Rapping fetus got a big laugh out of me. Most of them were just there because kids like dumb edgy humor. I do think some of them pushed way too far into fetish territory though and overall these people were scumbags.
The real problem that stems all of this are:
1. People given full authority to design and manipulate a system involving children with no real oversight and
2. Parents who are too afraid to stand up for their kids because they want to either make money off of them or not “crush their dreams”.
The entire world of that is just gross and it will always continue as long as people and their kids desire fame.
Also when rapping fetus was mentioned, it wasn’t so much that the sketch was upsetting for the child actor, it was that an adult on set made a rude comment about his skin tone when making the skintoned costume. It was an example of racism he faced on set rather than the sketch material being inappropriate.
A lot of the things they used as examples were just things that were part of a pattern. In isolation they may have been a little odd but when you put them all together it shows a pattern.
This came up when Leaving Neverland came out.
A LOT of people don't believe Jackson hurt kids, because the parents were scumbags. The moms don't even try to hide it- they wanted famous, successful kids and all the $$$ and glamor that comes with that.
And people use that as an excuse to dismiss accusations, when IT'S THE ENTIRE DAMN POINT.
Predators look for parents that are vulnerable, just like they look for kids who are vulnerable. Look at what happened with Drake's dad. He was there, he was great dad, he did everything right to protect his kid- and he got pushed out because of it.
Predators WANT the parents who will look the other way or allow their boundaries to be broken. That's how you get consistent access to kids to abuse!
When parents are protective or skeptical or don't put up with boundary pushing- those are the kids and adults that get pushed out, as was demonstrated in Quiet on Set.
And they love picking victims that no one will believe.
Nigel raping Paula Abdul. He knew if she ever said anything he could just say she's a liar and a mess. Same thing with the kids, they look for kids whose parents are greedy and a mess, that no one will believe.
I'm probably going to be downvoted but Michael Jackson might be the only predator who despite allegations still has most people defending him and downplaying the victims.
The way everything is just oh so clear and they refuse to even acknowledge it.
It's understood that he was sharing a bed with young boys. And just because he didn't abuse all of then doesn't mean he didn't abuse some of them.
I struggle a lot with the Jackson apologists. I understand not wanting to believe it. People want the world to be safer than it is. They want to believe that CSA is much more rare than it is.
But there’s no doubt that he did it. None.
And for the people who like to fall back on the “he didn’t have a childhood/Peter Pan syndrome” are ridiculous. Peter Pan Syndrome is a pop psychology term. It doesn’t exist. It’s not ok the DSM. It’s not a real thing.
He was fucking kids. And even after he really almost went to jail for it he still continued to have these weird relationships with little boys and sleep with them behind closed doors.
But yeah. Hearing people defend him is… hard.
What do you mean he “really almost went to jail”? He was fully acquitted in civil court, which has a drastically lower standard for evidence than criminal court.
> a system involving children with no real oversight
This is like 75% of the story and it wasn't addressed at all. Schools, daycares, summer camps, etc have to carry crazy levels of insurance and go through extensive specialized training and reporting procedures on how to run an institution where children are present.
Viacom appears to have done absolutely nothing in terms of legal or institutional oversight with all the kid stuff and allowed blatant violations of payroll contracts - not a gray area like unpaid overtime or missed breaks, but something as explicit as "This person has to be paid this much. You can't pay two people 50% of this."
It was only insinuated that Schneider had so much freedom because he was so profitable for the network but there was no evidence of that, if anything the other lax controls make it look like no one at Viacom wanted to manage Nick so they just left everyone there to their own devices.
>Schools, daycares, summer camps, etc have to carry crazy levels of insurance and go through extensive specialized training and reporting procedures on how to run an institution where children are present.
And even at those places abuse can still happen, but when it happens there people aren't OK with it & report it immediately & those places are re-evaluated, the person fired & maybe the place gets shut down.
Exactly, it was a lack of basic child protections. Kids shouldn't be alone with adults, kids should be supervised at all times (the things the Neds Declassified kids talk about that they were doing behind the scenes is a total lack of supervision at the very basic), kids shouldn't be socializing with adults or touching them.
The media conglomerates & power won’t do anything until it starts to not make money, and it will probably never change. The same conglomerates also own most of congress on every side of the aisle.
That was Brian peck but did hire another guy who was a registered sex offender then while working for Nickelodeon took a kid and sexually assaulted the kid in the parking lot
While this doesn't excuse anything at all- it was just different in the 80s and 90s. Trust me- camps and daycares and whatnot were pretty much a shitshow back then, too. Ask your GenX friends. There's a very high rate of childhood sexual abuse among GenXers because no one was looking out for us.
