All That: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that gives you the secret histories and little known facts behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. We are your vendors of vital information for your everyday life. My name is Jordan run Tug and I'm Alex Cycle and we are fresh out the box. Stop look and watch. Ready yet, get set, because today we're talking about all that. Yes, children of the nineties retreated to their very own snl a sketch comedy show for us and by us anchoring Nickelodeon's premium block of Saturday night television, much like Saturday Lives Original not ready for prime time players, the o G cast of all that have been enshrined in legend, at least for a certain subsection of millennials. Lauria Bett, Denberg, Josh Server, Katrina Johnson, An, Jelique Bates, A, Lisa Reys, Keenan and Kel plus latecomers like Amanda Binds and Danny Timbarelli all brought us unforgettable characters ere Boy, Super Dude, Repair a Man, That Man, The Island Girls, The Grumpy Coach Creton, the Grumpy er Mavis and Clavis and the awesomely fractured take on Ross Perrot. And let's not forget the big ear of Core and the surreal visual punch line that popped up in almost every episode when you least expected it. Sure, ish Bou the foreign exchange student didn't exactly age particularly well, but I couldn't make it through my high school French class without thinking of Pierre's cargo. And of course there's the loud librarian, Miss hush Bomb, who perfectly embodied the hypocrisy of adults by screaming at others to be quiet. And you know there was a quiet subversion behind the kid friendly jokes on all that, and also the diversity of the cast was nothing short of radical at the time. So, Hi, I go, I gotta ask, what was your relationship like with this show? Um? I feel like I remember Naked Knight being like one of my first media related disappot ointments because sorry, yeah, so I remember like trying to convince my parents to like let me stay up and watch this, and I thought it was gonna be like this epoch changing event and then like the end of it, I was like, oh, that was just TV. And then I think I started watching Frasier, although I do you remember Are You Afraid of the Dark a lot? Okay, whenever we got seventeen thousand pages is to get through us all of WHI should say. I don't remember very much about this show other than repair Man Man Man Man, and that's it. I don't remember any I just remember that echo thing and Keenan killing a bathtub or Keenan it's Keenan, right, kel Keenan always prs cargo. Yeah, just in a bathlor ha ha. Yeah. It's just pronouncing French sentences the way I legitimately did in class when I was trying my hardest, Yeah, which is when my teacher would have me read for her amusement at the end of class. And that's why I have a complex around speaking French to this day. Yeah. I personally loved all that because, in addition to just pure entertainment, it gave me a certain degree of encouragement because I was really in the comedy as a young kid, and I watched SNL and Kids in the Hall a lot, but for me, it was all about Monty Python and SNL got to me first, and that just sort of established the standards of sketch comedy, and then Monty Python just seemed to just break every single rule. It was so bizarre and surreal, and whenever you have experience with art that moves you, especially when you're a kid, you want to try your hand at making it yourself. And seeing these kids and all that and made me think, oh, it's possible because they're doing it. So this led to a lot of afternoons where I'd borrow my parents camcorder and film little sketches and at first they were just restaging and Monty Python skits, which I knew all of them by heart. There's probably at least ninety minutes of me singing the Lumberjack song somewhere in my parents house. And then I would branch into some of my own little original ideas and they were mostly terrible, but it was probably some of the first creative writing I ever did, which led me to writing plays in high school and then going to college for screenwriting and then eventually working as a professional writer. So all that had a big impact on me personally. So yeah, I'm really excited to talk about this today. When we get around to uh doing just shoot Me, I'll talk about how much that one meant to me it really, I was a weird kid, dude, I like skipped over like most children's entertainment and went straight to like middle browse sitcom's like Will and Grace Just Shoot Me and Frasier. I was seriously watching the like week night, it was like the Simpsons after homework hour, and then it was like the B Network Prime to But I never watched Seinfeld, never watched Friends. I exclusively watched the not hits. Oh well, I mean, as the reason I corrected you about the Nick and Knight thing was that was almost all I ever watched. Were like, well, I also watched old stuff. Yeah, um, yeah, I do remember watching a lot of that as well. But all right, let's get into it. Yes, this is just an introduction before we blow your mind. The show is too much information and we do it all the time, or at least two days a week. And in today's episode, we're gonna talk about the Oscar winner who has passed over for a spot on the show, the historic natural disaster that nearly wrecked the pilot, the time Chris Farley destroyed an entire set, and the single take Dandy timber Elli's awkward incident with Britney Spears, the unusual origins of Good Burger, the mild backstage drama with the cast, and the slightly less mild drama behind Keenan and Kell's temporary split, and a surprisingly touching story about that big ear of corn. Here's everything you didn't know about all that. So before we talk about all that, we have to talk about its predecessor, in the realm of kids sketch shows. You can't do that on television, And to paraphrase Stephen Hawking, we must get into a brief history of slow Time. So this Canadian produced comedy aired on Nickelodeon early in its existence from n and it had a lot of crossover with the sixties sketch show Rowan and Martin's Laughing. Yes Yes. It's probably most famous now for starring a young Goldie Hawn who played the role of a ditzy, bikini clad dancer with flower power phrases written all over her body, and Sharpie and Richard Nixon also made a guest appearance. The sixties folks Um Laughing had this segment called the Joke Wall, which was this wall of little doors that would pop open and cast members would lean out and deliver. They're often very cringe e one liners. You Can't Do That on Television had a similar running bit where people would pop out of lockers and do these old handy vaudeville style jokes and also laughing. Star Ruth Buzzy was on the cast as well. And you know who else appeared on You Can't Do That on Television? A very young Atlantis more set what about Twain? Um? I don't think that Canadian diamond selling superstar appeared on uh Slean Dion though. So, in addition to paving the way for all that's youth based sketch comedy, You Can't Do That on Television was also notable for pioneering Nickelodeon's iconic green slime, which would come pouring down from the heavens onto whichever poor cast made had just uttered the trigger phrase I don't know, you know. Whenever anyone said I don't know on the show, they'd have slime dumped on them, and cast members reportedly didn't like getting slimed, even though they sometimes get an extra fee for the hassle. Occasionally they try to change their lines during taping to avoid saying the dreaded I don't know phrase, for example, instead of saying I don't know, one castmate said insufficient data, but the slime gods are cruel and dumped on her anyway. And you know, it's understandable that people hated getting slimed because it was authentically pretty gross, especially in the early days. According to the incredible book Climbs and Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age by Matthew Clickstein, the creators If You Can't Do That on Television originally had something way more disgusting than mere slime. They had collected buckets of leftover food from the studio cafeteria and added water and planned to dump that on the cast, But the production of the show was delayed for a week, and by the time they shot the scene, the bucket of soggy leftovers had grown rotten and moldy and turned green, but they dumped it on the actors anyway. Executives of the network were horrified, but the audience response was tremendous, so they