Are You Afraid of the Dark? A Xennial Rewatch

Who loves SNICK as much as we did back in the 1990's?

Join us as we discuss a SNICK classic -- Nickelodeon's Are You Afraid of the Dark? We watched four episodes that span the original six-season run and discuss them, the concept behind the show and which storylines still hold up.

Bonus: An early Ryan Gossling sighting. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Spooky Vibe Between Seasons
• 3:10 SNICK, Target Audience, And Series Origins
• 7:35 Pitch Rejection, Title Story, And Greenlight
• 12:05 Filming In Canada And Production Hacks
• 17:40 Writing Rules, Kid-Centered Stories, And Twilight Zone Nods
• 22:30 Casting, Diversity, And The Anti-Disney Mandate
• 26:55 Famous Cameos And Cultural Context
• 30:40 Episode Rewatch: Laughing In The Dark
• 36:15 Episode Rewatch: Dark Music
• 44:10 Episode Rewatch: The Shiny Red Bicycle
• 50:25 Episode Rewatch: Station 109.1 With Ryan Gosling
• 58:20 Shifts Toward Comedy And Revivals
• 1:02:30 Takeaways, Nostalgia, And What’s Next

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Hello everyone and welcome back to Generation in Between, a Xennial podcast where we remember, revisit, and sometimes relearn all kinds of things from being 80s kids and 90s teens. I'm Danny. Hi, I'm Katie. Um, and today we have something from the early 90s to talk about. It is outside of spooky season now, but we're at that in-between time where I feel it's a little too early for Christmas. Um, but you're just past Halloween and it's like this weird zone. So we're not done being spooky yet. Not yet. We're not done. I was we what we were going to do was watch re-watch um Nightmare Before Christmas. Yes. But then I texted Katie. I was like, I love that movie. It's one of my favorites. But I was like, I don't know. I feel like that's just I feel like we need to do something else a little less common. So everyone, today we are going to talk about the Nickelodeon show Are You Afraid of the Dark? Yes. Now, did you watch this when it was on in the OG days? I feel like yes. But when we watched, so we watched four episodes for today. Well, I watched three, but that's another story. Um, I I remembered like the theme song and the premise of everybody, but I did not remember any of the actual stories that they told. Okay. So, but I definitely caught some of them, I would imagine, when they were first on. Well, we were right at the right age. Yeah. Um, and we'll get into that. And I do remember the show and I loved it because it was kind of like an intro to scary stuff, right? Um, it was part of Nickelodeon's original SNCC programming, which if y'all don't know what that is, it was Saturday night on Nickelodeon. What they were trying to do with that program, we've talked about it before when we talked about Doug and Renan Stimpy on other episodes. One was Cats versus Dogs, and I don't remember what was Doug. What he was on, we talked about Doug on uh the cartoon theme songs or something like that. I think it was theme songs, yeah. Do do do do do okay. Anyway, what they were trying to do with SNCC programming was kind of cater to like preteens, early teens. Teens who I mean, kids who were um old enough to want to stay up late, but not old enough to go out and do things yet. Right, right. So they would have like middle school age. It was like kind of the age they were catering to with their programming, and this fit right in. So here's the little description of Are You Afraid of the Dark? And it is one sentence. A group of teenagers meet in the woods and tell scary stories around a campfire. Yep. Do you remember the name of their group? The Midnight Society. Yeah. Okay. I only remember that because they just I literally just watched it. So I thought that was fun. So, what we're going to do is I did research. There, there's quite a bit of cool things to know about this show. Um, I did research, not on cold medicine this time. So it is not six pages of mumble jumbles. And then I told I had told Katie to watch four episodes. Now, three of them. Wait, was it two or three? A couple of the I don't remember if it was two or three were ones I actually remembered watching. Oh, okay. Like, because they were scary. And you you didn't see the one that stuck with me. And I'll show you images from it. I'll get there. There was one I had trouble finding. Yeah. And I saved it to the end, but then my day just got out of control and I didn't get a chance to watch it. That's okay. It's all right. So I gave her four to watch, and they're short, they're like 23, 24 minutes. Um, and then we'll talk about them. So I'll talk about the research first, and then we'll talk about the episodes we did watch. And um I thought there was something else I was gonna say, but it'll come to me when we start going through our notes. So you do remember it, you were not like a religious watcher of the show. Okay, no. I well, everyone who knows, I watched lots of TV. Um, especially middle school age was probably like my prime age for TV watching. So like I fell right in that SNCC like zone. So this series, um, it's it was described as a horror anthology series for kids, which is so 90s. I love that so much. The creators were DJ McHale and Ned Candle with a K. Uh, the pilot episode debuted on um a Halloween special they had on Nickelodeon on October 25th, 1991. Okay. So, like I was 11. That's older than I thought. I don't know why I thought it was a little later than that. Yeah. No, no. Well, you'll see why. Um, that was when the pilot episode came out, but the series did not debut in the SNCC lineup until uh like a year later, August 12th, 1992. Okay. So, and then it ran until February 1996. They did have two revival series where they tried to redo it. Um, and this might be why you think that February 6th, 1999, which ran till June 2000, and then they did it again in 2019, October 2019, and that went till 2022. Now, those were not all on Nickelodeon. Some was on Family Channel, some was on, I think Paramount was the one who did the revival in the most recent one. I thought I wrote that down. Well, I'm already failing. That's fine. Uh, so that might be why you thought that, because you may not have seen it until and then the Family Channel bought the reruns and showed them later. So maybe that's when you caught them. That might have been. Yeah, that could have been it. So, um, all right. So here's how they came up with the idea for this show. So DJ McHale, he was um a writer and he was trying to make it writing screenplays like for adult movies and uh TV shows and such. Um, but he had a day job to pay the bills that involved traveling a lot, and he made corporate and educational videos. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. So he was like trying to be creative, but then trying to pay the bills, and that was just, you know, it wasn't very exciting. He didn't like it very much. Um, he had a friend who told him, uh, why don't you try writing for children's media instead of just sticking to adult media? So he did, and it went well, and he got some jobs writing for after school specials on ABC, and then an HBO series called Encyclopedia Brown. I love Encyclopedia Brown. Well, they're books. Yeah. Yeah. The series was on HBO. Was on HBO. Yeah. So that's how he got his start. So while he was working on Encyclopedia Brown, he met Nick Med met Ned Candle. Hello Mouth. And together they kind of worked on a pitch that they they did, they called it Bedtime Stories for Lazy Parents. That wasn't the working title, that's just kind of what they called it. What they between themselves called it. Okay. And their their initial idea for for the show was to hire like an old actor, like a well-known actor that hadn't like that was kind of retired, bring him out of retirement, and film him in a chair in front of a fireplace reading stories. So that way, um, and to read like fairy tales, like classic fairy tales. The reason is fairy tale um sort bedtime stories for lazy parents is because they wanted to make videos so parents could just pop in this man reading stories. Yeah. I mean, it's not a terrible idea. It's really not. And then it made me think of that Jem Henson show, The Storyteller. Yeah. Remember? Yeah. Where he was in front of a fire and the dog? Yeah. Okay. Well, anyway, um, they wanted to do that. Um, and so then they started brainstorming, like, okay, well, what are the stories gonna be? And um Mikhail realized that the stories he liked best when he was a kid were scary ones, were spooky ones, creepy ones. So they said, all right, let's just get rid of the old man concept and let's have kids themselves tell these stories, like we remember doing when we were kids. And then it, you know, evolved into being around a campfire and a group that was founded to tell the stories, okay? The Midnight Society. So the working story, the working title for the show um actually was called Scary Tales as a play on fairy tales. Um, but they found out it had been used somewhere else, so they had to get rid of it because, you know, trademarks and legal problems. Yeah, all the things. Um, so then they were like, all right, well, what do we call it? So he DJ McHale did an interview and he said this there was a scary story written by Dr. Seuss called What Was I Scared of, which I've never heard of. Have you? Me either. Okay. And he said, I always love that story. So I took that title and thought, well, I was afraid of clowns and I was afraid of the dark. Oh, we might be related. Um and that's where the title came from kind of an answer to the Dr. Seuss title, like, Are You Afraid of the Dark? Yeah. Okay. Um, and so that's how they got the title. So then they go and they pitch their idea to Nickelodeon when they get all their shit together. And Nickelodeon originally said, Absolutely not, you can't scare kids. Like, this is not gonna work. They were like, bye-bye. But they left behind a three-page treatment of the show, which I don't know what that means. You know what that means? Like a treatment. I think it's not just the script, it might include like storyboards. Okay. It's like the overall vision. It's like, okay, got it. So I knew Katie would know. Um they left it there. And in the year between the original rejection, and then they came back to pitch a different show to Nickelodeon. Um, the network had hired a new executive, and his name was Jay Mulvaney. He also launched um The Adventures of Pete and Pete for those who don't remember watching that show. I had to throw that in there. Um, anyway, so Mulvaney actually came across their treatment in the development slush pile, as they called it. And he read it. Like he went through the stuff they were like, meh. And he read it, and he was like, actually, this is great. I really like this. And that's how they got that's the show. See, another example which we bring up a lot on this show, a no right now is not a no forever, always. And like, I I thought that was kind of cool that like they didn't just throw away stuff, they just kind of threw it in a thing. They were like, eh, I I kind of get that though, because it's like let's say in the year that they said it was terrible, to then there's like a hit scary kid show, right? Or any of the ones that they like throw away that you find out like something in that genre actually is popular, then it's still there instead of being like, Oh, what about that one we threw out? I mean, capitalism, always hold on to the hope that something will make your network. I mean it doesn't hurt to hold on to those ideas, yeah. All right, so now we're gonna get into some stuff about the filming of it. There's all kinds of interesting little tidbits here. Um, they actually the production was based in Canada. Okay. So a lot of actors were Canadian. Um they were always looking for like spooky places to shoot, but their home base was in Montreal, which I did not know this. Um, the show actually was given permission to film in cemeteries. They have quite a few shows where there's cemeteries, but they hit a little snag because there was a Canadian law that said you cannot show the real names of deceased people on TV, which makes sense. That is perfectly acceptable. Absolutely. So what the crew did was they made fake foam tombstones that they just put in front of the real tombstones. I was like, okay, well, that's smart. Um they but the names they put on there were like inside jokes among the cast and crew. And the funniest one I found was they had a story editor named Paul Doyle, and he said he started dying laughing when he read one. He was actually editing and he found it, and it said, Here lies blind Paul, because they would think they didn't think he was gonna see it. Oh, that's so funny. But he saw it, so I was like, Oh, that's fun. I love me an inside joke. That is really good. Um, also for scenes that they had that were in the deep dark woods, which there was plenty because it was scary stories. Um they got permission from an arboret, is it arboretum? Arboretum? Wait, where's the word? A-R-B-O-R-E-T-U-M. Arboretum. Arboretum. Okay, basically, I look, I was like, I don't even know what that is. Basically, it's like a botanical garden for like woody plants. Okay. We always think of like botanical garden like flowers and stuff. This for like trees and woody, woody plants, okay? Um, he got permission to film there, but the protected status of all the animals and plants that were there, it caused problems because the mosquitoes were so bad and you could not kill them. You were not allowed to kill them even with your hand. You weren't allowed to use pesticides, you couldn't use like bug spray. Yeah, why were they protected? Just because of because it was uh it whatever the where they were, it was just part of the you you couldn't mess with like the natural environment. Okay, which I get that, yeah, which makes sense. Um, and they said it swarmed the place like a horror movie, like the mosquitoes were that bad. I know. Um, the crew would have to wear like beekeeper outfits and gloves because that they were so bad. Mosquitoes, guys. Yeah, I'm from Louisiana, and let me tell you, I I know how nasty skeeters can get. Um, and they said they said this. Um, I remember actress Mia Kirshner doing a soliloquy playing this possessed girl in one episode, and a mosquito landed on her nose, and she tried so hard to stay in character to keep filming. Um, but eventually she said, I can't take this anymore. Like I did stop. Because this friend's sucking her nose blood dry. Can you imagine the torture? This young kid, yuck. Um, the campfire scenes, because every episode begins and ends, those are called wraparounds, right?

