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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 banhammer at some stage,
00:07with censors and studios putting their foot down and drawing a line under particular stories.
00:12I'm Cy for WhatCulture.com and these are 10 banned episodes of beloved TV sitcoms.
00:17Number 10, The Puerto Rican Day, Seinfeld.
00:20Often described as one of the best sitcoms ever,
00:23Seinfeld was a sarcastic, sardonic 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 parade celebrating Puerto Rican Day.
00:49Near the episode's close, Kramer accidentally sets fire to a Puerto Rican flag with a sparkler,
00:54and 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.
01:02The 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.
01:23Number 9, 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.
01:34This Season 9 edition was often called one of the best of the season,
01:37but was banned due to very clear real-life events.
01:40The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson first aired in 1997,
01:44and it takes the family out of Springfield for a rare visit to the Big Apple.
01:47Thanks to Homer's friend Barney, the family car is parked, ticketed, and clamped between the twin towers.
01:52As the family sees the sights, 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 centered around the location in question,
02:04with the tone exacerbated by Homer's frustration,
02:06and an unfortunate joke between two men with the punchline of
02:09They stick all the jerks in Tower 1.
02:11Despite the episode being well-received,
02:13and even winning an Emmy for Outstanding Musical Achievement for its comedic musical number,
02:17it remained off the air until 2006,
02:20and even then was carefully cut down in certain regions.
02:23Number 8.
02:24The one with the free porn.
02:25Friends.
02:26Despite being on the air for 10 seasons,
02:28Friends has thankfully been a show that hasn't encountered too much in the way of censorship,
02:32which, in all fairness, may explain why it felt like it was on TV
02:35pretty much every hour of the day for many years.
02:38Notable exceptions to this are the one with the lesbian wedding,
02:41which attracted some rather silly controversy and censorship
02:44due to its focus on same-sex relationships,
02:46and the one with the free porn.
02:48The episode's title, as with most Friends episodes,
02:50is a pretty good description.
02:52Joey and Chandler discover a free pornography channel on their TV,
02:55and fearing they'll lose it if they turn it off,
02:58leave it on, and wind up slightly addicted to it.
03:01What's remarkable about the episode, for the most part,
03:03is how frank the show is about pornography in 1998,
03:06where it was still quite taboo in the days before the internet.
03:09However, Channel 4 in the UK weren't happy with its frequent references,
03:12and it became the only episode of the show that was dropped from repeat showings,
03:16as it wasn't appropriate to be televised earlier in the day.
03:19Channel 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.
03:28Number 7.
03:29If you can't be with the one you love.
03:30Boy Meets World.
03:32It might seem quaint now,
03:33but around its highest points,
03:35Boy Meets World was a cutting-edge sitcom
03:36that navigated teenage life, relationships, and self-identity.
03:40It was created by Disney for ABC,
03:42but due to its strong viewership and name value,
03:45was picked up for syndication on the Disney Channel.
03:48Here, the House of Mouse rifled through the stories,
03:50and took issue...
03:53...you love.
03:54It kicks off following the ongoing story,
03:56where Corey came away from it.
03:57It was perfectly viable on ABC,
03:59where its target demographic understood and empathised with it properly,
04:02but the Disney Channel had a wider spread of viewer ages,
04:05and thus they refused to air it.
04:07Surely a case of better safe than sorry.
04:10Number 6.
04:11Comedians.
04:12Beavis and Butthead.
04:13Perhaps one of the most recognisable mascots of the MTV era,
04:16Beavis and Butthead were part of the wave of culture
04:18that was all about pushing buttons,
04:20low-hanging fruit,
04:21and appealing to the disenfranchised Generation X.
04:24With its apathy of all things right and proper,
04:26heck, one of them is called Butthead,
04:28the show was often in hot water,
04:30and was the target for some pretty scathing criticism,
04:32none more so than after the airing of the episode Comedians.
04:36The story in question sees the two Texan teenagers
04:38attempting stand-up comedy,
04:40which goes about as well as expected.
