There wasn't a disclaimer until this happened, the disclaimer was a direct response to this event, as was cutting a lot of episodes and pulling a few of them entirely, and eliminating the "fire" catchphrase from all future episodes.

This marked the beginning of B&B's downward slide into being tired and unfunny.

I don't know about the show becoming unfunny after the fire incident, though it did stumble and fall hard after the movie came out.

A lot of the episodes from 1993-ish (when the fire happened) were pretty unwatchable. Even Mike Judge admitted he wasn't too pleased with them.

I'd say the series' best years were '94 and '95.

One more thing: the series for me became terrible when they started showing an entire episod at once followed by a music video, rather than an episode being broken up by two or three videos like before. They started doing that after the movie was out.

Ah you're right. I was about 10 when this happened.. I love 'em but my parents were the kind of parents who would meet with other parents about whether they should let us kids watch Star Wars movies because of the guns and swords. Beavis and Butthead was this sacred cow: if we were EVER caught watching it, goodbye future. So we did.

Ironically the trailer didn't have cable, and the boy had never seen Beavis and Butthead. I think that was also around the time that ILM was able to CGI fire effects like in Backdraft, and explosions/fires were therefore more ubiquitous, and in a way, cool, before the first episode of Beavis and Butthead ever aired.

I guess we'll always find a scapegoat though, or in the case of the Great Chicago fire, a scapecow. I wonder if disclaimers were branded into cows, that they may or may not be capable of kicking over lanterns

For me it started to lose it when it became more about the narratives than about the videos, which started not too long after The Great Cornholio. The videos were always good though, even after the show slipped. I think seasons 2 and 3 are my favorite. I'd lost it by 5.

Beavis and Butthead were kind of like Tom Servo Crow and Joel (or Mike depending) for me. Nice little escapism into a world that wasn't my own. Having grown up with a fairly regimented extracurricular schedule (I went to music camp, not summercamp, swim team after school, then orchestra, etc rinse and repeat) I liked the freedom that Beavis and Butthead had, staying up all night watching videos, skipping school and having absolute freedom to do anything (which usually amounted to nothing.)

I didn't want to be like them, but I was glad they were there.

To me it never got old. Even the recent 8th season was great. The point of Beavis and Butt-head was always satirizing dumbshit teenage culture and the message was effective all the way through, whether B&B were swallowing condoms full of heroin in the early days or spending two hours doing nothing while waiting for the next good thing on TV in the post-fire days.

What?!?! Saying Beavis and Butthead went downhill after this incident is like saying the first season of the Simpsons was the best.

Wow. I decided to look up the heroin smuggling episode because I didn't believe it. Yup. I don't think I've seen any of those season 1 episodes actually. I also forgot how awesome the music was: The Replacements? Dinosaur Jr.? Grant Lee Buffalo? Even the criminally underrated Hazel? WAY better than anything regular MTV was probably playing at the time (except for maybe 120 minutes)

You're one of the most balanced poesters here. I'm glad that of everyone we live really close to each other, because if I ever ran into JHM or someone in the wild it would be a lot less pleasant than you.

you in Oregon dude? and aren't you a RN? Or are you a ER doctor, I forget?

Yes, television restrictions only taught me how to get closer to the TV with a lower volume.

On a slightly unrelated note, I still wasn't allowed to watch B&B when South Park first aired but I totally got away with SP because my parents weren't aware of it.

Then Bigger, Longer & Uncut came out, my parents watched it and...they liked it. What?