The episode was banned…you know…because they steal a police car and drive drunk until they die in an explosion. Part 1 Part 2 One of those characters was the Muslim prophet Muhammad, who the show had shown uncensored in a previous episode. However, “200” and “201” dealt heavily with the idea of censorship and featured Muhammad more prominently. Shortly after the episode was aired, Zachary Adam Chesser (an American also going by the name Abu Talhah al Amrikee) posted death threats toward Stone and Parker online, stating that they would “probably wind up like Theo van Gogh [a filmmaker who was murdered for criticizing Islam] for airing this show.” Chesser has since been arrested for aiding a terrorist organization and is serving a 25-year prison sentence. This controversy led to the episode being removed from South Park’s website. It was never re-aired in its uncensored form. “200” and “201” remain banned, and they are two of five episodes (all of which show Muhammad) from South Park’s catalogue that are not included on HBO Max. Additionally, all of South Park was banned from Sri Lanka due to scenes where the Buddha snorts cocaine in “200” and “201.” In the episode, then-17-year-old Jesse Carere walks down a street, naked. You see his butt. The Parents Television Council filed a letter to the Department of Justice, asking them to charge the show with child pornography violations. All the fuss led to brands like Taco Bell, General Motors, Subway, Foot Locker, H&R Block, Proactiv, L’Oréal, Clearasil, and Kraft pulled their advertising from the show. Due to the controversy and a lack of ratings (the show was often compared to the British show that inspired it), Skins was canceled soon after. The show’s violence was also called out by some, but asses really were the topic of conversation. ABC and the FCC literally got into a censorship battle over whether a scene in which Charlotte Ross is shown nude from behind counted as “too indecent.” ABC argued that “buttocks are not a sexual organ” due to “common sense," which is hilarious. Then, the FCC put the “butt” in rebuttal, responding to ABC that: “We find that the programming at issue is within the scope of our indecency definition because it depicts sexual organs and excretory organs — specifically, an adult woman’s buttocks.” No one knows how to talk dirty like the FCC. “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.” Then, Robertson paraphrased from the Bible: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers — they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.” The A&E network suspended Robertson, but later reversed the suspension, and the family issued an apology. The anti-LGBTQ statements comparing homosexuality to bestiality were made in 2013, but the show continued to air until 2017. Throughout these incidents, Deen’s contracts with Food Network, Walmart, Target, QVC, Sears/Kmart, her book publisher, and more were canceled. Kids are assigned positions, given allowances, and expected to look after themselves. The show filmed in New Mexico where, at the time, there were not strict regulations on child labor in television and film. The show immediately drew concern over child abuse and labor laws. While there were upwards of 200 adults on set at all times, some kids were still injured (one child’s face was burned with grease while cooking, and another drank from a bottle of bleach, mistaking it for seltzer water). However, some of the stars of the show look back on Kid Nation fondly. Laurel McGoff told the A.V. Club: “My experience on the show was the ultimate best experience of my life. It was really the most memorable part of my childhood.” Carpenter addressed the rumors in a tweet, stating: “Joss intentionally refused multiple calls from my agents making it impossible to connect with him to tell him the news that I was pregnant. Finally, once Joss was apprised of the situation, he requested a meeting with me. In that closed-door meeting, he asked me if I was ‘going to keep it’ and manipulatively weaponized my womanhood and faith against me. He proceeded to attack my character, mock my religious beliefs, accuse me of sabotaging the show, and then unceremoniously fired me the following season once I gave birth.” Joss did respond to some of the claims made against him. While the episode does not revolve around Puerto Ricans specifically, a Puerto Rican Day parade serves as the backdrop for the entire runtime. Among others, the leader of a Puerto Rican organization called out the episode’s stereotypes, and NBC banned the episode with an apology. It wasn’t until 2002 that the episode started to be aired again. The episode deals with George Liquor (in this episode depicted as an abusive father-figure) adopting Ren and Stimpy as pets. He tries to train them with confusing and conflicting tasks, and Ren eventually blows up and beats him with an oar. Nickelodeon refused to air “Man’s Best Friend,” and shortly after, Ren & Stimpy’s creator John Kricfalusi was fired. He cites this episode as the reason for his termination, though his relationship with Nickelodeon had already deteriorated by the time the episode was created. Kricfalusi was reportedly frequently late with deadlines, and he was later accused of sexual harassment, grooming, and dating minors, the latter of which was confirmed by his lawyer. Showrunner Bill Oakley later said, “It’s on the only episode of any series ever that had an entire act of World Trade Center jokes.” Oakley also donated a