ultimately wrote an entire episode about this rotten food sludge, and amazingly, they kept this as rotten food for a time until the cast basically revolted or like, stop doing this to us. This is a violation of all sorts of health and safety rules. So for a time the recipe was altered to cottage cheese and green food coloring, which also spoiled very quickly under the hot studio lights, so it was basically just as bad. Finally, the slime recipe was switched to a mixture of lime, green gelatin powder, oatmeal, and water, and eventually they also added baby shampoo to the mix of the slime, with wash out of the actor's hair more easily, after several of the female cast members complained, uh Nickelodeon later marketed slime shampoo, which I don't remember, but that's a really good idea. You can still buy it really, Is it like on eBay or is it new? No? I just googled it. But apparently the use of slime on TV sketch shows actually predates you can't do that on television like most things. It was first done back in the sixties on a British show called Not Only but Also, which is hosted by Dudley Moore, who later became a star in the United States in Ten and Arthur and other movies, and Peter Cook and they're both tightens. A British comedy John Lennon guessed it on this show in the sixties. The show is a big deal and they had a recurring bit called poets Corner where a guest would be challenged to deliver an impromptu bit of poetry while dangled over a vat of slime, which is called gunge in the UK. I hate that. Yeah, it sounds obscene. Yeah, driving the wrong side of the road and they call slime gunge. But the guests are challenged to deliver poetry off the top of their head, but any use of repetition, hesitation or deviation from the theme of the poem and the result in the speaker being dropped into this vat of slime dunk tank style, and you can't do that on television. Was a Canadian production, so maybe they were aware of this British show being part of the Commonwealth. So anyway, all this to say, slime has a rich televisual history, but it became most identified with Nickelodeon, where it cropped up on shows like Doubledare and in their advertising campaign and probably most famously in the iconic Slime Guys are Outside of Nickelodeon's studios in Orlando, and you can't do that on elevision, and the production in and the reruns continue to air on Nickelodeon. Throughout the early nineties, they were eager to have some form of replacement sketch show Enter All That. Yes, All That was created by mostly by two stars from the sitcom Head of the Class, which ran for five years from one on ABC. There was Dan Schneider who played the character Dennis Blunden, and Brian Robbins played the character Eric Martian. Uh. Neither of those mean anything to either of us, but both of these guys would go on to become big movers and shakers in the TV world. Uh. Brian Robbins worked on Smallville, One Tree Hill, cousin Skeeter, something called Sonny with a Chance. What's that? It's like a kid show, It's like okay? Uh, And directed Varsity Blues, The Perfect Score, Hardball with Giana Reeves. Wasn't that the other edgy baseball movie? There's one with Freddie Prince Jr. Right Summer Catch with Matthew Lillard. Anyway, we'd star with him and Scooby Doo Shaggy. If I recall yes, well this Guy Shaggy Dog remake with Tim Allen obviously would go on to do HEILM Good Burger and uh nor Bit famously said by Brian Wilson is his favorite movie and he's currently head of Paramount with an astounding C minus record. Like that, rose to the head of a class, Dan Schneider became the king of Nickelodeon for just over a decade with a much better track record. Need created and produced not just all that, but the spin off the Amanda Show, Drake and Josh Zoe one oh one with Jamie Lynn Spears, I Carle with Miranda Crossroads, Victoria's Victoria Justice, Any Young Ariana Grande, Sam and kat Henry Danger Game Shakers, The Adventures of Kid Danger. But during these guys time a head of the class, they started to branch out of acting. Um they wrote an episode of the show and we're subsequently invited to direct it. And also around this time they were invited to co host the second annual Kids Choice Awards with Tony Danza and Debbie Gibson. Because this was what do you expect? What was this big? In eighty eight, Metallica guns and wrote, oh yeah, Axel must not have been available. Can you imagine Axel getting slimed and he like punches out a child. Uh. The awards ceremony that he was produced by i'l be hecked. Uh he you know, hits it off with Brian and Dan and the three of them are discussing the possibility of making a new show for Nickelodeon, but uh, they kind of had to do it on the hush hush because Dan and Brian were still in a contract to ABC. So flash forward a few years head of the classes over, Brian Robbins is producing low budget sports documentaries with a friend of his name, Michael Tollin. Dan Schneider is, uh, you know, he's what we referred to as a jobber. That's not what we've heard of that job or as arrest term for the people who lose to wrest wrestlers who are on their way up the ranks. He's a gigging actor. And this guy I'll be hecked is now head of development at nick I'll be calls Dan and Brian and says, all right, sit comes over, you're free. Do you guys want to make that show? And all three of these guys were fans of sketch comedy like SNL the Carol Burnett Show SCTV, and apparently they all bonded over a love of laughing. So they hit upon the idea of creating a sketch show for children, but harder than you'd think, since the material has to be both kid friendly and funny. And you know, as anyone will tell you, you gotta work blue from the big last, nothing's funny like profanity. As I will tell you on this show, executive make Lorie Beth Dinburgh use a slur unlike you can't do that on television, which followed in the almost Vaudevillian tradition of Carol Burnett and Laughing or Snow, which had a social commentary topical aspect to it. All that was designed to reflect the growing popularity of what let's euphemistically call urban culture in the nineties. In Living Color is probably the big success around this time, right yeah yeah. Hip hop is ascendant, um and Brian Robbins is a a fan of this kind of stuff. He had just directed a hip hop documentary called The Show. He was friends with people like Russell Simmons, which had Coulio did the Fani I completely forgot that no tl C did the thing. Yeah, my memories of this are shot. Um, you know, you obviously have graffiti, you have this sort of garage esque set, and apparently that a lot of this stuff was scripted with a lot of input from kids on the show. The collaboration between the cast and the writers was so central to the show that the producers actually cast the show before they even wrote the pilot, which is anyone with even a surface level understanding of television will tell you is asked backwards. But Nickelodeon cast a wide net searching for the talent for all that. Yes, the auditions were a painstaking process that went on for several months across the entire country, and the kids that they found were all unknownst at the time, save for Keenan Thompson, that perennial sketch comedy overachiever, who by this point had already appeared in the Mighty Duck sequel D two as the character Russ Tyler. It's truly insane how long this guy's been in the game. We'll talk about this later, but the process of casting for all That wasn't just exhausting for the producers, but for the prospective cast. Josh Server recalls that he was called in close to ten times and asked to create his own original characters and unique impressions, which for a fourteen year old is a tough thing to do, and he later admitted that he was basically just ripping off Jim Carey for the whole first season of the show, which if you watch some of his characters that tracks. They found Josh in Chicago along with Kel Mitchell, who was then just a sophomore in high school. Keil had a rough time during those auditions because they were held during his mid terms, and cramming both for his tests and also for his monologue became too much, and when the time came to audition, he totally froze, and to make matters worse, as he slunk off stage, he tripped over some chords and knocked over some cameras, but he played it off like a bit of Inspector Cluseau's style slapstick that amused the producers, which bought him a second chance, and they asked him to do some impressions and he launched into