The Jumping Ground (season 17)

The seventeenth season of the New-Zealand American animated science fiction sitcom The Jumping Ground began airing on Cartoon Network in the United States on September 25, 2013 and ended on April 9, 2014.

This season overall, despite fully introducing the threat of the Infinity Stones, which would prove to be a significant part of the storyline from here on, was conceived by many critics as one of the show's worst, with some stating that a vast majority of the episodes were "rehashing" those of previous seasons, while others praised the escalation of the series' storyline, as well as unearthing many secrets in the show's history. Despite the mainly negative critical feedback, The season finale, "Dad's Dungeon" won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour) in 2014.

"Tuition Fees" ban from UK broadcast
Shortly before its planned airing in the United Kingdom on October 17, 2013, the BBC announced that the episode "Tuition Fees" had abruptly been pulled from broadcast on BBC Two, due to the episode's portrayals of violence over the increasing of university tuition fees in England, especially the 2010 protests by students. Labour MP Jim Sheridan, who sat on parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, condemned the episode, saying:

"I had been told at the time that BBC executives had assessed this episode of the beloved animated series, and I could tell that it had brought back bad memories from three years ago, four months into the coalition government, where students and taken to the streets to oppose a mass increase on university tuition fees, a pledge that had been broken by the Liberal Democrats when the Conservatives got into power. I cannot believe what creative monstrosity that Lee (Eisenhower) and Conrad (Vernon) have strategically conceived, and this is why that episode of The Jumping Ground would not air on Thursday night. It is a catastrophic act of hatred and I say this on a cross-party basis, Lee and Conrad should think first before failing to realize that it has offended a particular person from another region."

To fill in the space in its 8:30 timeslot on its usual position on Thursday night on BBC Two, a repeat of Mock The Week was shown in its place. Prime Minister David Cameron called for the BBC to prevent the episode from being aired and regarded it as "seriously offensive". Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said he was "extremely humiliated" by the episode and what it had portrayed. Culture Secretary Maria Miller also called for the show to be dropped, acknowledging the episode as "a serious error of judgment". Despite this, the episode itself is still available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

Seven months later, after the season itself had finished airing, emergence of video evidence of an unaired take during filming for the Season 15 premiere "HUMANCENTiPAD, in which Rob was shown to mumble a racist slur in a nursery rhyme, making this the second time in a row in which the show has been criticised for racism, after the "slope" remark from the previous season. After series co-creator Lee Eisenhower apologized publicly for the error, Time Warner, who owns the show's channel, Cartoon Network, chose to give the creators a final warning in regards to their behaviour, amidst calls by many public figures for the show to be pulled.