nick demands

[ugotslimed]

it's been said that at some point nickelodeon actually asked roger price to add more slime to ycdtotv. Also that the movies episode was made in retaliation to this request to over-slime the cast. Does anyone know if that continued after the one episode? Like was there a concious effort made to feature slime more at that point? Or did they just make that episode as a joke and then ignore nickelodeon's request.
I also wonder how closely ycdtotv's producers worked with the nick offices, how much back and forth they had-and who the main liason from nick was that went back and forth giving notes to the folks in canada.

[CappieGuy]

Illness has everyone slimed too thats it but the 89-90s have the most slimings and more unique slimings.

[BBOvenGuy]

You've got the story of the Movies episode right. Nick was asking for more slime, and that was Roger's answer. I would guess that they continued to ask for more slime, but I wasn't around when the series came back in 89-90, so I don't know for sure.

Nickelodeon worked closely enough with the show that they ended up hiring Geoffrey Darby away. However, the relationship soured as the network became bigger. It reached a point where Nick wanted to make their own shows in their own studios, instead of having their most popular show made by a "subcontractor." I have a feeling that one of the reasons we haven't seen YCDTOTV on DVD goes back to the way that relationship went bad at the end.

[ugotslimed]

was there ever any discussion of Nick outright buying the rights to ycdtotv from Roger Price and producing their own version? Perhaps shipping production over to america and filming at Nick studios?
I actually remember seeing an old ad for nick studios where they showed a clip of someone getting slimed from ycdtotv! I was like "they don't film that there!" -but maybe they were trying to make people think they did.

[ugotslimed]

incidentally Disney Channels most popular show now "My Babysitter's a vampire" is also a Canadian import.I somehow don't see Disney putting up with that fior long though.

[mcguinnfan]

If you notice, since we've been talking a little about 1984 lately, the slimings that year are so obligatory for the most part (particularly around the middle of the season) that it's hard to believe they weren't simply part of an effort to fulfill some quota, maybe even a backhand commentary on being ordered to ramp up the slime. To me, the 1984 slimings (and dousings, to a lesser extent) by and large are a tiresome intrusion on the episodes. (One of my favorites from that year is Clubs, the only episode with no slime or water-though that's far from the only reason I like it so much.) The Marketing episode from the same season also seems like a commentary on Nick's (or somebody's) craving for ever more slime; whether intended as such or not, the fact is that "green slime" of a sort would soon be marketed for retail sale, so it was prescient if nothing else.

To my way of seeing it (and I've never been a big fan of the slime anyway, so take this with that grain of salt), the slimings became more inventive again starting in 1985. It was as though the attitude became: if it has to be done anyway, may as well put some creativity into it. This was probably helped as well by the fact that Alasdair's reactions to both slime and water became so much funnier starting that year. And CappieGuy is right, in my opinion: 89-90 also shows that sliming could be done frequently but still at times quite brilliantly.

[ugotslimed]

I disliked nickelodeon's approach to green slime-but I loved ycdtotv's ORIGINAL approach. As the show went on, it did seem like the slimings were about filling a quota-especially when the kids looked up into it as if to get more on them-in my opinion Nick wanted slime to seem like something awesome that kids wanted to happen to them-like being slimed is fun-this is totally the oposite of what the original premise was-which is that slime is a metaphor for one of the horrible things adults can do to kids. Slime is something they dump on you when you've been thrown into a cold dark dungeon as a PUNISHMENT. Not something to be celebrated. Oddly enough, the one character who made slime seem so much more horrible than anyone else was Moose -and she began being phased out of the slime scenes in 85. From that point on Nick was littered with Double Dares and similar game shows where kids would love getting slimed. But ycdtotv was supposed to be about bad and humiliating things happening to the cast. If kids liked getting slimed, if it lost it's abillity to shock, then it lost it's usefulness to Roger Price.
However there is one scene , which I think was from 84-the one where Allisdair finds out whats in the slime-he reads off the ingredients as the credits role and we can't hear what he's saying, but Christine is listening, and it's just one of her best acting scenes. she looks like she's going to be sick the entire time,covering her mouth-looking grossed out, like each ingredient was worse than the last. You really feel for her because you can tell from her reactions that she is thinking "oh my god -I've been getting THAT dumped all over me for years! " -of course she always made getting slimed look like it was a horrible horribble experience-so I suppose it was apropriate that, as it got more popular-she got less slimings.

[mcguinnfan]

I agree with you pretty much about that. To me, the slime itself was never enough to be funny on its own, even when I was a kid. There had to be a good setup and a funny joke behind it. I think that's part of the reason I never liked "Double Dare" (besides the fact that it launched the career of the insufferable-just my opinion!-Marc Summers): it just seemed like a lot of the gross stuff from YCDTOTV without any of the humor or intellectual engagement.