SPEAKER_01: 14:07

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00: 14:08

With the kids at a campfire and they take turns telling a story. Those were actually filmed on a sound stage, so it's not as expensive. Really? Yeah. Oh, I know. I wouldn't have thought so, but I guess it's such a they had such tight shots of the kids. They didn't want to have to repeatedly build and tear down. I get it. And you would want it to look a lot the same. And yeah. And they said the wraparounds for an entire season had to be filmed in like a couple weeks. Which which was kind of hard on the kids. They didn't really bond a lot because they only saw each other for like a couple weeks every season. So they said that was kind of hard. Um, and that meant that that also meant, and as a writer, you'll understand how hard this would be. All the episodes for a season had to be scripted like super far in advance. Because when you did the wraparounds, they had to make sense. Because they had to say this is the tale of whatever. This is yeah. I mean, I don't hate that. Really? Have it all planned out, yeah. But I mean, as a writer, what if they were like you have to write 30 episodes? I guess it depends how early they got it to you. I mean, this wasn't like super in-depth writing, but still, yeah, I couldn't do it. I couldn't, I'm not a writer, so it's fine. I mean, if you have to write 30 episodes anyway, if you get me those 30 episodes and I am in advance and I can write them, unless they're all on me and I just have to make up 30. That would be hard. He uh DJ McHale said it was like a super stressor for him. I'm sure. Um, they said he wrote um or rewrote every single script for the first seven seasons, which was 91 episodes. Dang, that is a lot. Yeah. And you have to kind of be creative because you don't want to do the same thing. I know. Yeah, I know, I know. Um, so anyways, so that's just some of the stuff about like the filming, etc. But Nickelodeon was still like kind of wary of selling horror stories, even though it was like light, light, scary. It was very light, yeah, um, to children. So the network insisted that the Are You Afraid of the Dark episodes had to draw some inspiration from like classic literature? Okay. That way they could safeguard themselves against parental complaints that might happen. Because if they were like, oh, whatever, this is so scary, and they'd be like, What do you mean? That's classic fiction, that's you know, Edgar Allan Poe or whatever. And I was like, okay, I don't think I would ever compare until I remembered a few of their episodes. And they had a few examples. There's one in the first season called The Tale of the Twisted Claw, and that was based around W. W. Jacob's story, The Monkey Paw. Did you ever read that? No, I never read that one. Okay, well, you need to go watch that one, it's good. Um, they have one called The Tale of the Foam Police, which was actually based on George Orwell's 1984. Okay. Like Big Brother and all that. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so also when he was writing the stories, DJ McHale insisted that the stories focused on the kids, not the supernatural. Like he wanted the storylines to focus around them. He said this in an interview. He said, a writer would come in and say that they had this idea for, say, a haunted car. And I would say, that's cool, but who are the kids? I want a story about a couple kids that have something going on in their lives that is real and has a real kind of conflict that we would be interested in watching even if we didn't find the haunted car. I see that. Yeah. Now from like even the ones we watched for today. Yeah. And it does make it more interesting because instead of being, you're not necessarily watching for the supernatural. You're watching to see how they handle it or what happens to them. Yeah. I noticed that they didn't really, at least the ones I watched, they weren't really saved by adults either. Right. Which I love. Yeah. They had to figure it out. Yeah. And I think this, I think this right here was part of the appeal to so many kids. I mean, especially me, I was in the perfect age bracket at the perfect time for this show. And I think that was that's why you liked it, is because yeah, it was spooky, but that wasn't the main reason, you know, like that you wanted to keep watching. And he actually mandated that his writers avoid like big metaphorical fireworks, he said, like monsters and supernatural forces in favor of authentic emotion. Like you want to see them be scared, you want to see them be upset, you want to see them not necessarily focusing so much on the creep factor. Yeah. Um, and also, like you said, um, the kids were the fixers, but they also kids were the ones telling the stories and the ones that were the subjects of the stories. Right. So that was different. It wasn't some adult telling them a story, right? Like the old man in the rocking chair or whatever they wanted to do. It sounds so creepy, but I mean, you know it might have been okay. I mean, it's not the same thing exactly, but like Dolly Parton reads books on YouTube. Yeah. And it's like a whole thing that people watch, and part of it is for kids who either people don't read to them or um, so it's not a horrible idea, but this is what they came up with is much better. Yeah. Um, I'm gonna skip ahead and I'm gonna come back to this. Um one of my notes, because I read that out of order. He described Are You Afraid of the Dark as a mix of the Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock presents, which I thought that was a good comparison. Because those aren't necessarily always super scary. Right. Sometimes it's just weird stuff that happens, or they're funny, or you know, um, and this was my best favorite Easter egg I've found in a while. The Twilight Zone got a special nod every single episode with the Are You Afraid of the Dark catchphrase that they say before every story? They say, Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society. Do you know what Rod Serling said at the beginning of Every Twilight Zone? Probably something like that. I don't know. He did. He would introduce the show segment and he would say, Submitted for your approval, and then name of the story. Cool. So I never put those two together, and I have seen 60 bajillion episodes of the OG Twilight Zone, and I never would have put that together. But I love that. I love it too, because it's just simple. I know, I love it. It's also just like fun, it makes it, I don't know, it makes it feel more like a society. I know, like a secret society when you say something like that. Can we start saying that? What our podcast submitted submitted for the approval for your approval listeners, secret society of generation in between. Okay, so only the uh rewind. My brain got ahead of my mouth. Does that ever happen to you? Oh, yeah. Um, all right. Though you only see them for a few minutes at the beginning and at the end of every single episode, the Midnight Society Kids like are a crucial role because they're the common link in the entire series. They're in every episode. It's not always the same cast. Um oh, the magic dust they throw on the campfire. You know what that was? Is it just sand? Uh-uh. It was a mix because did you notice it was shiny? Yes. It was glitter and coffee mate creamer, powdered creamer. Okay. Isn't that hilarious? Yeah. In fact, I saw one of the actors who was on the show. He's like, I would he when he got hired, he was so excited. He's like, I couldn't wait for like the magic until I realized, oh, it's just coffee creamer. Like what? Like, what? Oh, I love it. And the reason they did that, Nickelodeon did not want to show kids using matches because they wanted to avoid kids trying it at home. And like, even in the beginning where they're holding the match in the intro segment, you don't see the hand light the match, it just appears on fire. And you don't see who it's attached to either. Correct. Um, and all 91 episodes, you only see a kid light a match one time, and it wasn't in the intro, it was in an episode, and that's because it slipped through the sensors. She was trying to um light a lantern, and she ended up not being able to do it, and they had to kind of fake it, so it just looked like she did it. So actually, there were no kids that actually lit matches, even though that episode looked like she did. She didn't really she didn't know what she was doing, so they had to do it for her and like play it off. So, anyways, I just thought that was funny. Not playing with matches used to be such a huge part of our childhood. For real. I don't think I've ever told my children that there's not a lot of matches around, though. That's because you only have one boy. Oh, that's true. Maybe I should text him, even though he's 18 and be like, by the way, in case I never told you, do not play with matches. I mean, it's not really matches, it's fire. Right. Like, and you have candles, like we usually have candles too. My kids would always try and stick their fingers in it. I remember I was cooking pancakes on a griddle once, and one of my daughters was maybe six, and just out of nowhere just takes her hand and slams it down. And I'm like screaming, and then she's screaming, she was fine, it wasn't that hot. But I'm like, excuse me, I'm like, why would you do that? She's like, I don't know. And I'm like, I guess I never told you not to, but I feel like you can like feel the heat emanating. No, she never did it again. That is and she's okay. I know. Thankfully, it wasn't super hot yet. God, that's so scary. But I just remember thinking, like, why would a person do that? But also, she's six, and why does six year old anybody do literally anything? Yeah, nobody has the answer to that. Right. Maybe I should tell that one not to play with matches. Yeah. I don't think I have yet. Not too late. Not too never too late. Never too late. Um, okay, so speaking of kids, they worked really hard to get the casting right for this show, not just for the campfire kids. Um, that's not what they're called, but the Midnight Society kids. But for each episode, too. They wanted to get the casting right. Um, but for the Midnight Society, he embarked on what he called the magical mystery tour. Oh, that's great. He went to Vancouver, Toronto, New York, and Montreal and had big old casting sessions, seeing thousands of kids each stop. Damn. In fact, he he got chicken pox in Montreal and had to quarantine for 10 days before he could travel again. Because of like the kid germs. Oh my god. And there was no way to figure out like well, at that point, like who had him. They probably didn't even know they had him at the time. Right. Um, there was one person, one actor that was on all seasons, um, the uh original that made it for through one through 91, and then he made a a reappearance in one of the revivals, and that is the guy who played Gary, his name is Ross Um Hull. He had the glasses. Okay. Yeah. He was one of the older ones. He was like the head of the Midnight Society. He was on the pilot through the conclusion of the OG series, came back for a cameo in the first revival in '99. Um, this made me giggle because after they said after the first season, they had to remove the lenses from his glasses. Uh, because the campfire reflection was always in his glasses. And so if you watch in all seasons after the first one, if you look at it, if they get it from the right angle, you can see he has no lenses in the glasses. Oh my goodness. You would think they'd be a little careful tonight.

