There's one Family Guy episode that you'll NEVER get to see...
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00The longer that it's on the air, the more chances a show has to slip up.
00:03The following TV sitcoms have all been hit by the band hammer at some stage,
00:07with censors and studios putting their foot down and drawing a line under particular stories.
00:12I'm Si for WhatCulture.com and these are 10 banned episodes of beloved TV sitcoms.
00:1710. The Puerto Rican Day – Seinfeld
00:20Often described as one of the best sitcoms ever, Seinfeld was a sarcastic, sardonic and
00:25oftentimes nihilistic show about nothing in particular. All that being said,
00:29it dared to poke fun and be outrageous in the way that real people were,
00:32in opposition to picturesque sitcom families.
00:35The show has a handful of episodes that wouldn't go over well today,
00:38but The Puerto Rican Day caused enough of a stink to be taken off TV for four years.
00:43This 1998 story sees the cast of the show caught in city gridlock due to parades celebrating
00:48Puerto Rican Day. Near the episode's close, Kramer accidentally sets fire to a Puerto Rican flag with
00:53a sparkler and, in an attempt to stop the fire, throws it to the ground and stomps on it.
00:58This induces the ire of the people around him and they chase him off the street.
01:01The episode itself induced the ire of real Puerto Ricans and complaints about it filtered in,
01:06including from the then Puerto Rican borough president of Bronx at the time.
01:10There were letters and even protests outside of NPC's Rockefeller home
01:14and the station acquiesced to their demands by removing it from syndication.
01:18The cast and crew took umbrage with this, but the episode stayed off the air until 2002.
01:239. The City of New York vs Homer Simpson – The Simpsons
01:27Considering that it's the longest-running American animated series of all time,
01:31The Simpsons is bound to have a handful of questionable episodes. This Season 9 edition
01:35was often called one of the best of the season, but was banned due to very clear real-life events.
01:40The City of New York vs Homer Simpson first aired in 1997 and it takes the
01:44family out of Springfield for a rare visit to the Big Apple. Thanks to Homer's friend Barney,
01:48the family car is parked, ticketed, and clamped between the twin towers. As the family sees the
01:53site, Homer stays by the World Trade Center waiting for the ticket man.
01:57Of course, after September 11th, 2001, the episode was removed from the air because so
02:01much of it centred around the location in question, with the tone exacerbated by Homer's
02:05frustration and an unfortunate joke between two men with the punchline of
02:09they stick all the jerks in tower one. Despite the episode being well-received and even winning
02:13an Emmy for Outstanding Musical Achievement for its comedic musical number, it remained
02:17off the air until 2006 and even then was carefully cut down in certain regions.
02:238. The One With The Free Porn – Friends
02:26Despite being on the air for ten seasons, Friends has thankfully been a show that hasn't
02:30encountered too much in the way of censorship, which in all fairness may explain why it felt
02:34like it was on TV pretty much every hour of the day for many years. Notable exceptions to this
02:39are The One With The Lesbian Wedding, which attracted some rather silly controversy and
02:43censorship due to its focus on same-sex relationships, and The One With The Free Porn.
02:48The episode's title, as with most Friends episodes, is a pretty good description.
02:52Joey and Chandler discover a free pornography channel on their TV and,
02:55fearing they'll lose it if they turn it off, leave it on and wind up slightly addicted to it.
03:00What's remarkable about the episode, for the most part, is how frank the show is about
03:04pornography in 1998, where it was still quite taboo in the days before the internet.
03:09However, Channel 4 in the UK worked happy with its frequent references and it became
03:13the only episode of the show that was dropped from repeat showings as it wasn't appropriate
03:17to be televised earlier in the day. Channel 5 continued to show the episode,
03:21but edited it to exclude any shots of the TV when the porn was on,
03:25even though, unsurprisingly, it was never explicit.
03:287. If You Can't Be With The One You Love – Boy Meets World
03:32It might seem quaint now, but around its highest points, Boy Meets World was a cutting-edge sitcom
03:36that navigated teenage life, relationships and self-identity. It was created by Disney for ABC,
03:42but, due to its strong viewership and name value, was picked up for syndication on the Disney
03:47channel. Here, the House of Mouse rifled through the stories and took issue with a handful,
03:51one of these was If You Can't Be With The One You Love.
