Old Nickelodeon Cartoons

Dead weight of nostalgia suffocates pop culture

It's probably not wise to get too worked up about live-action cartoons aimed at 11-year-olds. But I found it difficult to watch “Bucket & Skinner's Epic Adventures” (8 p.m., Nickelodeon) without a haunting sense that pop culture is stuck in an epic rut more than a half century in the making.

“Epic” is pure fantasy, a buddy comedy shot in super-saturated colors, set in a fantasy beach community where the high school has a surfing team and where the students appear to major in weightlifting, wisecracking and Advanced Dude Studies. Taylor Gray stars as Bucket, the “smart” one, while Dillon Lane is Skinner, a space case who occasionally stumbles upon the answer.

Together, the boys navigate the hallways, the cliques and a part-time job while taking time to ogle the girls, including classmate Kelly (Ashley Argota). The boys' hairdos make their heads seem remarkably oversized, like bobblehead dolls or male Olsen twins.

While their attitudes seem lifted from “Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure,” the plot for the pilot revolves around a school election and echoes films, including “Election” and “Napoleon Dynamite.” In fact, from the surf-town setting to the “Monkees”-style slapstick, every single second and frame of “Bucket & Skinner” seems derived from other sources. If some mad scientist had distilled every goofy kids' show ever made, he might come up with this. It's both brilliant and oppressive, and like any synthetic creation, sterile.

Some may find comfort that today's tweens are watching shows remarkably similar to those enjoyed by their parents or even grandparents. More than half a century separates “Bucket & Skinner” from the silly surf movies of the early 1960s. It's difficult to imagine the youth culture of that period being pacified or entertained by cultural relics from 1910. By the time “Gidget” came around, the “Andy Hardy” and “Henry Aldrich” teen comedies of the early 1940s were dismissed as hopelessly old and insufferably corny.

In Billy Wilder's 1950 masterpiece “Sunset Boulevard,” Gloria Swanson played Norma Desmond, a once-famous shut-in who can't stop watching her old silent films, seen as ancient artifacts of a bygone era. Yet “Boulevard” was made only 20 to 25 years after the end of the silent era. We're now spoon-feeding children pop relics twice as old as that. In “Sunset Boulevard,” nostalgia was shown to be a kind of mental illness, a tragic affliction resulting in delusion, seclusion and homicide. We seem to have made it our way of life.

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Nickelodeon is actually a TV channel most popular with little ones. It provides wholesome programs that develop children’s thinking ability with their enlightening themes. The channel is largely focused at youngsters ages 6-17, with their weekday morning hours TV program block for preschoolers age groups two – five years old. Nickelodeon is offered in cable TV’s throughout the world providing to the younger generations values advancement and academic assistance. They likewise have popular cartoon figures that have extremely grown in recognition to the young children as well as to mom and dad, making it their staple channel for great fun and learning too.

Nickelodeon also rose to popularity with lots of our teen superstars taking part in their programs when they were a teenager perhaps even up to now as adolescents. Young celebrities like Kenan Thompson, Amanda Bynes, and Britney Spears’ younger sister, Jamie Lynn Spears. They even gained world-wide recognition with the introduction of Dora The Explorer, and also the incredible character of Spongebob Squarepants. Both Equally figures, as well as other Nickelodeon personalities sold well to children of different ages.

In truth, they’ve already offered so much in instructing the young together with the ABC’s, Math, Fine Art, Music, and Attitudes enhancement. Each and every subject matter is vital to a little one in preparatory school and grade school. With these programs broadcast by Nickelodeon, parents don’t have any reason to avoid their young children from watching television during their extra time. Not only are they kept entertained, they’re also informed and molded with decent morals. Apart from their TV programs, they’ve also introduced learning materials in forms of applications and videos in DVD format for a kid to frequently view it and study from it right until they’re very good by it. They also have a separate website for instruction which will really make way for more advancement to a child’s developing mind.

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