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Slimed!: An Oral History Of Nickelodeon's Golden Age (2013)

by Mathew Klickstein(Favorite Author)

3.18 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0142196851 (ISBN13: 9780142196854)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Plume

review 1: For starters, take that title very seriously. The book actually drops in at the mid-80s, well after the channel had launched and found its footing. No mention of the original QUBE experiment in Columbus, Ohio, that led to the original channel, the name change, shows from the earliest days of the channel--A blip of a mention of "Pinwheel" in Marc Summers' foreword, no mention of "Today's Special," Livewire," "Standby: Lights, Camera, Action," "Reggie Jackson's World of Sports"--and really, a clear sense that author Matthew Klickstein only pursued shows that he personally liked. Shows like "Fifteen," "Eureeka's Castle," "Don't Just Sit There," "Kids Court" and "Nick News W-5" and "Special Delivery" (which ran for THIRTEEN YEARS) were all successful shows and aired in seeming... morely his preferred timeline, but don't get any acknowledgement.My other problem with this book is that Matthew Klickstein seriously overestimates how knowledgable the average reader is going to be about Nickelodeon. Names are dropped with absolutely NO context, and he provides no narrative text anywhere in the book to hold the quotations together. Oh, sure, there's a helpful mini-bio of everybody in alphabetical order in the back of the book, which is great if you want to keep one thumb tucked in between the back pages for the entire duration of your read. Otherwise, you're stuck seeing the name "Hardy Rawls" at the beginning of a quote and not knowing who he is. Hardy Rawls played the dad on "The Adventures of Pete and Pete," by the way, which makes me ask how hard would it have been to just begin his first quotation in the book with "HARDY RAWLS, played Dad on The Adventures of Pete and Pete"?I mean, the really crazy part is, even when you're knowledgeable about really specific subject matter, you still won't know who some of these people are. I made it through several quotes from a "Robin Russo" in the book before I finally figured out it was Marc Summers' assistant on "Double Dare." I couldn't figure that out because she was credited on the show as Robin Marella.Klickstein's format for the book is a little bit jarring until you're quite a few pages into the book and you can finally handle what he's going for. He's more interested in ideas that he is in history, and instead of presenting a linear history, the book is divided up into a series of ideas: a chapter about music, a chapter about set design, a chapter about branding. Not a criticism at all, it's just different from what a lot of prospective readers might be expecting.Despite the total reaming I just gave this book, the truth is, what IS there is a good read. You can read the stories contained in this book and feel like you were there: what it was like to work on the sets, how much fun it was for the adults to do this stuff with kid mentality, the unseemly and almost-sleazy nature of the business end of the network (actors were signed to extraordinarily lowball deals for the original programming--some for as low as $150 PER EPISODE!), and an incredible assessment of changes in philosophy in the show's programming. A fabulous observation is made that Nick's original shows TODAY are about kids who are famous, kids who want to be famous, kids who are wizards, kids who have superpowers, etc. The Nickelodeon shows of the late 80s and early 90s were about kids who were kids.Klickstein has had a lot of success for this tome, and it's deserved, but I'd like to think that maybe he'll revisit the subject matter and write a second book because he left out SO MUCH. This is a good book, but not a definitive text.
review 2: I just got up after nearly 4 hours(I guess I read slow) of starting and finishing this book in one sitting. The last time this came close to happening was the last Harry Potter.I've only had cable one summer when my sister and I were rewarded with cable TV in 1994 for good grades. While didn't have Nick on a constant basis I remember seeing You Can't do that on Television, Double Dare and Pinwheel in the early 80's at friends houses and being awed.As well as being fair to all parties involved it was the closest thing I could get to a time machine. It was fascinating to hear all the stories from the performers, writers, hosts, executives and production staff who were there in the early days. less

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