hand-drawn cel of the two towers from the episode to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. The museum’s curator, Alexandra Drakakis, called it a “hilarious and tender” donation. While Rakolta was appearing on talk shows and demanding Married… with Children be taken off the air, Fox decided to play it safe with another potentially dicey episode: “I’ll See You in Court.” Fox never aired “I’ll See You in Court” due to its sexual content. Main characters Al and Peg go to a motel to try to add some flair to their love life. They discover a videotape on which their neighbors are having sex, then have sex themselves only to discover they’ve also been filmed. They sue the motel, and Al and Peg wind up having sex again in the empty courtroom at the end of the episode. Wait a minute, a ’90s show featuring sex? We know what that means! That’s right, our old pals the Parents Television Council named Married… with Children the worst show of 1995 to 1997. In the clip below, Yost discusses his exit. The truth is somewhere in the middle of all that. It’s true that people were shocked by Russell’s hairstyle change. The New York Times even described her as having a “glorious head of voluminous golden backlit hair,” and some Felicity fans were indeed upset that she chopped off the locks. But the ratings for Felicity had already tanked before Russell cut her hair (due to it changing time slots). However, the idea that a hairstyle change tanked a show had already taken root, and the whole situation became an industrywide joke for some time. Dan and Amy sat down with Entertainment Weekly to clarify why they left. Dan said: “We’ve been working for the last two years with one-year contracts, working seven days a week for the past six years, and we wanted not a two-year pickup for the show, but a two-year contract for us, so we could relax a little bit and not just think 300 days at a time, always wondering whether we’d be here. And we hit a brick wall with that, and also with our request for more personnel, more writers, a staff director for the [stage set] so that we didn’t personally have to go down on the set and oversee the directors and make sure the knickknacks were on the right shelf at Lorelai’s inn. So, last Thursday, when we saw none of that was coming together, we made our decision [to leave].” Amy added: “We went to the studio around the Christmas holiday and said, ‘Here’s what we’re looking for, and let’s talk now before the season ends and things get crazy with [your] attention distracted by fall pilot development,’ but we got frozen out. It was like Footloose, when they’re revvin’ up the tractors, playin’ chicken. It took too long, and before everyone knew it, we were loading our desks on a truck and driving off the lot.” What went wrong was the strobing light patterns (the colors blue and red rapidly alternating) that appear several times in the episode, leading to some kids having medical issues: “There were about 600 kids who genuinely did have headaches and convulsions and breathing problems” —Benjamin Radford, Vice However, the story that got repeated was that thousands of kids were hospitalized with seizures. This was largely due to mass hysteria. Still, Nintendo stock fell over 3%, the anime went into a four-month hiatus, and it’s now become common practice to warn viewers of possible epileptic-inducing content. Season 9 had a pretty big cliffhanger, too. After its 31-episode run, Pam (Bobby’s wife) wakes up in bed. She hears the shower running in the bathroom, opens the door, and finds her late husband Bobby alive and well. Turns out, all of season 9 was just in her head. This was how the writers decided to handle Patrick Duffy (the actor playing Bobby) leaving the show. Duffy was tired of playing a secondary character, so they killed him off, and he set out to be a big star. When he decided to come back, they had to come up with a way to bring him back to life. Season 9 of Dallas is now referred to as “the dream season.” After Doherty left (and called Charmed “a show for 12-year-olds”), Milano told Entertainment Weekly: “I think it’s hard when you put two very different people together. I’m very laid-back and passive. I have my Buddha. I come in here and meditate. [Shannen’s] got a lot of energy, she’s very headstrong, she wants to get the job done. I think it’s unfortunate that she left, and that she needed to bad-mouth everyone involved and the audience. She sounds really angry. I just hope I didn’t contribute to that anger.” In 2021, Milano updated Entertainment Tonight on her and Doherty’s relationship: “I would say we are cordial. You know, I could take responsibility for a lot of our tension that we had. I think a lot of our struggle came from feeling that I was in competition rather than it being that sisterhood that the show was so much about. And I have some guilt about my part in that.” In the episode, King Friday VIII begins stockpiling bombs after hearing that Cornflake S. Pecially is doing the same. But when Lady Elaine Fairchilde and Lady Aberlin travel to Pecially’s kingdom, they discover that the citizens are building a bridge, not bombs. The show highlights how a misunderstanding almost led to needless violence. Maybe it’s not fair to include this episode on this list, because “Conflict” was praised by teachers for introducing the idea of miscommunications leading to violence. But I think it shows how a controversial subject can be handled successfully if you have the magic of Mr. Rogers.
