21 Controversial TV Shows That Only Lasted A Few Episodes Before They Were Pulled From The Air
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A while back, we wrote about shows that were canceled before even airing a single episode — now, we’re back to write about shows that did manage to get on the air, but only for a few episodes. Here are 21 shows that were quickly pulled due to controversy!
1.
The Book of Daniel only aired four (of eight) episodes before being canceled by NBC. The controversial drama starred a narcotics-addicted priest who frequently spoke to Jesus himself. This priest, named Daniel, had a martini-addicted wife, a weed-selling daughter, a promiscuous son, and a gay son, which would prove to be one of the most controversial aspects of the series. Many of the network’s affiliates refused to air the series, and the series had trouble finding advertisers, causing it to be pulled after only a few episodes.
2.
Adults Adopting Adults only aired three of ten episodes on A&E before its own cancellation. It was reported to Variety that it had been canceled due to low ratings, but it’s hard to believe the controversy surrounding the show had no effect. One couple involved, Christy and Danny Huff, planned to adopt a pregnant 20-year-old from Austria, but there were concerns that Danny might develop romantic feelings for the woman, which had happened when he had tried to adopt an 18-year-old prior. Viewers were uncomfortable with Danny’s behavior towards the 20-year-old, who was named Ileana. Danny had also made problematic racial comments in deleted TikToks.
3.
I’m sure you’ve heard of The Osbournes, but I highly doubt you’ve heard of their short-lived variety show, Osbournes: Reloaded. The show only aired a single half-hour episode back on Fox in 2009. It’s not just that the show was awful, featuring unfunny parodies and mocking the not-so-rich and famous, but that it also featured heavy profanity and “risque” content. Almost 14% of Fox affiliates refused to air further episodes, causing Fox to drop the show entirely.
4.
Another celebrity variety show, The Richard Pryor Show, was canceled after five episodes due to its envelope-pushing content. Case in point: the first episode began with a scene of shirtless enslaved Black men, including Pryor, being whipped. Pryor is eventually given a worse punishment…a job at NBC.
6.
Kid Nation actually did air a full season, but the controversy it attracted stopped a planned second season in its tracks. I actually watched Kid Nation as a kid and wanted to apply for Season 2 — it was actually a super interesting look at kids having to form a functioning society without adults (but for the host, who wasn’t around except for challenges). Still, ethical complications obviously arose, along with concerns about the potential violation of child labor laws. A second season was planned, but was canceled before it could come to be.
7.
Another controversial show that only lasted a single season was Bridalplasty. Now, this wasn’t *necessarily* canceled due to controversy — viewership wasn’t great either — but it was so wildly controversial I have to include it on this last. In the show, brides competed for the chance to win plastic surgeries before their wedding. Each week, the bride who won a challenge would get one of their desired surgeries and be immune from elimination the next week while they recovered. The winner got all the surgeries they wanted.
8.
HBO’s Luck also aired a full season before its cancellation. The show, which was about horse racing, had actually already filmed the first two episodes of the second season when it was canceled after the third horse death on set. Concerns about mistreatment of the horses and dangerous conditions had been present since the series’s start, and after three deaths, the outcry proved too much.
9.
The 1960s variety show Turn-On didn’t even make it through a single episode before it was pulled off the air; it was pulled after only 11 minutes. The experimental show blended (often offensive and raunchy) sketches, stop motion, animation, puppets, and synthesizer clicking — and audiences were not a fan. After one too many phoned-in complaints from miffed audience members, an ABC affiliate in Cleveland quickly cut the airing, infamously telling ABC, “If your naughty little boys have to write dirty words on the walls, please don’t use our walls.” Other affiliates followed suit, and the show was canceled, with an already-filmed second episode never making it to air.
In case you’re wondering how it was offensive…the sketches involved blackface, KKK members in the audience, and a Star of David telling a Christian monk, “We’ll forget about Auschwitz if you reduce the charges to manslaughter!” Other sketches joked about foot fetishists, birth control, the upsides of domestic violence, and a woman offering sexual favors to a firing squad about to kill her. Remember, this was 1969 — most of this stuff would be seen as inappropriate for prime-time TV even today.
10.