SPEAKER_01: 25:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 25:27

Which I thought was super funny. Um, and again, like I said, because those campfire segments were filmed all at once, the kids were only together for a week or two every season, so they didn't really have a lot of bonding, as kid stars do when they're on regular shows. Um, Mikhail tried to help them out by arranging a team building trip, which sounds cute, but then he said it kind of backfired. He took them bowling and he like hurt his back to the point where he still had problems years and years later. Like he pulled something in the worst way. This man should not be around children. Chicken pox, back injuries. I know. Interestingly enough, he had kind of had some shitty things to say about them. About the kids? Yeah, and I'll tell you what it is. So if you're already feeling like maybe you shouldn't be around kids, you're gonna feel like that even more in a second. All right. Um, this is what he said. The fact is, the whole time I was making that show, I cared so little about the Midnight Society. It was an annoyance. To me, the Midnight Society was never the interesting part about the show. The interesting part was the little movies that we made. It used to crack me up when people would say, I like this Midnight Society better than that Midnight Society, or I like this kid in the Midnight Society better than that kid. I was always like, who cares? That's not what the show is about. Oh, but that makes the show. I think so too. I don't think you could just start with the little movies or whatever you call them. Oh it's it's you like the kids, you see yourself in the kids, and because you don't necessarily relate to the people in the movie, you relate to the kids telling the stories. Yeah, plus they were engaging and they were adorable and they had good chemistry like amongst themselves. It's like a story within a story, and a writer, I would think, would know that. What a weird thing to say. I was like, that is so shitty, and he just like kept going. I know. Like, okay, just keep getting his rant about. Hello. Okay, so there were some um Xennial actors who had cameos in um Are You Afraid of the Dark segments? One we watched, uh Ryan Gosling. He was in the Tale of Station 109.1, which also had Gilbert Gottfried. That was so great. Um, actually, Mikhail wanted to cast uh Ryan Gosling as part of the Midnight Society, but he turned it down to be in the Mickey Mouse Club for two years. Um, but when he came back, because he's Canadian as well. Yeah. Uh so he lived in Florida for two years while he was on Mickey Mouse Club. When he went back to Canada, um, they got him to do that episode. Okay. So he was in that episode right after Mickey Mouse Club. Okay. Okay, so people would have known who he was then. Yes. I wondered about that. Yeah. Um Nev Campbell was in an episode called The Tale of the Dangerous Soup. Oh. Two years before The Craft and Scream. Okay. So it was right before and Party of Five, obviously. Before she was like really big. Yeah. Um Eddie Kane, Eddie, Eddie K. Thomas, Shipbreak. Ah Finch. He was in the Tale of the Curious Camera, which was his first screen roll. Oh. Was Are You Afraid of the Dark? And then Tia and Tomorrow Maori, and I accidentally deleted the name of their episode. They were on an episode about um oh my gosh. It's I'll look it up when we're done. But they were in one. Uh and they were on there as twins. Uh okay. They were they were in it together. Awesome. And I think it was right before their sister-sister time. That sounds about right. Because that was like 96, 97, 98-ish. I have no idea. I think. No idea. Um, this I thought was very interesting that I didn't think about really until I was re-watching it. Are you afraid of the dark was like a big cornerstone in Nickelodeon's efforts to diversify children's TV. And I say that in the most 90s terms I can think of. But for the time, there like all programming, especially children's programming, was very, you know, white, Eurocentric, heterocentric, you know, very whatever, Eurocentric. Um, but they were trying to break out of that a little bit. And and their SNCC programming was the first, because you know, they had Ren and Stimpy, they had Doug, you know, they were trying to diversify. And here's what Mikhail said about uh casting. I'm almost scared. No, no, no. It's good. This is okay. There were two mandates with casting besides being good, obviously, besides being a good actor, which I would say question mark after some of the episodes I watched. Okay. At the bottom of the list. He said diversity was a big one. And he said often a kid got nicked by Nickelodeon because they were too Disney. They didn't want he said apple pie, freckles, cute, over-the-top acting. They were like, that's a Disney kid. Get rid of him. They wanted normal looking kids who were not because Disney, and if we said Disney kid, you know exactly what we're talking about. Absolutely. And I think they got that right. I think so too. I think they got that right. Um, and he said, I think it's one of the things that made Nickelodeon so great. If it smacked of Disney Anna is what they called it, they wouldn't do it. They also had kids of all racial identities and showed interracial relationships, which in the early 90s was not done much on TV. In fact, this show got nominated for an award from the NAACP for that thing alone. Um, also, every episode switched off having a girl protagonist and a boy protagonist. Cool. So there was equal representation of who like who was the main character. The main character of the story. Which I love that. Which to us is like, well, duh. But in the early 90s, not done. And like, um and they they didn't make a big deal about it wasn't like, oh, this is a girl story. And this is a boy story. Oh, that's like that's an interracial relationship. It was just it was just there. Yeah. Which is how it should be. And I think the best way that that happens, at least on the gender and and relationships and racial identities, is when it the story has nothing to do with those things. And it's just people like it could be a boy, it could be a girl, it could be any racial identity telling the story or being the protagonist. And that's when it's done right. Yeah. Like that's the best way to do it. Yeah. So I had never thought about that until I saw that. I was like, oh, okay. Well, yay, Nickelodeon, winning awards for this stuff. I was watching it and I was like, yeah, I mean, you can see that like the kids look like normal kids. They do. Like it would, I think it's it was probably easy to picture yourself as one of the kids. You know, I agree. Because they had kids that looked differently from each other. Yes. And like you said, looked a little more normal. And by that I just mean like, yeah, like it's accessible. Like it could be your friend. Right. They're not like so perfectly put together and the perfect teeth and the perfect skin and the perfect hair, and like so clean cut. You know. To be fair, they're still pretty clean cut. Oh, well, I know. But I just mean with the Disney, they are, you're right. But I just mean comparing it to if you compared like a side-by-side of a show at the same time, yes. You would definitely notice the difference. And I don't mean just the campfire kids, I mean the kids in the show. Right. Right. Yeah. Um and the relationships in the stories. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay, so I have just a few more things, and then we'll talk about our thoughts when we watched them. Uh the first five seasons of Are You Afraid of the Dark aired from 92 to 96. Again, the show returned for a two-season revival in '99, but by the time the second one aired, Nickelodeon was kind of moving away from doing dramas. Um and they said it mostly came down to guess what? Money. Uh Mikhail said comedies are much cheaper to do. Kids love comedy, so they went with the lowest common denominator. I mean, you know, they figured they had a better chance of getting a hit with a comedy than a drama. And I was like, oh yeah, this kind of was the last kind of like serious show. Everything else was comedies. And the cost I would imagine is a lot higher. True. Because you've got so many kids. You've got the Campfire kids, plus new people every story, plus different settings. Yeah. I'm sure production costs were higher, I know, than like a sitcom. Um, he did write a feature-length screenplay for a movie version. Excuse me. He said, I did write a movie called The Tale of the Wicked Gift for Paramount. Um, it was an original story about the boogeyman who was conjured centuries before by an ancient tribe as a means to discipline children. Ooh. He said the project never went anywhere because the folks who ran Paramount at the time didn't get that you could make a movie like that, meaning horror light. Um, they felt that horror had to be either like true horror or like Scooby-Doo funny. Because he was trying to do something in the middle. Yeah. And they were like, eh. So that was, I don't, I didn't write down what year that was. But then, so they were like, nah, we don't want to do that. That's not gonna work. But then they changed their mind because in November 2001, as happens to this man, yeah. November 2011, they it was announced a film adaptation of the series was in the works at Paramount. Oh, good grief. Uh-huh. Um, and the person the people working on the project was It Writer, like it, the scary clown. Not like the It Guy, but like the It Guy guy. It writer, um, Gary Doberman and producer Matt Kaplan with filmmaker uh DJ Caruso tapped to direct. The film had an October 2019 release date, but eight months before Paramount just removed it from their schedule and never said why. So who knows? Money, I'm sure. But look, if I am this McHale guy, I keep wanting to say Joel McHale. I know from Talk Soup. I know. I wonder if they're related. I'm sure it's a common last name. I'm sure it is. But um, I keep thinking, like, never give up. I know because everything, someone not everything, but most things people have said no to you, they've come back and said no. But then they said no again. Then they said no again, and that was six years ago. So maybe maybe we'll give up on this particular project. Yeah, I love it. So those were all my those all my facts, um, which I thought it was all pretty interesting. Yeah. So let's talk about now the episodes we watched and sounds good. Introduce them and then we'll talk about them. And I'll save the one that you did not watch. Actually, we'll talk about as it comes. Because I want to talk about the Ryan Gosling one last. Okay. Okay. Sounds good. And there's a reason for that. Okay. I watched these with my family, with Tori and Cooper, and they were like, oh my god. I listen, I told them that it was gonna be cheesy. It's cheesy. I was like, this is from 1992, guys. It's so enjoyable though. I know. I really enjoyed watching these. Like, I'm thinking I'm gonna go back and watch more. They didn't like it because, and I said, I think y'all don't have the nostalgia piece with it. That's true, and I think if you if you don't have it, then you're gonna be like, this is dumb. Like, because especially the first few episodes, the acting is so bad. Uh-huh. It's like so bad. Even the adults that are in it. It's so bad. But then it picks up, it just took it a little while. So the first one we watched was from the first season, and I remember, or no, wait, yes, first season is a second episode. It's called The Tale of Laughing in the Dark, which I remember because there's a clown in it. Here is the summary, which is a very long summary. A kid named Josh decides to prove that a fun house isn't haunted by stealing the nose of the clown who is supposed to haunt the place. Oh, wait, that's not very long. Ha, that was it? That's the summary. I thought my my I thought my thoughts were I'm like settled in for a long journey. And I'm kidding. Yeah, okay. Um, yeah, so there's a scary clown that it okay. I wrote clown ghosts, no wonder I remember this one, right? And I just put like fear of clowns. Like, listen, episode two of the entire series. You got to. You gotta go there. Well, not only fear of clowns, haunted houses, and ghosts. And ghosts. Plus, um, did you notice how they had some throwbacks to like some other urban legends and stuff? Like the call coming from inside the house, yep, um, finding footsteps. Yes, but okay, also, how 90s was it to have the cigar as part of the storyline? That was so funny. Cigar smoke, and it just kept popping up. The clown ghost appears, you smell cigar smoke. Yeah. Or you see, like what he was the ghost was behind the house, and all you see is a smoke. Yeah. And I was thinking, I don't think my kids would know what cigar smoke is. Oh, yeah, neither would mine. They would know what marijuana smells like because we smell it everywhere we go these days. And they're like, they like are the first to point it out. But um, but cigar smoke, I think they would just be like, What is that? But as kids, I knew what I I mean, I still do, but I knew what cigar smoke smelled like. And then he had the bowl of cigars on the microwave. I know, and then there was like the Z on the floor in the pudding. That was really funny. Well, first, okay, so let's talk about some of the funny things. First of all, that kid is a jerk. So why is that other brother and his sister keep hanging out with him? He's so mean. He was really mean, like, he's so mean. Um okay, also, the the kid came home to make dinner. He warms up the entire giant thing of spaghetti. That was in the freezer? I know. It's like there's spaghetti in the freezer, and he just takes it out of the freezer and puts this giant, like I was like, I don't think that's how you do that. It's like pudding for a party of 25 people. It's this giant bowl of pudding he takes out and drops the whole thing.

