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1:54

abuse a child, especially a child that's under your

1:56

care somehow, or who you're a

1:59

trusted adult to. whether it's sexually, physically,

2:01

or verbally, child abuse instantly creates a

2:03

black mark on someone's reputation. Rightly so,

2:05

for the rest of their lives. Beloved

2:08

child entertainers and producers of beloved

2:10

children's entertainment to sexual predators.

2:13

It's a spectrum from wonderful and

2:15

beloved to horrible and despised. But

2:18

sometimes that spectrum is more like a Venn diagram

2:21

than there are unfortunately people who fall

2:23

in both worlds. This is

2:25

true from the very beginnings of Hollywood. As Judy Garland

2:27

was making the family classic movie, The Wizard of Oz,

2:31

the 16 year old was highly pressured to

2:33

take barbiturates and other drugs and live on

2:36

a death-defying diet while working with the studio.

2:38

While maintaining a girl next door image, Garland

2:40

later wrote in an unpublished biography that she

2:42

was constantly groped and sexually harassed behind the

2:44

scenes by older men including Louis B. Mayer,

2:47

the producer and co-founder of MGM. Mayer

2:50

also allegedly had people spy on Garland to ensure

2:52

that she stuck to her diet of mostly cigarettes,

2:54

coffee and chicken soup. Delicious.

2:57

In addition to this regiment, her breasts were bound

2:59

by tape and she wore a special corset to

3:01

flatten out her curves while filming to keep her

3:03

looking innocent. But when we look

3:05

at old Hollywood, that was a long time ago. Things

3:08

have changed, haven't they? And it's certainly not that way

3:10

now, is it? On March

3:12

17th, a four-part docuseries

3:14

quiet on set, the dark side

3:16

of kids TV debuted on investigation

3:19

Discovery, Discovery Plus and Max aka

3:21

HBO. Then a fifth episode would

3:23

air on April 7th. And

3:26

the series focuses on the abuse of

3:28

child actors who worked on Nickelodeon shows

3:30

in the 1990s and 2000s, the golden

3:32

era of Nickelodeon's programming in the 90s

3:34

and 2000s. The

3:36

series came to be thanks to cast members

3:38

from shows like Zoe 101,

3:40

Drake and Josh and iCarly coming forward in recent

3:42

years about the toxic environments they faced

3:45

on set. The docuseries lit the

3:47

internet on fire with tons of

3:50

chatter, accusations and anguish being voiced all

3:52

over Reddit, social media, TikTok in particular

3:54

and elsewhere. And the docuseries

3:56

focused most of its how could this happen

3:58

to kids, judgment, venom and school. born on

4:00

one man, Dan Schneider. Nickelodeon's

4:03

former Golden Boy, who was portrayed

4:05

as an inappropriate pervert and shitty

4:07

boss at best, to a

4:09

child molester who just hasn't been caught yet at worst.

4:12

Born in Memphis in the late 1960s, Schneider felt

4:14

early on that he was destined for greatness. He

4:17

was a quick study of his favorite TV writers.

4:19

Sitcoms were his language. After starring in a few

4:21

movies, a young actor was cast on a sitcom

4:23

called Head of the Class, when he

4:25

was barely 20, and on set he

4:28

became close with fellow cast member Brian Robbins, and

4:30

the two will become creative collaborators. Brian

4:33

and another creator will pitch a show to

4:35

Nickelodeon in the early 90s called All That,

4:38

a sort of kids SNL with sketches,

4:40

live performances, and interviews. And

4:42

Dan will be its head writer. Soon,

4:44

the success of this show and Dan's ability to

4:46

create spin-off after spin-off will lead to

4:49

The New York Times calling him the Norman Lear

4:51

of children's television, referring to

4:53

the iconic screenwriter and producer who made

4:55

All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Mod,

4:57

Good Times, Sanford and Son, and more.

5:00

And for two decades, Dan Schneider will reign supreme

5:02

at Nickelodeon. He was their number one hit maker,

5:04

by leaps and bounds. His shows

5:06

had consistently great ratings and cast members who

5:08

would go on to become stars in their

5:11

own rights. But did Schneider

5:13

abuse his position of power over children? Was

5:15

he himself a predator, something that's

5:17

been alleged by Internet sleuths and insinuated strongly

5:19

by the producers of the Quiet On Set

5:22

docuseries? Or is

5:24

he the victim of a good old Hollywood witch hunt of

5:27

journalists who allowed some incredibly strong confirmation bias

5:29

to see him as the enemy some face

5:31

of evil, regardless of what

5:34

the actual evidence demonstrates? Did

5:37

a few documentarians and some network execs erroneously

5:39

decide, based almost entirely on the accusations of

5:41

a number of child actors who failed to

5:43

find success as adults, that

5:45

Schneider is a monster? Someone whose reputation needs

5:48

to be smeared? Someone whose character needs to

5:50

be assassinated? Did they decide to take down

5:52

a ratings monster so they themselves could use

5:54

his name to get higher ratings? On

5:57

May 1st of this year, Schneider filed a defamation

5:59

suit against the United States. Warner Brothers Discovery and

6:01

other companies behind the docuseries in

6:03

Los Angeles Superior Court. Is

6:06

he about to clean house and make a lot

6:08

more millions on top of all the millions he already

6:10

made while working for Nickelodeon? Was

6:12

child abuse actually rampant on

6:15

Nickelodeon's hit shows in the 90s and in the

6:17

first decade of this century? And was Dan Schneider

6:19

somehow behind most of it? Or

6:22

did a few ethically reckless documentarians get

6:24

it wrong? Did they exploit a very

6:26

serious subject, the abuse of children, in

6:29

a pathetic and wildly irresponsible attempt to build

6:31

up their own names in Hollywood? Did they

6:34

overzealous attack an incredibly successful show creator based

6:37

on very little evidence and leave a stain

6:39

on the favorite childhood shows of millions just

6:42

to boost their own showbiz careers with

6:44

some sensationalist bullshit? A

6:46

dissection of the explosive accusations recently

6:48

leveled against Dan Schneider and Nickelodeon

6:50

right now on today's pop culture.

6:53

Do you really have to feel bad about

6:55

the shows you watched as a kid in

6:57

the 90s and early 2000s? Fact versus Fiction

6:59

Smoke versus Fire edition of TimeSuck.

7:01

This is Michael McDonald and you're listening

7:03

to TimeSuck. Well

7:18

happy Monday and welcome to the cult of

7:20

the curious. I'm Dan Cummins, the

7:22

master sucker, peaky fucking

7:25

blind professional dialect

7:27

coach. Don't let anyone tell you

7:29

that my accents aren't perfect and you are listening to

7:31

TimeSuck. Hail Nimrod, Hail Susfina, praise

7:33

be to good boy Bojangles and glory be to

7:35

triple M. Recent author, again

7:38

I think. Stay tuned for this

7:40

week's TimeSuck updates. The

7:44

human monsters Richard Byrd saga

7:46

continues. But right now let's

7:48

get to a topic that brings us very much to

7:50

today's news. If you're in the

7:52

demographic of roughly 18 to 35 year olds and had

7:54

access to cable, you can probably remember

7:57

watching at least one of Dan Schneider's shows

7:59

or maybe have kids or younger siblings who

8:01

watch them. Did you think they were

8:03

funny? Silly? If you

8:05

were a kid, did they inspire you? Make you

8:07

think that you too could become a big star? Did

8:10

you think that maybe that dream could

8:12

actually be a nightmare? Few

8:14

did at the time, but many do now. The

8:18

internet in general seems to have taken what

8:20

the quiet, unsaid documentary producers sold to them

8:22

at face value. Dan Schneider

8:24

is a monster. But is he?

8:27

Or did the producers do a great job of presenting former associates

8:30

with clear access to Grind, leaving out

8:33

very important context, and presenting

8:35

information in an incredibly biased fashion to

8:37

make you think Schneider is a monster?

8:40

I first heard about this episode from someone who

8:42

loved Schneider's shows as a kid, watched a docuseries.

8:45

You know, felt I had to do an episode about it all, and I'm

8:47

glad I did. And when I went

8:49

into it, I'll admit, based on the hype, I

8:51

fully expected to be convinced, you know, that Dan

8:53

Schneider is some kind of twisted pedophile.

8:56

I expected to be outraged that he allowed, you

8:58

know, children to be abused

9:00

on his sets, you know, like created an atmosphere

9:02

for that, or that he did that himself and

9:05

for a long time. And then

9:07

when I dug into the information, I was outraged, but

9:10

not for the reasons I expected to be. So

9:18

how are we covering today's episode? I first learned

9:20

a little bit about the history of kids TV

9:23

and where Nickelodeon was when Schneider entered

9:26

the picture, along with asking the ethical questions we're

9:28

dealing with today. We'll dive into a timeline, follow

9:30

the rise and fall of Schneider from

9:32

his first gigs in writing to the smash hit

9:34

variety show, all that, to as many

9:37

shows and spinoffs involving characters and actors from

9:39

previous shows. He really created quite

9:41

the legacy, a legacy that, however, would begin

9:43

to be questioned around the time of the

9:45

Me Too movement in 2017 as more and

9:48

more people started looking at what constituted appropriate

9:50

behavior in the workplace. And those questions about

9:53

the appropriateness of Schneider's behavior would

9:55

lead to questions about the appropriateness of Schneider's

9:57

content, content that features young

10:00

actors, sometimes as young as 12, performing

10:02

things that, to some members

10:04

of an older audience, at least in

10:06

retrospect today, seem pretty rife with sexual

10:08

content. But is it? Or is

10:11

it just that kids' content is goofy and goofiness

10:13

can sometimes read as sexual and vice versa? Does

10:16

Dan Schneider have a history of sexual involvement

10:18

with any of his underage cast members, as

10:20

some online sleuths have claimed? Or

10:23

has a lot of witch-hunting gone on with Schneider,

10:25

perpetuated by sensationalist gossips online and based on nothing?

10:28

So let's start with a peek into the history of

10:30

children's television. It may not surprise you to learn that

10:33

children's TV is nearly as old as TV itself. The

10:36

BBC's Children's Hour, first

10:38

broadcast in the UK in 1946, is generally

10:41

credited with being the first TV program specifically

10:43

made for children based on the radio show

10:45

of the same name, which originated

10:47

over decades earlier in 1922. The

10:50

radio program took its name from a verse

10:53

by poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, between

10:55

the dark and the daylight, when

10:57

the night is beginning to lower, comes

10:59

a pause in the day's occupations that

11:01

is known as the Children's Hour. Already,

11:04

you can see that this was, you

11:07

know, maybe not the most exciting entertainment. It

11:09

was originally broadcast from BBC's Birmingham station,

11:12

Birmingham crown jewel of the British Commonwealth,

11:14

one of the world's safest, most luxurious

11:16

cities, home of the picky

11:18

fucking blinders. A popular

11:20

series on the radio

11:22

show version were things like Jennings

11:25

at School, readings

11:27

of a series of humorous novels about

11:29

a kid's misadventures in boarding school, Mary

11:31

Plain, stories about a cute bear, who doesn't

11:33

love a cute bear, and Worsall

11:36

Gummidge, stories about a scarecrow.

11:38

In the US in the early 1930s, adventure

11:41

serials such as Little Orphan Annie began

11:43

to emerge, becoming a staple of children's

11:45

afternoon radio listening. And through

11:47

these shows, or though these shows, excuse me, were technically

11:49

for kids of all ages, they had

11:51

the vibe of nursery schools, stories, and fables. Easily

11:54

understandable, moralizing tales that allowed the value of

11:56

ethical behavior, friendship, or showed the value, excuse

11:58

me, of ethical behavior. behavior, friendship, and so

12:00

on. In the United

12:03

States, early children's shows included Kukla, Fran, and

12:05

Ollie, which launched in 1947, The

12:08

Howdy Duty Show, which also originated in 1947,

12:11

and Captain Kangaroo, which originated in

12:13

1955. I don't

12:15

think I'd ever heard of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie before.

