‘Roseanne’ vs. Disney and 10 Other Times Sitcoms Gave Their Network the Finger

Seinfeld regularly defied what a sitcom was and wasn’t supposed to be, pretty much from the jump. The show infamously about nothing routinely wrung 22 minutes of something out of mundane situations like waiting for a table in a restaurant or losing a car in a parking garage. For the show’s breakthrough fourth season, co-creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David took the show to a meta level by introducing a running subplot wherein Jerry and George (Jason Alexander) sell a show to NBC. That show? Basically Seinfeld, featuring execs mirroring IRL NBC execs and, later in the season, lookalike actors for the rest of the Seinfeld cast (Jeremy Piven played George!). While not exactly mean-spirited, as Larry David stand-in George definitely comes across poorly, NBC had to be worried about their hit show divulging so much behind-the-scenes info.

Watch Seinfeld's "The Pitch" on Hulu

Married… with Children routinely gave the fewest Fs when it came to making the censors, advertisers, executives, and sometimes even the audience happy. Every episode of the show made someone mad, and Season 9’s “No Pot to Pease In” took aim at Fox. Like with Seinfeld’s show-within-a-show, this one finds Kelly (Christina Applegate) pitching a show to Fox based on her family and friends. During that process, a Fox exec shows off the network’s primetime schedule, which includes a whole bunch of question marks, the word “crap”… and then The Simpsons and The X-Files.

Buy Married... with Children's "No Pot to Pease In" in iTunes

NewsRadio was just about as punk as a ’90s multi-cam, big network sitcom could get. The cast would get drunk at awards shows, the scripts contained too many uses of the word “penis,” and when the writers learned that NBC execs hated Andy Dick’s pratfalls, they made sure to include one in every single cold open for a season.

NBC should not have expected NewsRadio to play along when they dictated that their entire Tuesday night lineup would be a riff on the hit movie Four Weddings and a Funeral. NBC told NewsRadio, Frasier, and Wings to do episodes with a funeral, while short-lived show The Pursuit of Happiness got to throw a wedding. Frasier’s great aunt died (in one of the best Marty Crane episodes), and Joe and Brian had a little corpse mix-up on Wings. NewsRadio, however, chose to introduce and kill off an office rat. And then, another office rat, and another, and another, and another, each with melodramatic funerals around the garbage chute. Definitely not what NBC had in mind.

Buy NewsRadio's "Rat Funeral" in iTunes

Even after the whole “Rat Funeral” debacle, NBC still kept trying to bend the defiantly weird NewsRadio into a traditional Must See TV show. That included asking the show to incorporate big weddings in order to boost ratings, because who doesn’t love a sitcom wedding? The NewsRadio writers, obviously. The show vented their frustration in “Our Fiftieth Episode” when station owner Jimmy James (Stephen Root) badgers Lisa (Maura Tierney) and Joe (Joe Rogan) into getting married on-air, despite the two not being a couple. It doesn’t work, of course, as Lisa repeatedly rejects Joe’s fake proposals.

Buy NewsRadio's "Our Fiftieth Episode" in iTunes

When Disney folded the ABC network into its sprawling empire in the ’90s, pretty much every family sitcom on the network was required to shoot an episode/advertisement for Walt Disney World. Full House did it, Family Matters did it, Boy Meets World did it, Step by Step did it, Sabrina the Teenage Witch did it, and yes, even Roseanne did it–although begrudgingly.

First the show had to explain how the Conners could afford the most expensive family vacation ever (Dan got an unexpectedly big paycheck from his job at the garage). Then when the family finally got to Disney World, Darlene thought everything was lame, Dan only wanted to drink a yard of beer in Epcot’s Germany Pavilion, and Roseanne and Jackie menaced a Disney park attendant by intentionally littering and making him clean up their mess.

Watch Roseanne's "Disney World War II" on Prime Video

As if their actual, anarchistic trip to Disney World wasn’t enough, Roseanne continued to stick it to Disney in the follow-up episode. In it, David (Johnny Galecki) takes a job at a never-mentioned-before local theme park called Edelweiss Gardens Amusement Park. The mascot is a disturbing bunny in lederhosen and the parks intense training/programming turns all of the employees into mindless drones. And just to really give the finger to ABC and Disney, the show’s title is a play on Springtime for Hitler, the fictional music in Mel Brooks’ The Producers.

