Why A Dexter’s Laboratory Segment Was Banned For Nearly Two Decades

The 1990s was a golden age for cartoons. Following the creatively bankrupt string of toy commercials disguised as TV shows of the ’80s, we got one phenomenally written, visually inventive, boundary-pushing cartoon after the other in the 1990s. One of the best shows of that decade was “Dexter’s Laboratory.” Created by maestro Genndy Tartakovsky, the show was the very first Cartoon Cartoons show to be made into a series. It follows the titular Dexter, a boy genius with a skill for engineering who is at constant odds with his older sister Dee Dee, who keeps entering Dexter’s secret lab without his permission and interfering with his experiments.

The show was a huge hit, responsible for starting the careers of plenty of veteran animators like Craig McCracken, Rob Renzetti, Seth MacFarlane, and Butch Hartman, who each went on to create successful animated shows of their own. You can see the influence this show has had on each generation of Cartoon Network shows, and how it established a spirit of bold creativity and visual experimentation. There are anime homages, Hanna-Barbera references, mecha fights, in-universe superheroes, and much more while establishing Tartakovsky’s storytelling style in a way that made “Dexter’s Laboratory” unique among contemporary cartoons, like the use of silence for storytelling, and focus on striking imagery.

As popular and successful as the cartoon was, producing four seasons and 216 unique segments, there was one episode that never saw the light of day — and for good reason.

Shortly after being picked up to series, “Dexer’s Laboratory” was given 39 half-hour episodes at once (in addition to its original 13-episode season order). This meant that the writers and animators had to come up with a lot of new ideas beyond anything that was part of the initial pitch and do so at a quick pace. Unsurprisingly, some of the ideas were a bit out of the ordinary, and were it not for the high episode order, they probably wouldn’t have been written.

One such episode is “Rude Removal,” directed by Rob Renzetti. Renzetti chatted with /Film about the making of the episode, which creator Genndy Tartakovsky was not that enthused about at first. Still, with 39 episodes of three cartoons each to write, there was not that much space to be picky. “This episode came out of that frenzy of ‘let’s try anything,'” Renzetti said. “It was one of those ideas that you think are funny but don’t know that the network will ever let us do it, but what the hell we’ve got to submit an outline this week so we might as well submit this and see what happens.”

The segment involves Dexter accidentally placing himself and Dee Dee in his latest invention, a machine that splits people into a polite half and a rude half. This results in the polite Dexter and Dee Dee having British accents while the rude ones have thick New York accents and constantly spew profanity.

“The outline got submitted and the network loved it,” continued Renzetti. “We were like, ‘Really, are you sure? You know the characters are basically swearing.’ We were very upfront about what the concept would be, but they said it was fine at every step. We went through the normal process, sent the storyboard and everything and they loved it. It was really funny. And every step we asked if they were sure, but the network always said yes, they were going forward with it.”

Then came the voice recording session. The actors, Christine Cavanaugh and Allison Moore recorded every line of dialogue with swear words included. “It was the most hilarious recording session I’ve ever been to,” recalled Renzetti. “The voice actors loved doing it, being able to swear in character voice. We were all cracking up after every swear word because without them it wouldn’t have the same impact on the performances if they weren’t able to let loose.” Though obviously, the rude versions of the characters get attention and the big laughs, the polite characters are equally surprising, especially Dexter and his weird accent on top of a British accent. “It went very smoothly, and we finished the episode and presented the network and finally we heard, ‘We can’t air this.'”

“Rude Removal” never made it to air. Still, the episode eventually started making the rounds at festivals and conventions, until Adult Swim eventually released the full cut on YouTube back in 2013. Nowadays you can even find an unbleeped version where Dexter goes to town talking like a sailor.

What makes the episode curious is that it never got network notes to change the language (or lack thereof), but rather the network fully supported its production — until they didn’t. Perhaps it was a victim of controversy on the part of the network affiliates and stations, like “Cow and Chicken” was with the Red Guy.

This is the one episode of “Dexter’s Laboratory” that never made it to air, the only one to experiment with radically changing how the characters acted. As Renzetti puts it, “We know what the show was and stayed in the pocket of who and where the characters were. We didn’t want to cross a line or push barriers.”