I always struggle with which category I want to put these reflects in. I settled on a deep dive because I addition to my opinions, I think there is more to say about Nickelodeon specifically as well as the adults that were around at the time.
I want to start with a couple of mundane things before we start. Aesthetics and flow first, and these are nit-picky things. I’m not sure if the doc was made with the idea in mind that it would air on TV or on a streaming service that had commercials, but there were these sharp cuts that seemed like a commercial was supposed to go in that slot. Also, and this is just me, I always hate when I watch a documentary and they do too much time jumping. There were too many times where they would start with something and jump backwards to that time. It was very abrupt to me, personally, because a lot of the events happened around the same time and lead into each other. So, in theory, you could have introduced a new person, so the female writers on The Amanda Show, and continue with the timeline.
Also, the title is a bit misleading because it gives the impression that we would be talking about all kids tv (or at least that was my impression). We only talked about the kids from Nickelodeon, and I guess that couldn’t be in the title for some reason, but the doc is about Nickelodeon specifically. There’s no Disney Channel or ABC family star in this doc, so that was also something I will nit-pick about.
Alright, now that that is out of the way, let’s dive into the meat of this documentary. If you watched this documentary as a Nick kid who is now probably in your 30’s like me, this was devastating to see and hear. To know that the shows you were watching were not all fun and games as it was portrayed. I noticed a lot of the people who they interviewed, besides Katrina who I loved as a child, were from the latter half of the Nick era. This was the era of Nick where I might have been watching Disney Channel more. At a certain point for me, the shows weren’t that funny anymore and the people I had grown up with, Danny, Josh, Kenan, Kel, and LoriBeth, were gone. I still know the faces but I didn’t remember all the sketches that they mentioned, per se. What is noticed while watching this documentary was that there were no adults that were on set being interviewed, and what I mean by this is Drake & Josh had parents on the show. The Amanda Show and All That had sketches that had adults in them. I wanted to hear from those adults as well. In addition to those kids parents, they, as adults, are also responsible for the wellbeing of these children on set. Especially, if you are acting as their parents on the show. A lot of shows that I watched where there were kids, I remember whoever played that child’s parent on the show took special care of that child on set. There was no mention of that here and I would love to know why.
Dan Schneider is one of the villains in the documentary, but what I lacked from his origin story were people outside of the business who knew him. I know the focus is on the child actors, but whenever I watch a documentary about a serial killer or a murderer, they give me that backstory. All I know about Schneider is that he loved inappropriate jokes, he was fat, loved self-deprecating humor, he was sexist, might have been a little racist, and he yelled a lot a a time during his tenure at Nickelodeon. I don’t really have anything else. The only person who something nice to say about him was Drake, and I want to know where that niceness came from because according to some of the kids in this doc, he wasn’t known to be caring or nice unless you were a favorite. I wanted to learn more about the Jekyll and Hyde persona he had.
I want to talk directly to my 90’s babies and the early 90’s babies. Those born before 1997. The rest of you can pause for a moment. Do you all remember the adult jokes in our favorite cartoons as a child on Nickelodeon? I wondered the entire time I was watching this documentary why no executive caught these inappropriate jokes. Surely, someone was a parent and knew these things were not meant for kids, right? The answer is yes. They absolutely knew because there were inappropriate jokes in Hey Arnold!, Rugrats, Ren and Stimpy, and the list goes on. THIS is why Schneider felt comfortable with writing what he did. SOMEONE higher up knew about the taint joke and the face shots (I don’t want to use the actual name of the shot in this post). They ignored it because the fabric of Nickelodeon was not only entertaining kids with jokes, but bringing in the adults as well. We see now that shows always have some type of joke that only the adults will understand. However, THOSE jokes are appropriate. Schneider’s jokes were NOT, and I’m going to go ahead and say that someone knew he was lying to them about what the joke meant and let it ride.
Here is where I want to talk about the people I loved in this documentary—Joe Bell and Tracy Brown. As the documentary went on, I was so angry at the lack of parental oversight that I was getting from the kids and employees talking about the parents. I got the impression that the parents didn’t want to ruffle any feathers or didn’t want their child to not be able to work on the show for whatever reason. I am not a parent but I do have a lot of friends who have kids and those kids are my kids. I could not imagine being a play auntie on set and not being near my child or seeing something on set and not saying anything to someone about it. Mr. Bell and Ms. Tracy stood up for their kids, and it’s terrible that both parents kind of feel like they failed their children. They did all they could but power that be pushed them to the side. Luckily, Bryan was fired and no longer had to endure being overlooked and mistreated, but Drake was not. I feel for him and his dad—both having to endure this pain for so long in silence. I did wonder what would have happened had we known about this case when it happened. What would Drake’s life had looked like moving forward? Would he still have fallen into those same traps he did? Was he the only one Peck did this to? Would someone else at Nickelodeon have said something? Would another child actor have had the same story? We didn’t hear from his mom, and I just don’t understand allowing a man you don’t know and the same man your husband said don’t leave around Drake to care for your child. I just don’t get that and I never will.
We got to hear interview snippets from Jennette McCurdy and people told us about Amanda Bynes and her relationship with Schneider. I wish we could have heard from more then. I get why we didn’t but the Bynes and the McCurdy relationships are kind of murky.
I feel like the information in this documentary is just 25% of what was going on at Nickelodeon. I don’t know when but I feel like more will come out soon. Much like the R. Kelly, Diddy, Jeffery Epstein, and Bill Cosby cases, the signs were there but were ignored for years. Now seems to be the time where people want justice and want to prevent whatever has been happening to continue to happen. A lot of my childhood and what I did know has been shattered, but these people were not my family or friends. They are figures in entertainment, and we have to remember that when these allegation and stories come out. These are people far removed from our lives and because what they created in our lifetime was so important to the fabric of our lives, we want to protect that. We are not obligated to do that. I hated hearing in this documentary that the kids could not do something or the parents could not do something. THEY COULD say they didn’t like something. THEY COULD say no. It might have resulted in losing a job but think about what that could have done for that child in the long run. Knowing what we know now, we could have saved that child from the battle scars of the industry. I get it, no one wants to be broke, but I’d rather be broke than to see my child be yelled at by a fat grown man. I’d rather be broke than to see my child be groped by a man. None of what happened to the kids is the fault of anyone but the attackers themselves, but the kids and parents had power. You don’t have an All That or The Amanda Show without those kids. Sure, they can get a new person to replace your child, but imagine if the parents and kids got together and blew the whistle on the team back in the day. It would have been on every newspaper and magazine cover. Imagine if Drake and his family wanted to go public with their case. Again, this isn’t a fault of the victims, but I can only imagine what could have been had a group of people stepped up. The female writers did it on a small scale, but imagine if that writer was friends with one of the male writers and he banded with her. The landscape of Nickelodeon television would have been different but it would have also been safer for those kids.
I, like most of you, felt terrible watching this documentary. I’m a helpful person, but I know, personally, there was nothing we as viewers could do besides write a letter. As a child, we never knew anything was out of the ordinary. I never remember my mom watching these shows with me. She would have been able to catch some of these jokes.
Is there anything I missed that you saw in the documentary that concerned you?
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