It seems like mid-1984 was when they really stopped sliming Christine very much; I can only imagine how tired she must have been getting of being "dumped on" all those years. For awhile, it appears as though they were trying to make Alasdair the designated target, but that didn't really come off, and it wasn't till the following year that his reactions got to be very funny; I love that dismayed, cascading "OHHHHH!" that he would let out in his last couple seasons. I don't think anyone ever made it seem more horrific than Christine did, though, and I definitely agree that it's fitting, artistically speaking, that she wasn't as often on the receiving end when the slime became more popular and lost its shock value. It makes her slimings more special and more distinct somehow. It's also fitting that her last sliming, in Movies, was such a good one; even that late in her time on the show, she still made it look worse and more unpleasant than anyone else.

That episode you mention is from 84; it was Science, and I like that scene a lot too. It's fun to imagine what might have been so horrible in that list of ingredients to put those expressions on her face!

[ugotslimed]

Other examples of christine making the slime seem horrible -the one opposites sketch when she doesn't realize it's an opposites sketch yet in the classrom, and she says she doesn't know-she expects the slime to dump down and the look on her face as she looks up to see if it's gonna come down is so scared -and of course the movies episode you mentioned, because she knows saying it will get her slimed, so she looks all doomed.
what makes it so great when she get's slimed?-her secret -I figured it out, it's in the mouth. In later years when kids looked up, they could not open the mouth because slime would get in it. when Moose looked straight forward she was able to "gasp" ! and shriek as the slime came down on her, it made being slimed looked extra horrible. Plus she could whine and moan and stuff like she sometimes did.
a really great bit of acting on her part is the sketch where Ross buys the shows and says there will be more slime and water jokes-she is in agony! she actually cries expecting what's going to happen to her! the thing that sucks is that they give the slime in the scene to Lisa-who can barely act her way out of a paper bag-and she doesn't seem all that concerned. I would have totally reveresed those two in that scene. slimed Moose and watered Lisa.

[mcguinnfan]

I definitely wouldn't say that Lisa could barely act; it was more that she was so natural that it almost never seemed like she was acting. When it came to slime and water scenes, she had a slight problem in that she couldn't get through them without laughing! So that probably made her a little less effective in communicating the horror of getting slimed...but it could still be very charming, in my opinion.

You're right, though: Christine really sells that scene. That's another one where you feel very sorry for her; it's almost hard to watch. Another example of the writers and producers really working to establish that empathy for her on the part of the viewers, and letting her do the rest with her facial expressions and body language. That's what I miss in a lot of the mid-period slimings (and dousings) in particular: that sense of its being awful to get slimed. She always seemed to give you that.

[MarcD]

Alasdair's "Ohhhhhhhh..." when being slimed IS one of the greatest reactions to slime/water of all time. The best one is in the episode with Naida, when he is her servant and gets slimed when she says the words.

[ChrisInMI]

Alasdair wasn't slimed in that "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" episode; the only one who was slimed in that episode was Naida herself, at the very end of the show. He DID, however, get drenched twice in her place when she was the one who said "Water"... and his reactions to both drenchings were hilarious. Another example is his drenching in the "TV Commercials" episode.

Speaking of 1989-90, I wonder if the massive slimings that Christian, Chris and Jennifer got in the "Excess" episode had something to do with Nick wanting more slime as well. Not to mention all the group slimings that took place in 1989-90 (Fantasies, Blame, Looking Cool, among others). Again though, it seems - based on CJOH's 1988 audition ad for the "new" cast - that the kids picked in those seasons had to be willing to get slimed if needed, and at least one of the 89-90 kids (Stephanie Bauder) has said that she really enjoyed getting slimed. So perhaps that too was a way for the show to be able to work in more slimings - if they had actors that liked being slimed or at least wouldn't object to it, they could fit in more slime that way.

I have to say, though, that I REALLY hated it whenever the scene would end immediately after a sliming - example: Matthew in Enemies and Paranoia, Kevin W. in the series finale, or Abby in Age. I also do agree that the increased reliance on slime from 1985 onward resulted in some very poorly written slime scenes, along with some brilliantly written ones. One of the worst has to be Doug's in Moving (a 1984 episode, as one poster noted above). They really couldn't think of anything better than having him slimed for saying, "I don't, no!"???

Were they afraid kids wouldn't watch if no one got slimed? That might have been true for some of the younger viewers - I remember watching the show at age eight/nine and being disappointed if there was no slime in a certain episode, but being older, I look back and realize that the slime scenes usually weren't the strongest or best-written sketches.

