Summer With Nick

Almost every summer when me and my little brother were kids, around this time of year - about the middle of summer - we would go visit my grandma and grandpa in Indiana for about a week or two, sometimes staying with them while our parents went on trips (they went to Arizona one year and generally out West another - Oregon and California). These weeks would be spent fishing with my grandpa and cousin Brandon, climbing their pine trees, shooting at Diet Rite cans with BB guns, watching hummingbirds at the feeders, and visiting the A & W to get cheese fries and root beer floats. It was always a fun time. But we spent a lot of the days down in the basement, watching Nickelodeon on TV.

My brother and I were deprived as kids (insert sarcasm tag here). We never had cable growing up, except for one brief summer in high school where we had Direct TV. We still don't have cable in my house, and don't really feel a need for it. Now that the stations have switched to digital, we have five channels of PBS, where I can watch all the Nova, Nature, Frontline, and Ohio's government at work that I need to be content. During that time we had cable, it sucked so many hours away from each day. But I'm not posting to bash cable and admonish people to value simplicity; I'm actually remembering how great it was for those few weeks every year to veg out in front of the TV from around two in the afternoon to midnight, and I'm starting with Nick. The next post will be about Cartoon Network.

Nickelodeon had some awesome programming in the '90s, but the very best show they ran was The Adventures of Pete & Pete. This is a story about two brothers, both named Pete, and their adventures, if you will, in a weird suburban neighborhood. The show is very funny, as I can confirm from having watched season one again recently.

Big Pete, the older brother, is the overly-dramatic and philosophical narrator, and most of the episodes are told from his perspective. Little Pete is his weird and obnoxious younger brother. He has a tattoo of a lady named Petunia, and calls people "blowholes."

Each episode is well-written and has a different feel to it, and one of the things I found most interesting on watching it again was that the episodes narrated by Little Pete have different themes and express a very different worldview - a more cynical, practical, self-interested worldview. The show is so well-written that I'm certain most of the humor went over my head when I was ten years old, and is much funnier now. And who can forget the catchy and memorable theme song?

Perhaps my favorite show when I was a kid was All That, a kids' comedy-sketch show. As a testament to how limited its appeal is, though, I can't remember much of anything from it, except the in-your-face attitude that typified TV kids in the '90s. I was certainly never like that, but I thought the show was very funny. Here's a sketch the illustrates the contrast between the now-cringe-inducing kids' humor to the brilliance of Chris Farley's delivery. Kenan Thompson is an SNL, now, and he is doing basically the same act.

The whole joke is just Chris Farley squirting ketchup everywhere, but he makes it hilarious even though he's just doing the same Matt Foley voice he did on Saturday Night Live. Notice how he also works in his "Bulls fan" sketch by faking a heart attack.

Another favorite was Aaahh!! Real Monsters! This was a show about three monsters attending a school to learn how to scare people - basically the same plot as Monsters, Inc.. It was right up my alley, because I like anything with dark themes or that has main characters who would typically be considered villains or anti-heroes.

Crumb, Ickis, and Oblina

Another Klasky Csupo cartoon that I enjoyed was Rugrats, a cartoon about a group of talking babies. Chuckie was my favorite. It's a lot like Bobby's World, a show I liked better, and Muppet Babies, a show I didn't like, but which Nickelodeon aired during the day. Most of the humor comes from the way the babies talk, similar to Bobby's World, where the humor is based on Bobby's misunderstandings of what older people say. Rugrats has too many gross diaper jokes.

Two of the shows that stood out from the afternoon lineup were :Legends of The Hidden Temple and Are You Afraid of the Dark? Legends was a game show where kids had to run an obstacle course themed as an Indiana Jones-style ancient temple. Teams competed against each other to find keys and artifacts that would allow them to move onto the next round. It's especially interesting because there are six teams rather than the standard four or two. Best of all was the giant talking stone head Olmec (who sounds nothing like what a giant stone head should sound like). I never watched GUTS, Double Dare, or What Would You Do?, but I did watch this every chance I got.

Are You Afraid Of The Dark? was a horror show. It was like the Goosebumps TV series. It had good atmosphere (just check out the opening) and some pretty scary stories. The most memorable and disturbing episode is the one where some kind of disease is causing everyone to die of laughter. It was called "The Tale of The Ghastly Grinner, and is a perfect example of nightmare fuel.

This is still pretty creepy.

I've left out a lot here, most notably Ren & Stimpy (which I didn't like), Rocko's Modern Life (which I only watched once or twice, but which sounds like a funny show), and Doug (which was okay). But that's a pretty good summary of what I liked about Nickelodeon.

Next week, Cartoon Network. See ya then.

Captain Planet and The Planeteers

When I was five or six years old, I loved the show Captain Planet and The Planeteers. This is probably one of the most well-known '90s pop culture icons. The show displays many of the things that made '90s shows successful, and many of the values they tried to teach us in the '90s. It's also got a very catchy theme song. This video contains the intro to the show and the theme song at the end.

Captain Planet's mission is "to take pollution down to zero." He is an Earth elemental, a mullet-wearing mythological being summoned by the power rings of the team of five Planeteers, who come from all over the world. He was appointed by Gaia, the spirit of Earth, to protect the planet from the pollution of a team of polluting evildoers that are each representative of a problem in society, mostly related to environmental issues.

