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,
00:24sardonic and oftentimes nihilistic show about nothing in particular.
00:28All that being said, it 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
00:52Rican flag with a sparkler and, in an attempt to stop the fire, throws it to the ground and
00:57stomps on it. This 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
01:26The 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 family out
01:44of 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.
01:52As the family sees the sight, 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,
02:01because so much of it centred around the location in question,
02:03with the tone exacerbated by Homer's frustration and an unfortunate joke
02:07between two men with the punchline of, they stick all the jerks in Tower One.
02:11Despite the episode being well-received and even winning an Emmy for Outstanding Musical
02:15Achievement for its comedic musical number, it remained off the air until 2006,
02:19and 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 10 seasons, Friends has thankfully been a show that
02:29hasn't encountered too much in the way of censorship. Which, in all fairness,
02:33may explain why it felt like it was on TV pretty much every hour of the day for many years.
02:38Notable exceptions to this are The One with the Lesbian Wedding, which attracted some rather silly
02:42controversy and censorship due to its focus on same-sex relationships, and The One with the Free
02:47Porn. The episode's title, as with most Friends episodes, is a pretty good description. Joey and
02:52Chandler discover a free pornography channel on their TV, and fearing they'll lose it if they
02:57turn it off, leave it on and wind up slightly addicted to it. What's remarkable about the
03:01episode, for the most part, is how frank the show is about pornography in 1998,
03:06where it was still quite taboo in the days before the internet. However, Channel 4 in the UK worked
03:11happy with its frequent references and it became the only episode of the show that was dropped from
03:15repeat showings, as it wasn't appropriate to be televised earlier in the day. Channel 5 continued
03:20to show the episode, but edited it to exclude any shots of the TV when the porn was on, even though
03:25unsurprisingly, it was never explicit. 7. If You Can't Be With The One You Love
03:30Boy Meets World It might seem quaint now, but around its
03:34highest points, Boy Meets World was a cutting-edge sitcom that navigated teenage life, relationships
03:39and self-identity. It was created by Disney for ABC, but due to its strong viewership and name
03:44value, was picked up for syndication on the Disney Channel. Here, the House of Mouse rifled through
03:49the stories and took issue with a handful, one 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, he attends
04:03a house party and sneaks away some whiskey. He even drags his friend Sean into things, but after
04:08the pair are picked up by the police, they agree to never drink again. However, Sean gets a taste
04:12for things and drinks the entire next week. Jack, his half-brother, discovers this and scolds him,
04:18revealing that abusive alcohol runs in the family. With a synopsis like that, it's not surprising
04:22that Disney wanted to stay away from it. It was perfectly viable on ABC, where its target
04:27demographic understood and empathised with it properly, but the Disney Channel had a wider
04:31spread of viewer ages, and thus they refused to air it. Surely 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 the
04:44wave of culture that was all about pushing buttons, low-hanging fruit, and appealing to
04:48the disenfranchised 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 aired,
05:20dragged the show into its most dire controversy. Austin Messner, a 5-year-old boy, had burned his
05:25house down with his mother's cigarette lighter, killing his young sister. His mother blamed the
05:30show, and the influence it had on her son. Despite neighbours proclaiming that the family didn't have
05:35cable and couldn't have seen it, MTV chose to re-edit Comedians and then eventually can it for
05:40good. In 2008, Messner confirmed himself that not only did the family not have cable,
05:44he had never seen the show in his life, and he didn't plan to.
05:475. My Jigglyball – 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 has
05:59negative connotations due to its connections to performative caricatures and harmful stereotypes.
