Why Did Adult Swim Pull The Jellies “Walla Walla Wallabees” Episode?

Wait, what?

Pretty much every week for most of 2018/2019, Sunday Nights Adult Swim would air back to back new episodes of whatever new series they were debuting. Whether it was Hot Streets, The Shivering Truth, and most recently, Lazor Wulf, the network has always done a super good job at keeping me occupied, aside for the occasional transition to whatever the next new original series is going to be. That was until last weekend.

Right now we’re in the middle of a very good second season of The Jellies, by far a way more intense effort akin to the show’s app roots rather than the more cliched effort we got in the show’s first season. It’s razor sharp and I’m enjoying every minute of it. Like any normal week for The Jellies, two episodes were originally scheduled for last week. Ep5 entitled “Walla Walla Wallabees” and Ep6 “The Last Reggie on Earth” were scheduled to air and stream on Adult Swim and Adultswim.com respectively, but only Ep6 (now re-titled Ep5 on AdultSwim.com) actually made it on. Why? The network advertised that we were getting both episodes, but to no avail.

After doing some investigation, we’ve come to learn that “Walla Walla Wallabees” had featured a Wu Tang Clan parody of some sort. Whether or not that weighed in on the episode being pulled is unknown at this point as I’ve reached out to Adult Swim for comment but have not heard back (which is actually pretty common). Cartoon Network/Adult Swim has a sordid history with this sort of thing, pulling episodes of series like Dexter’s Laboratory or Moral Orel for being too controversial and then just re-airing them at random times during grave yard or in the case of Dexter’s Laboratory ten years later. The other issue is with new corporate parent AT&T one has to be concerned about a new “corporate overlord” type of effect where a company with a stock that has always traded way higher than anything with Ted Turner’s name on it could become a new block in the future for getting out original content seen as two racy.

In any event, for the network to potentially get too bent out of shape about television in the age of streaming that’s constantly shepherding us original animation that takes chances and continues to do so is a very nineties way of thinking and should be put out to pasture. Heads are about to roll in Atlanta from what I’m hearing, time will tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

This Sunday Night, The Jellies have two brand-new episodes starting at Midnight ET/PT…we hope.