12:18

If I have, I've forgotten. It was broadcast

12:20

out of Chicago for a decade. It was a puppet show,

12:23

entirely ad-libbed, like

12:25

zero script. And Bert

12:27

Tillstrom, the creator, was the only puppeteer, and

12:30

the only non-puppet character was Fran Allison. Kukla

12:33

and Ollie were burst puppets. So two people ad-libbing

12:37

for 30 minutes. And

12:39

this show has not held up well

12:41

against the test of time. It's pretty

12:43

brutal. As in, if this was the only

12:45

program I could ever watch on TV again, I would immediately

12:47

smash my TV to pieces. Here's

12:50

a little excerpt from a video called The Best of

12:52

Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. This is the best. It

12:55

includes their opening title sequence song

12:57

that honestly also feels ad-libbed. Here

13:01

we are, back with

13:03

you again. Yes, my golly.

13:05

Yes, my golly. A Kukla, Fran. A

13:07

dear old Ollie. Here we are again.

13:09

Here we are again. Here we are

13:12

again. Here we are again. Okay.

13:15

Here we are again. All

13:17

right, you're here. Here we

13:20

are again. All

13:23

right. Oh, boy. Okay.

13:30

What fun with

13:33

Kukla is this segment. What's

13:35

Kukla up to? Isn't that a pretty one? Oh, it's just...

13:37

Hey, go ahead. Wait till you see my false face. Stay

13:40

right there. All right. All right. Okay.

13:42

Kukla goes behind the little wall to

13:44

change costumes to puppet. There's

13:46

a pumpkin on a little table behind

13:48

Fran. Get over my nose. And

13:50

then put on some kind of mask. And

13:53

it's a creepy clown mask. Oh,

13:57

that's a beautiful one. I'm

14:00

sure it hits harder if you're five.

14:04

It's probably way more entertaining. Competition for

14:06

viewers, a lot less aggressive back then than

14:08

it is now. The

14:10

Howdy Duty Show started cowboy Buffalo Bob

14:12

Smith and his puppet partner, Howdy Duty.

14:15

Kind of like, what are you? Like

14:17

many of the popular variety shows at the time,

14:20

the Howdy Duty Show featured jokes, songs, and skits,

14:22

little skits and sketches. The

14:24

episodes were filmed in front of a live studio audience

14:26

filled with enthusiastic children and their parents. Here's

14:29

another clip from the best, the

14:31

best of Howdy Duty. Howdy, Howdy, Howdy,

14:33

Howdy. Well,

14:36

howdy, Howdy, howdy, Howdy,

14:38

Howdy. Howdy, Howdy, Howdy.

14:41

And hi, Mr. Smith. Well, hi there,

14:43

little Howdy Duty. And hi,

14:45

Clarabelle. Look at all the boys and girls there

14:47

at home. Hi, kids.

14:50

Clarabelle's a fucking nightmare. And kids in the gallery,

14:52

what time is it? Howdy, Howdy, Howdy. Let's hang it.

14:54

And howdy, Howdy, Howdy, Howdy. Oh God, this is

14:56

wishing the last day. This

14:58

is wishing the last song. Howdy, Howdy, Howdy, Howdy.

15:00

I'm Smith and Howdy, You. Hey, Howdy, You, You.

15:02

Let's give a round of applause. Picture those kids

15:04

getting screamed at. Like they paused, what the fuck

15:07

are you doing? Come on. Pick a key. Goddamn.

15:09

Yeah, the studio audience is singing that song. Clarabelle

15:19

they referred to as a clown, like

15:21

a clown sidekick. They

15:24

love clowns back then. Clown sidekick of

15:26

Buffalo Bob Smith. And

15:28

Clarabelle looks like he was built in a

15:30

fucking nightmare factory. Like I would

15:32

not be surprised at all if finally some like news

15:35

came out that Clarabelle had, you know, killed like 35

15:37

people. Just really

15:39

like, like about the creepiest clown you can imagine looking

15:41

at. I think if I watched either one

15:43

of these shows for more than 10 minutes on acid or shrooms, I'd have

15:45

a full psychotic break. While the

15:47

Howdy Duty show provided young viewers with entertainment,

15:49

critics complained that it had no educational value.

15:53

Apparently no one really complained about the creepy

15:55

mime clown. Clarabelle, which I

15:57

find shocking. I think I

15:59

said mind clown. But I meant mine. I don't know what

16:01

a mine clown sounds even more terrifying, like some kind of

16:03

psychic clown that can get in your head. Conflicting

16:06

opinions on the show's value began the

16:08

long-standing debate about children's television. Some

16:10

people claimed that the broadcast networks had

16:13

an obligation to educate and inform viewers,

16:15

but network executives preferred to concentrate on

16:17

attracting large audiences, which brought the

16:20

network more money from commercial sponsors. This

16:22

debate has continued until the present day. What

16:25

is kids' TV supposed to do? Is it supposed to be

16:27

educational? Do network execs have obligations

16:29

to their audiences, or can it

16:31

just be about entertainment and money? Ding

16:34

Dong School, which aired from 1952 to 1965, excuse

16:38

me, yes, it really was called Ding Dong School, was

16:40

one of the first attempts to produce

16:42

educational programming for young children. Its

16:45

creator and host, Francis Horvitch, would

16:47

sit in front of the camera and simulate small

16:49

talk with a viewing audience at home, demonstrating some

16:51

basic life skills for the camera. You

16:55

have to hear how this first episode starts. TV

16:58

programming has evolved so much since

17:01

these early shows. ["Ding

17:04

Dong School"] The whole thing on

17:06

the screen, General Mills kicks, brings

17:08

you Ding Dong School.

17:13

Okay, giving everybody plenty of time to read that. ["Ding

17:16

Dong School"] All right, is Francis ringing

17:18

the bell? ["Ding Dong

17:20

School"] ["Ding

17:28

Dong School"] Did

17:36

you have to not be good at singing to get these jobs?

17:39

["Ding Dong School"]

17:42

Okay, and then there's this grandmotherly-looking

17:45

host? What day is it?

17:48

You're right. Monday. Friday.

17:51

Yeah, what are you gonna do? Are

17:54

you? Good.

17:58

Tomorrow to- This is how you make the cable guy. how

18:00

you create the cable guy from that Jim Carrey movie. I'm

18:02

going to add that to a list of shows not to watch while

18:04

tripping. I don't want Francis in

18:06

my fucking head while it's fragile. Ding Dong

18:09

School was a prelude to later shows for

18:11

very young kids like Sesame Street, The Electric

18:13

Company, and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, but

18:15

still for most kids, the Howdy Duty

18:18

Show was it until the

18:20

popularity of the Howdy Duty Show began to fade during the late 1950s.

18:22

The show would wrap up

18:24

in 1960 thanks to many kids discovering Walt

18:26

Disney's Mickey Mouse Club back

18:29

when Disney was still a corporation without so much blood

18:32

on their hands, right? Back when Roy Disney

18:34

still hadn't murdered his mother. Old

18:37

joke referencing Roy, if you're curious, a little

18:39

love for longtime suckers. The original version of

18:41

the variety series ran on ABC weekday afternoons

18:43

from 1955 to 1959. Started a group of

18:46

talented young

18:49

performers, the Mouseketeers would sing, dance,

18:51

and perform skits. It

18:53

was revolutionary, the idea that kids could perform

18:55

for other kids instead of for adults. In

18:58

addition to feeling a natural affinity for people their own age,

19:01

kids also got the impression that if they

19:03

wanted, they could become famous too, right? Increasingly

19:05

shows allure, very aspirational.

19:08

The 1960s, however, would push children's programming

19:11

back towards focusing on the educational value

19:13

of children's television with many

19:15

progressives believing that new technological advancements could

19:17

be used to offer lower income communities

19:19

educational programming they might not otherwise get

19:22

at school. And this was

19:24

not a new idea, right? The first laws affecting

19:26

the TV industry tried to make sure that TV

19:28

lived up to its potential. The Communication

19:30

Act of 1934, for example, said

19:33

that the airwaves which carry TV signals

19:35

belong to the American people. Since

19:37

television broadcasters use the public airwaves to distribute

19:40

their programs, they have a duty to create

19:42

programs that serve the public interest. But

19:44

when commercial broadcasting began in the late 1940s,

19:47

through a combination of factors that

19:49

allowed three powerful networks, NBC, CBS and NBC,

19:52

to take control of the limited number

19:54

of very high frequency, VHF channels available

19:56

for TV broadcasting, things changed. The

19:59

Big Three Network generally serve their own interests rather

20:01

than the public interest. That is, they

20:04

broadcast whatever type of programs would attract

20:06

mass audiences and generate the most

20:08

advertising revenue. Only a few

20:10

channels on the less desirable ultra-high

20:12

frequency UHF band were

20:14

set aside for public service programming. In

20:17

1967, Congress tried to address the lack

20:19

of educational and informational programs on TV

20:21

by passing the Public Broadcasting Act. This

20:25

act created the Corporation

20:27

for Public Broadcasting, CBB.

20:31

That does not flow well to

20:34

raise money to support public television and radio services. In

20:37

1969, the CBB established

20:39

the Public Broadcasting Service, PBS, much

20:42

better. A national non-profit

20:44

organized to create and distribute TV

20:46

programs that served the public interest.

20:49

While not a formal network, PBS eventually grew to include more

20:51

than 350 member stations across the U.S. PBS

20:55

started broadcasting in October of 1970 and

20:57

would go on to produce educational and highly

21:00

regarded children's shows like Sesame Street, Zoom,

21:03

Barney and Friends, Reading Rainbow, Arthur,

21:06

and Magic School Bus. But

21:08

perhaps most iconic of all, it

21:10

created Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. The

21:13

show was created by Fred Rogers, who believed

21:15

that TV programming could and should do more

21:17

to educate, entertain, and support young children. He

21:20

once said during an interview on CNN, the

21:42

show was created by Fred Rogers, who believed that TV programming could

21:44

and should do more to educate young children. So

22:00

heartwarming. A

22:09

little model of the town, he zooms out

22:11

and then zooms in to Mr. Rogers' house.

22:16

Now he's coming in the front

22:18

door. I

22:22

forget how long it just

22:24

is instrumental. There

22:28

he is. It's

22:30

a beautiful day in this neighborhood. A

22:32

beautiful day for a neighbor. Would

22:34

you be mine? Could you be

22:37

mine? Take off the

22:39

jacket. It's a neighborly day in

22:41

this beautiful neighborhood. A neighborly day for beauty. Would

22:44

you be mine? Could you be

22:46

mine? I

22:48

have always wanted to have a

22:51

neighbor just like you. I've

22:54

always wanted to live in a neighborhood

22:56

with you. So

22:59

let's make the most of

23:01

this beautiful day. Since

23:04

we're together, we might as well

23:06

say, would you be mine?

23:08

Would you be mine? Won't you be my

23:11

neighbor? I love that they actually just redo

23:13

that each time. You

23:15

can hear him dropping the shoe. It's not like they

23:17

just recorded it once, I don't think, and showed it

23:19

every episode. I think it's different for like he sings

23:22

that every episode. And

23:24

I never thought about this before, but in the opening

23:26

he walks into his house, takes his

23:28

jacket and shoes off, but

23:30

then puts on another set of shoes and

23:33

then puts a sweater on over his shirt and tie. Like,

23:36

dude, it's your fucking house. Why

23:38

are you putting a sweater on after walking inside? Why are you

23:40

putting shoes on immediately inside? What's going on with your floor? Just

23:42

turn the heat on, buddy. Why

23:45

are you living in an icebox? Why can't

23:48

you just wear socks? Maybe go barefoot, you germaphobe. What

23:50

kind of psychopath immediately puts on a house sweater and house

23:52

shoes when they step in their front door? How many bodies

23:54

do you have in the basement of your set, Fred? Were

23:58

you fucking the puppets? We

24:00

put on special puppet fucking shoes and special

24:02

puppet fucking sweater to fuck the puppets Mr.

