You Can't Do That on Television/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Acceptable Political Targets: The slobbish father, Lance Prevert, is a Senator. Specifically, a Canadian Senator[1] (an even more acceptable target).
  • Ear Worm: The opening theme, a Dixieland rendition of the William Tell overture.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While the show was a success in Canada, it was a cultural phenomenon when it started running in the U.S., to the point where Nickelodeon took over the production of the show to ensure it would keep going.
  • Spiritual Successor: All That.
    • The show itself is a complicated case of one. What remains of the 1979 season is almost entirely unrecognizable as You Can't, lacking most of its defining characteristics as well as its layout. Whatever Turns You On, which aired for one season between 1979 and 1981, gave You Can't most of its cast, layout and running gags as well as its style of humor. But it technically came second. Make of that what you will.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: The age of the kids and then-popular unisex haircuts, fashions and names in younger children leads to many viewers with no awareness of the show getting thrown for a loop.
  1. ↑ Unelected, appointed for life, notoriously prone to chronic absenteeism, and even more notoriously just a rubber stamp on nearly all government actions -- Canadians frequently have serious debates about either eliminating the senate, or reforming it radically.
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