Friday, August 30, 2013

Retro Kids' TV: The Amanda Show

Good afternoon students, this is Dr. Cooper. One the new popular trends for teenagers and young adults today is Retroism; Remembering the stuff we enjoyed as kids. So today we go into the world of Retro TV shows from our childhood that helped to define our generation. Today we will be exploring a short-lived but wildly popular comedy that must of us recall from reruns. Today we are discussing Nickelodeon's The Amanda Show.


Created by the now-famous Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider, The Amanda Show was a sketch-comedy that originally ran from 1999-2002. It was a spinoff from another sketch-comedy, All That!, and was the first of a chain of spinoff shows Schneider eventually created. It starred Drake Bell, Josh Peck, Nancy Sullivan, and of course, Amanda Bynes. While The Amanda Show was admittedly extremely similar to All That!, as both were sketch comedies, The Amanda Show had its own unique style of entertainment that made it distinctly different. Unlike All That!, it also had a permanent non-rotating cast that allowed for viewers to bond with more.


The show featured an array of outrageous sketches, mainly parodies of popular shows and businesses of the time, and featured plenty of slapstick comedy that every kid loves. Noteworthy parodies included "Judge Trudy", a kid judge who gives adults nonsensical punishments, and "Blockblister" the movie rental store loaning cheap remakes filmed by a family of egg-loving people with funny accents. My personal favorite was a skit called "Stranded" in which five contestants are "stranded" in a locked convertible (with the top off) in an abandoned parking lot. Whoever stayed in the car the longest would win $1,000,000, which was locked in the trunk. Oddly it took thirty-something days for the last two contestants to find out the keys were in the ignition the whole time. But that's completely irrelevant; now back on to the topic...

Other parts of the show included the various antics that occurred backstage during production of the show, the most well-known being the exploits of Penelope Taynt, an unstable fan-girl using overcomplicated plots to meet Amanda face-to-face.




The Amanda Show was abruptly canceled in 2002, but its enormous success continues to influence Nickelodeon television today. It launched the careers of Drake Bell and Josh Peck, leading to the redundantly titled show, Drake & Josh. A plethora of spinoff shows resulted from that too, including Zoey 101, iCarly, and Victorious, all of which have been extremely popular, if not more popular, than its parent show. As for the Amanda Show itself, it lives on in sporadic reruns on Teen Nick.


"Hillbilly Moments"
"Weenie Dooper"













When "..." Attack




 And finally, it is impossible to think of the Amanda Show without remembering....




 ...The Dancing Lobsters.



I hope everyone enjoyed  and please come back next week for the next Random History lesson. I look forward to it....kinda. 
"May the Force be with you" 






Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amanda_Show
http://www.nick.com/amandaplease/

Pictures: www.movieposterdb.com  
www.usmagazine.com  
www.buzzfeed.com 
www.tumblr.com 
 www.youtube.com 
rapgenius.com
http://www.fakecard.com/pokedex/pokemon/164.shtml

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