04:42After the audience walks out of the comedy club,
04:44Beavis accidentally sets it on fire,
04:46and the two watch and laugh about how funny the situation is.
04:49Unfortunately, an incident in Moraine, Ohio,
04:52exactly a month after the episode aired,
04:54dragged the show into its most dire controversy.
04:56Austin Messner, a five-year-old boy,
04:58had burned his house down with his mother's cigarette lighter,
05:00killing his young sister.
05:02His mother blamed the show,
05:04and the influence it had on her son.
05:06Despite neighbours proclaiming that the family didn't have cable,
05:08and couldn't have seen it,
05:10MTV chose to re-edit Comedians,
05:11and then eventually can it for good.
05:13In 2008, Messner confirmed himself,
05:16that not only did the family not have cable,
05:17he had never seen the show in his life,
05:19and he didn't plan to.
05:20Number five,
05:22My Jiggly Ball,
05:23Scrubs.
05:24In 2010,
05:24Netflix and Hulu made the choice to re-examine the content on their platforms.
05:28Specifically,
05:29they were stripping back any shows that used blackface,
05:31a low-bar gag that has negative connotations due to its connections to performative caricatures,
05:36and harmful stereotypes.
05:3830 Rock,
05:39The Office,
05:39and Community were affected,
05:41while NBC's Scrubs had three episodes removed from streaming services.
05:45These were Season 3's My 15 Seconds,
05:47and Season 5's My Chopped Liver and My Jiggly Ball,
05:50which just so happens to be a fan favourite.
05:52The episode has the show's typical moral quandary about the American healthcare system,
05:56but also centres on a gag about a fake sport,
05:58that the janitor uses to lure JD out into the parking lot,
06:01to get pelted by balls.
06:03The blackface moment,
06:04like the others in the show,
06:05is typically inconsequential,
06:07and comes as part of a cutaway fantasy,
06:09where JD imagines his perfect roommate,
06:11a mix between love interest Elliot,
06:13and best friend Turk.
06:14It's stupid,
06:15and the show's willingness to put Sarah Chalk in blackface feels hollow and dated.
06:19Showrunner Bill Lawrence has said that he felt embarrassed by the episodes,
06:22but said that they would probably return to streaming services after some editing.
06:26Over two years later,
06:27however,
06:27they still remain absent.
06:29Number four,
06:30A Royal Flush,
06:31Only Fools and Horses.
06:33If you're a viewer outside of the UK,
06:35you'll almost certainly need a primer for what Only Fools and Horses is.
06:38A beloved sitcom that aired during the 1980s,
06:41it starred British acting institutions,
06:43David Jason and Nicholas Lindhurst,
06:45as two London-based brothers wheeling and dealing,
06:47and doing what they could to make money.
06:49Though they were often scam artists,
06:51and traded in illegal goods,
06:52the show framed them as two men just doing what they could to get by,
06:56while looking out for each other,
06:57which is actually what perturbed many about the episode,
06:59A Royal Flush.
07:01This 1986 Christmas Day special saw Rodney get close with an upper-class family,
07:05and his brother Del Boy acts progressively more uncharacteristically aggressive.
07:09He verbally abuses Rodney,
07:11and even threatens an audience member of a theatre show.
07:14Fans often called the episode one of the worst in the show's run,
07:16and creator John Sullivan tended to agree.
07:19When it came to 2005, when the show is being remastered for DVD,
07:23Sullivan personally saw to it that a whole 18 minutes of the 76 were cut,
07:27and a laugh track recorded by an audience of fans was added to soften Del Boy's harsh behaviour.
07:32This writer's cut version replaced the original in syndication,
07:35and all future releases for 15 years,
07:38all the way until 2021,
07:39when the original was also supplied alongside it on the latest Blu-ray release.
07:43Number 3, 201, South Park.
07:47Just to prove how bizarre South Park's history is,
07:49this banned episode was actually nominated for a Primetime Emmy,
07:53and in all fairness, it was a good time to honour the show's achievements,
07:56as it was celebrating its 200th episode.
