Are You Afraid to Think Back to Nick's Best Shows Ever?

On Sunday, Jack Black hosts the 21st Annual Kid’s Choice Awards on Nickelodeon. In honor of this illustrious occasion, Spec TV writers present you with our favorite shows from Nick’s golden age: the ‘90s.

Legends of the Hidden Temple

Nickelodeon provided kids with many a great show, but Legends of the Hidden Temple was the cherry on top of the sundae. With multiple Facebook groups commemorating it to this day—“I HATE When Kids Suck At Putting Together the Shrine of the Silver Monkey” has over 130,000 members—our generation is not ready to forget the tense moments the show provided.

Obstacle courses and trivia questions were used to weed out teams until one remained. Whether they faced the blue barracudas or the green monkeys, the Temple guards always jumped out in a frighteningly forceful manner during the team’s quest to retrieve the sought after artifact and win the game. Pairs barely ever succeeded, but hope was always there. And, in the rare instance that a pair did win, viewers could count on a great ’90s prize. Who didn’t want a week at NASA Space Camp?
—Ali Krimmer

Clarissa Explains it All

I had a diary in the third grade. Inside, it had spaces to record my favorite food, my best friend, my birthday, etc. In the spot that said “favorite TV show,” I scribbled Clarissa Explains it All. In the space allotted for “favorite song,” I wrote “Na Na,” which is perhaps the only way to title the production’s ingenious theme song. What can I say? When I was younger, I thought Clarissa was the shit, and I watched her show religiously. This ’90s Nickelodeon classic revolved around adolescent Clarissa Darling, played by a pre-TGIF Melissa Joan Hart. Using homemade computer games, she tackled her biggest obstacles, including her brother, Ferguson—the carrot-topped, seemingly demonic baby of the family. Meanwhile, Clarissa’s best friend Sam, perhaps best known for his distinct entrances, put doorbells to shame. Teen dramedies are a dime a dozen these days, but Hart’s candid narrations are really what makes this show such a permanent pop-culture fixture—or at the very least, one that this third-grader-turned-21-year-old finds “way cool.”
—Laura Hedli

Hey Arnold!

Hey Arnold! followed Arnold, an idealistic fourth-grader with a football-shaped head, and his diverse set of classmates from P.S. 118, an elementary school presumably located in Brooklyn or Queens. While always maintaining the show’s whimsical atmosphere, each episode offered profound insights into life hardly comprehensible to the show’s target audience of twelve-year-olds, but made palpable to all by the melancholic sounds of jazz and artful overviews of city scenery. The show addressed topics that were typically avoided by our daily television regimen because they seemed beyond our maturity level—a wide variety of ethnic and cultural stereotypes, Arnold’s broken family and alternative home in his grandparents’ boarding house, and Helga’s neglectful parents. As we grew to understand the deeper motivation beneath each character’s overtly stereotypical behavior, we were led to question and reassess our own rapidly developing ideals. Hey Arnold! may have served as an after-school pastime for us while growing up, but in retrospect, we can appreciate its efforts to encompass and explore the diversity and richness of human experience.
—Esther Choi

Doug

My mom used to refer to Doug’s Doug Funnie as “Lame-o”—and she was right. Unlike some of his Nickelodeon contemporaries, Doug had absolutely no pretensions of being cool. At the end of one episode, in which a little too much attention was drawn to Doug’s rather outdated (even by early ‘90s standards) fashion sense, Doug even proclaimed it himself: “I’m lame!” So why did a generation of kids keep up with the hijinks of this geeky kid in a sweater vest and khaki shorts—and why do we all lament the fact that, for whatever reason, Doug has yet to be released on DVD?
Maybe it was the supporting cast. Who can forget Doug’s blue-skinned best friend Skeeter Valentine, the awesomely clichéd bully Roger Klotz, Doug’s pretentious, beret-wearing older sister Judy, or Doug’s love interest—complete with an inexplicable Southern twang—Patti Mayonnaise? Or perhaps it was the not-so-subtle pop-culture references that kept us coming back for more, like Doug’s favorite British band, The Beets—”Killer Tofu” anyone?—or the iconic Quailman, Doug’s superhero alter-ego who wore his underwear over his pants. In the end, though, it was probably just how normal he was that made Doug and his life so appealing. After all, we could all relate to Doug, even if we couldn’t idolize him.
—Elizabeth Simins

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

When I watched an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark today, I was surprised by some characteristics of the show that I hadn’t picked up on in the early ’90s—sub-par production values and stilted acting, for example. But what surprised me most about my reunion with the Midnight Society was the following: after hearing the first few notes of the eerie theme song, the fear kicked in, and my heart started racing. If this instinctive reaction hasn’t diminished after 12 years, I don’t know if it ever will. Which begs the question, who on Earth thought a horror-themed show was a good idea for kids? Seriously—episodes have revolved around demonic clowns, paranormal kidnappings, ghosts, alien zoos full of Earth children, water demons, and murder by scarecrow. At the time, I thought I was cool for watching such a scary show, but now I wonder if it was worth the childhood fear of clowns and dollhouses (yes, dollhouses) that resulted from some particularly frightening episodes. Regardless, there’s no denying that this was powerful TV for the 10-and-under set, and I appreciate the series for that reason. And while I’ve grown up and have overcome the fears that the show inspired, my reaction to the opening credits tells me that, yes, I’m still at least a little bit afraid of the dark.
—Amanda Sebba