24:04

Rock answer me. Anyway, nobody's

24:07

weird. As a kid, I never thought

24:09

anything of that. I'm like, okay. Guess that's

24:11

how this guy lives his life. He has a house sweater, house

24:13

shoes. Uh, these shows will

24:15

lead directly to the Nickelodeon network. The first

24:17

Nickelodeon show was created by Dr. Vivian Horner,

24:19

an educator and the director of research on

24:21

the PBS series The Electric Company. That

24:24

was a big hit. Uh, the channel's

24:26

first series would be called Pinwheel and it premiered

24:28

on Cube December 1st, 1977. Before

24:32

this episode, I thought Nickelodeon was newer than that. Cube

24:35

was experimental, uh, was inexperimental to

24:37

a multi-program cable television system that

24:39

played a significant role in the

24:41

history of American interactive TV, even

24:44

though it didn't last long. It was launched

24:46

in Columbus, Ohio. Hello, Buckeyes. Then only lasted

24:48

until 1984. But

24:50

in those seven years, it introduced audiences to

24:52

pay-per-view programs, special interest cable

24:54

television networks, and interactive services. Uh,

24:58

Pinwheel was originally essentially the same as the

25:00

programming on PBS, a preschool show. But

25:02

that would change in 1979 when Nickelodeon officially launched

25:04

on April 1st as the

25:06

first ever children's network on Warner Cable franchises,

25:09

excuse me, across the country. Uh,

25:12

Pinwheel would change production locations from Columbus to New

25:14

York City. Vivian Horner had asked

25:16

her coworkers to help come up with a list of possible

25:18

names for the network. Sandy Cavanaugh, the

25:20

producer of Pinwheel, proposed Nickelodeon, even though

25:22

she wasn't fully satisfied with it. In

25:25

2013, she'd recall, I

25:27

wasn't thrilled with Nickelodeon. It was

25:30

whimsical sounding, though. It had a fun

25:32

lilt. I agree, Sandy. It does

25:34

have a fun little lilt to it. Uh,

25:36

Nickelodeon quickly expanded its audience reach, uh, first

25:38

two other Warner Cable systems across the country,

25:40

and eventually two other cable providers. As

25:43

Nickelodeon originally operated as a commercial

25:45

free service, the network ran interstitials

25:47

between programs, consisting of a

25:49

male mime portrayed by Jonathan

25:51

Schwartz doing tricks in front of a black

25:53

background. And I watched

25:55

some old clips of this mime on

25:57

YouTube. And to me, Creepier

26:00

than any footage I've seen from any of a

26:02

Dan Schneider shows. I don't know what

26:04

the fuck was going on with clowns and mimes for so long. New

26:07

shows were added to the Nickelodeon lineup in 1980, including

26:10

Dusty's Treehouse, First Row Adventures, What Will

26:12

They Think of Next, and

26:14

Livewire. Cy Schneider, no

26:17

relation to Dan Schneider, became Nickelodeon's president

26:19

that same year, and his tenure will

26:21

become referred to years later as the

26:23

Green Vegetable Era. As

26:25

it focused mainly on programs that parents thought were

26:27

good and appropriate for kids, but not necessarily what

26:29

the kids themselves wanted to see. It's pretty funny.

26:33

That would change with the introduction of the Disney Channel. Launched

26:35

on April 18th, 1983 as

26:37

a premium on top of basic cable

26:39

television systems, the Disney Channel wouldn't

26:42

set its sights on preschool programming as so

26:44

many had before, but on kids aged 7

26:46

to 17. Why

26:48

those ages? Because, as

26:51

it would be revealed many years later, Mickey

26:54

Mouse is a pedophile. But

26:56

he doesn't fuck with kids under 6. No.

26:59

That evil mouse very attracted to kids between

27:01

the ages 7 and 17. And

27:04

also, maybe mostly attracted to Goofy.

27:06

No one talks about that. Mickey Mouse has

27:08

been fucking the shit out of Goofy since

27:10

1932. Actually,

27:13

did you know that originally Goofy's name was

27:15

Sirius? But Mickey fucked him Goofy,

27:18

giving him his current name. And I know that's a stale

27:20

joke. I'm an idiot. Disney

27:22

really did focus on kids between the ages of 7 and 17 now. Why? This

27:26

matched up with some cultural shifts. While the

27:28

only people who had been home during the day in

27:30

the previous decades were more likely to be very young

27:32

adults, or excuse me, very young kids, and

27:34

stay-at-home parents, the rise of working

27:36

mothers and the so-called Latchkey kid, a kid

27:39

who walks themselves home from school, lets themselves into their house

27:41

alone while their parents are at work, meant

27:43

that there was a hugely untapped audience ready to sit in front

27:45

of the TV from the hours of 3pm to 7 or 8pm.

27:49

The Disney Channel was an immediate success.

27:52

It reached profitability in less than two

27:54

years. By January of 1995, its programming

27:56

reached 1.75 million subscribers. Currently,

28:00

Disney Plus has over 153 million subscribers.

28:04

So they're doing pretty good. Within

28:07

this channel, there would also be different programming

28:09

blocks themed for different ages. It

28:11

was Disney Night Time. Featured classic

28:13

Hollywood movies for older kids and parents. The

28:16

American Legacy featured documentaries about the history of

28:18

the US. Tune-in Tuesday

28:21

was devoted to cartoons. Bonus Thursday

28:24

had programming aimed for teenagers. Triple

28:26

Feature Friday showed three related

28:28

movies in succession. And

28:31

the Midnight Dark Side of Disney featured mainly cartoons

28:33

and Mickey Mouse brutally banging the shit out of

28:35

Goofy's back door. Surprised

28:37

they didn't get in trouble for that, but I guess most parents figured

28:39

that if their kids watched something

28:41

inappropriate after midnight, you know, that was on them. Of

28:44

course, the Midnight Dark Side stuff is nonsense. All

28:47

of this, all of the real stuff I mentioned at least,

28:49

spelled big trouble for the young Nickelodeon network. Suddenly,

28:51

they had some major competition. This

28:54

competition would push Nickelodeon into its most iconic

28:56

era. The 90s and the first decade of

28:58

the 2000s, an era defined by shows that

29:00

were really just fun. These

29:03

shows wouldn't be aimed at educating kids at all. They'd

29:05

be aimed at making them laugh, at being entertaining. These

29:08

shows would be marked by young talented performers who

29:10

portrayed sassy, witty characters, characters whose parents weren't around

29:12

much, and if they were, could always be persuaded

29:14

to let the kids do what they wanted. Or

29:17

simply avoid it. For Nickelodeon sitcoms,

29:19

they would feature attractive girls, handsome guys,

29:22

romantic plot lines, and wacky shenanigans. Sketch

29:25

shows would feature kids doing crazy dares, like drinking

29:27

a gallon of purported sweat, doing

29:29

celebrity interviews with the likes of Usher and Tony

29:32

Hawk. And as these shows became more

29:34

enshrined in the culture, the kids in them became bigger

29:36

and bigger stars, making Nickelodeon the

29:38

epitome of kids cool, its own mini

29:40

Hollywood, with its own stars and drama,

29:43

this little entertainment ecosystem. For child

29:45

actors, Nickelodeon became a kingmaker. But

29:48

this may have come with the Dark Side. Indeed,

29:51

child acting is as old as Hollywood itself.

29:53

Jackie Coogan was considered the first major

29:55

Hollywood child star who rose to fame in

29:57

the silent film era. Shirley Temple.

30:00

uplifted the spirits of the nation during the Great Depression. But

30:03

what happens when you have a network whose

30:05

success relies on a handful of children,

30:08

a handful of children working days that are often 10, 12, 14 hours long, round

30:11

of a bunch of adults they don't necessarily

30:13

know, around people that control their careers, people

30:15

that are constantly trying to please. These

30:18

would be some of the main problems brought up

30:20

by the Quiet On Set, the dark side of

30:22

kids TV docu-series, which details the

30:25

experience of many 90s and 2000s kids,

30:27

you know, 2000s kid stars on

30:30

Dan Schneider's shows like all that,

30:32

The Amanda Show, Zoey 101, Drake

30:34

and Josh and I. Carley. Obviously,

30:37

even as creator of several of the above mentioned

30:40

shows, Schneider didn't control everything about who was hired

30:42

and what happened on set. But

30:44

the documentary does allege that he created circumstances in

30:46

which children were charged with working long hours, being

30:49

subject to his favoritism and perhaps

30:51

being overly sexualized. And,

30:54

and this is the reason Dan is

30:56

suing the show, the producers associate him

30:58

with some pedophiles who happened to be employed

31:00

on some of the shows, pedophiles who actually

31:02

did not happen to have criminal records for

31:05

being pedophiles when Dan worked with

31:07

him. But mostly the

31:09

series focuses on the sexualization of Dan's young

31:11

stars. For evidence of this, they

31:13

present a few different scenes and show these same scenes

31:15

over and over at Nazium for

31:17

five episodes. In a few

31:19

of the scenes, girls are shown getting viscous

31:21

goo shot across her faces, getting

31:24

doused with water and one or

31:26

two instances making some noises that, you know,

31:28

sure do seem pretty sexual. And

31:31

in more scenes, you know, there's a focus on bare

31:33

feet. There are clips of underage actors

31:35

performing weird and unnecessary tasks with their feet, like trying

31:37

to put their toes in their mouths, eating

31:40

food with their feet, sucking on their own toes and so

31:42

on. A lot of footshit. And

31:44

in September of 2013, the Twitter page for

31:46

Schneider's show, Sam and Cat, posted

31:49

Sam and Cat tomorrow, right on the bottom

31:51

of your foot. Take a pic and use

31:53

Sam and Cat Saturday. We'll retweet and follow

31:55

until our fingers get sore. The

31:58

question here is, is this all? just

32:00

a bunch of silliness? Absurdity? Or

32:03

does looking at little kid feet make

32:05

Dan's dickheart? Not me, Dan Snyder. I

32:08

mean, that is the basic accusation. Is it

32:10

legit? Or are people saying this now? No

32:12

one seemed to be saying this back when it happened,

32:14

because now feet have become super

32:16

sexualized. I don't remember anyone talking about

32:19

foot fetishes 10 years ago, or

32:21

even 5 years ago. Now I

32:23

actually know somebody who makes 4 figures a month

32:25

sending the dude's pictures of just her feet. Suddenly,

32:28

to me it seems, in the last few

32:30

years, feet have strongly become associated with porn

32:33

when they weren't before. Foot fetishism

32:35

is one of the most common types of

32:37

sexual fetishes today. According to a

32:39

Psychology Today article, it's actually the

32:41

single most common sexual fetish. Dr.

32:43

Justin Leemeyler, or Leemeyler, research fellow at the

32:45

Kinsey Institute wrote a book called, Tell Me

32:48

What You Want. It was published in 2018.

32:50

He surveyed more than

32:53

4,000 Americans about their sexual fantasies. And

32:55

5% of heterosexual women, 18% of heterosexual men,

32:58

11% of lesbian and bisexual women,

33:00

and 21% of gay and bisexual

33:03

men said they sexually fantasized about

33:05

feet. So is Dan Snyder one

33:07

of these people? Maybe. And

33:10

if he only wants to fuck or get turned

33:12

on by adult feet, well, who gives a shit?