interpretations of his old uncles, which helped get him the gig, and I guess making fun of family members was a common approach during auditions. Alsa Reas says that her mom literally told her, let's think of different people in the family you can make fun of, and I give you permission make fun of me too if you have to, and she got the gig. Alsa has a really interesting background, attending the Professional Performing Arts School in New York City alongside Claire Danes, Brittney Spears, and Alicia Keys, and Laura Bett Denburgh has much humbler ambitions. She told my Space for their Garganta or All History by Stephen J. Horowitz and Jill Menzie that she auditioned quote as a lark after winning a high school drama competition which happened to be attended by All That producers. Angelique Bates, I Love this so much was spotted at a theater competition by the creator of Unsolved Mysteries, who recommended her to an agent that got her the All That audition, and she also claimed that she auditioned ten times, later saying they had us doing improv sketches, all kinds of stuff. I went in fully dressed as Steve or Cale. I guess she did an rcle impression that was her big show stopper Keenan Thompson, on the other hand, said he had a very different experience. Quote, I didn't really audition. He's talking to Complex for their massive Earle history, and I had a meeting with the producers in their office and kicked my feet up on their desk and was like, what can I do for you guys? But I guess they were impressed because they hired me, thus kicking off a theme of boys apparently getting preferential treatment on the show, which we'll get too later. But then again, he was an old pro he had D two under his belt. Uh A. Lisa Reas brings up the point that the producers were very intent on having an odd number of cast mates, since I guess that sketch troop tradition. SNL had seven for the first season, and Living Color had nine, Monty Python had five performers plus Terry gilliam as an animator, Kiss and All had five. I think SETV had eleven, so I guess the producers were adamant about having seven cast members to mirror the original SNL not ready for prime time players, so I just think that's interesting. And finally, in early they had the O g crew lined up Angelique Bates, Laurie Beth Denberg, Katrina Johnson, Kel mitchell A, Lisa Reus, Josh Server, and Keenan Thompson. But one person who did not make the cut was actress Ama Stone. She tried out at the age of just twelve years old, and she recently revisited this rejection during an appearance on The Tonight Show. For her auditions, she showcased three original characters, including a demonically possessed babysitter and a cheerleader who couldn't spell what she used cheering, which I actually think it is pretty funny. And though she didn't get the gig Emmastone says she remembers the event fawn like, telling Jimmy Fallon auditioning was a pretty special experience. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Too much information in just a moment. So once the actors were chosen as all That's main cast, it was time to film the pilot episode. She should have been fairly straightforward, right, but then God intervened. But she was scheduled for January, the day of the north Ridge earthquake in Los Angeles. This is apparently the day of I've seen a mix of both, but I believe it was the morning of the night that they were supposed to shoot the pilot in Orlando, and a lot of people were based in l a and they had to fly out of there. And this earthquake was one of the most forceful quakes in American history. The rumbles were felt as far away as Las Vegas and Phoenix, so that's pretty far. Fifty seven people were killed, more than nine thousand people injured, and property damage was estimated to be close to fifty billion dollars, making it one of the costliest natural disasters in US history. And north Ridge was where Laurie beck Denburgh lived, and she later said, luckily no one I knew got hurt, but the city shut down, so I really thought I lost my shot. I ended up taking a red eye flight to Orlando. Once I got there, I headed straight to the studio after being up all night and feeling so shaken. Then we jumped right into the read through, and this was before the age of cell phones, and one of the producers recalled getting a message at the hotel that just said, your wife called to say she and your daughter are fine. Which is a terrifying message to receive. And I guess it coused a minor rift in his family because he didn't fly home. I can imagine. So anyway, as I said, filming for the pilot took place in January in Orlando. Then came an agonizing six month limbo period when no one heard anything. Apparently, the pilot for All That tested extremely poorly with focus groups, and Nickelodeon were not jazzed about the project. But then the president of Nickelodeon, a woman by the name of Geraldine Laybourne, watched the All That pilot and loved it. She said something like, this show is great. We picked it up. Yet let's make it so. The show debuted on April six, and the pilot aired as a one off special. It's kind of what they call backdoor pilot, where they put something on air, engage the response. If it does well, they order a series. Ratings want sky high. They were good to go. Everyone was flown back to Orlando get cracking on new episodes for a full season. And it's worth reiterating that the first two seasons of All That were taped at the iconic Nickelodeon studios on our Land and though located inside the Universal Studios theme park, which is a pretty sweet deal for a bunch of teens and tweens. Whenever there was downtime in the production, the cast would sneak into the park and ride the rides for free and eat a bunch of junk food. The e T Ride was apparently a favorite, as was the Terminator three D ride. Josh Server later said, we'd cut the lines and piss everyone off, and then at night, after taping wraps, they cruise over to Disney World, which is also in Orlando, and catch the fireworks shows and it's pretty awesome. Laurie Bette Denburgh would later tell ABC News it was like living in a big theme park. It was like being at college and on vacation all at once, but unfortunately working in a theme park cut both ways. Since guided Nickelodeon Studio tours were also part of the attractions, so guests would watch the cast not only when they recorded the episodes, but also as they got prepared. They would watch the cast through glass walls, not unlike a fish bowl, and Josh Server recalls moments when they were getting their makeup applied and there would just be a series of Strange was walking boys staring at them and after all that second season wrapped. The remainder of the series we shot at Nickelodeon on Sunset in Hollywood, so I guess they probably didn't have that problem there. But aside from these little hiccups, it basically ruled. Angelique Bates had her thirteenth birthday on the set and the producers brought out Da Brat, her favorite rapper as a surprise, which I love. In addition to the rappers and musical guests, will run down more of those later. Uh, impressive roster. Celebrity guests came through all that. Malcolm Jamal Warner from The Cosby Show, Tyra Banks, Larrissa O, Lanik Sherman, Helmsley, John Luguiziamo, Kobe Bryant, and Jermaine Duprie, who we don't talk about because I once tried to book him for a filmed interview segment on the H one and the bailed day of and I had the pale whole camera crew. Anyway, we don't talk about Jamaine dupris, okay, right, but your favorite is Chris Farley, who you know, a childhood heart, a good bridge but Tween, SNL and all that. Yeah, I think besides Keenan, I think he was the only member of SNL to actually appear on All That Like Kids, SNL and Yeah. And he appeared on a special edition of the Cooking with Randy sketch in which Keenan Thompson plays a chef obsessed with chocolate, which every sketch end it was some kind of explosion of chocolate all over the set. Uh. And for this particular sketch, he faced off with Farley, who was playing a chef with a similar fixation on Catchup and people were not prepared for Hurricane Farley. According to Josh Server, the bit was filmed in one take thanks to Chris Farley. He said, quote he knew they would make him do it over and over again, so he went out there and literally trashed the stage. It was the messiest thing I had ever seen, and he made it impossible for the production team to reset for another take. Yeah, these kids were champs. The