06:0530 Rock, The Office, and Community were affected, while NBC's Scrubs had three episodes removed from
06:10streaming services. These were season 3's My 15 Seconds and season 5's My Chopped Liver and My
06:16Jigglyball, which just so happens to be a fan favourite. The episode has the show's typical
06:21moral quandary about the American healthcare system, but also centres on a gag about a fake
06:25sport that 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 as
06:34part of a cutaway fantasy where JD imagines his perfect roommate, a mix between love interest
06:39Elliot and best friend Turk. It's stupid, and the show's winningness to put Sarah Chalk in blackface
06:44feels hollow and dated. Showrunner 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 viewer outside of the UK, you'll almost certainly need a primer for what
07:04Only 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, the show framed them as two
07:20men just doing what they could to get by while looking out for each other, which is actually
07:24what perturbed many about the episode A Royal Flush. This 1986 Christmas Day special saw Rodney
07:30get close with an upper-class family and his brother Delboy act progressively more
07:34uncharacteristically aggressive. He verbally abuses Rodney and even threatens an audience
07:39member of a theatre show. Fans often called the episode one of the worst in the show's run,
07:43and creator John Sullivan tended to agree. When it came to 2005, when the show was being remastered
07:48for DVD, Sullivan personally saw to it that a whole 18 minutes of the 76 were cut and a laugh
07:54track 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
08:04years, all the way until 2021 when the original was also supplied alongside it
08:09on the latest Blu-ray release.
08:103. 201 South Park
08:13Just to prove how bizarre South Park's history is, this banned episode was actually nominated
08:18for a Primetime Emmy, and in all fairness it was a good time to honour the show's achievements as
08:22it was celebrating its 200th episode. One of the most controversial shows of all time, South Park
08:27creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker drew from as much of their previously contentious content as
08:32possible for this double-bill episode. 200 was the set-up. Tom Cruise leads a legion of mocked
08:38celebrities to the town of South Park and promises a class-action lawsuit unless they can produce the
08:43Prophet Muhammad. 201 sees the second half of this and features many religious figures, including
08:48Muhammad himself, a hugely divisive choice considering that previous cartoon drawings
08:53of the Prophet in newspapers had resulted in riots. Threats to the studio and the lives of
08:58Parker and Stone were pretty prevalent before the episode even aired, but it did get one showing on
09:03April 21st, 2010. However, 201 was heavily censored. Black bars obscured Muhammad and all of his
09:10dialogue was bleeped, which 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.
09:192. I'll See You In Court – Married With Children
09:23Michael G. Moe, creator of Married With Children, calls I'll See You In Court the lost episode of
09:28the show on two fronts. One, because it never aired, and two, because the team behind the show
09:33lost control of the situation around it. In this proposed 1989 episode, Marcy Rhodes recommends
09:39that the Bundys rekindle their love life by having sex in a seedy motel room. However,
09:44here they discover that the Rhodes' own game of horizontal refreshments has been caught on film.
09:49Regardless, the Bundys have sex anyway, and together the couples attempt to sue the motel
09:54owner. Like most great sitcoms, Married With Children was a boundary pusher at the time and
09:58was no stranger to controversy. However, this episode's dialogue and subject matter in 1989
10:04was too much for Fox. Where 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. Edding it down would've left
10:14very little. It 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 that was more exciting than its so-called misgivings.
10:281. Partial Terms of Endearment – Family Guy
10:32Family Guy has always been a show that isn't afraid to be crude, insensitive,
10:36or just simply challenging, and has gotten into trouble a few times for it. However,
10:40there have only been two episodes banned in the US. The first is pure unfortunate happenstance.
10:45Turban Cowboy features a cutaway gag where Peter competes in the Boston Marathon with his car,
10:50knocking down runners. A month after the episode aired, a bombing at the competition caused this
10:54episode to be pulled, but it eventually returned years later. However, despite being aired overseas,
11:00Partial Terms of Endearment has never been shown in America, and it's a long way from
11:04ever having that opportunity. The reason being that the episode handles the rather controversial
11:08topic of abortion. Lois reconnects with a college friend and her partner, and they ask
11:12her to be a surrogate, carrying a child to terms for them as they cannot conceive themselves.
11:17Despite Peter's arguments otherwise, she agrees. Later, 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, and even Adult Swim, who carried the more controversial stories
11:30that Fox didn't, wouldn't touch it. It was eventually released on DVD, but the episode
11:34has never been shown on TV, and it remains the only Family Guy story missing from Disney+.
11:40And that's the list! Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below. Which of
11:44these bad episodes have you seen, and which do you think didn't deserve the treatment they got?
11:48Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends, subscribe 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.