unknown: 39:13

I know.

SPEAKER_00: 39:14

That was really funny. Was his friend's name Ouija? Okay, yeah, we thought it was Luigi, but I think maybe he was just called I don't know. Yeah, they're calling him Ouija. Yeah, but it's I think his name was Ouija. Weird, yeah. Because you know I had the close captions on. Was how did they spell it? Ouija, like the board. Okay, well, maybe that was on purpose. Maybe, but why? I no one knows. It's like everyone has a normal name and his name is Ouija. I thought that was strange. Out of the episodes we watched, that was the one I remember because of the clown. But it was probably the one I liked least rewatching it. Okay. I loved when he chases the sister outside and the trash can. Uh it's like that aluminum trash can with like the metal lid and she like he like runs into it. And I was like, oh my god, remember those trash cans? Yes. Because now they're these, like, first of all, plastic, but also just how big our trash cans have come, and like they come have to come a few times a week just to like because we have more trash now. So much trash. So I thought that was interesting. And I liked the part where um the mean kid, I can't think of his name, me either, is in his room and he's trying to lock the door at home because the clown's in the house, and uh the purple balloon um blows up under the door. That's scary. That was scary, and it said, give it back, give it back, yeah. Give it back. It was also a throwback to that one of the scary stories I read. The lady who took the bone.

