ComingSoon.net is taking a look at five episodes of popular television series that proved to be too controversial. Check out our choices in the gallery below!
While many television shows have gone in the direction of shorter seasons and shorter runs, there are plenty of past and present ones who embrace the traditional 20+ episode season structure with hopes of remaining on-air for as long as possible. Naturally, with such a high demand for plots and stories, there are bound to be a few duds in the mix.
What many show runners and television writers can’t anticipate, though, is their episode facing bad timing or being accused of bad taste. Unfortunately for them, this sort of thing happens quite often. Whether the episode happens to contain subject matter that reflects real-life tragedies or it simply takes its plot too far, there are a handful of TV shows with episodes that were either pulled from the release schedule or removed from recirculation after the fact.
TV episodes never aired
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Seinfeld, Season 9 Episode 20: “The Puerto Rican Day”
Arriving just one week before the incredibly successful sitcom’s two-part clip show and two-part series finale, “The Puerto Rican Day” couldn’t have arrived at a worse time. The episode sees Kramer burning and stomping on the Puerto Rican flag, much to the disdain of countless viewers. It was removed from syndication, but can still be seen on some networks.
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South Park, Season 5 Episodes 15 and 16: “200” and “201”
To celebrate their 200th and 201st episodes, South Park went all out and mocked countless celebrities from past episodes—including the depiction of a religious prophet that was immediately seen as incredibly controversial. The episode was never re-aired and is still unavailable on Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, Amazon, and other Video On Demand services.
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Friends, Season Eight Episode Three: “The One Where Rachel Tells Ross”
At this point in Friends’s run, the show was pretty much unstoppable. However, the tragedy that occurred on 9/11 meant that the show’s airport-heavy episode needed to be pulled because of a subplot involving a bomb threat.
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Sesame Street, “Episode 876”
February 10th, 1976: the day the Wicked Witch of the West wreaked havoc on Sesame Street. Margaret Hamilton, again playing the role of the iconic Wizard of Oz villain, did such a good job reprising her role that children were traumatized and PBS had to completely remove the episode from circulating.
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The Angry Beavers, Season 4 Finale: “Bye Bye Beavers”
Many will recognize this iconic Nickelodeon cartoon and appreciate how enjoyable it was back in the day, but no one knows how it was really supposed to end. The network pulled the show’s finale when they saw a cut that followed the Beavers as they slowly entered an existential crisis upon receiving a letter that they were living in a cartoon that was now cancelled.
