel. Here, the House of Mouse rifled through the stories and took issue with a handful,
03:51 one 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 Topanga
03:58 and is pretty miserable about the whole affair. In order to try and perk himself back up,
04:02 he attends a house party and sneaks away some whiskey. He even drags his friend Sean into
04:07 things, but after the pair are picked up by the police, they agree to never drink again.
04:11 However, Sean gets a taste for things and drinks the entire next week. Jack, his half-brother,
04:16 discovers this and scolds him, revealing that abusive alcohol 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 with it
04:29 properly, but the Disney channel had a wider spread of viewer ages and thus they refused to air it.
04:34 Surely a case of better safe than sorry.
04:37 6. 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 to the
04:48 disenfranchised Generation X. With its apathy of all things right and proper - heck, one of
04:54 them is called Butthead - the show was often in hot water, and was the target for some pretty
04:58 scathing criticism, none more so than after the airing of the episode Comedians. The story in
05:03 question sees the two Texan teenagers attempting stand-up comedy, which goes about as well as
05:08 expected. After the audience walks out of the comedy club, Beavis accidentally sets it on fire,
05:13 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
05:21 the show into its most dire controversy. Austin Messner, a 5-year-old boy, had burned his house
05:26 down with his mother's cigarette lighter, killing his young sister. His mother blamed the show,
05:30 and the influence it had on her son. Despite neighbours proclaiming that the family didn't
05:34 have cable and couldn't have seen it, MTV chose to re-edit Comedians and then eventually can it
05:39 for good. In 2008, Messner confirmed himself that not only did the family not have cable,
05:44 he had never seen the show in his life, and he didn't plan to.
05:47 5. 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.
06:05 30 Rock, The Office and Community were affected, while NBC's Scrubs had three episodes removed
06:10 from streaming services. These were season 3's My 15 Seconds and season 5's My Chopped Liver
06:15 and My Jiggly Ball, which just so happens to be a fan favourite. The episode has the show's typical
06:21 moral quandary about the American healthcare system, but also centres on a gag about a fake
06:25 sport that the janitor uses to lure JD out into the parking lot to get pelted by balls.
06:30 The blackface moment, like the others in the show, is typically inconsequential and comes as
06:34 part of a cutaway fantasy where JD imagines his perfect roommate, a mix between love interest
06:39 Elliot and best friend Turk. It's stupid, and the show's winningness to put Sarah Tork in blackface
06:44 feels hollow and dated. Showrunner Bill Lawrence has said that he felt embarrassed by the episodes,
06:49 but said 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. A Royal Flush - Only Fools and Horses
07:00 If you're a viewer outside of the UK, you'll almost certainly need a primer for what
07:03 Only Fools and Horses is. A beloved sitcom that aired during the 1980s,
07:08 it starred British acting institutions David Jason and Nicholas Lindhurst as two London-based
07:13 brothers wheeling and dealing and doing what they could to make money. Though they were often scam
07:17 artists and traded in illegal goods, the show framed them as two men just doing what they could
07:22 to get by while looking out for each other, which is actually what perturbed many about the episode
07:26 A Royal Flush. This 1986 Christmas Day special saw Rodney get close with an upper-class family,
07:32 and 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 tended
07:45 to agree. 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 of fans
07:56 was added to soften Delboy's harsh behaviour. This writer's cut version replaced the original
08:01 in syndication and all future releases for 15 years, all the way until 2021,
08:06 when the original was also supplied alongside it on the latest Blu-ray release.
08:10 3. 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 achievements as
08:22 it was celebrating its 200th episode. One of the most controversial shows of all time, South Park
08:27 creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker drew from as much of their previously contentious content
08:32 as possible for this double bill episode. 200 was the set-up - Tom Cruise leads a legion of
08:37 mocked celebrities to the town of South Park and promises a class action lawsuit unless they can
08:42 produce the Prophet Muhammad. 201 sees the second half of this and features many religious figures,
08:48 including Muhammad himself - a hugely divisive choice considering the previous cartoon drawings
08:53 of the Prophet in newspapers had resulted in riots. Threats to the studio and the lives of
08:58 Parker and Stone were pretty prevalent before the episode even aired, but it did get one showing on
09:03 April 21st, 2010. However, 201 was heavily censored - black bars obscured Muhammad and all of his
09:10 dialogue was bleeped, which rendered the show's 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 Number 2 - 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 of
09:28 the show on two fronts - one because it never aired, and two because the team behind the show
09:33 lost control of the situation around it. In this proposed 1989 episode, Marcy Rhodes recommends
09:39 that the Bundys rekindle their love life by having sex in a seedy motel room. However,
09:44 here they discover that the Rhodes' own game of horizontal refreshments has been caught on film.
09:49 Regardless, the Bundys have sex anyway, and together the couples attempt to sue the motel
09:54 owner. Like most great sitcoms, Married With Children was a boundary pusher at the time,
09:58 and was no stranger to controversy. However, this episode's dialogue and subject matter in 1989 was
10:04 too much for Fox. Where the studio typically asked for one or two changes per episode,
10:09 the list for I'll See You In Court had over a dozen requests. Edding it down would have left
10:14 very little. It took a full 15 years for this episode to be released to the public, only for
10:19 intrigued fans and critics to find it rather banal and not all that titillating. The episode had
10:24 developed an unknown allure that was more exciting than its so-called misgivings.
10:28 At number one, partial terms of endearment - Family Guy
10:32 Family Guy has always been a show that isn't afraid to be crude, insensitive,
10:36 or just simply challenging, and has gotten into trouble a few times for it. However,
10:40 there have only been two episodes banned in the US. The first is pure unfortunate happenstance.
10:45 Turban Cowboy features a cutaway gag where Peter competes in the Boston Marathon with his car,
10:50 knocking down runners. A month after the episode aired, a bombing at the competition caused this
10:54 episode to be pulled, but it eventually returned years later. However, despite being aired overseas,
11:00 partial terms of endearment has never been shown in America, and it's a long way from
11:04 ever having that opportunity. The reason being that the episode handles the rather controversial
11:08 topic of abortion. Lois reconnects with a college friend and her partner, and they ask her to be a
11:13 surrogate, carrying a child to terms for them as they cannot conceive themselves. Despite Peter's
11:18 arguments otherwise, she agrees. Later, the parents are killed in an accident. Following this, Lois
11:23 has to make the hard choice about what to do with the baby. Fox refused to show the episode, and
11:27 even Adult Swim, who carried the more controversial stories that Fox didn't, wouldn't touch it. It was
11:32 eventually released on DVD, but the episode has never been shown on TV, and it remains the only
11:37 Family Guy story missing from Disney+. And that's the list! Let us know what you thought of this
11:42 video down in the comments below. Which of these bad episodes have you seen, and which do you think
11:47 didn't deserve the treatment they got? Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends,
11:50 subscribe and hit that notification bell, and head over to whatculture.com where you can get
11:54 more content like this every day. I've been Si for WhatCulture, and have a good week.
11:59 (laughs)