unknown: 40:38

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_00: 40:38

Remember? And it's they're like, give me back my bone, and she's like, Fine, here, take it. Yeah, but okay, also he runs back to the haunted house to put the nose back. When did he have time to stop and buy cigars? That was weird. And how did it how did he buy cigars? Well, I mean, it was the 90s. Yeah, they probably sold it. He could say it's for my dad or my grandpa. Yeah, like that used to happen, guys. Literally, literally. And you could your dad could send you to buy cigars. Oh, yeah, I had grandparents that used to do that on the club. Or cigarettes, yeah. Okay, so anything else on that one? No, that was it. That was it. Katie read her notes on an envelope of cigarettes. That says my son's name on the other side. I was literally sitting at my table, and there's like a stack of mail I still need to go through. And I start watching, and I have no notebook. I have zillions of notebooks, and I'm just like sitting there, I'm all set up, and I'm like, I had a pen. All right, actually, I had a Sharpie. See? Oh my god, that's cool. So I grab a Sharpie and a blank envelope. Um there's nothing in it. It was, I think it was his paycheck, and it's it's not in here now. So I was like, it's fine. I can't. That's hilarious. So it's written on the back of an envelope. I am 97 years old. Okay, she is. She's 97. It's time. Okay, so anything else on that episode? Not that one, though. All right, the next one I have, and I don't know if you wrote it down in the right way. The Tale of the Dark Music. Uh-huh. I just wrote Dark Music, but okay. So, well, see, it was labeled different online when I looked them up than it was on Amazon, than it was on another place. So I have no idea the logic behind that.