Re: Lisa - gotta love the way she smiled with her mouth closed tightly every time she got slimed or drenched - you can really tell she was trying hard not to laugh. But sometimes a squeak or giggle would sneak out anyway - i.e. her multiple slimings in St. Patrick's Day, or her "white sliming" in Media. I don't, by the way, think she was a terrible actress, and I agree with Mcguinnfan that it was probably more her just being her normal bubbly self.

Finally, ugotslimed, I wonder if the slime scene you are remembering from the Nick Studios commercial may not be from a YCDTOTV episode at all, although it was taped on the YCDTOTV stage? I'm thinking the commercial you are remembering actually used footage of one of the Slime-in contest winners (IIRC, it was Jennifer Dudley, the 1988 winner; her winning slimings - she got it three times - are posted in their entirety on Youtube).

[MarcD]

Alasdair wasn't slimed in that "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" episode; the only one who was slimed in that episode was Naida herself, at the very end of the show. He DID, however, get drenched twice in her place when she was the one who said "Water"... and his reactions to both drenchings were hilarious.

Thanks Chris. My mistake. But yes, the reactions were what I was remembering. "You said the word, now you're going to get....OOOHHHHHHH"

[dumas]

Other examples of christine making the slime seem horrible -the one opposites sketch when she doesn't realize it's an opposites sketch yet in the classrom, and she says she doesn't know-she expects the slime to dump down and the look on her face as she looks up to see if it's gonna come down is so scared -

I remember that one too, it's from the 1982 Heroes episodes. Besides Christine, Kevin Kubusheskie also said I don't know and was afraid of the green slime who didn't come. It was fun to see Lisa saying "I know" and getting slimed and she didn't see that one coming. They should had used that gag a bit more often.

Also for the 1986 episode "Ennemies and Paranoia" who features the red(who seems to look more pink) slime when they(Adam Reid and Les) said "Free". I wonder if it was to test the water for a new running gag for the series?

[ugotslimed]

Alasdair wasn't slimed in that "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" episode; the only one who was slimed in that episode was Naida herself, at the very end of the show. He DID, however, get drenched twice in her place when she was the one who said "Water"... and his reactions to both drenchings were hilarious. Another example is his drenching in the "TV Commercials" episode.

Speaking of 1989-90, I wonder if the massive slimings that Christian, Chris and Jennifer got in the "Excess" episode had something to do with Nick wanting more slime as well. Not to mention all the group slimings that took place in 1989-90 (Fantasies, Blame, Looking Cool, among others). Again though, it seems - based on CJOH's 1988 audition ad for the "new" cast - that the kids picked in those seasons had to be willing to get slimed if needed, and at least one of the 89-90 kids (Stephanie Bauder) has said that she really enjoyed getting slimed. So perhaps that too was a way for the show to be able to work in more slimings - if they had actors that liked being slimed or at least wouldn't object to it, they could fit in more slime that way.

I have to say, though, that I REALLY hated it whenever the scene would end immediately after a sliming - example: Matthew in Enemies and Paranoia, Kevin W. in the series finale, or Abby in Age. I also do agree that the increased reliance on slime from 1985 onward resulted in some very poorly written slime scenes, along with some brilliantly written ones. One of the worst has to be Doug's in Moving (a 1984 episode, as one poster noted above). They really couldn't think of anything better than having him slimed for saying, "I don't, no!"???

Were they afraid kids wouldn't watch if no one got slimed? That might have been true for some of the younger viewers - I remember watching the show at age eight/nine and being disappointed if there was no slime in a certain episode, but being older, I look back and realize that the slime scenes usually weren't the strongest or best-written sketches.

Re: Lisa - gotta love the way she smiled with her mouth closed tightly every time she got slimed or drenched - you can really tell she was trying hard not to laugh. But sometimes a squeak or giggle would sneak out anyway - i.e. her multiple slimings in St. Patrick's Day, or her "white sliming" in Media. I don't, by the way, think she was a terrible actress, and I agree with Mcguinnfan that it was probably more her just being her normal bubbly self.

Finally, ugotslimed, I wonder if the slime scene you are remembering from the Nick Studios commercial may not be from a YCDTOTV episode at all, although it was taped on the YCDTOTV stage? I'm thinking the commercial you are remembering actually used footage of one of the Slime-in contest winners (IIRC, it was Jennifer Dudley, the 1988 winner; her winning slimings - she got it three times - are posted in their entirety on Youtube).

I kinda doubt that they would go all the way to canada just to film a scene for a Nick studios ad to make it seem like ycdtotv was filmed there. I'm pretty sure in the ad I'm remembering, the scene they show is a familiar one. One they probably just threw in hoping no one would notice. For all their trouble Nickelodeon should have just bought the show and shipped production to Nick studios. I still think they should have to pay some kind of royalties for the green slime thing.