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For the most part, my memory of Nickelodeon is Double Dare, Duckula and You Can’t Do That On Television. By the time All That hit the airwaves, I was getting read to take my driver’s exam for my license. I was a sophomore in high school. I didn’t really want to see some little girl dressed up as Ross Perot. Yes, Saturday Night Live sucked big that year and In Living Colour had been given a mercy killing by being canceled, but my humor was a little more mature. There was The State on MTV which managed to fill my sense of humor.
For the most part, a person like Dan Schneider has been reduced to a joke spoken on Late Night With Conan O’Brien as legally changing his name to “The Fat Guy From Head of the Class.” Schneider had appeared in a few movies of the 1980s (Better Off Dead and The Big Picture alongside Kevin Bacon and directed by Christopher Guest), but for the most part had been forgotten once that sitcom ended in 1991, leaving us to question why kids in a gifted class took five years to graduate high school. For the most part, Dennis Blunden could’ve been just a character and in real life Schneider could have been a completely different person. How true that is.
While Dennis might have been a scheming grade-A wiseass, he at least had some scruples. The tales of misconduct by Schneider on Quiet on the Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV make you wonder how long are people willing to look a blind eye to something as long as it’s profitable. Schneider allegedly did a lot of sneaky and sleazy things such as making two women writers split a salary and then subjecting them to a gross and disgusting acts. Accusations are spoken by many women who said that he needed massages and back rubs at all time. Hollywood tales are full of people who got too close. In The Devil’s Candy, both Melanie Griffith and Uma Thurman seem to be all huggy-buggy with Brian DePalma during the production of The Bonfire of the Vanities. But there’s a big difference between a friendly hug and a kiss and heavy touching that are massages. As John Travolta said in Pulp Fiction, a foot massage can be sexual and it most likely is depending on who is wanting one.
And mind you, All That premiered in 1994 when people were starting to take sexual harassment seriously…or at least admitting that it was happening and trying to prevent it. Schneider had been in the business for about a decade so apparently he must’ve known how to get away with things. And let’s face it, if you were a nobody especially if you’re a woman or non-white, you pretty much had to take what you could get in the entertainment industry. Sherry Lansing might have been the head of Paramount but the women writers such as Christy Stratton and Jenny Kilgen of The Amanda Show had to feast on the scraps.
The Ren and Stimpy Show had just failed at Nickelodeon and it needed bigger hits as it had ran out of those reruns of Canadian shows like Out of Control and Today’s Special that obviously looked and felt dated in the 1990s. And the kids had their own hit variety show. But looking back, there are some obvious sexual innuendo and double entendre. Footage of a young Ariana Grande doing outrageous stuff with a potato and water is obviously meant to be something more sexual.
And then there are the pickles with Brian Peck. Gross! Peck, who was reportedly an actor and voice coach played Pickle Boy and he often did vulgar things with pickles such as passing one through a glory hole to guest star Ray Romano who eats it like he’s having an orgasm. While kids watching may have not known what a glory hole was at the time, but it’s so obvious what they’re doing. And they fired Ralph Bakshi in the late 1980s saying he was incorporating drug use in Mighty Mouse.
You’ve probably already heard but Drake Bell gives a very in-depth interview about how he was sexually abused by Peck on an almost regular basis. Also, many actors and celebrities defended Peck than Bell. However, a few have come out in recent years apologizing to the actor/musician. Bell has said the reason he came clean with the abuse he suffered is that his father had blamed himself for allowing it to happen. Bell, himself, has had legal issues. The abuse doesn’t excuse them but it might explain a lot. Bell became popular on two shows (The Amanda Show and Drake & Bell) in which Schneider was involved.
As for Amanda Bynes herself, she’s only featured in archival footage but it’s obvious she had great talent. And it’s a shame she’s struggled with substance abuse and mental health issues. Bynes hasn’t appeared in anything since 2010. But hearing how Schneider was basically around her at all times, it’s possible he may have done something inappropriate. Schneider has denied allegations of a toxic work environment as well as abuse allegations.
The docuseries is four episodes around 45-50 minutes each. But something like this barely scratches the surface. Watching some of the questionable footage of sexual innuendo probably wouldn’t get a PG-13 rating if it was a movie. It’s been reported the MPAA refused to allow the phrase “man chowder” in American Pie when Sean William Scott’s character drinks a beer that another has ejaculated into. And that movie got an R rating. I mean, I like a dirty joke just as the next person, but when it involves a kid in a vulgar way, I turn into Chris Hanson.
