Hey guys, so originally I wasn't going to make a Raiders of The Lost Media because I don't post stuff on here on a Tuesday but, today marks Dexter's Laboratory's 25th anniversary. So I thought what better way to celebrate than talk about the most legendary episode of the show. The Rude Removal episode, most specifically the uncensored version. Let's begin.
Part One - What is Dexter's Laboratory & What is Rude Removal?
Dexter's Laboratory (or often shortened to Dexter's Lab) was an animated TV series created by Genndy Tartakovsky. The show follows a super intelligent boy named Dexter, who can often be found in his lab hidden within his room. Often times he winds up in a crazy adventure either caused by him, his annoying older sister Dee Dee, or his arch rival and fellow boy genius Mandark. The show ran from April 27th, 1996 to November 20th, 2003. This gave the show four seasons and seventy-eight episodes before it ended.
Rude Removal is a unaired episode of Dexter's Laboratory. It was scheduled to be released somewhere in 1997. At first Cartoon Network (the channel that aired the show) was going to allow to air but later got cold feet. They feared they were going to get huge backlash considering the amount of swearing that was contained in the episode. Now supposedly the episode was shown at conventions during the late 90s (some people even said the swearing was uncensored) but over time it would fade into obscurity.
Part Two - The Plot
The plot for Rude Removal goes like this. Dexter builds a machine to remove Dee Dee's rudeness, Dee Dee goes upset by this and thinks it's Dexter who is the rude one. This causes a fight between the two and they both wind up in the machine and both get their rudeness removed. Because of this we now have two Dexters and Dee Dees. One well-behaved and the other ones....well...rude. Now the nice Dexter and Dee Dee must get their rude selves back to where they came from before things go very more haywire.
Part Three - The Rediscovery
Before it was rediscovered many people thought this episode didn't exist and it was entirely fake. It wasn't until Oct 26, 2010 that Fred Seibret (he was the president of Hanna-Barbera from 1992 to 1996) confirmed the episode's existence on his Tumblr. Two years later the creator of Dexter's Laboratory himself, Genndy Tartakovsky would confirm the episode's existence during his IAmA session on Reddit to promote his movie Hotel Transylvania. He even said the episode "might" find it's way online and that he would bring it with him for his next public appearance. Then in 2015 Craig McCracken (famous for creating shows such as The Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and Wander Over Yonder) who worked on the show as a storyboard artist and art director for season 1-4, would also confirm the exist of the episode. He even gave information saying that the episode wasn't meant for private parties for was in fact an real episode for the show.
Part Four - And Then Came Adult Swim
Weeks after Tartakovsky's Reddit session Adult Swim (Cartoon Network's nighttime adult oriented block) saw the increasing amount of interest in Rude Removal. They soon began airing bumpers suggesting that they were going to try to get the episode to air on TV. After a lot of bumpers about the episode Adult Swim would soon go quiet about it until November 30th, on this day they would send out a tweet asking if there was still any interest in the episode. After a huge positive response from this tweet Adult Swim would later air a bumper stating they obtained a copy of the episode and were negotiating getting it aired online "in the next week or so" and would remind their viewers to remind them to tell Jeff to put it with the hashtag #tellJeff.
Weeks would go by and audience began to get annoyed and even started to think that Adult Swim never actually got the rights for the episode. Their minds would later be blown away when on January 20th, 2012 when Adult Swim tweet saying the episode would air live on Tuesday afternoon.
After the episode aired it received many positive reviews even when some were disappointed over the fact it was a censored version of the episode instead of uncensored. Then the episode was pulled off of Adult Swim's YouTube channel with no explanation. However by the time it was pulled many people uploaded mirrored versions of the episode thus ensuring the episode would live on and be viewed by the general public.
Part Five - The Uncensored Version
Because of the unearthing of the censored episode many rumors began to float around saying an uncensored version existed, and some even said that's in the possession of one of the former crew members and many even wonder if Adult Swim has an uncensored version in their vault. Around this time this rumor was neither confirmed nor denied. It wasn't until July 15th, 2017 when Craig McCracken would yet again be brought up in the discussion about the episode only this time talking about the uncensored audio. Then in another tweet McCracken would later talk about how he doesn't know if Cartoon Network even has an uncensored cut, stating he only knows about the censored one that Adult Swim shown.
Because people really want to see the uncensored cut of Rude Removal many people would take advantage of this. A lot of people would claim to own a copy of the episode with the uncensored dialogue intact. The most famous of these was done by a YouTuber going by the username electricthecheese (now known as mrSimon) published a "YouTube Poop" video shortly after the censored episode aired in 2013. Really all he did was take the censored episode and replaced the bleeps with audio from other episodes to make it appear as an uncensored version of Rude Removal. This would later cause another problem. Other users would later reupload the video and NOT give electricthecheese any credit and instead pass it off as an official uncensored cut of the episode.
Part Six - Availability
Sadly we'll probably never see the uncensored audio of Rude Removal. The only thing we have is the censored one. But hey, who knows, maybe a miracle will happen and we'll finally see it.
So that's going to do it for me. Come back on Thursday, Apr 29th for my review of Justice Society: World War II. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.
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