TV URBAN LEGEND: An episode of You Can't Do That On Television was approved to air in Canada, but was later banned in the United States due to its subject matter.
You Can't Do That On Television was a sketch comedy/variety series that ran on Canadian television and on Nickelodeon throughout the 1980s (it started in 1979 and ended in 1990, with a couple of gap years, so ten total seasons). It's famous for introducing slime to Nickelodeon.
The show was originally intended to be basically Saturday Night Live, only with teens and pre-teens - a forerunner to All That.
Actor Les Lye played multiple roles in the series and the kids would change from year to year. Every episode would be about a particular theme and the sketches would somehow involve that theme.
The sketches were almost all just recurring bits, like one set in a dungeon (with Lye playing a dungeon master)...
or a firing squad (with Lye playing the guy who says "Ready! Aim! Fire!")...
or a burger joint (with Lye playing Barth, the owner of the burger joint)...
or a disheveled Senator at home (played by Lye)...
And obviously, the show is best known for the fact that when someone said "I don't know," they would be hit by Green Slime...
and when they said "water" (or variations of the term), they would be hit by water...
Oh, and by the way, Alanis Morissette was briefly a cast member...
Anyhow, fairly late in the show's run (in its 8th season), they had an episode that Nickelodeon eventually banned from the network!
The topic was "Adoption," and there were a number of gags in the episode of questionable taste, like the Senator intended to adopt kids to use as workers.
The episode aired in the United States, but Nickelodeon received some complaints about the depiction of adoption in the show and they realized that it might have been a bit rough for actual adopted kids to watch, so they banned it from the network (it's believed that the episode aired twice in the United States before being banned).
One of the show's creators, Geoffrey Darby, was interviewed by Mathew Klickstein (On Your Marc, SLIMED! An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age) for Vulture, and he admitted that the Adoption episode probably went too far:
"Speaking of showing a firing squad on a children’s show, did you ever feel then or do you ever look back on the episodes now and feel that maybe some things went a bit too far?
I think the “Adoption Show” went too far.
We ourselves didn’t understand what buttons were being pushed about an episode dealing with adoption. And that was our mistake.
None of the kids were adopted, we didn’t know anybody who had been adopted. That was really us just not being cognizant of the world of adoption.
And so that was a bad show. That was just not being respectful."
It's fascinating to see Darby concede the point. Its believe the show's producers eventually pulled the episode from rotation in Canada, as well.
The legend is...
STATUS: True
Thanks to Mathew Klickstein and Geoffrey Darby for the great quote!
Be sure to check out the TV Legends Revealed archive for more urban legends about the world of TV.
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Original source: CBR.com.
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