first rule of sketch comedy is never break. No matter what happens, you just keep going, And this got tough for Josh Server. Once during a scene where Danny tim Barelli was supposed to smash a dinner plate onto his head. And normally the prop people like score the bottom of the plate so that it shadows instantly, but I guess it's time. They didn't do it right, so the kid gets smashed on the head with the plate for real, and apparently the stage managers in the wings mouth thing like keep going, keep going, and he did just incredible. Good lord, this is not just child abuse. The Nickelodeon story is just like it's the machinery of Nickelodeon is oiled with the blood of children. We'll touch on that later. Yeah, as you mentioned earlier, the kids were heavily involved in the writing of this show, and like most sketch comedy, uh, it was just shot at a pace that would make your average racing greyhound blush. Um. The scripts would be delivered to the kids the night before the read through. They would come in the next day with voices personalities that they've worked out, which these are children. Katrina Johnson later said, doing sketch comedy is like doing ten sit comes a day each week, because everything is set up like its own TV show and camera and sound and all this stuff, and you could just do it over and over but in the early seasons of the show, the writers and producers were a little more involved. They helped the kids create their own characters. A Lisa Reyas said they were times in creative meetings when the adults in the room would ask the kids hey, do you have any ideas? Or we have an idea for a character, but how would you make it work. Amount of responsibility they gave these kids it's pretty mind blowing. Yeah, hey, you with the concussion after we broke a dinner, played over your head. Finished writing this character for me? Uh. Josh Server talks about coming up with how he thought the character Detective Dan should be, and then the producers helped him tweaked it. Uh. He later said, I truly believe we had more creative control than any kids in television. Maybe ever, they really gave us a lot more leeway to improvise. He was the only original cast member to stay through the first six seasons. Other than Detective Dan, he played Jimmy Bond Agent one seven. Is that what it is? I think that's medium funny and any kibbits, But his most famous creation arguably ear Boy. He said that character will live with me for the rest of my life. It doesn't matter where I go or what I do. When I win my oscar god willing, they're going to show a climp of ear Boy. Sure, Josh, unless you win it for playing here boy. That's not really how that works. But the gritty earboy story, yeah, ear boy begins. Uh. Kel Mitchell also felt that way he would tell Complex the writers were awesome. They allowed us to be creative and encourage improv and ad liming. And it was in those such a moment that Kel came up with the voice of Ed from Good Burger. Uh. He told the l A Times that we've been playing around with what he called the wild dude type voice since he was eight years old watching professional wrestling. That's bizarre to me, I like you, I thought that he was doing a surfer voice. Uh. And this was his interpretation of the voices that pro wrestlers would use. That doesn't make any fight interviews where they're like, you know the professional wrestler was he? I guess I'm thinking of like macho man, Brandy Savage, like screaming about oh yeah, and like okay, whatever, man, We're sure kel uh. He first used the voice on the show while playing a pizza delivery guy. The audience loved it, and so the writers created a skit based around the voice, which became Good Burger. And Kel was also responsible for the giving the character the hairstyle. He told the A V. Club, I remember I went to the hair room and I saw these early Brandy nineties Millie Vanilly braids. I put those on and it came to life. Another one of his characters, Coach Creton, was based on a gym teacher you had in high school who was mean about everything. He told the story about a Valentine's Day when kids were talking before class. Oh look, I got a car. Shut up, there's no love play volleyball. That's rough man, all of these sucking balls at them. Every single child actor had a horrible childhood. Ye, And that leads us into a sidebar about Dan Schneider. Um, well, let's start with the slightly cute part, or at least the not devastating part. First. The collaborative atmosphere on all that was fostered by co creator and head writer Dan Schneider, who was the frequent victim of pranks by Katrina Johnson, who was the baby of the cast. She was not quite fourteen. In the show debut, I guess there was an article and TV guy that wants described her as a talented seven year old boy, which made her quote in her words, a piste off fourteen year old curl, and she was sort of the hellion around the set. She's most famous to me for playing Ross Peroul on the show, one of the few instances of all that veering at the topical territory, mostly because the man was a human cartoon. But Katrina took great delight in sneaking onto sets of other shows that were taping at Nickelodeon's studios, Walt dressed and her Ross Perol outfit and prosthetics, and in her words, running around on set and hiding in places and attacking people, just freaking them out because this tiny old man was popping out of some weird places, which I fully support. But she also had a running gag with Dan Schneider involving Hooters. I'll just quote directly from the complex or all history. Everyone used to go to Hooters in Orlando. That was the spot. This is somebody who is in her early teens at the time, So I won't anyway, I would leave all these love notes on Hooters memorabilia for Dan Schneider everywhere. It would be like underwear assigned calendar, a lip print on a napkin, and stuff like that. One day, at the end of the season, I followed it up with a paternity suit, like fake papers, getting a fake paternity suit from a teenager. Um it is interesting because there's some controversy surrounding this man, Dan Schneider, and it involves underage girls and rumors involving paternity. I will tread lightly for legal reasons. Um So. Dan Schneider has been described as the Norman Lear of children's television, which is a pretty great compare. Norman Lear created a string of hit shows in the seventies, many spinning off from one another. All in the Families spun off into The Jefferson's Archie Bunker's Place, and Maud Maud itself spun off into Good Times, a bunch of shows. Dan Schneider is a similar television fractal All that spun off into Keenan and Kell and The Amanda Show with Amanda Bindes, who also started another one of his shows, What I Like About You on the w B. He also created Zoey one on one with another all that veteran Jamie Lynn Spears, Britney Spears's sister. Then you have I Carle and Victorious, which led to the crossover show Sam and Cat plus Drake and Josh Henry Danger Game Shakers, all huge shows that are created, produced, and written by this one guy. Dan Schneider's incredibly prolific. His twenty plus year reign as Nickelodeon's live action Golden Boy ended in March when he parted ways with the company under shadowy circumstances. There's speculation that Nickelodeon encouraged him the back out of his formal contract for a seven million dollar payoff. Schneider said this was just a mutual parting of the ways and the network refused to comment any further, but the timing of this, just months after the Me Too reckoning struck many as suspicious, especially considering the vast majority of these shows that he created, wrote and produced starred teenage girls. Again, there's the two shows with them and the bines. Zoe one oh one had Jamie Lynn Spears, I Carly had Marina Cosgrove and Janet McCurdy, Victorious, Victoria Justice and a young Ariana Grande, as did Sam and Cat. There are numerous pictures out there of Dan posing with these young women on the set of his shows, with what appears to be genuine fear in their eyes, and he reportedly took home videos of these underage actors hanging out around the set. I have not seen these, but reportedly the actor's body language changes abruptly at the sight of Dan Schneider and his camera. The outlet Deadline Hollywood reported that there were complaints about Schneider's alleged behavior, including his alleged quote well documented temper issues for years, and his tweets showing photos of his young actress's feet. Oh