Comedians (Beavis and Butt-head)

"Comedians" is the first episode of the third season of Beavis and Butt-head and the 28th episode of the series overall. This episode is blamed for the death of a 2-year-old girl when her 5-year-old brother ended up burning down their whole trailer.^[1]

Plot

Beavis and Butt-head are sat at home watching television when they see a commercial for a documentary about a stand-up comedian who lives an affluent lifestyle from his earnings. Although Beavis would rather go to Stewart's house and burn things, Butt-head decides that they should go to the comedy club to become "stand-up chameleons".

They arrive at the club, named "The Laff Hole", and Butt-head goes on stage first, but only Beavis finds his jokes funny and he is eventually booed off stage. Beavis is next, and the audience exit in droves, leaving only Butt-head to watch him. Inspired by an earlier act, Beavis attempts to juggle burning newspapers, but ends up burning the club down. The pair watch the fire spread from outside while they declare how funny and cool they both are.

Controversy

On October 6, 1993 (exactly one month after the episode had aired), Austin Messner, a 5-year-old child in Moraine, Ohio,^[2] was watching this episode. That night, he sneaked out of bed and attempted to copy the scene when Beavis juggles the newspapers and lights the club on fire. As a result, Messner burned down his trailer, killing his 2-year-old sister.^[3][4] One week after the incident, MTV decided to move the episodes to 10:30 PM instead of 7:00 PM and also decided to delete any fire references on their network show. They had to heavily edit the episode and finally, they took it off the air.^[5]

References

External links

• "Comedians" at the Internet Movie Database
• "Comedians" at TV.com