03:54It kicks off following the ongoing story, where Corey has been dumped by love interest Topanga
03:58and is pretty miserable about the whole affair. In order to try and perk himself back up,
04:02he attends a house party and sneaks away some whiskey. He even drags his friend Sean into
04:07things but, after the pair are picked up by the police, they agree to never drink again.
04:11However, Sean gets a taste for things and drinks the entire next week. Jack, his half-brother,
04:16discovers this and scolds him, revealing that abusive alcohol runs in the family.
04:20With a synopsis like that, it's not surprising that Disney wanted to stay away from it.
04:24It was perfectly viable on ABC, where its target demographic understood and empathised with it
04:29properly, but the Disney channel had a wider spread of viewer ages and, thus, they refused to air it.
04:34Surely a case of better safe than sorry.
04:376. Comedians – Beavis and Butthead
04:40Perhaps one of the most recognisable mascots of the MTV era, Beavis and Butthead were part of
04:44the wave of culture that was all about pushing buttons, low-hanging fruit, and appealing to the
04:49disenfranchised Generation X. With its apathy of all things right and proper – heck, one of them
04:54is called Butthead – the show was often in hot water, and was the target for some pretty scathing
04:58criticism, none more so than after the airing of the episode Comedians. The story in question sees
05:04the two Texan teenagers attempting stand-up comedy, which goes about as well as expected.
05:09After the audience walks out of the comedy club, Beavis accidentally sets it on fire,
05:13and the two watch and laugh about how funny the situation is.
05:16Unfortunately, an incident in Moraine, Ohio, exactly a month after the episode
05:20aired, dragged the show into its most dire controversy. Austin Messner, a five-year-old
05:24boy, had burned his house down with his mother's cigarette lighter, killing his young sister.
05:29His mother blamed the show, and the influence it had on her son. Despite neighbours proclaiming
05:34that the family didn't have cable and couldn't have seen it, MTV chose to re-edit Comedians and
05:38then eventually can it for good. In 2008, Messner confirmed himself that not only did
05:43the family not have cable, he had never seen the show in his life, and he didn't plan to.
05:475. My Jiggly Ball – Scrubs
05:50In 2010, Netflix and Hulu made the choice to re-examine the content on their platforms.
05:55Specifically, they were stripping back any shows that used blackface, a low-bar gag that
05:59has negative connotations due to its connections to performative caricatures and harmful stereotypes.
06:0530 Rock, The Office, and Community were affected,
06:07while NBC's Scrubs had three episodes removed from streaming services.
06:11These were Season 3's My 15 Seconds and Season 5's My Chopped Liver and My Jiggly Ball,
06:17which just so happens to be a fan favourite. The episode has the show's typical moral
06:21quandary about the American healthcare system, but also centres on a gag about a fake sport
06:25that the janitor uses to lure JD out into the parking lot to get pelted by balls.
06:30The blackface moment, like the others in the show, is typically inconsequential and comes
06:34as part of a cutaway fantasy where JD imagines his perfect roommate,
06:38a mix between love interest Elliot and best friend Turk.
06:41It's stupid, and the show's winningness to put Sarah Chalk in blackface feels hollow and dated.
06:46Showrunner Bill Lawrence has said that he felt embarrassed by the episodes,
06:49but said that they would probably return to streaming services after some editing.
06:53Over two years later, however, they still remain absent.
06:564. A Royal Flush – Only Fools and Horses
07:00If you're a reviewer outside of the UK, you'll almost certainly need a primer for
07:03what Only Fools and Horses is. A beloved sitcom that aired during the 1980s,
07:08it starred British acting institutions David Jason and Nicholas Lindhurst as two
07:12London-based brothers wheeling and dealing and doing what they could to make money.
07:16Though they were often scam artists and traded in illegal goods,
07:19the show framed them as two men just doing what they could to get by while looking out
07:23for each other, which is actually what perturbed many about the episode A Royal Flush.
07:28This 1986 Christmas Day special saw Rodney get close with an upper-class family,
07:32and his brother Delboy acts progressively more uncharacteristically aggressive.
07:36He verbally abuses Rodney and even threatens an audience member of a theatre show.
07:40Fans often called the episode one of the worst in the show's run,
07:43and creator John Sullivan tended to agree.
07:46When it came to 2005, when the show was being remastered for DVD,
07:49Sullivan personally saw to it that a whole 18 minutes of the 76 were cut,
07:53and a laugh track recorded by an audience of fans was added to soften Delboy's harsh behaviour.
