They say there’s a time and place for everything, just as long as it doesn’t offend anyone.
It may seem that shows like South Park, Family Guy and Game of Thrones can get away with
anything, but even they aren’t immune from censorship imposed by networks and pubic opinion.
But what could possibly have been so offensive about Sesame Street that had it banned in
Mississippi or The Price is Right that had them pull dozens of episodes from syndication?
Find out in our list of 10 TV Show Banned For Shocking Reasons…
Simpsons
The season nine episode of The Simpsons titled “The Cartridge Family” showed what happens
when people like Homer acquire firearms.
His reckless misuse of the weapon wasn’t considered very funny by British censors who
didn’t allow the episode to be aired when in initially premiered in 1997.
It would later appear on a “Too Hot For TV” VHS compilation and would air in syndication
in the UK but not without several bits cut, such as Marge deciding to keep the gun herself
at the end and Moe’s lesson on how to turn a gun into five guns.
Seinfeld
As a big network show, Seinfeld didn’t usually court controversy and one of their final episodes
illustrated why.
In “Puerto Rican Day” the characters get stuck in traffic caused by the Puerto Rican
day parade.
The parade is mostly an excuse have the characters gridlocked and is never even shown.
However in the episode’s final minutes, Kramer accidentally lights a Puerto Rican
flag on fire and gets chased by several angry parade goers.
The National Puerto Rican coalition took particular umbrage with Kramer’s observation that “it’s
like this every day in Puerto Rico” as they attacked Jerry’s car.
It was called an “unconscionable insult” to Puerto Ricans.
NBC issued an apology and pulled the episode from syndication.
Sesame Street
What could be so objectionable about puppets teaching children to count that got Sesame
Street banned for 22 days in 1970 Mississippi?
To but it bluntly, racism.
Not racism in the show, but on the part of a committee who was uncomfortable with an
integrated cast of kids and decided to flip a big bird to the Civil Rights movement.
No official reason was given when they first pulled the show from the airwaves, but once
an anonymous insider leaked the committee’s reasoning the public outrage was too loud
to ignore and they reversed their decision.
Boy Meets World
When Boy Meets World began in 1993 nobody expected it to last seven seasons.
During its run, Cory went through many things, including puberty.
By the seventh season, star Ben Savage was 20 years old, so the show runners tried to
include some more age appropriate themes, such as underage drinking and premarital sex.
The show found a new audience in syndication on the Disney channel, but to this day there
are 3 episodes that fans who discovered the show here have never seen due to their mature
content.
They’ll just have to use their imagination for what happened between Boy Meets World
and Girl Meets World.
Star Trek
In the original Star Trek series, the crew would often find themselves on planets with
societies that mirror aspects of our own usually accompanied by some kind of social commentary.
In a second season episode titled “Patterns of Force” the Starship Enterprise finds
themselves on a planet with a rising power that emulates the Nazis.
Because of the blatant depiction of the Third Reich and a character claiming that the Nazis
were the most “efficient society ever”, German networks refused to air the episode
for nearly 3 decades.
There’s clearly a lot of shame surrounding this aspect of German history, but it’s
not exactly something that can just be swept under the rug by removing all cultural references.
X Files
While the X-Files predominantly dealt with UFOs and alien conspiracies, some episodes
were much more horror than Sci Fi.
In season 4 they aired one of their most controversial episodes ever with “Home”, a story involving
a heavily inbred family cut off from the outside world.
In addition to the taboo subject matter, it was an intensely scary episode and little
too much for what primetime network audiences were used to.
It was the only X Files episode to get slapped with a TV-MA rating but they still received
viewer complaints and the episode was removed from syndication on Fox.
“Home” is now considered one of the best episodes of the series, but in 1996 people
trying to unwind on Sunday night with Mulder and Scully’s latest alien adventure just
weren’t prepared something that was more Texas Chainsaw Massacre than Close Encounters.
South Park
South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have continually pushed the boundaries of
censorship, and in 2010 they found out just how far they could go.
For their 200th episode they made a two part special that tied together multiple story
lines from past seasons, one of which promised to show the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
After the first part aired, Stone and Parker received death threats and Comedy Central
decided to censor the character with a black bar and bleep out all mentions of the prophet’s
name.
The irony being that South Park’s message is often about censorship and freedom of speech,
so many thought they had meant to have the character removed this way in order to prove
a point.
They even incorporated the experience into Kyle’s concluding monologue about using
violent threats to get your way, but this was also bleeped out.
The Price is Right
If you ever watched The Price is Right during the Bob Barker years, you’ll remember that
he closed every episode with a reminder to get your pets spayed or neutered.
This wasn’t a sponsored message, but a personal mantra from an ardent animal rights activist.
Fur coats were once a common prize on the game show, but at Barker’s request they
not only stopped giving them away, but agreed not to air an re-runs or release DVDs of episodes
with fur prizes.
He remains critical of other prizes the show still gives away, such as tickets to Sea World
and the Calgary stampede, which is probably why he wasn’t invited to partake in the
show’s 40th anniversary despite being the host for 35 years.
Family Guy
Like South Park, Family Guy found out just how they could push the envelope in 2010 with
“Partial Terms of Endearment”, an episode where Lois gets an abortion.
Perhaps one of the reasons Family Guy is able to get away with pretty much anything is because
the jokes are usually irreverent yet disconnected from anything that’s actually happening
in the story or to the characters.
Generally nothing is taboo on the show, but when the entire third act was about Lois getting
the abortion, Fox wasn’t laughing and decided to terminate the episode.
Even the Cartoon’s Network’s Adult Swim wouldn’t air it, but it played in the UK
and can now be seen on DVD and streaming platforms.
Game of Thrones
When you have a show with as many severed body parts as HBO’s Game of Thrones, sometimes
you have to outsource their production or rent them in bulk.
This is how ex president George W. Bush’s head accidentally ended up impaled on a stick
in the first season much to HBO’s dismay.
Even with a wig Bush’s profile is recognizable in a couple shots, though the show’s makers
claim it wasn’t intentional and didn’t even notice until after the scene was shot.
Intentional or not, HBO was forced to issue an apology for what was seen as disrespect
to the former Head of State and promised to remove the shot from all future DVDs.
How many of these banned episodes have you been able to track down?
Were there any we missed?
Let us know in the comments below and be sure to subscribe for more videos like this one.