Slimed!

This was a fun book, and I had a major squee episode when I got the email from First Reads that I'd won it. I'm 31 years old, so I spent a good portion of my childhood in Nick's Target audience. SNICK was an Event in my home, I subscribed to Nick magazine, and I wanted nothing more in life than to someday compete on Double Dare.

The book isn't exactly what I expected it to be. It's an oral history, so it's a series of quotes from cast, crew, production staff, everyone involved in the various projects. Rather than being organized by the interviewee, it's organized by topic. This keeps topics from being repeated, but it did make it a little difficult to understand at times. I would have preferred if after the interviewee's name, there was some kind of credit to tell me who they were or at least which show(s) they were associated with. Either that or some sort of narrative thread from the author tying the interviews together. Most of the time, the context is there, but I still ended up flipping to the appendix an awful lot which got annoying.

That said, I learned a lot about the network that basically defined childhood for me and most of my friends. It's a great nostalgic look back at this time without having to see the stars now, recognize how old they are and by extension how old I am. They contradict each other left and right, so you really get to see all of the challenges from every angle. Kids loved being slimed! We all hated the slime! etc... The only time I found this frustrating was during the bits about Ren & Stimpy. I really hated this show, and listening to the people who made it talk bitterly about it all these years later... well, maybe that's some of the reason why. The people associated with my favorite shows seemed a little more positive except for those canceled in their prime (yes, my family was the only one around who watched Roundhouse. What? It had a mobile La-Z-Boy!).

I love children's television, and I still spend a lot of my time today analyzing it and seeing what values we are imposing on our kids. The last chapter reflects a lot on this, and I really feel that in those early days, Nick was one of the few that put kids first (except with Ren & Stimpy... God, I hated that show). They were using real kids playing with real kids, and I was sad when they got bigger and more and more corporate input started making its way onto the show. I hope that some of those folks will read this book and remember that, “What's good for kids will be good for business.”

Interesting topic, but the format was difficult to tolerate, let alone enjoy. Snippets from separate interviews with child actors and crew members were arranged topically together, but since they were separate interviews, it was a bit choppy and not a real conversation. You could, however, tell when some interviews came later than others, because one actor would comment on the point that another actor had made in the previous snippet, as prompted by the author/interviewer.

The actor's name accompanied each quote, and sometimes I could figure out what show they were on if they mentioned it in the comments or in context with nearby quotes, but I felt like I would need to sit with IMDB open next to me and keep looking up the actors to place them in context and reflect on their shows correctly. I actually wish they showed a headshot of the character they played at the time and the show name underneath of it, preferably with each quote, but at very least in an appendix for reference until I could place the actors' names.