Nickelodeon Will Revamp 90’s Shows – The Daily Double Talk
By Tommy McGrew
Oh shit, the millennial in me is going absolutely ape shit right now. Nickelodeon president of content and development Russell Hicks sat down with Variety telling them,”We are looking at our library to bring back ideas, shows that were loved, in a fresh new way.” Don’t play with us Russell, we older millennials take our nostalgia very, VERY seriously, maybe too seriously but that’s not the point. The point is this, this all sounds great on paper. The thought of Nickelodeon bringing back those shows early 20 something’s have no fucking clue about eg: Hey Dude, Are You Afraid Of The Dark, Salute Your Shorts, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Space Cases, etc. I could go on and on and I haven’t even touched on the networks original animated content (Nicktoons). But let’s just take a second to think about some of the older shows other networks have tried to bring back only to meet disastrous results. Does anyone remember the revamped Ren and Stimpy that Spike tried to push. The shit was atrocious and the reason it was, was because they tried way too hard to capture something from the original show that was simply a happy accident. It was lighting in a bottle for something like Ren and Stimpy. The same could be said for Beavis and Butthead when MTV tried to revitalize it, it was glaring how both shows were obviously missing that special something. I have yet to see a rebooted 90s property work on all levels as it’s predecessor did. Hands down though, the most successful of the 90s rehashes is Disney’s Girl Meets World, which has become a bright spot in the Disney line-up. It’s nowhere near as smart, mature, or funny as Boy Meets World (the 90s show it’s spun-off from) but it is a half a notch above most Disney channel shows and it’s also very quick to give a wink and a nod to BMW fans that usually makes us forgive the shows major flaws. To be fair though Nickelodeon has yet to reboot any show, so they make look at all the mistakes others have made and do everything possible to avoid their failures. Time will tell how this experiment pans out. Hicks is being very vague on which shows he plans to remake but does give us some encouraging parting words, he says,”We are looking at our library to bring back ideas, shows that were loved, in a fresh new way.” Well were all looking forward to that Russ.
Check out the Variety article here. To see a few cool ideas their staff had for revamping some Nick classics.
[Source: Variety]