33:15

Lucifina certainly doesn't. Lucifina is all about sucking on

33:17

those toes and fucking some feets. If

33:19

that's what you enjoy. But if Dan

33:21

was writing scenes showcasing kids' feet because it secretly

33:24

turned him on, well, that's obviously problematic. I

33:27

hope that being problematic is obvious. Not

33:30

only did Snyder supposedly perpetuate his foot

33:33

fetish to massive audiences of children, he's

33:35

accused of consistently sexualizing his child actresses

33:37

in docu-series as well. Daniella

33:40

Monette, known for

33:42

her role as Trena Vega on Victorious,

33:44

recently spoke out about his wardrobe choices

33:46

for female actors. Monette

33:49

claimed that the outfits appeared far from age

33:51

appropriate and that he would always advocate for

33:53

skimpier outfits. In fact, she said

33:55

he allegedly went to the extent of arguing with Nickelodeon

33:57

execs about the length of a young actress' skirt. wanted

34:00

it to remain shorter. Nickelodeon

34:02

supposedly told the producer that the skirt looked too

34:04

short for it to air on live TV, but

34:06

Schneider demanded no changes to the outfit. Dan

34:09

has denied doing this, and others he has worked with

34:11

said that the costume designer on his show would have

34:13

done this if anyone. Also,

34:15

any and all scenes of every show Dan worked

34:17

on were approved in the end

34:20

by network execs before being broadcast. So

34:22

if Dan dressed someone truly inappropriately, why

34:25

didn't any execs flag it and demand the outfit be

34:27

edited out? And I'm

34:29

not some Dan Schneider apologist, by the way. Before

34:31

the documentaries, I didn't even know his name. I'd

34:34

heard of some of his shows, but didn't watch any

34:36

of them. And looking into his

34:38

shows now, you know, not my thing, because, you know, I missed

34:40

the boat. I didn't watch him as a

34:42

kid, so I watched them now, you know, it's they're not for me. I don't

34:45

need to watch them. So I've no,

34:47

I've no horse in this race. Back to allegations

34:49

of his inappropriateness, there's a certain viewpoint that things

34:51

like feet and goo are just intrinsically funny to

34:54

an audience of kids. And

34:56

Dan Schneider, more than anyone, was able to tap into these

34:58

gags to make audiences come back for more. And

35:00

that might be the true motivation. Also,

35:03

you can make a business argument as opposed to

35:05

a sexual one for skimpy clothing. After all, part

35:07

of the appeal of teen audiences was that they,

35:09

you know, 14 audiences, was that they

35:11

might be attracted to or want to be one

35:13

of these hot girls, that they dreamed of wearing

35:15

cool outfits hanging out with the cute friends, that they

35:17

wanted to date the cute guys on the show,

35:19

you know. And kids do dress the way they're portrayed

35:22

in these shows, you know, or at

35:24

least they wanted to. The only part

35:26

of growing up wanting to prove to the adults around

35:28

you, hey, I'm not a kid anymore. I'm fully formed.

35:30

I can, I can, I can dress provocatively. I did

35:32

that. Sagged my jeans halfway off

35:34

my ass. Constantly found a

35:36

reason to take my shirt off and show off what I

35:39

thought at the time. We're big biceps. They

35:41

weren't. Or my ripped abs that

35:43

were ripped only because that was so skinny. Lindsay,

35:46

she did the same shit when she was a kid. I've seen

35:48

the pictures. I've heard her mom talk about the kind of stuff

35:50

she tried to wear at school. And I've seen

35:52

this with my own kids. Kyler, when he first got

35:54

some muscles, you know, around the age of 16, he suddenly

35:57

seemed to always be looking for a reason to have a shirt off.

36:00

Home, public, just everywhere. Acted like he was always on

36:02

the verge of being called in for a muscle and

36:04

fitness cover shoot, and he had to be ready in

36:07

two minutes. Monroe, same thing the

36:09

past year or so. Started rocking some bikinis

36:11

that led to me asking Lindsey privately, are you sure

36:13

we're okay with this? Apparently

36:15

I'm a lot more conservative when it comes to Monroe than

36:17

I am with Kyler. Sorry, this is Fina, try not to

36:19

give anyone a complex. Also,

36:21

teenagers are not strangers to sexual material. Pediatricians

36:24

actually recommend talking to kids about their sexual health

36:26

beginning around the age of five. When

36:29

kids start to ask where babies come from. So

36:32

having some sexual themes and programming for

36:34

teens is not grooming them necessarily at

36:36

all. It's providing realistic programming

36:38

that they can relate to, programming where

36:40

they aren't being talked down to and

36:42

over-infantilized. For the number

36:45

of your mom jokes anyone can hear in a middle

36:47

school hallway, you know it's true that the

36:49

kids find a lot of comedy and sexual material. And

36:51

perhaps that comedy helps them deal with processing

36:54

their own changing bodies and relationships. However,

36:57

what kind of sexual material is it okay for

36:59

a 40 year old man to write for kids? And

37:02

what if he's writing that, you know, what

37:04

if he's writing like what possibly he's sexually attracted

37:06

to and forcing kids to unwittingly act out his

37:08

sexual attractions in front of him? At

37:10

what point does one cross the line from

37:13

being edgy but authentic as a kids

37:15

TV writer into just being a fucking

37:17

creep? Someone who could be seen

37:19

as grooming kids or at least becoming

37:21

the Hollywood version of that uncle who hugs his

37:23

teen relatives a bit too long to finally get

37:25

together? And sure seems to keep trying

37:27

to peek down blouses and look up some skirts. This

37:30

is the dilemma with Dan Schneider. At

37:33

least it is a dilemma for the quiet on set

37:35

producers and those who agree with its conclusions. Adding

37:38

to this dilemma are the numerous allegations that

37:40

Schneider has, you know, or did foster an

37:42

obviously toxic work environment that

37:44

he harassed female writers who worked

37:46

underneath him, requested massages from female employees

37:49

and demeaned and yelled at basically everyone

37:51

on set regularly. Was

37:53

the dream for children working for Nickelodeon and Dan

37:55

Schneider really more like a nightmare? Or is this

37:57

all a case of looking back on entertainment? from

38:00

20 years ago, through the heightened

38:02

lens of the peak of the Me Too movement,

38:04

and seeing things that maybe weren't there.

38:07

Connecting dots that were possibly never actually

38:09

connected. Let's look at

38:11

all of this in a lot more detail in

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today's TimeSuck timeline. Right

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unwanted subscription. one

52:00

person who was finally able to bring us back together.

52:03

One day he called me and said, listen, I don't know

52:05

if this is a touchy subject or not. I know you

52:07

haven't spoken to Kellen awhile, but do you have a problem

52:09

with him and do you have a problem with

52:11

me putting him on a new show? Of course I

52:13

didn't. Later, Thompson wrote, finally, in

52:15

2015, Dan called me again. It's

52:17

time to talk about doing a good burger reunion.

52:20

Have you talked to Kellen awhile? I had not. I

52:23

feel like he's changed. He told me he's in church now.

52:25

Oh really? Yeah. He's done a full 180 as far

52:28

as humility is concerned and cleaning up any kind of

52:30

bad blood with people he rubbed the wrong way in

52:32

the past. He's really trying to repair

52:34

those relationships. You guys should talk. And

52:36

then they did talk and went on to work

52:38

together in a few more projects. I

52:40

just want to note that Dan, that while Dan is in the dog house,

52:44

Keenan is still killing it. He has no reason

52:47

to hold back on Snyder currently, but he hasn't,

52:49

he hasn't said anything. Back

52:52

to the formation of all that now cast and crew

52:54

flew out to the Nickelodeon studios at Universal Orlando to

52:56

shoot the pilot in front of a studio audience, January

52:58

17th, 1994. According

53:01

to those who worked with him, Dan created

53:03

a really fun set. He was self-deprecating, always

53:05

joking around, falling over and getting messy. He

53:08

inspired actors to do whatever they needed to do to

53:10

get it done, to push themselves towards greatness, even with

53:12

kids as young as eight. After

53:14

Taping was completed, the pilot was unfortunately shelved.

53:18

The initial screenings did not test well with

53:20

focus groups consisting of children, both

53:22

boys and girls in different age groups that

53:24

Nickelodeon used. Score showed that

53:26

kids probably wouldn't like this new sketch comedy

53:29

show for kids. However, despite this

53:31

negative response, after mulling

53:33

it over, Geraldine Laborn, then president of

53:35

Nickelodeon, decided to pick the series up. And

53:38

it was a hit. Those fucking focused idiot kids

53:40

were wrong. They picked the dumbest kids down in

53:43

Orlando. It was quickly approved

53:45

for a second season. After production on the

53:47

second season wrapped up in 1996, the show

53:49

moved out of the old Nickelodeon studios

53:51

at Universal Orlando, Orlando Resort in Florida,

53:53

California. After the third

53:56

season wrapped up, Angelique Bates left

53:58

and she will later claim much, much. later in

54:01

an interview, gosh dang, with

54:04

the blast.com in March of 2024. Bate

54:07

said that all that creator Dan Schneider

54:10

regularly subjected her to verbal, physical, and

54:12

emotional abuse. Serious

54:14

claims. But then

54:16

she proceeds to provide literally zero examples

54:18

of this. Like it's weird. She

54:21

makes these bold claims and then doesn't

54:23

talk about anything specific that makes me think, oh, okay, yeah,

54:25

that's fucked up. She

54:27

also said that she was bullied by another cast member,

54:29

that producers took that cast member's side when her mom

54:32

complained and that an unnamed producer,

54:34

not Schneider, hit on her mom. She

54:36

also said she chose to leave the show because

54:38

she wasn't happy with the amount of lines she

54:40

was getting from the writers. She felt she should

54:43

have more screen time. And

54:45

my gut read on Angelique Bates, she

54:48

wasn't good enough of a performer to justify putting

54:50

up with what sounds like bratty behavior. She

54:53

seems pretty extra in interviews to me.

54:55

Melodramatic. Was she bullied or

54:58

was she dramatic and confrontational? Complainting about your

55:00

lines on a show? That's a fucking great

55:02

way to get axed. And even though it

55:04

seems like she's been trying to hang on

55:06

to her showbiz career ever since, she describes

55:08

herself as an entertainer on her Instagram profile.

55:10

The now 43 year old's career in showbiz

55:12

basically ended when she left the show in

55:15

1996. Reads

55:17

is pretty sad. Her interview

55:19

with blast.com was also published on

55:21

Yahoo! Entertainment's website in the grossest,

55:23

most clickbaity way. The headline is

55:25

Angelique Bates Exposes Nickelodeon for Allegedly

55:27

Making Sexual Advances. So you're going

55:29

to assume that they're talking

55:31

about somebody making sexual advances on a kid, right?

55:33

That's what I get from that, you know, from

55:36

that headline. She was a kid on that show

55:38

talking about Nickelodeon kids network beneath

55:40

this headline, Carousel of Photos of

55:42

Dan Schneider. So I go

55:44

into this article and there's so many articles like this online right now.

55:46

I go into this article reading, you know, thinking that, okay,

55:49

here we go. Here's a smoking gun. She's

55:51

claiming that Dan Schneider made sexual advances towards

55:53

her when she would have been 14 or

55:55

15. Yikes. Nope.

55:59

She doesn't claim he ever. was

1:00:00

impeccable that her comedy was always on point,

1:00:02

especially Dan Snyder. He'd already been

1:00:04

thinking about a spinoff series, right? He had Katrina in

1:00:06

mind for it originally, but you know, they're always looking

1:00:08

for other possibilities. Very normal in this business. And

1:00:11

now he has Amanda in mind as her career

1:00:13

or excuse me, as his career progresses, uh,

1:00:15

it'll become one of his signature legacy of

1:00:17

making moves, taking a character or actor from

1:00:19

one show and giving them another

1:00:21

show, you know, then taking a character from that show

1:00:23

and giving them another show and so on and so

1:00:25

forth, creating the string of Dan Snyder produced hits. It's

1:00:28

a very smart business move. And

1:00:30

this process will begin with Amanda. They

1:00:32

would make no attempts to hide his favoritism. Once

1:00:34

Amanda had been cast and all that, when she's

1:00:36

just 10, he quickly dropped Katrina Johnson and she

1:00:38

almost never saw him anymore. And

1:00:40

again, that show is not fair. You know, that's

1:00:43

how, that's how I do it in Hollywood. Uh,

1:00:45

your product and if audiences and

1:00:47

or producers are loving you because the show or, you

1:00:49

know, shows, uh, you are on or hits or because

1:00:51

they feel you're about to be the star of a

1:00:53

new hit show within your loved and everyone's your best

1:00:55

friend, but then if producers lose faith

1:00:58

in you or the audience loses interest, well, you're done.

