The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story

What a energetic, and joyful journey seeing old friends from my childhood and learning about Nick itself. A must see for anyone who grew up with Nick!

It was nice seeing some of the old shows I used to watch and how they started, but after watching this documentary about nickelodeon it's easy to see where they lost sight of what they started out as, way before sponge bob and Dora as stated in the show. When your breakout show is about kids being kids and just having fun and making fun of everything (You can't do that on television) in fact most of what the kids did in that show would not be allowed now, which is why they will never release the series. They also a few great shows after that. But once you start to guide kids thinking you will lose them. I think it started with nick news, they kind of mention it in the show that they had this huge audience now what do we do with them? Once you start manipulating kids into seeing what YOU want them to see and care about and inject political correctness into their shows, you start to lose some of them and before they knew it they were just another corporation that lost touch with its customers. Don't get me wrong they had some good shows in the later years, Josh & Drake, I-Carly and a few others but even those were best in the early episodes because they were much rawer and a little less P.C. but I suppose that happens to every show.

This documentary was fantastic. As someone who grew up watching and loving Golden Era Nickelodeon in the early 90's, and still holds onto that love to this day in my 30s, this was a fun and informative look into Nickelodeon. The Orange Years covered tons of different ground, and was jam packed with stars that made Nickelodeon what it was, such as Kenan Thompson, Danny Tamberelli, and Geraldine Laybourne. Watching this made me want to break out my old orange Nickelodeon VHS tapes and have my own SNICK night. Orange you glad you've got your Nickelodeon?

Nickelodeon was my life. I grew up watching it as a toddler, stuck with it as a child, a pre teen, a teenager and rewatched all of the old shows as an adult. I still watch them any chance I get. Rocko's Modern Life was my favorite to rewatch, but they were all great cartoons and live action shows. I started life watching today's special, noozles, David the gnome and the little bits, progressed into Rugrats and just gave my life to Nick after that. My dad says he hated me watching Ren & Stimpy and Aaah Real Monsters, but those shows gave me character. To be honest, Nickelodeon raised me. It was the only channel I watched 24/7 when Beavis & Butthead and Daria weren't on MTV. My parents fought and I ran to Nick. I was a lonely loser and Snick was my Saturday night. I'm more cultured a person because of the diversity of those shows. Weird is cool. I defended Nickelodeon to all the cool kids watching MTV or Adult Swim because they weren't learning empathy or humility. The shows for kids now are embarrassingly bad by comparison and there is no one channel that educates kids while making them laugh without simultaneously brainwashing them. The songs I learned from that channel are still sung to this day (even the Stick Stickley P. O. Box 963 song!). Everyone knows happy happy joy joy, even if you didn't watch the show. There isn't anything like those shows on TV now and it's really sad that kids have no way to learn a sense of humor or quirkiness. So I want to thank every writer, director and producer that did anything for Nickelodeon between 1985 and 1998, because it made my life better and got little me through some really dark times.

This was a documentary that Jaime and I watched together. We started it on a Friday night, I had to leave to catch a movie at the theater so we finished this the next day. We were intrigued to see this since to different degrees, we grew up with the shows that were on the channel, Nickelodeon.

We learn here about the history of this channel. From its humble beginnings in Columbus, Ohio to Geraldine Laybourne taking over and how her approach helped it grow. This also helps to explain why it did so well and the trend that it started with being the first channel dedicated to children. Looking back on it, it makes a lot of sense. During that time, not so much. There were children and teens along with adults who hadn't made it, taking on different shows with producers who were learning on the fly. If that doesn't sound like growing up, I'm not sure what else would.

This was fun to see the likes of Danny Cooksey, Lori Beth Denberg, Melissa Joan Hart, Kel Mitchell, Kenan Thompson and Marc Summers get interviewed. I remembered these people from my childhood years. What I didn't know was that Christine Taylor, Larisa Oleynik and others also got their start on Nickelodeon. Coupling with them are people behind the scenes and hearing their perspective adds another layer as well.

What I'll say is that this is a well-made documentary. I like that it hooked me. It then gives the history and going through the different years/era. It was informative. They edit scenes and clips that helped to showcase what they're conveying. There is a bit about each of the different shows and what their contribution was to the growth. The ending was sad, since my daughter won't know the world before this channel or how it changed what she will watch in her formative years. I enjoyed this quite a bit. I'd recommend it to people my age or those interested in how Nickelodeon changed children's television.

My Rating: 7.5 out of 10.