Hey, Paramount+!!! This Sucks!!!

The service has yet to make good on their promise to add 200 Beavis and Butt-Head cartoons, with music videos, to stream.

It’s been over a year since it was announced that Paramount+ would be adding “over 200 remastered episodes” of Beavis and Butt-Head—the 1990s satirical animated series centered around the misadventures of two ignorant Texas metalheads—to their streaming service (Graves). By remastered, they mainly meant with music videos included, as the original MTV series was a half hour show usually containing two episodes each, with each cartoon punctuated by the duo watching anywhere from three to six music videos Mystery Science Theater 3000-style, talking over the material with their own commentary (though by Season 7, they were down to one video per cartoon). However, as of July 29, 2023, there are currently only 67 Beavis and Butt-Head “remastered” cartoons available on the service. What the hell, Paramount+?

To be fair, it should be said that the fact that there are any available is a miracle. In the beginning, when the show only aired on MTV, it was free to cherry-pick whatever they wanted from the network’s massive catalogue of available content (David Wain—actor, writer, and cast member of sister MTV show The State—provided commentary regarding their similar situation on his website; “State FAQ”). While not privy to their inner workings, one can assume that the network had contracts allowing them to play these music videos over and over again in perpetuity. And it worked. Mostly improvised by Mike Judge, creator of the show and voice actor of both main characters (Joost and Randall), the video commentary was a highlight of the series, both showcasing Judge’s razor sharp satirical wit and astute cultural commentary … all hidden under the pretense of dick jokes, casual sexism, and the duo’s hypnotic, monotonous chuckling.

The most fascinating thing about the music video scenes, however, was not the material itself, but the effects that it had on the music industry, as their “this is cool” and “this sucks” commentary made the animated pair actual influencers in the music industry. Paul Brannigan, music journalist and former editor for Kerrang!, remembered the impact they had:

I remember Beavis and Butt-Head instantly making [metal] music journalism irrelevant and obsolete [… o]ne “these guys suck” comment was more savage and damaging than any 1K review in Kerrang! And, on the other end of the scale, they totally made careers. For a time, in our world, they were the only critics that mattered. (qtd. in Ruskell)

(“Tribe” is currently not available on YouTube. Instead, here is Beavis and Butt-Head watching Gruntruck’s video for “Crazy Love.”)

Monte Connor, formerly of Roadrunner Records, credits the success of Gruntruck’s 1993 album Push to Beavis and Butt-Head giving airtime to their video for the song “Tribe.” “Getting Beavis and Butt-Head to cover your video was one of the biggest scores a label could ever hope for,” he said, adding “Push became our most successful selling rock release to that point in 1993” (qtd. in Ruskell). Another beneficiary of Beavis and Butt-Head’s patronage was musician and film director Rob Zombie, who recounted in a 2021 Stereogum interview how the animated show put his band, White Zombie, on the map:

White Zombie [was] on tour after being signed to Geffen [Records]. Our record had come out, but no one at Geffen really believed in us or cared. […] I always felt that the video could connect if it just got some exposure. To that point, we’d been on Headbanger’s Ball and 120 Minutes [MTV shows that aired Saturday and Sunday from 12:00am to 2:00am, respectively]—our one play at two in the morning. I was like, “If we could just get played at a normal hour, we could get something going!” And Beavis and Butt-Head was the first time the video ever got played at a time where people could see it. The reaction was immediate. The record sales just jumped the following day. It was kind of amazing, how [immediate] the reaction was back then. (qtd. in Fitzmaurice)

Released in March 1992, the band’s third album, La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One, initially struggled, selling only 300,000 copies; however, after three of their videos aired on Beavis and Butt-Head in Fall 1993, the album went on to sell two million units in the U.S. (“Rob”). “Back then, the week before you were on Beavis and Butt-Head, maybe you sold a thousand records,” Zombie said, “The week after, 10,000 records. The week after, 100,000 records. Things would just move in a way that you couldn’t believe” (qtd. in Fitzmaurice). Zombie would later become friends with Judge, and he would pay the creator back by animating the peyote hallucination-inspired music video for the show’s 1996 film, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (Ruskell).

Of course, while Beavis and Butt-Head did make careers, it arguably broke them as well. Kip Winger, bass guitarist and singer for the 1980s hair metal band Winger, claims that the show’s mockery of the band—mainly in the form of their merch being worn by dorky supporting character Stewart—caused serious damage to their brand (Pasbani; Ruskell). However, the digs at the band were not meant to be personal (Pasbani) and were more likely indicative of the ever-changing music landscape. Said music journalist Nick Ruskell:

[A]s cruel as they could be […] often it was just shit being called out as shit. With grunge, new American punk, hip-hop, and a wave of street-level metal bands like Pantera and Sepultura on the rise, the showy decadence of the 1980s looked particularly cheap. All Beavis and Butt-Head were doing was pulling on loose threads until the [tasseled] white leather jackets fell apart.