1:01:00

Your dream is thrown down on the ground and fucking

1:01:02

stopped on. It's not fair, but

1:01:04

it happens all the time. And

1:01:06

I do feel bad for these former child stars. Tough breaks

1:01:08

in this business are hard to handle as an adult. Can't

1:01:10

imagine how hard they are to handle as a child. Has

1:01:13

to be psychologically brutal for a child actor to

1:01:16

transition to adulthood

1:01:18

for 99% of child actors. You know,

1:01:20

either your career peaks as a kid and

1:01:22

now you're viewed as a, a has been by the

1:01:25

time you're barely an adult or you have been abused,

1:01:27

sometimes sexually by predators taking advantage of your parents not

1:01:29

being around or praying on your ambitions

1:01:31

or both, or you are abused

1:01:33

and your career still goes away. The

1:01:36

successful child actor who becomes a successful adult

1:01:38

actor who was not abused as a child

1:01:40

actor and is mentally healthy. Well,

1:01:42

that seems to be the exception to the rule back

1:01:45

to the beginning of the rise of Amanda binds. Now, according

1:01:48

to all that alum, Leon, Freerson, Dan and

1:01:50

Amanda were working together, uh, more like peers.

1:01:53

We had to go to school on set. He would

1:01:56

recall later. There would be times that Amanda would just

1:01:58

be missing. A lot of times we would hear. would

1:02:00

be with Dan, pitching ideas and writing. We

1:02:02

saw them grow closer to each other on set. And

1:02:05

the way this is portrayed, it sounds like he's

1:02:07

accusing Dan of doing something shady. Like he's insinuating

1:02:09

that, you know, maybe Dan is like grooming her

1:02:12

or, you know, maybe even molesting her or something.

1:02:14

No. Leon will remember how

1:02:16

a lot of parents stayed away from set, not wanting to

1:02:18

get in the way, but how Amanda's dad was always there.

1:02:20

How he and Schneider always seemed to be close. And

1:02:22

it looked like they were carefully crafting Amanda's career.

1:02:25

Leon says this in an accusatory way too. Like

1:02:28

Dan and Amanda's dad are doing something nefarious, but

1:02:31

I strongly feel that Leon is

1:02:33

just jealous. This guy's 37

1:02:35

years old now. He still

1:02:37

clearly wants to be a big actor, but

1:02:40

he hasn't had a recurring role in a TV series since the

1:02:42

fourth season of all that in 1998 when

1:02:44

he was 11. His Instagram today

1:02:46

mostly picks and clips of him from all that

1:02:49

from over 25 years ago. It's

1:02:51

fucking cringy. He reads

1:02:53

to me as someone with an axe to grind because he's met his

1:02:55

career didn't continue. There are a lot

1:02:57

of people like that in LA.

1:02:59

I met more than I ever cared to

1:03:01

when I was down there. Dan's first spin

1:03:03

off, The Amanda Show, starring Amanda Bynes, begins

1:03:06

airing October 16th, 1999. It included

1:03:08

cast members Drake Bell, Nancy Sullivan,

1:03:10

John Casser, Raquel Lee,

1:03:13

and Josh Peck. Another sketch

1:03:15

comedy show and also a show within a

1:03:17

show. Series is set in

1:03:19

a fictional universe in which it is broadcast

1:03:21

as a popular television comedy as evidenced through

1:03:23

staged mishaps involving members of the studio audience,

1:03:26

as well as comedic subplots involving

1:03:28

Amanda's unhealthily obsessed nerdy self-proclaimed number

1:03:30

one fan who constantly devises schemes

1:03:33

to achieve her lifelong goal of

1:03:35

meeting Amanda. Recurring sketches

1:03:37

included Judge Trudy, a spoof

1:03:39

of the courtroom reality show Judge Judy, So

1:03:41

You Want to Win Five Dollars, a spoof of the ABC

1:03:44

game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Moody's

1:03:46

Point, a spoof of the

1:03:49

teen drama Dawson's Creek and Block Blister,

1:03:51

a spoof of the now

1:03:53

defunct video rental store Blockbuster, and also I'm a

1:03:55

sexy kid and I want to fuck daddies, a

1:03:57

parody of the Golden Girls. Ugh. That

1:04:00

is, that's troubling. And

1:04:03

of course I'm just being shocking in nonsense school there. Amanda

1:04:05

was 13 when the series premiered. It was her big break.

1:04:07

And it was Dan's big break as well in many ways. This

1:04:10

was the first time in which Schneider is given the title of

1:04:12

creator, which is a big deal in the industry. Make a lot

1:04:14

of money for the creator. And this

1:04:16

may have empowered him to overstep some boundaries, seems to have.

1:04:19

Christie Stratton and Jenny Kilgan, two writers who

1:04:21

primarily worked during the series first season, they

1:04:24

were new writers then, would describe how working

1:04:26

with Dan was like being in an abusive relationship. At

1:04:29

the time, there weren't a lot of positions for women in

1:04:31

sketch comedy. It was hard to navigate. The

1:04:33

opportunities for women were fewer. So you knew you were going in

1:04:36

for, you know, like one spot that you probably wouldn't get it. But

1:04:38

Christie and Jenny both, you know, really wanted to make it. Neither

1:04:41

of them knew each other. Christie got the spot

1:04:43

by applying while Jenny actually joined a Hollywood writers

1:04:45

group where she met Dan, who to her surprise,

1:04:47

ended up liking her work and recruiting her. Both

1:04:50

women were excited to work in a real writers

1:04:52

room. You know, huge opportunity. Except

1:04:54

on their first day, they were informed by a line

1:04:57

producer that they, Christie and Jenny, would have to share

1:04:59

a salary. Two women sharing one salary. None of the

1:05:01

men, they found out, share their salaries. But

1:05:04

both of them knew that this could be a big break, so they didn't want to,

1:05:06

you know, fuck it up and ruffle some feathers. And

1:05:08

this sounds blatantly fucked up,

1:05:10

right? Sexist as hell. Same

1:05:12

old tired patriarchal shit that's been happening to women

1:05:15

for centuries. Well, maybe

1:05:17

not. What has not shown in this doc is

1:05:19

some very important context. That

1:05:21

this has been common practice for new writers, male

1:05:23

and female, for years. The

1:05:26

network, not the showrunner, they allocate

1:05:28

a certain budget for writers and producers. And sometimes

1:05:31

a position salary can be split for a new

1:05:33

writer or producer. And while Dan did this for

1:05:35

two women on the Amanda show, he also did

1:05:37

the same thing on other shows with two men

1:05:40

or with one man and one woman, and

1:05:43

many, many, many, many show creators, you know, and

1:05:45

show runners, EPs, were doing this

1:05:47

on their shows, had done it before, have done

1:05:49

it since. Again, it's pretty common practice. This was

1:05:51

not about being a woman, it was

1:05:53

about being a new writer. It's

1:05:55

a lot to go into here, but I have

1:05:57

long respected TV writers in part because... They've

1:06:00

had to pay a lot of dues to get those gigs

1:06:02

men and women Leaving that

1:06:04

context out in this docu series in

1:06:07

my mind equates to blatant slander and defamation

1:06:09

You're framing things in a in a very

1:06:11

dishonest way You know removing

1:06:13

the context makes Dan look like he's you know treating

1:06:15

two women unfairly because he is sexist and he might

1:06:17

be actually I think he is or at least was

1:06:20

but this is not evidence of that And

1:06:23

by the way, I've worked as both a TV writer

1:06:25

and a TV producer in the past Not a lot,

1:06:27

but I wrote two episodes of a Molly Ringwald Jason

1:06:30

Priestley sitcom called raising expectations back in 2016 Directly

1:06:33

before time suck took off and I

1:06:35

worked as a consulting producer Which is code

1:06:37

for writer and reality TV on a number

1:06:39

of different shows most notably Duck Dynasty 2013

1:06:43

and 14 and I have and

1:06:45

I have had a lot of writer and producer

1:06:47

friends friends who are now network execs and showrunners

1:06:49

And what Dan did here again? Standard

1:06:52

practice it would just be unfair for me

1:06:54

not to mention. I'm not just talking on my ass However

1:06:57

early on Dan Schneider allegedly did do something

1:06:59

that was sexist and inappropriate Allegedly

1:07:01

said that he didn't think women could be funny Supposedly

1:07:04

asked the writers room to think of one woman

1:07:06

who was funny in front of these writers and

1:07:08

nobody said anything Which is super fucked up That's

1:07:11

a shitty wildly unprofessional thing to do an

1:07:13

asshole move for sure and Dan has not

1:07:15

to my knowledge denied doing this Soon

1:07:18

after he allegedly asked Christian Jenny if he could

1:07:21

refer to them as the girls when they said

1:07:23

yes He said good because I can't stand girls

1:07:25

who are uptight about things like that and

1:07:28

that if true You know, it's cringy and unnecessary

1:07:32

Christian Jenny said they were uneasy but pushed it aside They

1:07:34

were both there to do one thing to write and

1:07:36

they do whatever they needed to be in that room and

1:07:38

the early days were Somewhat fun. They say the group

1:07:41

was goofy energetic and sometimes maybe

1:07:43

dirty Schneider created a children's

1:07:45

character portrayed by Amanda Bynes named Penelope

1:07:47

taint as

1:07:50

in the stretch of skin between the balls in the butthole Dan

1:07:53

Schneider told producers that it didn't mean anything dirty but

1:07:55

that but then he gets he turned around and told

1:07:57

Christian Jenny that yeah It did refer to the perineum

1:08:00

and to keep that a secret. To Christie and

1:08:02

Jenny, this signified Dan's power that he could create

1:08:04

a joke that was obviously sexual and tell network

1:08:07

execs that it wasn't, and they believed

1:08:09

him, you know, had grown too far. However,

1:08:11

as someone who loves inappropriate jokes, is

1:08:13

this really that fucking big of a deal? A

1:08:16

taint joke in a show with teenagers? My

1:08:18

God. I would have met

1:08:20

my life that all of those teenagers were making

1:08:22

more inappropriate jokes about that every day on set.

1:08:24

Shit, I watched Eddie Murphy's Delirious and was listening

1:08:26

to 2 Live Crew when I was 11 and

1:08:28

12 years old. I listened to EZ and NWA.

1:08:31

I was hearing jokes about shit like rusty

1:08:33

trombones and donkey punches at fucking recess. A

1:08:36

taint reference would have been tame. Soon,

1:08:39

Dan started to really push things further though. The

1:08:41

women would sometimes get messages from him

1:08:44

directing them to scream things out loud in the

1:08:46

writers room like, hammers. They

1:08:48

would do so. Then it became more degrading

1:08:50

over time, like, I'm an idiot, or

1:08:52

slut. And yeah,

1:08:55

that's fucking weird. But I wish

1:08:57

we knew more about the context. Was everyone making inappropriate

1:08:59

jokes? Did you have the male writers do that too?

1:09:01

That's never explained. It's very important. Men

1:09:04

and women, are they both doing this? Or is it

1:09:06

just the women who have to yell shit like that?

1:09:08

And I will say, writer's rooms notoriously get weird. I

1:09:13

was told by the showrunner for a Discovery Channel show

1:09:15

called Porter Rids that I worked on to stop drawing

1:09:17

cartoons on the writers room whiteboard

1:09:20

of various cast members getting fucked by bears.

