On this date in 1993, the Music Television Network (MTV) debuted the animated series Beavis and Butthead, which would become the highest-rated series for the network until that time.
The show provided viewers with rude and crude buddy humor, reminiscent of The Three Stooges, Cheech and Chong, and Wayne and Garth from Saturday Night Live as well as the Wayne’s World films.
The lead characters were two teenage boys residing in the fictional town of Highland, where they attended Highland High (inspired by a real school from creator Mike Judge’s hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico). However, they mostly passed their time consuming junk food, discussing girls, and, above all, watching music videos.
Beavis and Butthead alternated between animated narratives and real music video clips, which the characters commented on in their typical bone-headed manner, highlighted by sarcastic remarks and grunt-like laughter.
Judge originally created his two lead characters for an animation festival, where they caught the eye of an MTV producer who then selected them for the network’s animated showcase, Liquid Television.
After securing a contract with Judge for 65 episodes, the network began broadcasting the series on weeknights at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. Responses from critics were mixed—some lauded Judge and MTV for cleverly targeting a significant portion of the network’s key demographic—young males who view music videos—while others condemned Beavis and Butthead’s lowbrow humor as a sign of a decline in television quality overall.
Despite the criticism, the show achieved the highest ratings for MTV. It also ignited fierce debate regarding the influence of television on impressionable children, particularly after a tragic incident in 1993, when a mother attributed her five-year-old son’s fire-starting behavior—likely inspired by Beavis and Butthead’s well-known pyromaniac tendencies—to the deaths of his two-year-old sister. Following the uproar from this tragedy, MTV removed four episodes from airing, eliminated all references to fire, and shifted Beavis and Butthead to a later time slot, from 10:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., claiming that they were trying to cater to an older audience.
Regardless of its questionable impact on younger viewers, the success of Beavis and Butthead led MTV to create a spin-off featuring the boys’ nerdy female classmate, Daria Morgendorffer. Daria premiered in March 1997, just eight months before Beavis and Butthead concluded its run. Later, Judge developed the Emmy-winning animated series King of the Hill for Fox, along with directing movies such as the feature film adaptation of Beavis and Butthead, Beavis and Butthead Do America (1996), and the cult classics Office Space (1999) and Idiocracy (2006).