boy, and this brings us to the foot thing. A disproportionate number of the plot lines in his shows, for which again he is the writer for many of these involve young girls and feet. Frankly, it makes Quentin Tarantino look like an amateur. There have been numerous threads on Twitter and many YouTube compilation videos over the years that have assembled an astounding number of scenes and jokes involving feet. There are episodes where characters touch each other's feet, draw on their feet, and pour ketchup on their feet. There's an entire episode of Victorious centers around everyone using toxic fish to make their feet smooth, and adults will rub the children's feet and go, wow, that's so smooth. There's another scene on one of his shows where a barefoot Ariana Grande attempts to put her entire toe into her mouth. There's an episode of another show where the characters try to shoot bow and arrows with their feet. There's an episode of I Car Really where an apparently nude Miranda Cosgro of luxury. It's in a bubble bath until she gets her toes stuck into a faucet, which is actually a Dick van dug show reference. Moving on, it gets weirder when you head over to Twitter. Deadline reported that Dan Schneider's official show accounts would share photos of young actresses toes in the form of a quiz. He posted a photo of Jeanette McCurdy's quote very unusual toes and encourage Twitter followers to name her toes. In the social media account for the show Sam and Cat starring Jeanette McCurdy and Ariana Grande, encourage fans to write the show's hashtag on the bottom of their feet. And post the photo in the comments. This tweet is still alive, and in recent years many adult men have posted photos of their own feet with Dan Schneider as a pedophile written in sharpie. There's an anonymous Reddit poster that claimed, quote, I grew up in l A. It was an extra on The Amanda Show A few times. Dan Schneider paid me a hundred bucks to tickle my feet in between takes. He asked me if I was ticklish, and I said no, then he bet me a hundred bucks he could make me ticklish. I was expecting him to reach over and tickle me under my arm or something like that, but he led me to his office. I basically got paid to receive a foot massage and a lot of compliments. Schneider, for his part, has responded these foot fetish allegations. In an interview with The New York Times given three years after he left Nickelodeon, he said he was well aware of these compilations all of his foot scenes and called the accusations that he has a fetish for preteen feet quote ridiculous and that the comedy was quote totally innocent. He added kids fine feet, goofy and funny, and there is no effort to sexualize my young stars. But there are some weird moments. There's a moment in Victorious where Ariana Grande, age sixteen, writhes around in bed in a low cut top and douses herself with water. There's another scene when she's forced to crawl on her hands and knees towards a character, And still another where a guy shoves her head under a table. It trust me, it just looks bad. Uh. And still there's a seam where Already shakes a potato up and down vigorously while screaming, give up the juice. Mhm. The website babe dot com also cites examples of questionable jokes from Dan Schneider's slate of children's shows, seemingly referencing boys having sex with vacuum cleaners, and I've seen girls if they want to get slapped with a sausage. It's also a bit of dialogue from an I Car the episode entitled Eyeballs, in which a character says, I want to wash my hands. They smell like clams. Oh you had clams. No, there's a wire reference in one of those that I've seen. What really? Yeah, I think there's a spitball. There's like an episode where they're fighting with spitballs or something and one of them references a line or um. One of the characters in the Wire gets killed by a friend of theirs and he says something like, how does my hair look good? And he says, your hair looks good and I need shoots her in their head. Uh. And I believe they just recite that line, reading word for word in I cartley. I'm pretty sure it's just the shooting. Um. Have you seen the Wire? No? But I mean, what what do they shoot? It's spitballs? Are No, they're playing Assassin? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah you've seen that. No, I know the game Assassin. Though. Yeah. They do a whole riff on one of the most famous Wire villains getting killed. Bizarre, not for stuff, but still weird. Yes. There is an anonymous comment posted on a blind item website called Crazy Days and Nights, which people in the entertainment gossip industry in the early twenty tents may remember that called Dan Schneider quote a monster and quote the worst pedophile alive. This comment are under the name him, which a bunch of m's got a lot of press in places like Jezebel, because a lot of people were speculating that it was actually Robert Downey Jr. His rep says it isn't. This is a whole other thing for you to google. But it's fascinating and sad and equal measure this him. Commenter on this blind item website had a lot of long comments with some pretty explosive claims about Hollywood. Google it. I'm talking now, um, But yeah, there's a theory that Robert Downey Jr. Was calling Dan Schneider a monster in the Worst Pedophile Live for legal reasons, I should say that's on substantiate um. Anyway. I know I'm getting deep into infoil hat territory here, But there's a long standing rumor that Dan Schneider is the father of Jamie Lynn Spears baby, born when she was a teen acting on his show Zoe One on One. Officially, her boyfriend Casey Aldridge claimed to be the father of the baby, but there are some who say that they were on an on off period for a few years and this kid took a payoff to act as the father of Jamie Lynn's baby. Jamie Lynn herself has never commented. In fact, she praises Dan Schneider in her memoir Things I Should Have Said, which is published earlier this year. In interestingly, another one of Dan Schneider's stars, Janette McCurdy, who appeared in both I Carly and the Salmon Cat spinoff, published a memoir this summer, actually just a few weeks ago, that painted a damning portrait of her experience with Nickelodeon. She didn't name Dan Schneider directly, but she claimed that a figure known as Quote the Creator, pressured her to drink alcohol while under age and gave her an unwanted shoulder massage. She further claimed that Nickelodeon tried to buy her silence, and Dan Schneider was indeed the creator of both the shows. Did you mention what the memoir was called? I know I did not. Would you care to take us there? It's call I'm Glad my Mom died. Yeah. She's on the cover holding an urn with UM confetti spelling out of it. Yeah. It's been making a lot of headlines lately. Check it out if you are so inclined UM In a few days before we actually taped this episode in late August, Zoe one on One co star Alexa Nicolas staged a protest outside of Nickelodeon's headquarters in Burbank, California, alleging that she and fellow child actors, presumably including Jamie Lynn Spears, the star of the show, were quote not safe during the time working on Zoe one on one. So that's all very interesting. There's lots of smoke, but very little fire. The New York Times reported in one that Nickelodeon's decision to cut ties with Dan Schneider after more than twenty years of hits came after an internal investigation, which uncovered no evidence of sexual misconduct, but however, the in house investigation determined that he was verbally abusive on his sets, difficult to work with, and quote prone to tantrums and angry emails. When asked about the allegations, Schneider defended his work and said that if people found the to be hard to work with, it was because he maintained quote high standards as a showrunner. And he also denied that he had improper relationships with children, saying I couldn't and I wouldn't have had long term friendships and continued loyalty from so many reputed people if I had mistreated by actors of any age, especially minors. And getting back to all that, I haven't come across any complaints from any members of the cast of that show. Well, we don't know what the NDAs were like anyway, Uh, palate cleanser, vital information with Lorie Beth Denburgh your favorite all that sketch and why not? Yeah, the Weekend Updated. I also remember this actually, and uh, you know, much like Jeffy Chase is the anchor in Weekend Update, and basically that's, you know, one of the