Watch Roseanne's "Springtime for David" on Prime Video

When you’ve made a fun family show like Boy Meets World mad, you know you’ve really messed up. That’s just what ABC did when they moved the show to a later time in the TGIF lineup, a move that so annoyed the Boy Meets World crew that they called it out in an episode. Cory (Ben Savage) and Topanga (Danielle Fishel) are babysitting a kid that is dead set on watching his favorite show, even if it’s on past his bedtime. When Cory realizes what show he’s talking about, he freaks out:

Billy: It used to be on at 8:30 but this year they moved it to 9:30, those idiots.
Cory: Wait a minute–they moved that show to 9:30? Why?
Billy: No one knows!
Cory: Well was it doing badly at 8:30?
Billy: No!
Cory: Well why didn’t they leave it alone?
Billy: They’re trying to kill it! They’re trying to kill it!
Cory: Those are bad, bad people.

ABC moved Boy Meets World back to its earlier timeslot for the rest of its run.

Watch Boy Meets World's "Shallow Boy" on Hulu

30 Rock made fun of everything during its run with a rapid-fire regularity, and NBC was always at the top of its hit list. How could it not be? 30 Rock is a show set in NBC’s headquarters about the making of a fictional show on a fictionalized version of NBC. That put it in a unique position to make fun of the network every single week. A good chunk of the show lampooned NBC’s sale to Comcast by selling off the fictional NBC to a company called Kabletown (with a “K”).

And just like when NBC tried to make NewsRadio do a funeral episode, the network learned you can’t make 30 Rock play by the rules. “Greenzo” aired during NBC’s Green Week, an initiative by NBC Chief Executive Jeff Zucker that forced every primetime show for a week to include an environmental message. 30 Rock’s response was to introduce a Green Week mascot named Greenzo (David Schwimmer) who takes his eco-positive job to the extreme by going on The Today Show and ranting about evil corporate executives.

Watch 30 Rock's "Greenzo" on Hulu

NBC gave 30 Rock plenty of material to tear into during its run, that’s for sure. While the network was struggling with its late night lineup and trying to figure out how to keep both Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien on the schedule, 30 Rock was plotting. That led to the episode “Khonani,” wherein Jack (Alec Baldwin) tries to keep two of the overnight janitors happy. When Khonani (Conan) takes over Subhas’ (Leno) 11:30 p.m. shift, Jack gives Subhas the 10 p.m. shift. But that renders Khonani’s shift pointless as Subhas cleans up just before he starts. The resolution? Subhas goes back to the 11:30 p.m. shift while Khonani finds a gig elsewhere (the Foxwoods Resort Casino, a.k.a. TBS?).

Watch 30 Rock's "Khonani" on Hulu

NBC had a lot on its hands when both 30 Rock and Community were on the air, because both shows loved to push the network’s buttons. After two seasons of constant network notes, the intentionally weird and subversive Community finally had it and kicked off their third season with an elaborate musical number that called out all the network notes and critics’ complaints. It’s worth watching (see above!) and rewatching and then watching again. Sample lyrics:

We’re gonna get more calm and normal
We’re gonna fix our state of mind
We’re gonna be less crazy
We’re gonna finally be fine!

Of course the show did not get more calm or normal and the Greendale gang remained crazy.

Watch Community's "Biology 101" on Hulu

When it comes to modern day sitcoms, The Big Bang Theory is like the suck-up kid in class who reminds the teacher to assign homework. This totally traditional show plays by the rules–except, it turns out, when you mess with Star Trek.

When CBS announced that their new live-action Star Trek TV show Star Trek: Discovery would air on the network’s companion streaming service CBS All Access as opposed to CBS proper, the Trekkies on staff at Big Bang were not happy. At the conclusion of this episode, the show stuck on a message in place of one of the production company logos that usually follow the credits. It read, and read this with your very best Sheldon voice:

RIP Network Television 1948-2015. CBS recently announced that it was bringing back the series Star Trek, but not for the CBS network, for a streaming video on demand system called CBS All Access. In lieu of flowers, CBS has requested that mourners send them six bucks a month.

For all its faults, you gotta commend the Big Bang Theory for nailing the tone of nerdy, self-righteous internet snark with that message.

Buy The Big Bang Theory's "The Platonic Permutation" in iTunes