1:09:23

I would draw a picture of a bear, fucking various, all of

1:09:25

the little fake cartoon plots would end with one of the

1:09:27

cast members getting fucked by a bear. It's a long story,

1:09:29

but everyone was doing shit like that to make each other

1:09:31

laugh on the show. I was

1:09:34

only asked to stop because the showrunner was worried that the production

1:09:36

company owners might see it and he would get in trouble. But

1:09:39

what if someone was offended by this and

1:09:42

then went on a documentary

1:09:44

complaining about how pornographic cartoons,

1:09:46

prominently featuring bestiality scenes, made

1:09:48

them extremely uncomfortable. They didn't want to work there, but

1:09:51

they were afraid to say anything because they didn't want

1:09:53

to lose their job. So they just suffered in silence

1:09:55

with these bare fucking pictures. Am

1:09:57

I a monster now? Or are they? a

1:10:00

thin-skinned crybaby. Or do they have a

1:10:02

right to be sad about it, but I also have a right to enjoy

1:10:04

what I think is funny. If

1:10:06

they didn't say the words, Dan would allegedly keep

1:10:09

messaging them until they did, this yelling out in

1:10:11

the writer's room. Once Dan supposedly

1:10:13

offered Chrissy $300 to eat two pints of

1:10:15

ice cream in 30 minutes, knowing full

1:10:17

well she had half a salary. She

1:10:20

did it, but then I guess he never paid her. A

1:10:22

couple weeks later, there was a fly buzzing in the writer's

1:10:24

room and he said he'd pay, whoever killed it, $30. And

1:10:27

jokingly, Chrissy said, should I add that to your tab? And

1:10:30

instead of laughing at a joke, anyone would have laughed

1:10:32

at it if Dan had made it, this joke, Snyder

1:10:34

brought her into his office and lambasted her. How dare

1:10:36

you accuse me of not making good on my bets,

1:10:38

he apparently screamed. Chrissy had no

1:10:40

idea what was going on. He'd created this fun, silly atmosphere,

1:10:42

but he could also turn it off as quickly as he

1:10:44

wanted. And yes, he

1:10:46

seems like a young power-hungry asshole here,

1:10:49

and he essentially has admitted to being

1:10:51

a young, power-hungry asshole as an early

1:10:53

showrunner in some rebuttal, some apologies he's

1:10:55

made. Yeah, it's fucked up. But

1:10:59

again, it's not predatory behavior worthy

1:11:01

of the focus, excuse me, of

1:11:04

a five-part docuseries on Max, is it? As

1:11:08

the season went on, things apparently got worse and worse.

1:11:10

In the writer's room, Jenny would later allege Dan would

1:11:12

show them porn or ask for shoulder massages, saying he

1:11:14

would put one of their sketches in

1:11:17

the show if they agreed. It was always presented

1:11:19

as a joke, but was it? Did

1:11:21

he also show male writers porn? No, that's

1:11:23

never addressed. I haven't shown

1:11:25

porn on shows that I've worked on. The VP

1:11:27

of a production company I worked for, him

1:11:30

and I used to send each other pictures of naked dudes with huge

1:11:32

dicks, each of us hoping that the other

1:11:34

person would open their email in front of the wrong person and

1:11:36

get embarrassed or in some trouble. Again,

1:11:39

it's like there is a culture in these

1:11:42

writers rooms of just being inappropriate to shock

1:11:44

jaded comedy writers. Another time,

1:11:46

Chrissy was in the writer's room thinking about

1:11:48

something that had happened to her in high

1:11:50

school when Snyder proposed something. Oh,

1:11:52

and before I actually say this, the massage part, I'll talk about

1:11:54

it more later, that part's super fucking weird to me. But

1:11:57

anyway, Snyder proposed something. What if she leaned over

1:12:00

the- table and recounted the story as she pretended

1:12:02

that she was being sodomized. And

1:12:04

that really does seem fucked up. This is

1:12:06

actually the most messed up thing I saw on the doc

1:12:08

regarding Snyder for me. But

1:12:10

again, who else was doing this shit? Other writers? Also, Dan,

1:12:12

was this a case of him being a prick? Very

1:12:15

misogynistic, very sexist, trying to make the women

1:12:18

always sexualized, not reading the room correctly? We

1:12:21

don't know. Every room I was in had

1:12:23

people pitching jokes that were insanely inappropriate to get a

1:12:25

laugh out of the room, just like all of the

1:12:27

shock jokes I have told here, I've told you to

1:12:29

laugh out of you. It's just hard to gauge intention

1:12:32

here. Christie said she was embarrassed,

1:12:34

but did it anyway. Didn't want to seem like

1:12:36

she couldn't hang. For Jenny, she said it

1:12:38

was upsetting to watch her friend do

1:12:40

this, knowing there wasn't anything she could do about it. Like

1:12:42

Christie, you know, she didn't want to be labeled the person

1:12:44

that couldn't take a joke. Soon

1:12:46

after this, Jenny hears from the Writers Guild, it

1:12:48

was actually illegal to have two people share a

1:12:50

salary. Then Snyder called Jenny, asked

1:12:52

if she was conspiring against the company. He'd hurt from

1:12:55

the Writers Guild. They had to pay them each their

1:12:57

own salaries. But still, against

1:13:00

union directives or not, this was common

1:13:02

practice and people bend, you know, union

1:13:04

rules constantly on shoots to this day.

1:13:07

This is not a Dan Snyder thing. This

1:13:09

was an industry thing. I'm not going to

1:13:12

say what I did, but I was paid

1:13:14

non-union wages to do work that the Writers

1:13:16

Guild would definitely consider Writers Guild union work.

1:13:19

The production company I worked for, myself, we would have gotten

1:13:21

in trouble, you know, had we been

1:13:23

caught. But you know what, I did it anyway. I

1:13:25

didn't feel exploited, even though I was paid less. I

1:13:27

felt lucky to have a job. And

1:13:29

I knew that if I wanted to move on

1:13:31

to union gigs, I needed a better resume. And

1:13:33

to get that resume, I would probably have to

1:13:35

do more non-union shit the union would not approve

1:13:38

of. And again, incredibly common. Not

1:13:40

the exception to the rule. Jenny

1:13:43

said that if Dan found out she told on

1:13:45

him, he said that she would never work for

1:13:47

Nickelodeon or Viacom again. Yeah, I

1:13:49

could see him saying that. I could see almost every show under

1:13:51

Satan, something like that. After

1:13:53

this, Snyder apparently got more volatile. He'd be charming and

1:13:55

charismatic sometimes, then flip multiple times of the day, making

1:13:58

everyone on set along with the writers. feel like the

1:14:00

other shoe is about to drop. And

1:14:02

in the last week filming the first season of Amanda's show,

1:14:04

the Amanda show, the other shoe does drop.

1:14:07

After work Schneider unceremoniously calls Kristi Stratton on her

1:14:09

phone as she's driving home. By the time she

1:14:11

was home she had been fired. Citing

1:14:14

the fact that she had done

1:14:16

two personal things on her weekends during the entire course

1:14:18

of filming when she was expected to be working. What

1:14:21

we don't know here though, how good was

1:14:24

Kristi's work on this show? This

1:14:26

could have been for sure. Dan

1:14:28

being vindictive, being

1:14:31

a power hungry asshole, some

1:14:33

kind of retribution. But also maybe

1:14:35

Kristi just didn't write very good jokes. Meanwhile

1:14:39

producers brought Jenny Kilgan back for the Amanda show

1:14:41

season two. They offered her a 16 week contract,

1:14:43

but expected her to work for free for 11

1:14:45

of the show's 27 weeks. They

1:14:48

claimed it was all the money they had. After

1:14:50

just four days filming the second season, Kilgan reached

1:14:52

her limit. She said she was called into Dan's

1:14:54

office. He told her to pitch her an idea.

1:14:56

And as she spoke, he interrupted her and asked,

1:14:59

didn't you used to do phone sex? That

1:15:01

is super fucked up if he did this. No,

1:15:03

she replied. But he insisted that

1:15:05

the last season she had said something like that, kept

1:15:07

pressing her as though she until she

1:15:09

finally gave up and admitted it. And then that

1:15:11

day she quit. And again, if he

1:15:13

did this, you know, that's fucked up. This

1:15:16

is why I said earlier that Dan probably is sexist

1:15:18

or at least was sexist. Sounds like somebody

1:15:20

I would have hated to work for. But

1:15:23

again, the big damning accusations against him springing from

1:15:25

Quidar and said, aren't that he was a dick,

1:15:27

but a child predator. So where's the evidence of

1:15:29

that? Not this. Jenny

1:15:32

called up Kristi Stratton with an idea. They

1:15:34

should sue Nickelodeon and Schneider for gender discrimination

1:15:36

and harassment, which they did. Nickelodeon

1:15:39

did an internal investigation, ended up settling with

1:15:41

Stratton and Clingan for an undisclosed amount,

1:15:43

and I hope it was a lot. Jenny's

1:15:46

career would never really recover, but Kristi, she's

1:15:48

ended up writing for a ton of shows.

1:15:50

She's a showrunner today, like

1:15:52

modern family. She's been on some great shows. And

1:15:55

yeah, she's had a great career that I'm sure she has worked her

1:15:57

ass off for. Kristi and Jenny would both later want to be a

1:15:59

part of the show. if this was

1:16:01

how the adults were being treated by Dan, how were

1:16:03

the children being treated? And if

1:16:05

this was how Schneider behaved on his first big project, what

1:16:07

kind of boss would he become in the future? Meanwhile,

1:16:10

Nickelodeon is thriving. The

1:16:13

success of all that in the Amanda show, two

1:16:15

shows that employed many of the same child actors,

1:16:17

meant that Nickelodeon was becoming the basis for a

1:16:19

kind of mini Hollywood, with its own stars who

1:16:21

all knew each other and everyone competing for similar

1:16:23

roles and accolades, like the Kids'

1:16:26

Choice Awards, again, the kids version of the Oscars. Amanda

1:16:29

Bynes would win the Kids' Choice Award

1:16:31

for Favorite TV Actress, April 15, 2000,

1:16:33

when she's 14. In

1:16:36

her acceptance speech, she excitedly thanks Brian Robbins

1:16:38

and Dan Schneider as she clutches the

1:16:41

Orange Blimp Award, the symbol of Nickelodeon, and

1:16:44

this solidified Dan's status as Nickelodeon's

1:16:46

kingmaker, the guy you would need on your side

1:16:48

if you wanted to become a star in mini Hollywood. However,

1:16:52

it seems as if it was bizarrely easy to

1:16:54

get on his bad side. Or

1:16:56

was it? Here's something that has been offered up as proof of

1:16:58

him being an erratic monster. Raquel

1:17:01

Lee, who had joined the Amanda show at 12, turned

1:17:03

13, and the cast and crew got her an enormous

1:17:05

cake, like a sheet cake. And

1:17:08

apparently, she claims this made Dan angry, because Dan

1:17:10

allegedly told the caterers that she didn't need a

1:17:12

great big cake. Small cake was fine,

1:17:14

and he was, I guess, furious. And

1:17:18

after this, Raquel couldn't help but

1:17:20

notice that Dan seemed to favor Amanda

1:17:22

over her. Uh,

1:17:25

okay. Is that, is that really

1:17:27

why you didn't become a big star, Raquel?

1:17:29

Because you got a birthday cake bigger

1:17:32

than what Dan wanted you to get? I don't

1:17:35

buy that. Again, Raquel hasn't done much of anything

1:17:37

since she was a kid working on the Amanda show in similar

1:17:39

shows. In the last decade, she's only had

1:17:41

one tiny role in an indie movie that went nowhere,

1:17:43

and did a bit of voiceover work for a

1:17:46

minor character on the animated Disney show The Proud

1:17:48

Family, Louder and Prouder. That's it. Raquel

1:17:51

said that following the cake debacle, she

1:17:53

would see Dan and Amanda on set often. Sometimes

1:17:55

she'd see her giving him a shoulder rub. And

1:17:58

if there is one thing that Dan definitely guilty of. It's

1:18:01

getting way too many fucking shoulder rubs from

1:18:03

women and girls, right, to work for you. I'll

1:18:06

be honest, if I worked for him, I would think

1:18:08

that was super fucking weird. Why are

1:18:10

you having the girls rub your shoulders, dude? Get a

1:18:12

fucking masseuse, you weirdo. But I

1:18:15

wouldn't think he was a predator just based on that. I would

1:18:17

just think, like, man, that guy doesn't understand how this is

1:18:19

odd. What is he thinking? He's the boss. Another

1:18:23

bit of supposed evidence that Dan is a creep

1:18:25

is when Amanda and Schneider filmed a hot tub

1:18:27

scene together for a behind the scenes type sketch.