SPEAKER_01: 42:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 42:03

So where I watched it, it was season one, episode eight. Oh, I had season one, episode eleven. See, so uh who knows? Okay. Uh, this is Tale of the Dark Music. Um, Andy Carr and his family move into their uncle's old house, and Andy has the creeps. It's not until he hears the dark music in the basement that his suspicions are confirmed. This one felt very Twilight Zony to me. Very, yeah. Um, and it starts off with such a Xennial thing where he's on a newspaper route. Yes. Oh my gosh. I never had one. My brother did. But my dad would go with him. Oh, yeah. So it was like never like him really by himself. But the whole thing is it was like that in and of itself what is so like 80s because and and and early 90s. First of all, newspapers. That's back when everybody was reading a newspaper. Almost every house got a newspaper, and and child labor laws were like not existing. And kids were doing this by themselves before the sun was up in the dark. And even when my brother did it, so this would have been probably late 90s, he had to go collect money. Oh, yeah. Like once a month. And then you would go knock on the doors and be like, hey, you owe$20 for the newspaper this month. And then you would take the money and like, I'm like, oh my gosh, what a nightmare. I know. And unfortunately, I've listened to a few true crimes where it went wrong, which I think changed some of the rules around it. And now, like, you can pay online, and also not as many people get the newspaper in its physical form. I'm a newspaper gal. We don't get the newspaper, but I like a newspaper. People also just believe whatever they want to believe. Also, that anyway. Um, I liked how in that one, um, I forget who says it. Someone says there's two kinds of luck. Yeah. Oh, it's the storyteller. Yeah. Says, says um he was hoping for a change in luck, but remember, there's two kinds of luck. That's like your story you read about Michelle. I know. Michelle wanted all the good luck, uh-huh, but she got um some of the bad luck. Oh, speaking of the campfire, the blonde. Yes, Rachel Blanter, she played Cher and Clueless, the TV show. That's who she was. Um, and she was in Road Trip. Yep. I was like, where do we know her from? So I had to pause it and like look it up, and I was like, okay, now I can rest. Yes. She was so familiar. And her voice too. Yeah, but that's where we knew her from the case. That's where we know her. Okay. Okay. So the kid realizes every time he plays music in this new creepy ass basement, something down there opens the door and tries to snatch him. Yes. Okay. The boom box he had, the yellow, we had that same exact so good. You know why? It was waterproof. And we would have it outside um because we had a pool and we would bring it out there. And like, I can remember suntanning and having that yellow. I was like, oh my god. And that washer and dryer was yellow. Same one. We had the same one. That's awesome. We didn't have basement because we lived in Louisiana, which is below sea level. So, like it looks like every Indiana basement. Oh, yeah. We had a basement in the house I grew up in, and I I did not want to go down there. Oh, yeah. I'm sure. It was not finished. Yeah. Nobody used that. It's like a new thing. It had like a hanging light bulb. You had to pull the little thing on, and but you had to like be halfway through the basement to even get to it. Oh no. And then in this one, how they have like the door on the outside, the root cellar, we had one of those. And we had like padlock it from the outside so people couldn't get in, but like or people are scary. But it was there to like for like storms or something, kind of like Wizard of Oz, right? Like you go down, and there was a whole part of the basement, and maybe I'm misremembering it, but it was just like almost like a cement box, but it was a whole size of a room, just filled with like sand, I guess. And as a kid, I was like, is there stuff buried in there? I think it was just um had something to do with like drainage of the house and keeping it like from flooding. We lived on a burial ground. We might have. I'm just kidding. But I would not go down there. My dad would keep tools and stuff down there, but no, no, ma'am. I mean, that's and this basement and this one look just like it. You know what? Okay, so when we lived in Missouri, that was the first time we ever had a basement. And then we lived in Virginia, we also had one. We rented our house in Virginia, and this was so creepy. So we move in, we go down, the basement was finished, but underneath the stairs, once you got underneath the stairs, there was like this little like just empty alcove for like storage or whatever. Okay, this is so creepy. The stairs down to the basement had a door that went that you go down to the basement from the kitchen, and there was a lock. You could lock it from the kitchen. Okay, so like if you were in the basement, somebody could lock you in there, which was weird to us. Like they had they had installed a lock so you could lock the basement door. So we go, we're moving in, I'm cleaning up, putting stuff in the basement. I go in this alcove and I look around the corner and I'm putting like storage boxes, and underneath the stairs in this little corner is a blanket and a pillow. Swear to god, like a little kid blanket and a little kid pillow. And we were like, What the hell? Oh my god. I'm not even kidding. That's scary. And we were like, what the hell? And so I was like, okay, maybe they had a dog. Maybe. Because then there were also scratch marks on the door, short, like low down. And I was thinking, okay, well, maybe they'd like put a dog away if they had like faint, like, I don't know. So we asked the neighbors, we're like, hey, so um the people who lived here before us, like, did they have a dog? And they were like, no. Oh. And we're like, told them what we found, and they were like, well, they this gets so worse. They were like, they did have a daughter who had like some like issues and stuff. And I'm like, thinking in my head, did they lock her in the basement? Yikes, girl. I would be like, burn this house down. I mean, we had we had to live there. I mean, like, we didn't like, you know, that's yeah, that's just the way we had to it just nothing weird ever else happened, like, nothing weird happened there, but like, and I mean, we like Troy had seen the family before we like moved, so I mean she was still okay, but like, what? Anyway, creepy basements, creepy basements. Um, also in this show, it's a different weird thing that pops out every time. Yes, that giant doll. I know I wrote that down. I actually said scary floating doll. I put creepy, I wrote giant, creepy talking doll that hypnotizes you because remember she's like hypnotizing him and she's like, Come play with me. Yeah, what I know, she was really scary, and then another time it was like a skeleton in a top hat or something, or like a barbershop quartet hat that was weird, yeah, it was super creepy. I liked how I liked how it was every uh always something a little different, yeah. Like you weren't sure what was gonna pop out of there. And and I wrote down the bully and then the bully's dad. Oh wow or so like so stereotypical 90s, I guess. And he throws his bike in front of a trash truck and it runs it over. I'm just like, oh my god, like literal litigation would take place if this happened now. Seriously, oh my gosh, but at the end, I love how they just show the kid with the creepy smile when he's there, like because what happens is the the mysterious voice, because he tricks the the neighborhood bully to go down there, and then the creepy force takes him and they tell it, then a new bike appears because the bully destroyed his bike, a new bike appears, and the voice says, I'll give you anything you want as long as you keep feeding me. It's kind of like little shop or something. It reminded me of little shop, and um all you you all you hear at the end is his sister calling from upstairs, and he just looks at the camera with like a creepy smile. So good, so good, such a good ending. And then, of course, they go back to the campfire and they were like, Oh my god, did he actually feed his sister? Like, oh no, but whatever. Right, because you have to make it horror-like. But the sister, they made the sister very unlikable, right? On purpose. I mean, because also that's relatable. Your little siblings annoy you, it's annoying, but like she like he has to go down because she's playing a video game and she won't help. Uh-huh. Also, like this idea that everyone just inherits these huge houses from random family members. That was like a very popular storyline. It's like, well, where are my relatives? It's like, oh, this relative I never really met left me this giant house. Was it Google? What is that story? Or is there another one that's like that too? Oh, um, I can't think of it. It's the movie we watched where she