ways in which his name started becoming foisted down America's gullet. That's sort of what happened to Laurie Beth and he intro of the segment. They would always say her name, so she got the most name condition I do remember, just I for some of that cadence of her name is like seared into my behind my eyeballs. But you love Laurie Beth, you love, you love, you love Laurie Beth. Yeah, I feel a kinship with her because, like me, she was always stuck playing adult roles when she was a kid, which I was also in that position when I was doing high school drama because I looked as I do now at age thirty four. When I was sixteen, so like we did, I love Lucy. In our high school drama program, I was fred. I was always I was always the creepy adult. Yeah, so I feel kinship too because she always had to play the adult roles on this but she was one of the oldest players in the show, and some of the cast members have referred to her as the fun police because she was the grown up in the room. Um. She left the show in the age of twenty two because she was feeling that she was too old to do it. Um. She's not to roles in Malcolm in the Middle, Steve Harvey Show, as well as Dodd Ball, something called eighteen Fingers of Death. What is that? Alright? Thought you would know, and of course Good Burger. She supplements her acting income these days by working as a copywriter at an ad agency and also a wedding officiant. Laurie Beth Thinburg is available to dispense vital information for your your your Biggest Day. Um. She explains how she landed this unusual gig on her official website. She says it started as a joke when a friend I've had since the first grade decided to get married. They weren't very religious and couldn't decide on efficient so I jokingly volunteered. She got ordained through the Universal Life Church and the rest, as they say, is history, and that is um. Universal Life Church is famous for dispensing uh doctor Dohunter s Thompson right, doctor Hunter Thompson, and you can legally marry people through them, she told ABC News. I wrote a whole specialized ceremony for them, and people just loved it. They said, this is so great, you should offer this service. So I took their advice and today she offers personalized, quirky weddings, val renewals, and commitment ceremonies for couples looking for something a little bit different, a little less sterile, and a little more fun. As she says on her site, if you want a wedding off the beaten track, just email me, she said, is her favorite thing to do. UM and if you're interested in her favorite all that sketches. She was a fan of Mrs hush Bomb the Loud Librarian, but her least favorite sketch was Vital Information which shatters an illusion. She said she worked very hard in getting the tone exactly right so that she could nail the dry newscaster Timber and she was third in line to host the bit. She said it was Kell was originally given the role, but he was overloaded with sketches in the first few episodes. A Lisa Riaz says she was offered the vital information desk, and then when she was cast as Kiki in the Island Girl sketch, Lori Beth got the gig and now we must come into the the gender drama at the heart of all that. Josh Server has talked about the sense of competition that was present within the cast, saying, all that was just this creative environment that encouraged us to improvise and be ourselves, and being around Keenan Thompson and Lorie Beth made you, as a performer, want to elevate your game. We were coming in every day and every week forming friendships, but also just trying to make each other laugh in a fun competitive environment and trying to get bits on the show. But both Alisa Riyah's and Angelique Bates had said that all that, at least in the early season, was something of a boys club. Angelique said the boys were always the favorite. Nickelodeon always pushed the boys. That was one of the things that kind of sucked. Girls fell to the wayside a little bit. There's always the ups and downs of the network. It's never a smooth ride, and in a separate interview, she added, in the beginning, the show favored the boys a little more. I feel we had to kind of fight as women for the roles that we played in conjunction with continuing to have that creativity. But three of the women from the original cast, Katrina Johnson, Alissa Reyas and Angel League Bates have all kept in touch and reunited for comedy sketches on bates YouTube channel under the acronym a k A. Three of the women, and that Lloyd Beth was not involved with that. And I hope there's nothing. There's nothing weird there. Mh. We'll get to the bottom of it finding blind items on Reddit. Um. But you know, despite this, you know, comedy is a boys club, especially sketch comedy on a big network TV. I mean, this is exactly what they talked about with SNL poor GUILDA. But this show was still undoubtedly groundbreaking for being one of the most diverse shows on TV in the mid nineties, at least far as sketch comedy is concerned. I mean, just look at Seinfeld and Friends without His Friends taking place in New York. Not a single person of color on that show for seventy thousand seasons, versus shows like Martin Living Single, or even the disparity between S and L and Living Color. I mean this tell levision was segregated. But the original cast of All That included four young women and three boys, three white performers, four performers of color. The season of Saturday Night Live running that same year had a cast of seventeen, of which only four were women and only two were people of color, and a piece written for Zora on Medium, Branda Holt cites All That as the most racially and gender inclusive show on Nickelodeon during its era. Riya's Who's of Dominican, Irish and Italian descent, later said, when I got off the plane and saw the cast was such a melting pot. It made me happy because I knew there was going to be a little boy and girl out there that could relate to us. Also, it's important to know the kids looked their own age. M piece by writer Jake Flanagan in the Atlantic called the quiet radicalism of All That. He wrote, the kids who were refreshingly normal looking absent were the hyperactive, over costumed Disney Channel tweens Lizzie McGuire, or the pouty, brooding twenty year olds playing sixteen on the WB like Dawson's Creek or popular. The cast of All That reflected the nature of its audience. They were growing up, lanky, limbs, zits and all, and in order to cater to this diverse audience, the producers of All That shows a theme tune and musical guests that would reflect this. The title song was famously recorded by TLC, who got tapped for the job after they appeared as the very first musical guests and the pilot episode, and they hit it off the cast and jumped at the chance to do the song. Band member Roseanne the Chili Thomas later said it was as if we had known the cast members forever, especially Keenan and Kale, because they kind of reminded us of ourselves. Alizarea said that left Eye took a ribbon out of one of her hair braids and gave it to her while taping the pilot, which is adorable. She treasures it to this day. It belongs in a museum. All that was crucial to introducing kids to hip hop and R and B, booking acts that some, including network executives, were too adult for the kids. Slot. Producer Brian Robbins consulted with his young relatives on these musical bookings, but they often drew complaints from the network. Brass As you'd later say, Nickelodeon thought it was crazy. They were like, why do we have to use rap music. Of course, when all that's ratings took off, these exacts changed their tune. The lineup for their guests is really insane, and it is how I learned about so many R and B and hip hop artists. You have a Leah Usher, Faith Evans run DMC tribe called quest Nas with Sherman Helmsley as his lead in Busta Rhymes, Mary J. Blige, ll Cool J, Miss Elliott, Destiny's Child Boys, Demand Outcast, Coolio, Erica Badou to name but a few. Their guests were amazing, and Stephen Rifkin, who was then the president and CEO of Loud Records, praised all that in an interview with Billboard Magazine, saying all that is one of television's only forums for rap and hip hop artists since the demise of The Arsenio Hall Show. However, the musical guests did create a rare bit of drama within the cast. Katrina Johnson told Complex as far as tension, I don't think there was any in the original cast unless there was a real sexy performer. That maybe one cast member one