The problem is as a society, we’ve sexualized children, especially young girls, which is mentioned here. I’ve always thought Grande was being way too sexualized for her age. And even Bynes was basically being sexualized as soon as puberty hit. There’s some controversy over Schneider allegedly trying to help her get emancipated so she could circumvent child actor labor laws. But I feel there was more to it than work hours. (If you can stomach it, Google how Robert Plant or Ted Nugent were able to get loopholes so they can be with their underage girlfriend. Even Shirley Temple Black says she was the subject of creeps decades ago.)
It’s obvious the issue here is bigger than Nickelodeon. I’ve often been cautious of anyone who wants to be around kids too much, especially youth minsters. While the rumors have spread about Fred Rogers, most of them have been thankfully debunked. But even on sets, children are supposed to have their parents or legal guardians nearby at all time. But there are ways to get around that as some of the child actors on All That recall how their parents were told to leave a meeting room as they were told about Peck.
Although not appearing on camera for an interview, a title card says that Schneider denied the sexual innuendo in the shows stating that Standards and Practices have reviewed all scripts and footage before it went to air. Yeah, but Hollywood is also about looking the other way if you want to eat lunch in that town again. Nickelodeon, like a lot of networks, is owned by business corporate conglomerates. So, are you going to tell billion-dollar industries “No?” Of course not.
Even if some of the skits aren’t vulgar, they are just humiliating in which the cast of All That have to endure a Fear Factor-like show, Figure It Out, where they’re covered in worms. In a very dehumanizing way, one of the black actors says he was covered in peanut butter and had dogs lick it off of him. A lot of this stuff might have looked funny on paper. But on the screen, it looks disgusting and weird.
But you just can’t point the finger at writers and producers, some parents need to have their feet held to the flame. Jeannette McCurdy, who was on iCarly yet another series created by Schneider, has talked about how her mother pushed her into acting. She has since retired to focus more on her music and private life. Kyle Richards has spoken about how her mother pushed her and her older sister, Kim, into acting. Corey Feldman, who has been a strong advocate for exposing the sexual abuse in the entertainment industry, has also said how he was pushed into acting.
Having a child in the entertainment industry takes up a lot of the parent’s time. A lot of them can’t work full-time jobs, so they rely on their children’s salaries. Jason Bateman said both he and his sister, Justine, pretty much brought home the bacon during the 1980s. And even though the Coogan Act prevents parents/legal guardians from squandering everything, there are still loopholes. Feldman, Gary Coleman and Johnny Whitaker, of Family Affair, have spoken out on how most of their earnings were wasted. And now, you’re hearing about how Anna Thompson, aka “Honey Boo Boo,” has claimed that her mother, June Shannon, has misspent her money.
One of my friends from college has been in some movies like Crime Story and Strays (along with her husband and daughter) as well as the Hulu series The Act. Even though people have said her daughter would be a good child actress, she has expressed concern over her daughter’s safety. So, what can the industry do to keep it from happening?
Most people say the #MeToo Movement and “Woke” Culture has gone too far, but you can’t be too cautious when it comes to the safety of children. It wasn’t just Peck and Schneider who were preying on child actors. There’s other people working on the sets featured here who sent nude pictures to young girls. And that’s just one network. I’m sure there are people working for Disney and other major studios who haven’t been caught yet.
The stigmata of coming out to say you’ve been abuse is still something used to humiliate, degrade and embarrass the victim. I’ve covered sex crimes cases in which jurors said they didn’t want to ruin a good person’s life even though the evidence was obvious. The idea of a sexual predator is still based on the stupid Stranger Danger concept. Sexual predators aren’t scraggly men who are frothing at the mouth. They’re clean-cut and well dressed. And they are even women. A lot of times, women target children but it’s still not talked about because of the myth that every middle-school age boy wants to be with an older woman.
It’s going to take a lot of time to get rid of the mindset. Despite his legal troubles, Bell’s history of being abused can’t be overlooked. And most predators target at-risk children so their abuse won’t be as believed if it was an honor student or an all-star athlete. Kenan Thompson who got his start on All That and the spin-off Kenan & Kel has said he didn’t witness any of the toxicity, but has said they need to “investigate more.” A fifth episode is scheduled to air on Investigation Discovery on April 7 focusing more on Bell, reportedly and it will also stream HBO Max.
What do you think? Please comment.