goes to live with her dad. Oh, um, Lost Boys. She didn't inherit it, but she like goes to her dad's house and it's like this amazing place. Like yeah, I know. Just like these relatives just have these homes that like all these moms and their kids can just like show up and live in. I know, but you know, the the thing they made identifiable though in this one was that the mom just went through a divorce. Yes, and they didn't have a lot of money, and the kid had to get a job. I mean, that was pretty common. Yeah, it was so you know, anyway. Um, all right. The next one, um we're gonna talk about it because you didn't watch it. Okay. This one I remembered and it scared the shit out of me because it was a kid ghost. Oh I'm gonna show I need to find it. Yeah, I've got my phone. Look up, just type in this the tale of the shiny red bicycle, kid ghost. Okay, and see what picture it shows you, and I'll tell you if it's the right one. Shiny red bicycle kid ghost. So season three, episode five, the tale of the shiny red bicycle. Um it's just taking me to a fandom, but maybe the kid will show up. What? Okay. Go to oh, well, that's the episode. No, that's not it. Okay, hold on. I'll need the actual stuff. Sorry. See, this is what happened when I was trying to find this episode. I don't know what happened. Okay, so let me read you the sum. Well, wait till she's picture of kid ghost. Let's try that instead. Not just any okay, is it this one? Yeah, it's that one. Okay. Okay, look at it. Zoom on it. Okay, I'm sorry. Okay, and look at it while I tell you this summary. Okay, I'm ready. Mike, Mike Buckley is haunted by the ghost of his friend Ricky Haggerty, who died who drowned in his old bike. I don't know, that's a weird description. But I um so it tells a story that um this the beginning of this one, you see two kids about this age, about eight or nine, riding their bikes um over a bridge. They're like at a dam or something, and they're playing around the water, and they turn. I don't know how dams work, okay? Okay, I don't know what this is. It's like they they have to redirect water at a certain time every day. I don't know. Anyway, this happens while they're playing in this creek, and this water comes rushing, and the kid's trying to save his friend with his bike, and they and the kid dies. That's how this one starts off. Yeah, okay. That is not horror light, right? It's trauma. And then you see him as the friend who survived as a teenager. He's having nightmares about Ricky, and then he starts seeing Ricky everywhere, and it's scaring him. People think something's wrong with him, and the the thing that was sucky about it all, um, actually I put on here, start off with some childhood trauma, and then all the people who come across as kid, and he's like, I keep seeing Ricky and all this stuff, they're like, Okay, you need to rest. So you need to just let it go. You keep blaming yourself, just let it go. And I'm like, that is so early 90s, not let's get you into therapy. Right, let's talk about it. Talk about things are valid. Like this was six years ago, and like you're still like you're having nightmares, maybe. I was like, that, and all the adults are like, Oh, you have to just let it go. You have to just, it's like, hello. Anyway, so he keeps seeing this ghost, they bring him to the doctor, the doctor's like, you need to stay in bed all weekend, whatever. Well, apparently, him and his little brother are like fisher, like fisher people. He has a younger brother, around the same age as they were. And so while he's like in bed resting, his little brother is going to go fishing on the first day of fishing season or whatever the hell. And he was gonna go with him, but they made him stay home, blah blah blah. Well, he wakes up because he's having another dream about Ricky, and he sees him outside, and the I forget his name. Oh, Mike. He goes outside and he like confronts the ghost and he's like, Why are you here? I'm so sorry. Well, I don't know. Like, what are you gonna do? Are you trying to take me? You know, all this, whatever you would say to a ghost. I don't know. Something like that. Turns out Ricky keeps like, I keep trying to tell you, I'm here to warn you. It's your brother. Oh, he's in the same spot I was. You gotta go save on and he's like, Here, take my bike. So he takes Ricky's bike, gets there just in time to save his brother from the exact same tragedy, and um, as they're walking away, he looks over to where the bike was and it's like totally rusted and like whatever. Um wow, it's a heavy episode, yeah. But the kid ghost, that's what lived in my brain. Yeah, it was so creepy. But anyway, you couldn't find that episode, you don't need to watch it because I just told you the whole thing. You just told me, but it sounds like a good one though. I mean, it is, but like also it got me irritated because I'm like, this poor kid, yeah, like watched his friend die and feels like it was maybe partially his fault. He kept he keeps telling people, like, I feel like I could have done more, or like whatever. And he tells the ghost that and the ghost is like, you did everything you could, and I'm here to warn you, and like they never found the kid's body, they say that, and like they oh Lord, I know it was a lot, yeah. But I mean, that's again why we we re-watch and remember this stuff because we can take another lens now, and even though it was a story, so you could arguably say, Well, well, we're supposed to think that it's bad that they did that. That was pretty common for them. Oh, I no, I don't even think that you were supposed to think that. I think it was just like it was like, oh, six years me. Yeah, I think, and then I think you were supposed to think, oh, well, now he has closure because he saved his brother and saw a ghost, which is like, no, that's not how it works. Anyway, wow, okay, okay. So moving on to the last one, yes, this is the Ryan Gosling episode, and this was in season five, right? So we've moved forward several seasons. Could you tell the different vibe in this one? Yes, immediately. And the reason why is because they were going starting to go more towards the comedy route. Okay. The network. So there's like goofy music, and there's a lot more humor. Also, I'd have to look this up. Goosebumps, I want to say, was around this time, and Goosebumps did a lot different approach than Are You Afraid of the Dark? It had a lot of humor, a lot more like monsters and stuff like that. And that was kind of the era you were sneaking into with this season. I liked that at the beginning they like bring this kid in. Uh, they being the Midnight Society, they bring in this kid blindfolded. Yeah. And so right away you catch on that, and and maybe it was happening all season, but I felt like it was part of the season that maybe they were bringing new kids on each episode to join every episode. Okay. So is this new guy who was getting a chance? Well, and he had been there before. Okay. He had been in another episode before, and they gave him a chance, and then something he didn't let him in, and then this was his second chance. Got it. Last chance. Okay. I thought that was kind of fun. Yeah. I thought that, and I remember that kid. Um, this was called This is one of Ryan Gosling, the tale of station 109.1. Here's a summary. Did you ever listen, really listen to the static between stations on your radio dial? Sometimes you can pick up places from far away, and other times, who knows? Possibly another dimension. This was giving a lot um to me tales from the crypt vibes because it had so much dark humor. Yeah. I really liked that. Um, and also Little Ryan Gosling, precious, so good, and just such a reminder, like what a natural talent. He really is. I know. Like, I'm just like watching him. Now I didn't know he'd been on Mickey Mouse Club for a few seasons when I watched. When I watched this time, gotcha. Timing-wise, I didn't realize, oh, this was absolutely experience, yeah, yeah. But I was like, okay, I guess he's got a little experience. But I was just like, man, like he really does stand out. I know. And not just because it's like, oh, we know who he is now. No. Back then, I would have been like, whoa, he's a good actor. Yeah, he's a good actor. And he's so cute. And he was kind of not unlikable, but he was kind of ornery in this one. Yeah, and I like that they which was fun. Now, again, you could see like as the seasons went on, things were changing a little because he does not look like a normal kid. He looks like a Disney, he was a Disney kid. He was, yeah. Agree. But his brother wasn't. True. His brother wasn't. And Gilbert Godfrey is hilarious. He's so annoying. But he's so funny. He's so annoying. I love it though. Also, it was giving uh Beetlejuice with the waiting room. Yes. To go to the afterlife. And everyone's like, how do we yeah, take a number? He's like, Gilbert Godfrey says, Ever heard the phrase? Oh, wait, when your number's up, are we doing Gilbert Godfrey? Rewind.