1:18:30

In the scene, Amanda appears in a swimsuit in the hot tub,

1:18:32

a modest swimsuit, in my opinion, I should add, beside

1:18:35

Schneider, who is fully clothed. Amanda

1:18:37

starts talking about how Dan's the executive producer asks

1:18:40

him for a raise, to which he replies, no,

1:18:42

and that's it. How

1:18:44

is this evidence that Dan is like some insane creep? I

1:18:47

think the sketch is fucking lame. That's

1:18:49

not funny to me. But also, again,

1:18:52

I've never really liked Nickelodeon and Disney

1:18:54

kid show humor. I

1:18:57

think it would be way creepier if Dan was also

1:18:59

in a swimsuit, especially like a thong, especially

1:19:02

a thong with a little, little dick bird

1:19:04

hairbrush, kind of scooting out the side, you

1:19:06

know, sticking out of his ass. That

1:19:08

would be cause for alarm. The

1:19:11

Amanda show was abruptly canceled after the third

1:19:13

season in 2002. Why was it canceled? Well,

1:19:15

regarding her departure from Nickelodeon that year, Bynes

1:19:18

stated, I knew I didn't want to be

1:19:20

a Nickelodeon kid when I was 30. I was having fun,

1:19:22

but at 15, you don't want to be doing what you're doing

1:19:24

when you were 12. Yeah, makes

1:19:26

sense to me. Final episode

1:19:28

of the Amanda show aired September 21st,

1:19:30

2002, when Amanda was 16. Bynes

1:19:34

would go on to star in Schneider's What I Like About

1:19:36

You, a show on the WB

1:19:38

now for a slightly older audience about two

1:19:40

teenage sisters living in New York. Amanda

1:19:42

was heading into mainstream success and Dan

1:19:45

was following. But then soon things

1:19:47

started to go wrong. Schneider immediately clashed

1:19:49

with the co-creator, Will Calhoun, famous for working

1:19:51

on Friends and soon the network didn't seem

1:19:53

to trust Schneider. And again,

1:19:55

this is not uncommon. Co-showrunners clash

1:19:58

often on shows. He

1:20:00

was pushed out of the writer's room, but he could still remain on set

1:20:02

with Amanda in his role as a producer. Sounds

1:20:04

like a juvenile writing style. That kind of humor

1:20:06

may not have translated to a more adult series.

1:20:09

Then soon while clashing with her parents, Amanda tries to run away

1:20:12

from home and she does go to Dan for help. Details

1:20:14

are murky, but reports show that the police

1:20:16

were involved and that Amanda's parents were upset

1:20:18

about something with Schneider. Taking

1:20:21

Amanda's side, perhaps. In response

1:20:23

to this, Amanda comes up with a plan to emancipate

1:20:25

herself, something Schneider does help her with.

1:20:28

And there is a lengthy history of teen stars

1:20:30

getting emancipated from their parents. The lesson

1:20:32

being in control of their own finances also

1:20:34

keeps them from working the reduced hours that children are

1:20:36

required to work. Meaning it makes everyone much

1:20:38

more money. If Amanda were emancipated,

1:20:40

she would suddenly have a little supervision and

1:20:42

can be worked harder. Is that

1:20:45

why Schneider was offering to help? You

1:20:47

know, is he genuinely trying to help Amanda? Maybe.

1:20:50

Trying to get more cash out of his cash cow. Maybe. We don't know.

1:20:52

She has never alleged anything inappropriate about

1:20:55

Dan though. The

1:20:57

matter goes to court and the court does not

1:20:59

emancipate Amanda, but it does create a huge rift

1:21:01

between Schneider, Amanda and Amanda's parents. Pretty

1:21:04

soon after this, Dan parts ways with what I

1:21:06

like about you, staying on in name only and

1:21:08

returns to Nickelodeon. He throws himself behind

1:21:10

a revival of all that, which is taking a break after

1:21:12

its sixth season. In this revival, Dan

1:21:14

would be more present than ever, both on set

1:21:16

and in the final product. In

1:21:18

one scene, Dan calls the cast, big

1:21:20

red telephone starts ringing and someone shouts,

1:21:22

it's the Danphone! Hello, cast! Dan

1:21:25

says Parodine himself is a big shot producer.

1:21:27

When the call drops, the camera switches to showing Dan in

1:21:30

the backseat of a convertible with a blonde woman feeding him

1:21:32

a shrimp cocktail. It's not our

1:21:34

place to question Dan, another character says later in the sketch.

1:21:37

The group agrees, Dan is like a god. Does

1:21:40

this really reflect what's happening behind the scenes,

1:21:42

like quiet, on set alleges? Or

1:21:46

is this just a silly parody, meaningless? For

1:21:48

some, it would strike them as very much the former.

1:21:51

Several new cast members were hired for the

1:21:53

reboot, Giovanni Samuels, Kyle Sullivan, Brian Hearn and

1:21:55

Leon Freerson. For some of them,

1:21:58

like Giovanni and Kyle, it was the fulfillment of their dreams. always

1:22:00

wanted to be actors. For others, you know, it was

1:22:02

more of just a job. Every time I booked a role,

1:22:04

I felt like I was one step closer to getting my

1:22:06

family out of the hood. Ryan Hearn would recall later.

1:22:09

These actors would allege that the set could be dysfunctional.

1:22:12

That they would have to work overtime. You know,

1:22:14

kids working long past when they were legally required

1:22:16

to stop. They'd ask the kids

1:22:18

if they could stay longer, the producers would. None

1:22:20

of them would refuse. One sketch, sugar and coffee,

1:22:22

had pounds and pounds of sugar and coffee dumped

1:22:24

on the kids, which then had to run around

1:22:26

constantly for hours. It was gross

1:22:28

and uncomfortable, like many of the sketches would

1:22:31

be, especially in the SNCC on-air DARE segments,

1:22:34

involving fear factor-like challenges featuring the cast of

1:22:36

all that. SNCC was

1:22:38

short for Saturday Night Nickelodeon, a two-hour

1:22:40

block on Saturday nights geared towards older

1:22:42

pre-teen and teen audiences. The

1:22:45

three cast members from the All That segment,

1:22:49

the three cast members from All That in each segment, excuse

1:22:51

me, will be placed in a glass cylinder and

1:22:53

one would be randomly chosen to participate in a

1:22:55

DARE. If chosen, two security guards enter, grab the

1:22:58

cast member, as if he or she

1:23:00

was about getting arrested, so they don't escape. Some

1:23:02

of these DAREs included singing the national anthem in a diaper, apple

1:23:05

bobbing in a toilet, taking a bath on a tub

1:23:07

of raw eggs, eating a couple

1:23:09

gallons of blue cheese, being painted with

1:23:12

peanut butter and licked by dogs, hanging

1:23:14

upside down and being dipped in dog food, having

1:23:16

buckets of worms dumped on the cast members head,

1:23:19

drinking a gallon of sweat, sitting in a giant boil

1:23:21

of chili, eating a thousand toenails, or

1:23:23

what looked like toenails, the cast

1:23:25

member putting an entire scorpion in their mouth,

1:23:27

the cast member being pecked by hungry chickens,

1:23:30

or appearing to be, or shaving their school principal's legs.

1:23:34

And when they were in these situations, especially if they were messy,

1:23:36

the boys would appear shirtless to girls in tight

1:23:38

athletic clothing. Brian Hearn did

1:23:41

the peanut butter sketch. He had to be submerged

1:23:43

in peanut butter and after dogs came on stage to lick it

1:23:45

off, as he lay on the ground. I

1:23:47

don't like this, you can hear Brian say in one clip

1:23:49

of the segment as he laughs nervously, I feel all gross.

1:23:52

All of these were similar to challenges that have been

1:23:54

developed for the adult participants of shows like Fear Factor.

1:23:57

Former actors now are saying

1:23:59

that they... felt demeaned in some of these sketches. Didn't

1:24:02

say that at the time, but are claiming it now.

1:24:06

However, the show has been running for several years at

1:24:08

this point. And these gags

1:24:10

are in line with the show's humor. So

1:24:13

if you don't want to do gags like that, why

1:24:15

the fuck did you audition for a show

1:24:17

where they do those kinds of gags? I have no sympathy

1:24:19

for these kids with this complaint. Right.

1:24:21

And this is common for sketch shows. They don't like

1:24:24

only write sketches that they're a hundred percent sure of

1:24:26

the writers that everyone is comfortable with. They

1:24:28

write sketches that they think are funny and on brand for the

1:24:30

show. And if a cast member doesn't want

1:24:32

to do that show, yeah, they don't have to. But you know,

1:24:34

will that endanger their job? Probably. But then they shouldn't be on

1:24:36

the sketch show. Uh, some of

1:24:38

these former cast members have said, you know, they didn't realize what

1:24:41

the show was, you know, like what they were getting into cause

1:24:43

there were kids, all right, then it's your fucking parents fault for

1:24:45

taking you to the audition, not the show's

1:24:48

fault. If you hate gross gags, don't go

1:24:50

out for a job for a gross gag

1:24:52

show. Uh, there

1:24:54

were also some sketches and all that that

1:24:56

may be in hindsight, seem too sexual, at

1:24:59

least according to the quiet, unset producers and former cast

1:25:01

members clearly prodded by, if not outright coached in my

1:25:03

mind by the producers to say these things,

1:25:06

all that cast member, Leon for your symbol later

1:25:08

recall starring as captain big nose who had shoulder

1:25:10

pads that were shaped like a penis and testicles.

1:25:13

And I've looked this up and I don't

1:25:16

know. I think, I think you have to really

1:25:18

look for it. I don't see it like as

1:25:20

an obvious way. And you know, I love a

1:25:22

dick joke, but I

1:25:24

don't see it. I can, can you read into it and make

1:25:27

it felt like, yeah, sure. I mean, you could read into a

1:25:29

video of a kid washing up some carrots if you want and

1:25:31

make it seem like they're cleaning a handful of dicks, but

1:25:34

that doesn't mean that that's what they were pretending to do. Or that's

1:25:36

what somebody wanted them to look like they were doing. Uh,

1:25:39

in the bit when nose boy sneezed a clear white

1:25:41

substance shot through his nose, hits the scene partner in

1:25:43

the face. And to some of the boys on set,

1:25:45

this clearly read as a cum shot. Uh,

1:25:48

this was a, you know, for an intended audience as young

1:25:50

as six, but was it supposed to

1:25:52

read as a cum shot? That

1:25:55

is the big question. I don't think so. It

1:25:57

can also read as nothing more than snot getting on. which

1:26:00

is the exact type of gross out humor that

1:26:02

was Nickelodeon's bread and butter, right? On

1:26:04

brand. The kind of gross out humor

1:26:06

kids have enjoyed since the beginning of fucking

1:26:08

kids. That's a weird way to phrase it, since the

1:26:11

beginning of kids. Not

1:26:13

since the beginning, nevermind. The kids, the cast

1:26:15

members talked about this being sexual, but the

1:26:17

adults on set, there's not claims that they

1:26:19

were saying it was sexual. I

1:26:21

remember teachers in school doing shit, like in high school, that we

1:26:24

would giggle about because

1:26:26

it read sexual, but they clearly weren't trying

1:26:28

to do that, or when they

1:26:30

caught on, that that's why we were laughing. They'd be like, oh, come on, get

1:26:32

your minds out of the gutter. And

1:26:34

look, maybe it was sexual. I'm not

1:26:36

in Dan's brain. Maybe Dan was being a creep

1:26:38

here, but it's not obvious in my opinion. Leon

1:26:42

said he never wanted to complain. Like so many others,

1:26:44

he knew it was important to be on Snyder's good

1:26:46

side. Yeah, like the actor of every show ever. And

1:26:50

according to him, for the few black kids on set,

1:26:52

like Giovanni, Brian, and Leon, there were other things that

1:26:54

were uncomfortable as well. Giovanni felt

1:26:56

that he was, or excuse me, that she was

1:26:58

required to play the role of the token black

1:27:00

actress at a time when her identity was still

1:27:02

developing. She claims that in

1:27:04

quiet on set, claims this on quiet on set,

1:27:06

but proceeds not to offer a single concrete example

1:27:08

of what she means by this. Brian

1:27:11

Hearn, meanwhile, soon found that some

1:27:13

onscreen performances played off racial stereotypes.

