The tragedy of Beavis & Butt-Head is that you can't legally get the actual complete-with-music-videos episodes due to licensing issues. I thought maybe YouTube would make this possible given their deals with all the labels, but nothing to date.
Fortunately you can torrent pretty solid TV rips. I was both too young to watch as a kid and didn't have cable, but I watched the whole series with my wife almost 10 years ago now and it was so good. It's hard to believe that show was so controversial. In many ways it was one of the friendliest, nicest shows. I wonder if younger generations would appreciate it.
> It's hard to believe that show was so controversial
It was controversial because of the potty-humour and the chaotic puerile antics of the characters. They had a certain irreverence for authority and many conservative do-gooder types didn't like that.
> It's hard to believe that show was so controversial.
I guess you don't know about the kids who set their houses on fire (allegedly) because Beavis was burning stuff and saying "Fire!, Fire!" on air, or the accompanying congressional hearings on the state of the media. The show was on at 7pm when it first came out I think; after that shit it went to a 11pm "adult-only" show with lots of disclaimers about how you shouldn't do what the characters do. No more fire references, no huffing glue, etc. MTV was seriously worried they'd lose their license I think.
I had the same problem with a show I liked from back in the day called Northern Exposure. Fortunately I got my hands on a very rare copy with the original music.
The interpolated music videos were extraneous to the episodes. There was an animated short and there was B&B watching videos and saying stuff and the two were completely unconnected. That they were spliced together the way they were was to the detriment of the show. I remember one episode about B&B being stranded on an island in a mall and mixed in with that was them at home watching videos.
No mention of The Maxx, which is a shame. That was another supremely well-done animated show from MTV's heyday that gorgeously adapted an Image Comics series. It was closer in tone to Aeon Flux than Beavis and Butt-Head, which is probably why it's not remembered.
Remember "The Brothers Grunt" from the same cartoon block? A cartoon about five constipated trolls with drinking problems searching for their lost brother. That was probably the weirdest thing I ever saw on TV until I encountered Lexx on the sci-fi channel -- the epic tale of a security guard, a sex slave, a dead assassin, and a robot head flying around the universe in a giant bug while trying to find something to eat. Including links to prove I'm not making these up.
Parts of The Maxx are uncomfortable, but unlike the other shows mentioned here it's not just empty edgy humor: serves a thematic purpose. Really well done adaptation of the comic.
This article gives me no idea how they disrupted cable. This reads like a thirty something forced to write about the fortieth anniversary of MTV, which a quick search of the author shows is (probably) accurate.
It's useful to keep in mind that article authors generally don't write their own headlines on news sites; the article itself doesn't ever claim MTV's animation "disrupted cable," whatever that means, but instead claims that they were a laboratory "for animators who wanted to work outside of TV conventions at the time," which is a pretty defensible claim.
(Also, remember that headlines often get changed after publication; the headline as I'm writing this actually says "Here's How Beavis, Butt-Head And Daria Upended TV Animation". Due to the quirks of many CMSes, the `<title>` tags often retain the original headline.)
This may help - seems like the author tried to in some places:
> For animators who wanted to work outside of TV conventions at the time, MTV became a destination and a laboratory. According to Maureen Furniss, who is an animation historian at the California Institute of the Arts, "[MTV] showed people in the public things they had never seen before in animation and gave opportunities to a lot of independent animators and experimental animators."
> "MTV animation was truly an outgrowth and extension of MTV on-air promotion and MTV on-air promotion was incredible. It was a creative laboratory, " Terkuhle says. "We were not only allowed to take risks, but encouraged to take risks and the executives had our back."
> That ethos of a creative laboratory that took risks drew show creators to pitch and push for ideas that wouldn't end up elsewhere on television.
The author seems to have forgotten to include any mention of how these shows "disrupted cable".
Expanding the boundaries of acceptable taste in broadcasting wasn't a disruption, it was the linear continuation of a trend, following the footsteps of All in the Family, Married With Children, the Simpsons, and dozens of other shows that slightly broadened the goalposts for acceptable themes in broadcast comedy.
Odds are the author didn't write the headline, and the author mentions MTV's willingness to push the boundaries of acceptable taste as an enabling factor that brought innovative shows to MTV, not as an innovation in itself.