07:58This writer's cut version replaced the original in syndication and all future releases for 15 years,
08:04all the way until 2021 when the original was also supplied alongside it on the latest Blu-ray
08:10release.
08:103. 201 South Park
08:13Just to prove how bizarre South Park's history is,
08:16this banned episode was actually nominated for a Primetime Emmy,
08:19and in all fairness, it was a good time to honour the show's achievements as
08:22it was celebrating its 200th episode.
08:25One of the most controversial shows of all time, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker
08:29drew from as much of their previously contentious content as possible for this double-bill episode.
08:34200 was the set-up.
08:36Tom Cruise leads a legion of mocked celebrities to the town of South Park
08:40and promises a class-action lawsuit unless they can produce the prophet Muhammad.
08:44201 sees the second half of this and features many religious figures,
08:48including Muhammad himself,
08:49a hugely divisive choice considering that previous cartoon drawings of the
08:53prophet in newspapers had resulted in riots.
08:56Threats to the studio and the lives of Parker and Stone were pretty prevalent
09:00before the episode even aired, but it did get one showing on April 21st, 2010.
09:05However, 201 was heavily censored.
09:07Black bars obscured Muhammad and all of his dialogue was bleeped,
09:11which rendered the show's final moments a mess, but a statement in itself.
09:14However, 201 was never shown again, not on TV or on the South Park website.
09:202. I'll See You In Court – Married With Children
09:23Michael G. Moe, creator of Married With Children,
09:26calls I'll See You In Court the lost episode of the show on two fronts.
09:30One, because it never aired,
09:31and two, because the team behind the show lost control of the situation around it.
09:36In this proposed 1989 episode, Marcy Rhodes recommends that the Bundys rekindle their
09:41love life by having sex in a seedy motel room.
09:43However, here they discover that the Rhodes' own game of horizontal refreshments
09:47has been caught on film.
09:49Regardless, the Bundys have sex anyway,
09:51and together the couples attempt to sue the motel owner.
09:54Like most great sitcoms, Married With Children was a boundary pusher at the time
09:58and was no stranger to controversy.
10:00However, this episode's dialogue and subject matter in 1989 was too much for Fox.
10:06Where the studio typically asked for one or two changes per episode,
10:09the list for I'll See You In Court had over a dozen requests.
10:13Edding it down would have left very little.
10:15It took a full 15 years for this episode to be released to the public,
10:19only for intrigued fans and critics to find it rather banal and not all that titillating.
10:23The episode had developed an unknown allure
10:25that was more exciting than its so-called misgivings.
10:28And number one, partial terms of endearment, Family Guy.
10:32Family Guy has always been a show that isn't afraid to be crude,
10:35insensitive, or just simply challenging,
10:37and has gotten into trouble a few times for it.
10:40However, there have only been two episodes banned in the US.
10:43The first is pure unfortunate happenstance.
10:45Turban Cowboy features a cutaway gag
10:48where Peter competes in the Boston Marathon with his car, knocking down runners.
10:51A month after the episode aired,
10:53a bombing at the competition caused this episode to be pulled,
10:56but it eventually returned years later.
10:58However, despite being aired overseas,
11:00partial terms of endearment has never been shown in America,
11:03and it's a long way from ever having that opportunity.
11:06The reason being that the episode handles the rather controversial topic of abortion.
11:10Lois reconnects with a college friend and her partner,
11:12and they ask her to be a surrogate,
11:14carrying a child to terms for them as they cannot conceive themselves.
11:17Despite Peter's arguments otherwise, she agrees.
11:19Later, the parents are killed in an accident.
11:22Following this, Lois has to make the hard choice about what to do with the baby.
11:26Fox refused to show the episode,
11:27and even Adult Swim, who carried the more controversial stories that Fox didn't,
11:31wouldn't touch it.
11:32It was eventually released on DVD, but the episode has never been shown on TV,
11:36and it remains the only Family Guy story missing from Disney+.
11:40And that's the list.
11:41Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below.
11:44Which of these banned episodes have you seen,
11:46and which do you think didn't deserve the treatment they got?
11:48Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends,
11:50subscribe and hit that notification bell,
11:52and head over to WhatCulture.com where you can get more content like this every day.
11:57I've been Si for WhatCulture, and have a good week.