The only person I remember from my favourite TV show ever was Christine, the curly-haired star of You Can’t Do That On Television.
As an astute and avid fan of the show, I always knew when she was gonna get slimed or watered by the bucket gods above. See, Christine always wore this really bad wig that made her look like a bit of a pre-teen drag queen.
Of course, I also have vivid memories of Les Lye—an unfortunate-looking fellow who always looked like he woke up on the wrong side of the whiskey bottle. You might remember him from such skits as The Father, Snake the Bus Driver, The Teacher and other such demanding roles which required an adult.
Though by far, the skit that sticks out the most to my rotted TV-infested frontal lobe is the one where The Father quits smoking, much to the woo-hoos of his kidlings. To battle his nic fits he decides to remove the windshield from his car and head straight for the highways. ‘Twas only on the highways that he could inhale some exhaust to tide him over and out of his cigarette addiction.
While the kids at home laughed their fat, sedentary butts off at the hijinx of Nickelodeon wit, I was left aghast and paralyzed at the sight of watching the teens squirm around in their seat-belt-fastened chairs in respiratory hell. They looked trapped and helpless, wailing in pain, their facial features distorted by faked asphyxiation. I was moved by their Canadian acting.
I was young and thus believed them to be great artists. It was at this precise TV moment that I knew I must take up smoking.
Remember the bad locker jokes and the one kid who always got stuck in one of them? Remember Alanis’ bad boy haircut? Remember how the quality of the “I don’t know”-slime changed in its consistency from a lumpy, green, curdlike mixture to that of a kinda green watery paint texture?
Without this precious attention to detail, I was bound to be categorized as just a watcher, not a fanatic. My mom used to have this theory that that show was anti-intellectual. Her theory went something like: “I think I can actually see your brain cells reverse their evolution of existence while you watch that garbage.” Mom was probably right.
It surely explains many things in my life, but most poignantly, it explains my selection of U of T as my undergrad school of choice—you can’t get more anti-intellectual than that.
Who knew the Nic kids could have such vision as to inspire an entire generation of kids to become mentally retarded and anti-intellectual?
I file this show under “They Just Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To.”