My best friend of many years and I were talking yesterday, reminiscing about the job we both had right after high school when Beevis and Butt-Head first came out. He remembered me cracking him up with a weird laugh that I randomly started doing. "You sound like Beevis and Butthead!" to which I replied, "Who?!" Not having cable I hadn't heard of them yet.
So I was Butt-Head incarnate, apparently. Explains some things...
I didn’t really watch it on MTV - just an episode here and there, but ended up sitting through all the DVD’s one summer.
It’s a really great show, and I don’t understand why people get their panties in a twist over the original music being cut out of the DVDs. It was never a part of the story (except for the R:E:M song, but I think they kept it in), which together with its characters can more than stand on their own.
> I don’t understand why people get their panties in a twist over the original music being cut out of the DVDs.
I'm guessing that's because you didn't watch the show while it was airing. The music in Daria originally came from what was new and popular at the time episodes aired. The show's soundtrack was essentially the same as the viewer's day to day soundtrack. You could hear a new song on MTV, maybe spending hours watching MTV just waiting for the song to come back on, and then suddenly the song you've been listening to and listening for all week would turn up in an episode. It wasn't that the songs they used were directly relevant to the story in the episode, rather that the songs were directly relevant to the lives of the viewers. It was something that didn't (and really couldn't) happen anywhere else but because MTV had the access to the music they could pull it off.
Also, if you've mostly only seen the DVDs with generic music you might not realize how good the original soundtrack was. Many many songs used in the show are simply amazing. If you were an avid MTV watcher at the time, watching the show years later with the original soundtrack would bring back many old favorites. You can still find playlists of the original soundtrack at least so if you haven't had the pleasure I'd recommend checking them out.
B&B does stand on its own away from the videos. But the videos are also part of where they really shined. So you can buy the 4 box sets. But you are really getting about 1/3rd of the content from that show. Some of the videos are on the extras discs in the packs. Watching Mike Judge comment on MTV culture through the eyes of B&B was part of the fun. The last season they put the segments in. Watching them riff on Jersey Shore was most amusing.
Very excited to hear about the second Beavis and Butthead reboot! If you were a young fan, the episodes from the first one are definitely worth checking out.
Would love to see Beavis and butthead flip through streamers/YouTube/TikTok content and roast it as heartily as they did when music videos were a thing.
I was as big a fan of B and B as anybody back in the day, but it's been so long I can't imagine a reboot can capture the zeitgeist. It'll be another in a long line of disappointing grave digging, I suspect.
This made me think of "Liquid Television", where Beavis and Butthead made their first appearances on MTV. There's probably an interesting rabbit-hole to go down re: finding copies of those old shows. There are definitely some pieces that I'd like to see again. (I still find myself saying "You love to bowl" monotonously from time-to-time.)
I didn’t grew up in the 90s but I started watching Daria during high school and it quickly became my favourite show at the time. It was smart, beautifully drawn and said things that even twenty years after the show ended were relevant
I was late 20's in the Daria time frame. Yet, as I noted in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28011399, I liked that enough that years later I torrented all the episodes and binge-watched a good bunch of it. The concept and the characters are good. It's an "artifact of cultural significance".
Beavis and Butthead was the best show ever! It will be interesting to see if they are able to maintain their humor with the current PC cancel culture on the reboot.
I heard this report on the radio version of The Morning Edition, and it was roughly the same as this article... but then Chris Boyd's (sp?) Think came on after, with a follow up about MTV during the same period, and it was almost entirely white flagellation. For every subject brought up about MTV's history and decision making process, there were two or more references to race as an unsubstantiated, assumed reason for what MTV did. I am so very, very tired of this near constant race baiting from NPR and affiliates, but I don't know how to make a difference. And yes, I do know all the arguments assuming that I'm only feeling uncomfortable because of my own privilege or whiteness or whatever, and all I can say without laughing too hard is that these arguments are extremely wrong.
[+] [-] dmitryminkovsky|4 years ago|reply
Fortunately you can torrent pretty solid TV rips. I was both too young to watch as a kid and didn't have cable, but I watched the whole series with my wife almost 10 years ago now and it was so good. It's hard to believe that show was so controversial. In many ways it was one of the friendliest, nicest shows. I wonder if younger generations would appreciate it.