1:27:16

For example, during the, during one All That skit,

1:27:18

where Hearn played a kid selling Girl Scout cookies,

1:27:21

he pulls aside another kid, asks them in

1:27:23

a low voice if they want to buy any. The

1:27:25

other kid says, you're not a Girl Scout, and Hearn

1:27:27

looks around, shushing him. To his mother,

1:27:29

Tracy Brown, it looked like Hearn was selling drugs. And

1:27:32

then she asked, you know, why was the black kid, the

1:27:34

one that had to be cast as the drug dealer? I

1:27:37

don't know. Seems like a silly

1:27:39

sketch to me. Maybe this was poor judgment,

1:27:41

but there's also sketches where Keenan Thompson, another

1:27:43

young black cast member, is doing

1:27:46

things like playing a parody of Superman. Wouldn't

1:27:48

that be an example of Snyder giving a black

1:27:50

actor a historically white and empowering role? Doing

1:27:53

a little digging, it looks like he spread the

1:27:55

roles around based on the talents of each cast

1:27:57

member as opposed to their race, to me at

1:27:59

least. Again, maybe he was being

1:28:01

racist. I don't know. That one

1:28:03

sketch Hern refers to certainly as not evidence of

1:28:06

him definitely being racist in my mind. Brian

1:28:08

Hern, huh? Frankly, another failed actor.

1:28:12

Since his time on All That Ended in 2003,

1:28:14

he was a guest star in two episodes of

1:28:16

Everybody Hates Chris in 2009, one episode of

1:28:18

Lie to Me that year, and one episode

1:28:20

of The Unit also that year, hasn't done shit

1:28:22

since. Nothing in 15 years, but

1:28:25

still fronts like he's an actor. Why

1:28:27

are almost all the people jumping on

1:28:29

the fuck Dan Schneider bandwagon on this

1:28:31

docu-series, frankly failed actors who

1:28:33

seem to still want to be famous? I think that's a

1:28:36

very fair question because they have motivation

1:28:38

to be bitter and desperate enough to want

1:28:40

to get some screen time in

1:28:42

a docu-series like this. Hern

1:28:45

was fired unceremoniously after two seasons. He'd

1:28:47

been told he was brought back for a third season after

1:28:49

the second season wrapped, but during the break his agent informed

1:28:51

him he was not invited back and then didn't hear anything

1:28:54

from Dan Schneider, which is exactly

1:28:56

how this business works. I used to

1:28:58

hurt my feelings when things like this happened. Two years in a

1:29:00

row, I was told I was going to be on the last

1:29:02

comic standing that I passed this important round and they're

1:29:04

like, yep, here's the dates. I fucking, here's your

1:29:07

ticket, all the plans. And then both times, days

1:29:09

before I was supposed to go, they're like, the

1:29:12

producers have changed their minds. Yeah, fucking

1:29:14

sucks. But I wasn't like, why are

1:29:16

they doing that? They're out to get me. It's

1:29:18

just business. It's how things work in entertainment. And then

1:29:20

a lot of times we have to bring you back

1:29:23

to the stage. I mean, when you are not given

1:29:25

something, they don't call

1:29:27

and explain it to you. You just hear

1:29:29

from your manager or your agent. When you don't get a part, they don't

1:29:31

have like a meeting like, hey, here's why we didn't hire you. Here's

1:29:34

why you're not being brought back for a third season. You're not being

1:29:36

brought back, probably because that would just be so fucking awkward and it

1:29:38

wouldn't make the blow

1:29:40

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2:34:00

it sexual. And there's an

2:34:02

argument there, right, that you are reading into something

2:34:04

that is actually innocent. And I'm

2:34:06

not saying they're wrong. So why can't that

2:34:08

same logic apply to Dan Snyder and Nickelodeon?

2:34:10

I find that problematic. If

2:34:13

Dan was truly a huge piece of shit, a

2:34:15

monster, why haven't the actual stars from his shows

2:34:17

come forward and complain? Why isn't Amanda Bynes tearing

2:34:19

him down out there than me? Or Ariana Grande

2:34:21

or Kenan Thompson? How can the producers can only

2:34:23

find a handful of, I know this is

2:34:25

mean, but washed up has-beens, clearly

2:34:28

bitter, that their acting career

2:34:30

stalled once they hit early adulthood to

2:34:32

make honestly pretty weak accusations?

2:34:35

A handful out of hundreds who worked on

2:34:37

his shows? I hate shit like

2:34:39

this because I feel like it takes away from the

2:34:41

power of other people when they make much more serious,

2:34:43

much more credible accusations. If more docu-series were like quiet

2:34:45

on set, eventually I think a lot of people start

2:34:47

to tune them out. Be like, yeah, yeah, just a

2:34:50

bunch of bullshit again. Also,

2:34:52

if Nickelodeon truly was some kind of breeding

2:34:54

ground for childhood exploitation and abuse, why did

2:34:56

the producers only find three examples of pedophiles

2:34:58

being on set, two of which were not

2:35:00

convicted pedophiles when they worked for Nickelodeon and

2:35:03

didn't molest any kids or try to on

2:35:05

set? Three pedophiles were discussed,

2:35:07

three in two decades worth of shows,

2:35:09

thousands of people from extras to caterers

2:35:11

to cast and crew working during that

2:35:14

time. Are three cases statistically,

2:35:16

oh my God, I can't talk,

2:35:18

you know, statistically significant? Were

2:35:21

there more pedos in Nickelodeon than there were just

2:35:23

anywhere else? I don't think so. I'm

2:35:25

honestly surprised that people give a fuck about this docu-series,

2:35:27

that it made the splash it did. I

2:35:30

think it's trash. Maybe the single

2:35:32

biggest hatchet job of a docu-series I've ever watched.

2:35:35

Jason Handy and Brian Peck, yeah, garbage

2:35:37

humans. And both never worked for

2:35:39

Nickelodeon again when their crimes were exposed. But Dan Schneider, a

2:35:42

very successful showrunner who asked for way too

2:35:44

many shoulder rubs, maybe put,

2:35:46

probably put some tasteless jokes on air out of a lot

2:35:49

of jokes, probably was a controlling

2:35:51

boss with a bad temper and was chauvinistic,

2:35:53

demeaning asshole to at least a few occasions, you

2:35:55

know, to at least two female writers on a

2:35:57

few occasions. Should he be punished for that? Sure,

2:36:00

you know and he was it seems Nickelodeon did

2:36:02

let him go Is

2:36:04

he a sexual predator who deserves to have

2:36:07

some documentarians smear his name and destroy his

2:36:09

reputation forever based on this? Now

2:36:12

based on the evidence I watched I

2:36:14

mean at one point the docu-series honestly tried to

2:36:16

link Dan via the me to movement to Harvey

2:36:18

Weinstein R. Kelly Kevin

2:36:21

Spacey and Bill Cosby get the

2:36:23

fuck out of here. That's outrageous He

2:36:25

should win his lawsuit based on that alone One

2:36:27

thing the documentary did make me think about this

2:36:30

important though And I don't think they intended for

2:36:32

this to be the effect at all for their

2:36:34

documentary docu-series is the relationship

2:36:36

between fame and self-worth That

2:36:38

worries me more, you know when

2:36:40

it comes to child actors in general than anything uncovered regarding

2:36:42

Dan Schneider I do feel bad

2:36:44

for kids working in entertainment because they are given a

2:36:46

brush with fame at an early age When

2:36:49

they need more help than adults to psych it

2:36:51

psychologically process what's going on Imagine

2:36:53

me in 10 or 12, you know your cast

2:36:55

member on some kids show The producers love

2:36:57

you they're considering giving you a spin-off How

2:37:00

could you not start to fantasize about

2:37:02

how magical how monumental that would be

2:37:05

in the near future? You could be pulling up

2:37:07

to red carpet events in a limo making millions

2:37:09

of dollars be the envy of your peers on

2:37:11

the cover of magazines Have millions

2:37:13

of followers on social media constantly comment

2:37:16

on how much they love you. What

2:37:18

a rush What a massive adrenaline

2:37:20

shot to the ego But

2:37:22

then the producers move on to some other kid and

2:37:24

they give them a show instead and then your show

2:37:26

ends and you don't Get picked up for another show

2:37:28

and now not only are you not a star? You're

2:37:31

not coming to the studio a lot at all

2:37:33

anymore. No hair and makeup. No cameras No sightings

2:37:35

of stars on set and now you're not even

2:37:38

just another kid You're a kid who used to

2:37:40

do something really cool a kid who other kids,

2:37:42

you know thought was going somewhere How did you

2:37:44

blow it? They might wonder now, you know, why

2:37:46

aren't you still doing more shows? Why aren't you

2:37:48

a star? No wonder so many

2:37:50

child actors are so fucked up. I think

2:37:52

there needs to be a child psychologist on set

2:37:54

for these shows And when

2:37:56

the show ends, I think parents need to

2:37:58

get their kids into some counseling whether they

2:38:00

feel the kid needs it or not. Help

2:38:02

them transition out of showbiz. Make sure they're

2:38:05

okay. Help them transition back to being another

2:38:07

struggling actor at least, hustling to auditions. I

2:38:09

think culturally, we need to all stop equating

2:38:12

fame with worth as much as we do.

2:38:14

You don't need to be famous to have

2:38:17

fucking value and worth. Stars should

2:38:19

be seen as people who got lucky, much

2:38:21

more than as people who are somehow better than the rest of

2:38:23

us. There's a lot of talented

2:38:25

actors in LA. Some of them become famous, others

2:38:28

don't. The ones who become famous compared to the

2:38:30

ones that don't, it isn't always about there's so

2:38:32

much more talented. We should

2:38:34

stop looking at former entertainers as being people who have failed.

2:38:36

Instead, why not look at it like, how lucky were you

2:38:38

to have the run you had? How

2:38:40

fun, what a cool life experience. That's

2:38:43

what I would want to say to the

2:38:45

bitter former child actress speaking out on the

2:38:47

quiet onset, Dr. Series. Let it go. You're

2:38:49

okay. You're still alive. You're still young. You're

2:38:51

healthy. You've got some cool stories to tell,

2:38:54

right? You had a good run. You got to be

2:38:56

on a cool show. Be happy with that. Move on.

2:38:58

Get out of the entertainment business. You

2:39:00

had a cool, unique experience as a kid.

2:39:02

It didn't continue. Fucking oh well. So what?

2:39:05

Every career comes to an end eventually, one way

2:39:07

or another. There's an end date

2:39:09

to everyone's run on whatever they're doing. Grim

2:39:11

Reaper is undefeated. So just enjoy

2:39:13

the fact that you live long enough to reflect on this interesting

2:39:15

thing that you did. I think

2:39:18

that's all I've got to say on this one. Time

2:39:22

suck. Top five takeaways.

2:39:27

Number one for two decades, Dan Schneider was the

2:39:29

king of Nickelodeon. It's Golden Boy. It's Hit Maker.

2:39:32

In a time of increased competition with Disney, Schneider

2:39:34

appeared with the answer. Programming

2:39:37

that was goofier, sillier, more fun, more

2:39:39

glamorous with teen stars and a little

2:39:41

Nickelodeon ecosystem all of its own. Then

2:39:44

he got a little too hands on set. Good lesson

2:39:46

here. You want a shoulder rub? Have

2:39:49

your lover give you one. Hire a

2:39:51

masseuse. Ask a friend. Don't ask an

2:39:53

employee. Creepy at worst. Tone

2:39:56

deaf at best. For the record, I've never asked anybody

2:39:58

here for a shoulder rub.