SPEAKER_01: 59:27

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00: 59:28

I don't know if I can. Ever heard the phrase? That's pretty good. But I think I sound like um like a 1940s like Chicago gangster though. When your numbers up, kid. Yeah, numbers up. I don't know. That's actually pretty good. Okay, that wasn't too bad. That's actually pretty good. And this would have been after Aladdin when he was the bird. Yeah. Because he was like known before that. But then that brings him into the like kid area. Like a kid could. Watch it and recognize the voice. I mean, he was a comedian for like a long time. I don't know, but yeah, that's his voice is like his trademark. And good for him. I know. To just lean into that and be like, yep, this is this is what you're hiring me for. Listen, let's go. Character acting pays the bills. Does pay the bills. Obviously, I'm good at it. Well, somebody hire Katie. But the thing is, how long could you do that for? I can uh 10 seconds. Probably limit in the contract. I could do this for 10 seconds. 10 seconds? Got it. Um, okay. So what did you think of this episode? It was okay. It was okay. I didn't like it as well as the others. I think they were really riding on Gilbert Godfrey. Um, and just this like idea of um, you know, what happens after you die, which is a fear of everyone. So in this, they present this idea that there's a waiting room. Yeah. And you either go to this like good place or this bad place because the one guy gets taken away by these like hooded, scary guys. But then the guy at the end, who I forget his name, but it was the guy who they thought the kid was, the hearst driver. Yeah. So the hearst. I know, I know. I was like, oh my gosh, there's a hearst in this one. I can't believe it. Oh, but also did Ryan Gosling work at a mechanic shop? What was that about? I like cooking. It was across the street from their house. So then I was like, is it their family? I know that's what I was trying to say. But the brother didn't really work there. I know. It was weird. And then I didn't get that part. He was like on the phone and he was like, Yeah, I'm gonna go finish up on the hearse. And I was like, What? Aren't you 10? Hello? What are we doing? Yeah, I thought that was odd. Yeah. Because it wasn't really explained. No. But then I was like, oh well, I guess just because they have to have the hearse in it. I don't know. But anyway, I didn't like this one as well, but I understand what where they're going with it. And then obviously it's like super nostalgic and fun to see little Ryan Gosling. Well, I wanted to make sure we watched one with um with a Zennial person. Totally. And then also I wanted to watch one later in the seasons to see if it was kept the same vibe because by this point, when this originally aired, I wasn't watching the show anymore. So I don't I don't know any of those episodes. Right. I felt like it was a vibe shift for sure. Oh, it was like a medium. I mean, but I was like watching season one and then season five, right? So there was no gradual, no, but like it was like, oh, this feels very different. Yeah. Oh, yeah, because you didn't see the season two one. I didn't, yeah. So anyway, so that's it. That was your journey. That was fun. Are you afraid of that? I enjoyed watching that. Yeah, I enjoyed that watching that. And we have um a few other little like pre-holiday season topics we're gonna record. And then uh we're meeting this weekend to discuss our holiday season plans. You make us sound so official. We literally just like be like, what are we gonna do? And then we just I will show up with used envelopes and a Sharpie, and then and then later I'll be like, Did did you happen to take a picture of my notes? Because I can't find them. No, but now we have learned after two years to do a Google Doc and then it's there. And if you don't remember who's doing research, that's on you for not looking at the thing. Because it's right there, right in the Google Doc. But but all that to say, we will have some fun holiday content coming up. Yeah, and fun non-holiday content. Excuse me. I just did you hear that? Oh my god. Sorry, everyone. I think they burped in the mic. I don't see this is weird. I don't burp really. I mean, I just did, but like that's one thing. Like when people burp, I'm like, I never burp. That's so weird. But I did just now. I burp all the time. I know, I really don't. The only time I do, and my poor students is when I'm like really doing a vocal exercise. Oh, that makes sense. I'll yawn, I'll burp, I'll sneeze, like all the things. That's the only time I yawn so much. But that has to do with oxygen regulation. So yeah, I don't know. Yeah, there we go. Something. All right, all right. Well, now nobody cares about anything. We've already turned this off. So we're going to wrap up too. Please leave us a review wherever you're listening. Share us with your friends of all generations, and we will see you next time here on Generation in Between. Bye, guys.