So, despite being fictional characters on an animated series, Beavis and Butt-Head also served as music critics (“the two greatest music critics who ever lived,” according to Primus guitarist Larry Lalonde; qtd. in Ruskell) and tastemakers, influencing Generation X’s musical preferences and, more importantly, their music purchases. And the music video segments were a major part of that.

However, while the show’s format was fine for televised broadcast, it caused problems later when it went to the home video and streaming markets. Suddenly, the music videos were removed from the cartoons, leaving only the cartoon shorts; in the early seasons, this cut them down to half the length. And while the cartoons were fine without the iconic music videos, they were only fine in the same way that tortilla chips are fine without nacho cheese, seasoned beef, and jalapeños. Functional, but not as tasty. This, coupled with countless edits and censorship issues the show has experienced (more on that later), has left the show in a tarnished state. To fans, Paramount+’s announcement of “remastered” episodes was nothing less than a promise to restore this battered classic to greatness, but the streaming services’ reluctance to follow through on their promise is troubling.

(NOTE: in addition to the 67 available cartoons, Paramount+ includes 29 of the “Mike Judge Collections,” bundles of five episodes with no music videos. Available as Seasons 9 through 11 on the streaming service, these were available prior to last year’s announcement.)

Let’s crunch the numbers: not counting the 2022-2023 revival series (which is already on Paramount+), there are currently 227 episodes of Beavis and Butt-Head (including the two pilot installments from MTV’s animation showcase Liquid Television [from 1992] and the show’s 2011 revival), and these contained roughly 592 music video segments (Ruskell). Minus the aforementioned 67 segments currently online, that leaves a potential 160 episodes remaining.

Of course, this is assuming that all 160 installments will be added, as—in addition to the missing music video segments—the series has also had many early episodes heavily edited and, in some cases, pulled from circulation, as they contain examples of homophobia, drug use, and animal cruelty (the latter was to be expected, as the first pilot episode was literally called “Frog Baseball”). Originally portrayed as obsessed with fire, Beavis’ pyromania was removed from the series (until 2011; Miller) following accusations that the show was to blame for the death of a two-year-old girl when her five-year-old brother burned down their family’s trailer park home while unattended in October 1993 (this would later be disproven when it was revealed that the trailer had no cable television; Sommerlad). According to Judge, the network actually removed the references from the master tapes, saying that the originals “only exist with people who taped it at home” (qtd. in Joost and Randall). Other edited scenes include the boys huffing paint thinner and stove gas to get high (“Home Improvement,” “Stewart’s House”) and one where Beavis accidentally burned down a comedy club while attempting to juggle burning newspapers onstage (“Comedians”) (Kangas). Finally, there are at least three episodes that were pulled altogether: “Heroes,” where Butt-Head shoots down a commercial airplane at a skeet shooting range, and the two-part “Way Down Mexico Way,” where the boys travel across the border to buy fireworks, but are unwittingly used as drug mules by their neighbor, Dave, but they forget to tie off the condoms full of pills prior to swallowing them (Kangas). Some may question the restoration of these items, but I maintain that including, if not all, a majority of these scenes back into the show should be a priority.

Whether we like it or not, Beavis and Butt-Head is a series that has artistic relevance as satire, as commentary turned into marketing, and as a snapshot of the 1990s culture that spawned it. It reflects a specific era—with its desires, fears, and superficial values, which were hammered into our skulls via media and advertising much in the same way that it still is today. It is also an early example of the “ignorance is cool” ethos that, to our eternal dismay, has become mainstream in the past twenty years. It was the world seen through the eyes of two idiots who were still smart enough to see that our institutions sucked and needed to be burned down. With fire.

So, I say these cartoons should be remastered as close to the original as possible. Bring back the music videos and the edited scenes. If any of the dialogue is deemed too course, it can still be substituted by the existing replacement dialogue. And, if there is any concerns about adding such material to Paramount+, put a disclaimer at the beginning of those cartoons in the same manner Warner Home Video did with the Looney Tunes Golden Collections released twenty years ago. Even with its questionable material and its under copyright music videos, Beavis and Butt-Head should be restored and appreciated for the crass classic that it is, warts and all.

And I am not alone in its appreciation, as Sir Patrick Stewart—the classically trained Shakespearean actor best known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek and Professor Charles Xavier in Fox’s X-Men films—is a major fan, saying “[w]hen the history of 20th century American television is written, I think that Beavis and Butthead will be singled out as a very, very important cultural phenomenon” (qtd. in WENN).