at the date, but another cast member actually went on a date with that person, and that may have happened twice. Thankfully, she laughed this off. It's unclear who the culprit was, but Angelique Bates has talked about how her attempts to get close to one performer were apparently thwarted by her smell. She started, Yeah, yeah. She started a sketch with Keenan Thompson called Cooking with Randy and Mandy, which we touched on earlier. It involves these chocolate obsessed chefs, usually diving in the jacuzzis filled with chocolate, and the owner of chocolate apparently lingered long after these cast members would take their showers. To me, this is a selling point, but apparently it's camp Algelique's style when she tried to cozy up to Romeo of the boy band Immature. She later said, I had the biggest crush on Romeo, and I was trying to introduce myself, like, oh hey, imagine league, don't mind the chocolate smell. Anyway. Do you know that Amanda Bindes has been releasing rap singles since when last year? Wow? I mean I wonder if she'll finally get the partner with Drake. Yeah, uh, you know, maybe I'll rap was a formative influence on her. Um. We don't really get into a man that much on this because she was part of I don't know. She wasn't on the show until I think like a third or maybe the fourth season. I mean, you know, retalented rap career. Notwithstanding, she was famously one of the most restrictive Conservative ships after she had her very public problems with marijuana and Drake and Twitter and lighting a fire in someone's driveway. Um, but she was She was out FM under the conservativeship as of March and studied f I T right or studied some fashions too. Yeah, and uh, rapping, so I didn't know the rapping. Wow. Yeah. But Angelique Bates is smelling like chocolate was nothing compared to Danny Timbarelli's infatuation with Britney Spears a few seasons later. I guess the cast ran onto the stage after Brittany performed for a song on the show, and then Brittany bent down to take a bow and Danny blatantly stared at her butt, and it was so obvious that the director reset the entire scene and made the whole cast filmed the segment again and told him, under no uncertain terms, you know why we did this right, Don't don't do that as you meditate on that, We'll be right back with more too much information after these messages. Obviously, in addition to rapping R and b X, there were many pop stars on All That, like Brittany, the Spice Girls, Sugar Ray Bar, Naked Ladies, and in Sync. But All That will always be remembered for its rap performances and arguably no single rappers more closely linked to the show than Coolio. He was in the charts with his breakout single Fantastic Voyage soon after All That premiered, and he gets it twice in the show's first two seasons, and he even credits his career to All That, saying quote, it was one of the advanced steps of me becoming a household name. And Nickelodeon liked him so much that they tapped him into the theme tune to the Keenan and Kel's spinoff show, which he apparently wrote in just an hour. It sounds about right yeah, And this brings us to Keenan and Kell, the bromance at the heart of the story. Together they became the breakout stars of All That, launching the hugely successful spinoff Keenan and Kell and also the only film born of the franchise, Good Burger, and their chemistry was apparent from the moment they began doing their two grumpy old men characters, Mavis and Clavis during the pilot episode when they introduced TLC. They ad lived back and forth and made each other laugh, and as Keenan later said, they each had the same thought at the same time. Oh we're the same dude. Oh may we all be so lucky? In a way, they had this kind of Laurel Hardy dynamic going. Keenan had his killer deadpan and Kell with his endless reserves of frantic energy. Producer Brian Robbins, one of the creators of the show, went on to produced Keenan and Kell and direct good Burger described Keenan as an old soul and Kell as an internal child, which I feel like is a great way to sum up their respective energies. Kenan and Kelly became inseparable off the set, and their moms became tight, which I love. And producers saw Keenan and Kell gooving around with one another in between takes, and this led to the Keenan and Kel spin off in July, a year after all that went in the regular production. The show is not as beloved to me, at least as all that um my inviting memories are of the theme song by Coolio Kills all here it goes catchphrase, and of course is all consuming Unholy love of orange soda, Kelsy youth past her. Now he really on the Holy love of orange soda and holy love of God. So the spinoff show Keenan and Kel was a hit, and the brass at Nickelodeon had to think on how to spin more gold from these teams, and the answer appeared in the form of their Good Burger film adaptation. And this was very much a case of striking while the item was hot. The executives at Nickelodeon came back to the production team in late January and said, good news, you've got the green light. We're gonna make the movie. The bad news is it needs to be in theaters by July. This was late January. The typical gestation period for movies is five to seven years. They had six months. The team was shooting the movie a mere seven weeks later, and thankfully things were honed after years of doing the good burger sketch on all that so there wasn't you know, a lot to learn. Kel played ed the middle vanilly braided cashier. Keenan played Dexter, his uptight colleague working a summer job at the burger stand. It has a surprisingly impressive supporting cast a Vagoda, Shaquille O'Neil Sindbad, George Clinton who plays an asylum inmate, a pre Freaks and Geeks, Linda Carolini, and Carbon Elector makes a cameo weird Um. It was filmed on location at a real life restaurant in the town of West Covina, California, at a place that's now called Peters l Loco, and though they primarily serve Mexican food. They have included burgers on their menu because why not, that's money on the table. Uh. Roger Ebert predictively gave Good Burger the perfect review, the only review you need. It didn't do much for me, but I'm prepared to predict that its target audience will have a good time. That sounds about right. And now we have to get to the split. Keenan and Kell left all that after the fifth season wrapped in the fall, and The Keenan and Kell Show went off the air on the summer of two thousand. Keenan but joined the cast of SNL in two thousand three, ending the three years and an otherwise unbroken streak of sketch comedy coming up on thirty years now. It's insane how long he's been in the game. At age twenty five, Keenan became the first cast member on SNL born after its debut in nine Uh. This just kind of marked an important changing of the guard there. However, the thing that I didn't know was that Cal also auditioned for SNL around the same time, presumably and didn't get the gig. You know, he talked about this with the a V Club and he said I didn't get it, but that's okay. It was a fun time. I think I was just too hyper at that time. I was doing all kinds of characters. I had this bit where it was DMX if he was in toy story. Yeah, it was so random. I thought it was funny. And then I did a joke about Michael Jackson loving trees because he had this interview he was in a tree. I did this whole song about Michael Jackson and trees, which was very funny. But I'm a good company with a lot of guys who didn't get on SNL, like Jim Carey and guys like that. It was just an honor to even audition. But and this is where it gets sad. There was a period after Keenan got on SNL where he and Kel fell out of contact and there may have been some bad blood or at least some bruised feelings. In two thousand and twelve, Kell told TMZ the truth is Keenan does not want to be seen with me in any form of media or even have my name mentioned around him. He claimed at the time that he nearly reunited with Kell for a big name publication but Keenan apparently backed out at the last minute, supposedly in an ongoing attempt to separate himself from his Nickelodeon past. Kel was very understanding, at least publicly saying, I have not been upset about this. I respect his choice of wanting to make a name for himself solo. There's no bad blood on my side. I'm not to climb in a reunion. I know the fans love the show and would love to see some type of appearance with us. I just don't see that ever happening because of how he really