I’m sure you’ve heard of America’s Funniest Home Videos, and you probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn there was an Australian version — but you’ve likely never heard of its spinoff, Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos. The show followed the same format as Australia’s Funniest Home Videos, except that all the videos were a little (okay, a lot) more explicit. The show only aired one episode*, which was cut off a little over half an hour into the episode, after the network head, Kerry Packer, called and demanded the broadcast be stopped.
One of the videos, just so you can get an idea, showed a man lifting a weight with his penis.
11.
Videos After Dark tried the same thing in America. While the first episode did air in full, it was quickly canceled — apparently, American audiences weren’t any more forgiving than Australian ones.
12.
The 2000s were the decade of the dating show, and not every show was a winner. For example, Playing It Straight followed a woman named Jackie who dated 14 men — only five of whom were straight. Jackie’s goal was to end up choosing one of the straight men (in which case they’d split $1 million) — if she chose one of the gay men, he would win all the money. Critics found the show offensive, and the show stopped airing after three episodes, with the official reason being bad ratings — but Jackie herself said she thought “something deeper” was going on.
13.
A more popular dating show from the 2000s, Rock of Love, produced a ton of spin-offs, including one named Megan Wants a Millionaire, which centered on Megan Hauserman’s search for a rich husband following a stint on a number of VH1 reality shows.
However, only three episodes aired before the show was canceled. Why? Because one contestant, Ryan Jenkins (who was later revealed to have placed third in the show), turned out to be a murderer. After he left the show, he married Jasmine Fiore, then killed her a few months later. He then died by suicide a few days after her body was found.
Jenkins had also already filmed for Season 3 of the spinoff I Love Money, a competition show featuring cast members from multiple VH1 shows. He actually won — the season never made it to air due to Fiore’s murder.
15.
Another controversial reality show from a bit farther back was called Who’s Your Daddy?. In the show, TJ Myers, who had been adopted as a baby, tried to guess who her birth father was out of a number of different men — if she guessed correctly, she’d get $100,000.
The show faced a lot of backlash from adoption agencies, who found it exploitative and trivializing of adopted people’s experiences, calling it appalling and destructive.
16.
The Chop: Britain’s Top Woodworker might have seemed to be an innocuous woodworking show from its title, but it made waves when viewers seemed to recognize racist tattoos on one cast member’s face — including an 88, which is widely considered to mean “Heil Hitler.” Darren Lumsden denied this, but the show was still canceled, with A&E UK releasing a statement saying, “A contestant’s tattoos included symbols that could be connected to far-right ideologies and could cause offence; we sincerely apologise for that and we are sorry that our processes did not prompt further investigation at an earlier stage.”
17.
One of the most infamous sitcoms of all time is Heil Honey, I’m Home! which portrayed Hitler and Eva Braun living next to a Jewish family in the suburbs. Unsurprisingly, the British show was super controversial, and only aired one episode (in the ’90s), though seven had been filmed.
18.
A more recent controversial sitcom is Work It, a 2012 comedy about two men who dress as women in order to get jobs after they’re laid off. GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign were so against it that they actually took out an ad in Variety against the show. The show — which had also been panned by critics — was canceled after two episodes had aired.
19.
The Dana Carvey Show made waves in its very first episode when it began with a sketch depicting then-president Bill Clinton breastfeeding babies, puppies, and kittens. In just the first few minutes, millions of viewers changed the channel or turned off the TV.
The show never recovered these viewers, and it was ultimately canceled after seven episodes. You can watch the sketch here.
20.
ESPN took a chance in 2017 by green-lighting the late-night show Barstool Van Talk. Starring Barstool’s Dan “Big Cat” Katz and PFT Commenter, the show featured various ESPN and SportsCenter personalities as guests. The controversy came from Barstool’s history of misogyny, with NFL reporter Sam Ponder calling ESPN out for giving Barstool a larger platform. After the first episode, ESPN president John Skipper canceled the show, stating, “While we had approval on the content of the show, I erred in assuming we could distance our efforts from the Barstool site and its content.”
21.
And finally, we can’t entirely blame this one on controversy, but the controversial medical drama, Wonderland, was canceled after only two episodes in 2000, and backlash seemed at least partly to blame. The show, which depicted a psych ward, was criticized by the National Alliance on Mental Illness for portraying patients in psych wards as “killers, crazies, and freaks.” However, since it also aired at the same time as ER, the network may simply have felt it was going up against too much competition.
What controversial TV show can you not believe made it to air? Let us know in the comments below!
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