Rugrats Chuckie's Mother (Revised)

Remember Rugrats, that show on Nickelodeon? What you probably don't know is that the creator of the show, Gabor Csupo, originally planned a late night version of Rugrats called "Rugrascals", to be played at night, with more adult humor.

Because every major channel thought the pilot was too disturbing, they refused to air the show, and as a result no-one has really heard about it. However, one station in Wellington New Zealand mistakenly played it in the morning, thinking it was a regular Rugrats episode. The pilot and only episode of the show that was seen was called "Chuckies Mom". The intro played like normal, but at the end when Tommy shoots the milk at the screen, the sound effect is much louder, and the milk simply stays there for about 10 seconds, then the name of the episode appears. The episode played out like normal, with the babies playing in the playpen. They are all talking about their Moms, when Chuckie has a flashback.

It had Chuckie in hospital standing next to his mother in bed, who was dying from an unknown illness. She was singing "You are my Sunshine, My only sunshine" to Chuckie in a very weak voice, as if she was about to die, but when she sang the second verse the song started playing in reverse. A shot of Chuckie appeared with him looking at a chicken whose head had just been cuts off to show the audience the severity of the situation. It suddenly changed back to his mother petting Chuckie’s hair the scene zooms in slowly to her hand as it slowly drops down to the bed side.

Chuckie starts whimpering quietly as his mother says with an almost silent voice "Don't worry Chuckie; it's time for me to move on." A flurry of random live action clips were shown, said to represent death. One showing the decapitated chicken from earlier running around blood gushing from its neck. Another was a man being mutilated. Then a real life child that looks just like Chuckie is shown laughing with audible sound and looking like he is on top of them world then frame by frame depicting this child’s stomach being cut open his guts ripped out, you could see and hear the immense pain the child was feeling. The screaming, the horrifying screaming.

A shot of Chuckie's mom appears again, this time her eyes closed the heart monitor flat lining his father saying "Don't you remember where it all started?" The episode then cuts to live action footage of childbirth sonograms. About after 1 minute of these sonograms, you hear Chuckie’s father say "I’m so sorry” he starts crying and crying for 3 minutes straight with no stop the camera slowly panning out. At this time, you see Chuckie come out of the flashback, having a seizure.

Tommy, Phil and Lil are crying, and an ambulance worker calms him down, saying "Chuckie? Chuckie? Can you hear me?" in a stern voice. Eventually after coughing up blood and vomiting, Chuckie comes to his senses. We then see a point of view shot of Chuckie, seeing Tommy, Phil, Lil and the ambulance worker. His face has a confused look on it and he asks Tommy what happened. Tommy starts talking in his mothers weak voice and Chuckie starts going in a seizure. The screen cuts to black. Next you see the ambulance worker talking to Chuckie’s dad. The man tells him Chuckie has the same illness as his mother did and has roughly one year to live. You see the flashback come back of Chuckie’s dad crying and crying as the screen fades to black again.

After this, the regular credits played. Then suddenly it started the fifteen minute show all over again. Surprisingly, although the episode was watched by many children, only one adult who was watching (me) has spoken about it until now. It was unfortunate to find out that children suicide rates went through the roof in New Zealand that year.