feels. Interestingly, when The Atlantic went to interview Kel for article entitled Whatever Happened to Kel? From Keenan and Kel, as explained by Kel, Kell's publicist apparently requested that the writer not asked questions about the relationship between Keenan and Kel at that time. So that's but whatever the case, things of Pewter are blown over. They reunited on the Tonight Show in for a Good Burger sketch, and soon after they did a fan dango ad, which Keenan says was just like old times, and he didn't rule out the possibility of a larger Keenan and Kel reunion, later saying I think it lives in a very special place in people's hearts. So regardless of what either one of us has continued to do, people always think back on those times and they're like, who loves orn soda? Still to this day, I can't get mad at it because I love those time too, and I feel where they're coming from because it's the childhood. And just last week in late August two, shortly after receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Keenan confirmed that he and Kell are working on a Good Burger sequel, which they've both said repeatedly over the years that they'd be down to do. He said, quote, I would like to we're working harder on than ever. It's about meeting the numbers, letting them numbers match up, because I need them numbers. I don't know what that means. Maybe that's what he wants to pay to be. I'm not sure, So I'll call that tentative, but hopeful maybe we'll get the Good Burger reunion. Speaking of orange soda, Kell apparently doesn't bear anyone any quarrel who wants to reference that part of his life to him. He later said, I'm not one of those child stars who doesn't want to embrace it, says. Even at fancy five star restaurants, the waiter will inevitably ask him if he wants orange soda, which I don't know. Man, he's a better man than I am. I think I feel like I started glaring at people when I used to. You know, I work at a grocery store in high school. And let me tell you, anytime something doesn't scan, every single person in the world goes because it's free. You run out of good will created quickly. Apparently not if you're kel for a time. Apparently, Kell would you know? And then cash and checks you're you're a gig and actor you got. He would make appearances at colleges where he'd throw orange soda parties. He has his all white parties, has orange soda. Pretty whimsical as far as former child star goes. Ah, so this was all orange everything. Everyone would wear all orange and Kell would be up in the booth djaying, signing autographs. Um, and you know he was in I forgot he was an all falls down because he's from Chicago, just like Kanye, and uh, he got the call. He's all falls down. He got the call the day before saying if he wanted the gig, he had to be at the airport at five am the next morning. That's a trend that has continued for Kanye's entire career, making outrageous demands on people who then comply for some reason. But like many kids show figures the nineties who dropped in and out of the Spotlight, Steve from Blues Clues, Lindy Low, and Macaulay Culkin at all, Kel has been the victim and or recipient of a death hoax. This occurred back in two thousands six, and like a lot of things from that era, it went down on my Space. For some reason. They sent out an email blast saying that Kel had died at the age of seven, which is a macabre seven club bit, I guess, and this led to many people calling him, mostly his relatives. He recalled to the Atlantic as soon as they called, and I picked up. I think they figured it out. It's laughable, but at the same time it's a serious matter. It's shocking to me that someone would sit there and say someone else died, Oh, you sweet summer child. Think of how many times people start so and so death hoaxes on Twitter. Uh poor guy. So all Kell is still alive. All that is sort of not nothing gold can stay and the original cast of the show started to disintegrate. They all went their separate ways. I was the league Base left first after season two, followed by Katrina Johnson and a Lisa Rays the following year. Then Lorie Bette Denburgh left after season four, Keenan and Kell after season five, leaving only Josh Server from the original cast to stick it through to the end of season six and two thousand and As I said at the top of the episode, they had some great new additions to the cast up to that point, Amanda Binds and Danny Timbarelli being the most notable, but also Nick Cannon who I completely forgot was on the show, and Gabriel Fluffy Iglesias, who I also completely forgot was on the show. But after season six, all that went on hiatus for two years and they underwent a massive reboot with an all new cast that launched in two thousand two. Jamie Lynn Spears is the most famous, but it lost its magic for me, and the show limped along for another few years years until it was finally canceled in two thousand five. The studios where it was filmed, both in Orlando and on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. We're both closed and sold. That was pretty much the end of the story until when a very high profile revival of the show kicked off. One of the original co creators of All That, Brian Robbins, was by this point the president of Nickelodeon, and he was extremely bullish on this revamp, later saying I would have never, ever, ever canceled the show. It should have been Nickelodeon Saturday Night Live. All That was a very sophisticated show, young humor, and the level of comedy on that show was sophisticated. Keenan Thompson was at the Helm was an executive producer for this new version, and he guested on the show along with kel Lorie Beth, Lisa Reus, and Josh Server, who all returned for cameos. I have to admit I have almost no memory of hearing about this reboot, but it was reasonably well received and renewed for a second season in but production was suspended during the COVID nineteen crisis, and it has yet to resume two years later. Yeah, I mean, rebooting a nineties kids sketch show has got to be a tricky proposition because adults probably aren't gonna be dedicated viewers. Since children's humor only gets you so much mileage. Network sketch television shows in the age of YouTube and TikTok seemed like a hard sell for actual kids today, the nostalgia factor really only works when you get the original cast now grown up doing humor aimed at adults, kind of like the Legends of the Hidden Temple reboot where they had, you know, instead of a kid's game show core obstacle course, they have like an actual terrifying obstacle course for adults. Um. This revamp also failed, but still I feel like the only way that like on All That reboot would work in my eyes, was to get as much of the original cast as you possibly could and have it be almost like a Mad TV style like adults sketch show. I would love to see all those guys back together, but alas this could very well. But the end of the story, all that is remembered today fondly for being smart, funny, and in its own way, quietly groundbreaking. But I'd like to end on one story that touches my heart. I don't know, maybe it will yours as well. Before leaving the show, A Lisa Reis took a souvenir, a klonel from the iconic Big Ear of Corn. Does it belong in a museum, sure, but she keeps it as a reminder of her days, bringing laughter to kids and adults alike, not unlike the bell from the Polar Express. I love that. I love it very much. Yeah, I I don't know. I don't have anything to add to this. I'm touched by I'm touched by how much you loved this. Have you rewatched a bunch of them? Do you got to like YouTube? I rewatched some of it. Um, some of it doesn't translate well to adults. Uh, some of it doesn't translate out of the nineties, shall we say, But it's still it's still felt good to rewatch some of that. It took me back to a happy place, and I I welcome and I encourage others to do that as well. Well. If that's the show's legacy, I think we can put a bow on it there. I feel good about leaving it in a place of revisiting the warm cathode Ray Glow of your Childhood. I will do so with episodes of Frasier Bitches from that rear projection screen. My cornea is rotting. Uh well, folks, thank you for listening. This has been too much information. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan Runtalk. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtalk and Alex Hegel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. You For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows