Nothing Will Ever Get Close To Being As Dominant As Mid-90's Nickelodeon And Late-90's MTV

Collider - The first trailer for the upcoming documentary The Orange Years has been released online. The film chronicles the origins and success of the cable channel Nickelodeon in the 1990s, featuring interviews with the stars and creators of the content that dominated the childhoods of those coming of age two decades ago.

Shows like All That, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, and Clarissa Explains It All served to speak directly to kids without pandering, and they did so while also countering the more younger-skewing programming on Disney Channel. This trailer finds the stars and writers of those shows not only discussing the popularity of Nickelodeon, but how the guiding vision of Geraldine Laybourne allowed these series to traverse more mature content. It was precisely this mix of kid-friendly shows with a smidge of rebellion that made Nickelodeon so popular throughout the 90s.

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It’s cool that we’ve gotten to the part of life where we get documentaries about how everything we grew up with came to be. And there are two things that resonate with people my age more than anything else- mid 90’s Nickelodeon, and late 90’s early 2000’s MTV.

Mid 90’s Nickelodeon gets talked about a lot, and for good reason- it was legitimately the best television programming one channel has ever had. You can go down the list and not find a single miss in the bunch. From cartoons like Rugrats, Doug, Hey Arnold, and Rocko, to live action shows like Salute Your Shorts, Pete And Pete, and Are You Afraid of the Dark, it was non-stop, wall to wall, A+ shows.

Hold it right there. Can we talk about Are You Afraid Of The Dark real quick? Legitimately a terrifying show. Like, they didn’t try to dummy it down for kids, they were trying to get kids to cry at home. I straight up refused to watch it, it was just so scary.

Now I’m reading a list of shows and I can’t believe how many good ones there were. Kenan and Kel, All That, Hey Dude, Aaahh!! Real Monsters, Legends of the Hidden Temple, Double Dare, Nick Arcade, GUTS, Ren and Stimpy, Alex MF’ing Mack, What Would You Do, Wild And Crazy Kids, and then of course in the later years, Rocket Power and Figure It Out. I mean, WOW.

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Who wouldn’t try to jump from the recliner to the couch pretending to be on Guts?

Who wouldn’t be completely mesmerized by Legends of the Hidden Temple?

Do you remember how awesome that big wall of stuff was on What Would You Do?

I could talk for days on end about every show I listed. I have fond memories of every single one. And I’m so lucky to be the perfect age, because right when the Nicktoons were drying up, I started watching MTV. And buddy, those late 90’s/early 2000’s years of MTV had it all. TRL and Spring Break, what more did a boy need?

MTV in 1999 was basically softcore porn. Remember when one of the games was for a couple to swap clothes in that car? 12 year old Eric was NOT ready for that. Or Springer Break. Yes, this is a girl rolling around on feathers while covered in honey.

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Or Carmen Electra in her prime grinding up on Lit.

And then of course TRL and everything that came with that.

If you didn’t run home from school and watch TRL, you had nothing to talk about at school the next day (sigh, the days before texting and AIM).

There will nothing that will ever match 90’s Nick and late 90’s MTV. Nothing even close.