The villains are a colorful crew. There are poachers, unethical and greedy business people, evil scientists. There's Hoggish Greedly, Looten Plunder, Sly Sludge and his sidekick Ooze, Duke Nukem (not the videogame character), and Dr. Blight, the mad scientist. I used to think they were exaggerated. For instance, I didn't get why Sly Sludge was always dumping stuff into the ocean. Now I know that corporations do stuff like that all the time. Here's a clip that shows Sly Sludge dumping waste into the ocean.

The Planeteers represent some of the values and themes that were frequently in '90s TV shows. They are a team, and that teaches the value of teamwork and cooperation. They are racially diverse, which teaches acceptance. They come from all over the world, which represents the message that protecting the environment is a global issue, and all nations need to do their part. Captain Planet tells them "the power is yours," meaning everyone has the power to protect the environment.

It's also similar to the Power Rangers, as you could have a favorite Planeteer. When I was a kid, I would have most wanted the power of fire, so he was my favorite. However, judging from his personality, he was the most obnoxious jerk on the team.

I mentioned that Captain Planet has a mullet haircut. So did I.

No comment.

PBS After School

More often than not, instead of watching cartoons after school, my brother and I would watch educational PBS shows. The station had a great lineup in the 1990's.

The afternoon would start off with Wishbone, a show about a highly intelligent and literate Jack Russel Terrier who has many daydreams about classic literature. He could talk and be heard by humans in his imagination, but not in real life. He would imagine himself as these characters from stories, and it was educational because it explained the plot of the stories. It had a catchy, pun-heavy theme song, and the dog was cute in the hundreds of little costumes they dressed him in..

The next show on was Ghostwriter, a show about a group of kids that solve mysteries with the help of a ghost that can write. The kids can read his messages, but no one else can. Although it is all about a ghost that reads, it seems like the show is more designed to teach critical thinking and problem solving.

Bill Nye The Science Guy was the third show on after school. This was an awesome show that taught science and made it fun. We were lucky when they showed Bill Nye in school. The show had a lot of wacky humor to make the concepts understandable to kids, and each show ended with a music video that was a parody of a song with scientific lyrics. Enjoy this clip from the show:

Finally, there was Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?, a geography game show about catching the criminal Carmen Sandiego and her many henchmen. The show was exciting because of the detective agency theme, but also because of the band Rockapella, who created a very catchy theme song.

That wrapped up the afternoon kids programming on PBS. There was a show about math, but I never watched it. It was never my strong subject, and it was always dinnertime by the time that show came on.

I've been watching PBS since I was four or five, starting with Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. I still watch History Detectives, Nova, Frontline, Nature, and Antiques Roadshow all the time. It makes me a little grateful that we never had cable when I was a kid, or I might have overlooked it.

Gargoyles

Gargoyles was one of the coolest kids' shows of the '90s. It was a show about living gargoyles, creatures that would turn to stone by day and come to life at night. Rather than describing the story, though, I can simply show it with the opening theme.

The main characters of the show were a clan of gargoyles who hail from medieval Scotland. They were turned to stone for a thousand years by a wicked sorcerer. Now they've come back to life in modern-day New York City, and they act somewhat like superheroes, defending the city from the machinations of Xanatos, an evil tycoon trying to take it over. He is somewhat like an evil version of Batman, able to afford all kinds of neat gadgets.

The main clan of gargoyles are all interesting characters with unique personalities, although the show features hundreds of side characters as well. Goliath is the leader; he's the strongest, but he has a strict moral code and can sometimes be preachy. Hudson is the elder of the clan, and is mostly an adviser. Lexington is the smallest gargoyle, intelligent and fascinated by technology. Brooklyn is the second-in-command, sarcastic and sort of a wiseguy. Broadway is friendly, naive, and enjoys old movies. Finally, Bronx is the clan's guard dog. He behaves like a dog rather than having anthropomorphic qualities. They help the human police officer Elisa Maza solve crimes, usually committed by Xanatos and his henchmen, The Pack.

From left: Bronx, Hudson, Goliath, Lexington, Brooklyn, Broadway

Just as varied as the gargoyles are the wide cast of villains in the show. Xanatos, the main villain, uses a gang of mercenaries called The Pack that in public are celebrities (similar to pro-wrestlers), but in private hunt the gargoyles. 

From left: Hyena, Jackal, Fox, Wolf, Dingo

Another arch villain is Demona, a gargoyle poisoned by hatred for the human species stemming from what she perceives as a betrayal. She wants to kill all humans, and will destroy anyone who gets in her way. She used to be Goliath's betrothed, but she now views him as weak and foolish for protecting the humans. In one episode, she faces another villain known as the Hunter, who has the opposite agenda - he wants to destroy all the gargoyles.

Demona, appearing slightly older than usual

The show had the same spirit of a lot of media and toys I admired as a child, of monsters and mutants as the heroes. It had some dark themes running through it, and intelligent writing that was heavily inspired by Shakespeare. The voice acting was also top notch for most of the characters, particularly Keith David, who plays Goliath

I had Gargoyles sneakers when I was a kid. I remember going to Burger King several times to get the toys. I had seen Disney's Fantasia, and I think that may have been part of the reason I loved this show. The chernabog, the demon portrayed in "A Night On Bald Mountain," has to curl up and seems to become part of the mountain at the break of dawn.Gargoyles are like him, but they're good guys.

Chernabog shrinking away from the disgusting sunlight.