[+] [-] beauHD|4 years ago|reply
It was controversial because of the potty-humour and the chaotic puerile antics of the characters. They had a certain irreverence for authority and many conservative do-gooder types didn't like that.
[+] [-] erdos4d|4 years ago|reply
I guess you don't know about the kids who set their houses on fire (allegedly) because Beavis was burning stuff and saying "Fire!, Fire!" on air, or the accompanying congressional hearings on the state of the media. The show was on at 7pm when it first came out I think; after that shit it went to a 11pm "adult-only" show with lots of disclaimers about how you shouldn't do what the characters do. No more fire references, no huffing glue, etc. MTV was seriously worried they'd lose their license I think.
[+] [-] user3939382|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tclancy|4 years ago|reply
Edit: I should probably mention the last little bit is a B&B reference for people who missed the show.
[+] [-] johtso|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dhosek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AdmiralAsshat|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maxx
[+] [-] zxcvbn4038|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brothers_Grunt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexx
[+] [-] bitexploder|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SEJeff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonwatkinspdx|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KingOfCoders|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chipotle_coyote|4 years ago|reply
(Also, remember that headlines often get changed after publication; the headline as I'm writing this actually says "Here's How Beavis, Butt-Head And Daria Upended TV Animation". Due to the quirks of many CMSes, the `<title>` tags often retain the original headline.)
[+] [-] hhs|4 years ago|reply
> For animators who wanted to work outside of TV conventions at the time, MTV became a destination and a laboratory. According to Maureen Furniss, who is an animation historian at the California Institute of the Arts, "[MTV] showed people in the public things they had never seen before in animation and gave opportunities to a lot of independent animators and experimental animators."
> "MTV animation was truly an outgrowth and extension of MTV on-air promotion and MTV on-air promotion was incredible. It was a creative laboratory, " Terkuhle says. "We were not only allowed to take risks, but encouraged to take risks and the executives had our back."
> That ethos of a creative laboratory that took risks drew show creators to pitch and push for ideas that wouldn't end up elsewhere on television.
[+] [-] addingnumbers|4 years ago|reply
Expanding the boundaries of acceptable taste in broadcasting wasn't a disruption, it was the linear continuation of a trend, following the footsteps of All in the Family, Married With Children, the Simpsons, and dozens of other shows that slightly broadened the goalposts for acceptable themes in broadcast comedy.
[+] [-] dkarl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zelphyr|4 years ago|reply
So I was Butt-Head incarnate, apparently. Explains some things...
[+] [-] wodenokoto|4 years ago|reply
I didn’t really watch it on MTV - just an episode here and there, but ended up sitting through all the DVD’s one summer.
It’s a really great show, and I don’t understand why people get their panties in a twist over the original music being cut out of the DVDs. It was never a part of the story (except for the R:E:M song, but I think they kept it in), which together with its characters can more than stand on their own.
[+] [-] autoexec|4 years ago|reply
I'm guessing that's because you didn't watch the show while it was airing. The music in Daria originally came from what was new and popular at the time episodes aired. The show's soundtrack was essentially the same as the viewer's day to day soundtrack. You could hear a new song on MTV, maybe spending hours watching MTV just waiting for the song to come back on, and then suddenly the song you've been listening to and listening for all week would turn up in an episode. It wasn't that the songs they used were directly relevant to the story in the episode, rather that the songs were directly relevant to the lives of the viewers. It was something that didn't (and really couldn't) happen anywhere else but because MTV had the access to the music they could pull it off.
Also, if you've mostly only seen the DVDs with generic music you might not realize how good the original soundtrack was. Many many songs used in the show are simply amazing. If you were an avid MTV watcher at the time, watching the show years later with the original soundtrack would bring back many old favorites. You can still find playlists of the original soundtrack at least so if you haven't had the pleasure I'd recommend checking them out.
[+] [-] sumtechguy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewBissell|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k12sosse|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] technothrasher|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EvanAnderson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iddan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|4 years ago|reply
Regarding Beavis and Butt-Head, I made a script in the early 1990's that produced randomized B&B laughter, using samples.
hhehhh hehh huh .. hhe eheh ...
[+] [-] euroderf|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lgleason|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimmygrapes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ViViDboarder|4 years ago|reply
I’m not trying to imply anything, but why do you think you’re uncomfortable?
[+] [-] nullc|4 years ago|reply