07:58One of the most controversial shows of all time,
08:00South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker
08:02drew from as much of their previously contentious content as possible
08:05for this double bill episode.
08:08200 was the set-up.
08:09Tom Cruise leads a legion of mocked celebrities to the town of South Park,
08:13and promises a class-action lawsuit unless they can produce the Prophet Muhammad.
08:17201 sees the second half of this,
08:19and features many religious figures,
08:21including Muhammad himself,
08:23a hugely divisive choice,
08:24considering that previous cartoon drawings of the Prophet in newspapers
08:27had resulted in riots.
08:29Threats to the studio and the lives of Parker and Stone
08:32were pretty prevalent before the episode even aired,
08:35but it did get one showing on April 21st, 2010.
08:38However, 201 was heavily censored.
08:41Black bars obscured Muhammad and all of his dialogue was bleeped,
08:44which rendered the show's final moments a mess,
08:46but a statement in itself.
08:48However, 201 was never shown again,
08:50not on TV or on the South Park website.
08:53Number two, I'll See You in Court,
08:55Married with Children.
08:56Michael G. Moe, creator of Married with Children,
08:59calls I'll See You in Court the lost episode of the show on two fronts.
09:03One, because it never aired,
09:04and two, because the team behind the show lost control of the situation around it.
09:09In this proposed 1989 episode,
09:11Marcy Rhodes recommends that the Bundys rekindled their love life
09:14by having sex in a seedy motel room.
09:17However, here they discover that the Rhodes' own game of horizontal refreshments
09:20has been caught on film.
09:22Regardless, the Bundys have sex anyway,
09:24and together the couples attempt to sue the motel owner.
09:27Like most great sitcoms,
09:29Married with Children was a boundary pusher at the time,
09:31and was no stranger to controversy.
09:33However, this episode's dialogue and subject matter in 1989
09:37was too much for Fox.
09:39Where the studio typically asked for one or two changes per episode,
09:42the list for I'll See You in Court had over a dozen requests.
09:46Edding it down would have left very little.
09:48It took a full 15 years for this episode to be released to the public,
09:52only for intrigued fans and critics to find it rather banal,
09:55and not all that titillating.
09:56The episode had developed an unknown allure that was more exciting than its so-called misgivings.
10:02And number one, partial terms of endearment, Family Guy.
10:05Family Guy has always been a show that isn't afraid to be crude,
10:08insensitive, or just simply challenging,
10:10and has gotten into trouble a few times for it.
10:13However, there have only been two episodes banned in the US.
10:16The first is pure unfortunate happenstance.
10:19Turban Cowboy features a cutaway gag where Peter competes in the Boston Marathon
10:22with his car knocking down runners.
10:24A month after the episode aired,
10:26a bombing at the competition caused this episode to be pulled,
10:29but it eventually returned years later.
10:31However, despite being aired overseas,
10:33partial terms of endearment has never been shown in America,
10:36and it's a long way from ever having that opportunity.
10:39The reason being that the episode handles the rather controversial topic of abortion.
10:43Lois reconnects with a college friend and her partner,
10:45and they ask her to be a surrogate,
10:47carrying a child to terms for them as they cannot conceive themselves.
10:50Despite Peter's arguments otherwise, she agrees.
10:52Later, the parents are killed in an accident.
10:55Following this, Lois has to make the hard choice about what to do with the baby.
10:59Fox refused to show the episode,
11:00and even Adult Swim, who carried the more controversial stories that Fox didn't,
11:04wouldn't touch it.
11:05It was eventually released on DVD,
11:07but the episode has never been shown on TV,
11:09and it remains the only Family Guy story missing from Disney+.
11:13And that's the list.
11:15Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below.
11:17Which of these banned episodes have you seen,
11:19and which do you think didn't deserve the treatment they got?
11:21Make sure you like this video,
11:23share it with your friends,
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11:26and head over to whatculture.com
11:27where you can get more content like this every day.
11:30I've been Cypher, what culture?
11:31And have a good week.
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