5 'Very Special Episodes' That Nobody Saw Coming

In "Troq," we are introduced to the spacefaring hero Val-Yor who really hates Tamaraneans, the alien warrior race that Starfire belongs to. Now, upon meeting Starfire, he doesn't set a wooden mustard bottle on fire on her lawn or anything, but he makes it clear he sees her as inferior and untrustworthy, and continues to refer to her as "Troq," meaning "nothing," as in she is nothing to him. The question is ... WHY IN BATMAN'S HOLY NAME DOES HE THINK THAT?!

Omitting the fact that Starfire is as pure-hearted as a newborn puppy, she is also considerably more powerful than Val-Yor-Tamaranean-Mama-Is-So-Fat. Val-Yor is super strong, can fly, and has a degree of invulnerability, but Starfire has all that plus being able to breathe in space, manipulate cosmic energies, and possessing quasi-immortality. And when someone as amazing as that can still end up the victim of spacism, it really makes you realize that prejudice doesn't need a valid reason to exist. It's just a shitty thing that shitty people do sometimes because they are shitty, and you should never let yourself internalize all that nonsensical hate, like Starfire almost did.

Throughout the episode, Starfire risks her life to show that she is useful and good until finally standing up to Val-Yor, but in the end, the best that he could do is admit that she was one of the good Tamaraneans because, as the episode says, some people's minds just cannot be changed. That is a very bleak but very real, no-bullshit message about the irrational nature of racism, delivered via a Jay Leno-lookalike covered in silver.

Cartoon Network

This is Kurt Cobain happily eating a pizza. I spent a lot of time thinking about this picture, about how depression doesn't always look like depression, and about how people suffering from it put on a show for those around them, pretending everything's OK. That's the thing about suicidal depression. It's a sneaky motherfucker. It hides behind a big, wide grin and pizza for one, and that's how I choose to explain Kutner's suicide. Because we never suspected that Kutner was depressed, his suicide makes for a much more powerful statement about the invisible nature of depression.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm 100 percent sure the writers of this episode only wanted to write a shocking Very Special Episode for ratings' sake, but by SHEER ACCIDENT, they created something very deep and profound. Because think about it: When even a genius like House, whose entire job is to diagnose people, didn't see that a man he worked closely with was deeply, deeply depressed, how can regular people be expected to catch it before it's too late? Roll credits, pass the Vicodin.

I still have no idea why the show wasn't a bigger hit. It did everything right, especially staying true to the Muppets' spirit of being both entertaining and educational. This brings us to the episode "A Tail of Two Piggies," where Miss Piggy has a wardrobe malfunction at a movie premiere and suffers a nip slip. Only here it's actually a tail slip, because the Muppets might be more hardcore than people think, but they aren't THAT hardcore.

Although, would it really have been so awful if we saw Miss Piggy's nipple? Not unless afterwards your dad got up and disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes. See, we've already seen Miss Piggy's cleavage dozens of times on the show, so would adding a few brownish/pinkish circles to the whole thing really make such a huge difference? Aren't we perhaps sexualizing the nipple a bit too much? That is essentially what this episode asks, only with a pig's tail. In the show, Piggy's wardrobe malfunction becomes a huge deal because it makes people "uncomfortable" and she is asked to publicly apologize for it on TV. It's all very silly and funny because, come on, pig tails are nothing like nipples. But ... aren't they?

In "A Tail of Two Piggies," you can pretty much see most of Miss Piggy's backside, but it doesn't become a problem until her tail pops out. Tell me this doesn't somewhat resemble the way we treat breasts, which you can post as much as you want on, say, Facebook or Instagram, as long as you can't see their tiny, flesh yarmulkes. Isn't that just really, really weird? Please, be proud of your body and yourself, because you're special and no one can take that away from you. However, if your nipple shows up, even if it's an accident, you are a hazard to every child and every marriage in the known world.

Look, I won't pretend that there's nothing sexual about female nipples, because when I was younger, I would've gladly called a puppy a bad dog to see one in real life. But The Muppets makes a great case about how society makes way too big a deal out of nipples, by treating pig tails with the same kind of "moral outrage." Then, to keep things silly and light, the episode switches to Gonzo to remind us that a Muppet has fucked a chicken.

What the episode accidentally does is make drinking culture look douchey as shit. When Jeff and Britta order their favorite drinks and get really particular about them, you get the feeling that they're only doing it because they made alcohol part of their identities. It still gets them equally, sloppily drunk, but to them, the difference between a whiskey and vodka is apparently like the difference between a gentle kiss from your partner and rimming an angry rhino with diarrhea. They think it makes them classy but all it does is reveal their deep insecurities. Then, Yvette Nicole Brown's character Shirley closes the deal.

In the show, Shirley's a motherly Christian who, as we find out in this episode, had a serious drinking problem back in the day. She never did anything horrendous, but after all these years, she looks back on her drunken antics with nothing but shame. Although drinking made her happy in the past, all that remains now is her embarrassment and a feeling that she wasted her life. It all made a very compelling argument against taking "pride" in drinking, and as a person from a country where alcoholism is the national pastime, I have to applaud it.

It all started with the gargoyle Broadway (to explain Broadway's character really quickly, he's the kind of demon that would pause a life-threatening brawl to literally chug a pizza) becoming obsessed with a gunslinger western. Later, when he visits his cop friend, Elisa, he picks up her gun and starts playing with it until he accidentally shoots Elisa in the back. In some versions of the episode, you can even see her lying in a puddle of her own blood. It's pretty intense for a show that was apparently partly inspired by Disney's Gummi Bears.

ABC

But that's not why people watched Gargoyles. They watched it for the action, the fights, and the surprisingly well-written retellings of Arthurian lore; not for preachy lessons about how dangerous and bad guns are. But that's not what the episode did. Not at all.

Think about it. The episode would be VERY different if it was an adult human playing with a gun like that, because only a complete moron would ever do that. It just wouldn't be believable in the slightest, and reek of more strawman bullshit than a barnyard on a hot summer day. And if it was a child that ended up shooting Elisa, the message would suddenly get all hysterical about how we must keep handguns out of the hands of our kids (which are much better suited to operating mounted automatic rifles anyway). However, because Broadway is an adult who has no idea how our world works, the episode stays on message, namely that gun safety and gun education are both important. Broadway would never have shot Elisa if he had learned about firearms from somewhere besides a stupid movie, and the whole thing was partially Elisa's fault anyway for not storing her gun away safely.

The best part is probably when a distressed Broadway goes on an anti-gun quest to take down an arms trafficker, but the series never lets him disappear into his own asshole and somehow make GUNS the villain here. Despite Broadway steaming with righteous anger, it's made clear to us that HE screwed up, that HE is the responsible party, and it really drives home the message that you should be careful with things you do not understand, and not get too sucked in by how they look in movies or on TV. I just wish I found this episode before buying that lion-taming kit. On the plus side, the nurses here are incredibly nice.

Cezary Jan Strusiewicz is a Cracked columnist, interviewer, and editor. Contact him at c.j.strusiewicz@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter.

For more check out 4 Times Movies And TV Got Very Serious Issues Very Wrong and 5 Horrifying Ways Cartoons Tried to Cover Important Issues.

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