On a final note, while preparing this article, Paramount+ actually upped the number of remastered episodes of Beavis and Butt-Head while I was researching it. For the past several months, the number of installments remained at 53, but—as of June 28, 2023—it was boosted to 67. That said, it should be noted that it is still far from the “over 200” promised, and while the new episodes include Part Two of the Season 3 episode “Citizen Butt-Head,” the two-parter where the duo meet President Bill Clinton, Part One is still not available. So, while this is progress, there is much to be done.

Works Cited

Fitzmaurice, Larry. “We’ve Got a File on You: Rob Zombie.” Stereogum. Stereogum Media. 10 Mar. 2021. <https://www.stereogum.com/2117146/rob-zombie/interviews/weve-got-a-file-on-you/>. Accessed 28 Jun. 2023.

Graves, Wren. “Yes, Remastered Beavis and Butt-Head Episodes Will Include Music Videos.” Consequence TV. Consequence Holdings, LLC. 3 Jun. 2022. <https://consequence.net/2022/06/beavis-butt-head-music-videos-paramount-plus/>. Accessed 27 Jun. 2023.

Hughes, William. “Paramount Plus’ Remastered Beavis and Butt-Head Episodes Will Have All the Original Music Videos.” The AV Club. G/O Media. 4 Ju. 2022. <https://www.avclub.com/beavis-and-butt-head-music-videos-paramount-plus-1849019558>. Accessed 27 Jun. 2023.

Joost, Wesley and Jon Randall. “Heh-Heh-Heh … Heh-Heh-Heh … You Said Heh-Heh-Heh … Gobblin’…” Internet Archive. Internet Archive. 9 Feb. 1999. <https://web.archive.org/web/19990209193025/http://www.sonic.net/~goblin/9beavis.html>. Accessed 27 Jun. 2023.

Kangas, Chaz. “Here Are Five Banned Beavis & Butt-Head Episodes.” L.A. Weekly. L.A. Weekly. 2 Apr. 2013. <https://www.laweekly.com/here-are-five-banned-beavis-and-butthead-episodes/>. Accessed 28 Jun. 2023.

Miller, Caroline. “Beavis Connects with Fire in Beavis and Butt-Head Revival Series Clip.” MovieWeb. MovieWeb. 23 Jul. 2022. <https://movieweb.com/beavis-connects-with-fire-in-all-new-beavis-and-butt-head-clip/>. Accessed 28 Jun. 2023.

Pasbani, Robert. “Winger Squashes Beef with Beavis and Butthead Creator.” Metal Injection. Metal Injection. 8 May 2014. <https://metalinjection.net/news/feuds/winger-squashes-beef-with-beavis-butthead-creator>. Accessed 28 Jun. 2023.

“Rob Zombie Recalls the 25th Anniversary of His Big Break on ‘Beavis and Butt-Head.’” Yahoo! Yahoo! 28 Sept. 2018. <https://www.yahoo.com/news/rob-zombie-recalls-25th-anniversary-big-break-beavis-butt-head-194723819.html>. Accessed 28 Jun. 2023.

Ruskell, Nick. “’Beavis and Butt-Head’ Were the Greatest Music Critics Who Ever Lived.” Vice. Vice Media Group. 14 Aug. 2020. <https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dzqwx/beavis-and-butt-head-were-the-greatest-music-critics-who-ever-lived>. Accessed 27 Jun. 2023.

Sommerlad, Joe. “Beavis and Butt-Head at 25: How MTV’s Original Dumbasses Stormed America and Changed Comedy Forever.” The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, Ltd. 7 Mar. 2018. <https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/beavis-and-butthead-25th-anniversary-mike-judge-mtv-tv-comedy-animation-offence-a8243906.html>. Accessed 28 Jun. 2023.

“State FAQ, The.” DavidWain.com. N.p. n.d. <https://davidwain.com/thestatefaq#:~:text=MTV%20owns%20all%20of%20the,and%20the%20many%20unaired%20sketches>. Accessed 27 Jun. 2023.

WENN. “Patrick Stewart An ‘Obsessed’ Beavis and Butthead Fan.” Contactmusic. Contactmusic.com, Ltd. 21 May 2004. <https://www.contactmusic.com/patrick-stewart/news/patrick-stewart-an-.obsessed.-beavis-and-butthead-fan>. Accessed 13 Jul. 2023.

Images and video courtesy of Paramount Global and MTV Entertainment Studios. YouTube videos courtesy of the JAY KOOL and Cap'N Crunchyroll channels.