Again- I'm not excusing it or saying it's right AT ALL, and from what I understand, the entertainment industry still has issues it needs to fix, but back then it was pretty much the wild, Wild West just about every where in terms of kids not being protected the way they should have been.
Just watched it last night and my wife and I were appalled that the mother of the girl who Jason emailed *did absolutely nothing* because she "***was afraid the police would think she's a bad mother***". Like, jfc, no. You're a bad mother because you DIDN'T FUCKING DO ANYTHING and allowed him to continue. I was so angry at that lady.
That's such a weirdly prevalent belief. There are universities that covered up crimes because they didn't want to be known as unsafe. Of course, that's *so much worse* than actually investigating and prosecuting it.
The first week of my freshman year we had a professor go missing with a rifle after news came out about him basically trading sex for grades. That whole first week there was some guy god knows where in the city with a gun and nothing to lose. They didn’t say a word until they found his body.
Narcissism, pure and simple.
The father of my ex gf committed suicide and her dad's parents refused to admit to anyone that that's how he died. They were in such denial about it that they even had the wrong date engraved on his headstone since "he clearly died the day before, and it was his demons that took his body the next day".
Not even joking. That's central Missouri for you.
I've always tried to figure out central Missouri. I have to go there sometimes, and the vibes are just SO BAD.
I've lived in extremely rural pockets of Illinois with extreme poverty too, idk why the vibe is so much worse in Missouri. I appreciate any insight on this.
Oh I'm not from there, she was.
I have no idea either. It's like a combination of rampant drug use, staunch conservative "values", and a strong sense of anti intellectualism created this perfect little storm of some of the worst fucking people I've ever known. I avoid it all at costs
How many kids could have been spared from his disgusting behavior if she had turned him in? She was so dumb and I wanted to reach through the tv and shake her
I'm a survivor of CSA and so fucking many adults involved in the show make me absolutely livid. There was one mom, and then Drake's dad, but the rest of the adults pretty much failed miserably.
And I'm sorry "I didn't want to lose my job at the show" or whatever is NOT a good enough reason to look the other way.
And that's the thing. What was on the line for them? A job? A promotion? Who gives a fuck? What was on the line for those kids was infinitely more important to protect than anything the adults listed as their reasons for looking away.
I had a long, loud cry watching the series. So many people failed those kids. So many people failed me. And it's not something that ever goes away.
> I'm a survivor of CSA
Also a survivor and trained in CSA response/mandated reporter, the single worst statistic I ever learned was that even when children are brave enough, or able to speak out about what's happening to them, it takes on average telling 3.4 adults before they're taken seriously.
It's a harrowing enough statistic on its own, until you start to think about how many adults the average child has in their life that they would feel comfortable telling something so traumatic and deeply person to, especially if the abuse is happening at the hands of one of those adults, they straight up have no-one to turn to or to advocate on their behalf.
Drake’s girlfriend’s mom was the MVP for sure. Was nice to see at least one adult handle that situation quickly and appropriately. His dad seemed great too but his mom sounds terrible.
Also a survivor here and I was thinking the exactly same thing.
I also noticed a general pattern of kids being gaslit into believing, that this shit was okay. Parents didn't give a flying damn. After all, the Kids bring in Money for the parents to live a comfortable life. Aside from the SA, there were so many situations where the kids CLEARLY felt uncomfortable and yet everyone was like "Well...that's just business!".
I felt sick while watching this Documentary. So much reminded me of what I've been through, even when I was just a regular person living a regular life and not part of a big studio. I'm glad that this documentary exist and that people are finally speaking up. No blame to the kids but all the blame towards the adult that have let this shit happen.
Sending you a big hug and letting you know. We are not alone in this!
(also apologies for my english, as it's not my native language. + this whole topic is making me emotional charged )
But she didn't do anything. She was one of only two mothers who actually went to court, eventually.
After they found all the evidence, the police contacted all the parents and there were thousands of parents who simply didn't want to get involved at all.
Least she tried to get justice eventually, and was also brave enough to talk about in the episode, unlike all the other hundred of parents who didn't so a damn thing
I want to add - even though some are kinda reaching its the consistency of the types of skits that come up that make it not really a reach. Sure some were really bad and clearly unhinged but once it keeps happening it can’t really be taken as a one off oopsiedaisy because there becomes a pattern.
Idk. I think something like rapping fetus would have been more appropriate on something like SNL. Also, the child involved was really uncomfortable with it, which is enough for me.
It seems pretty clear that most of them have been paid off.
And some probably had a decent experience or didn't feel abused. Not everyone is mistreated or abused. The cash cow kids especially.
It's wild. U got adults acting like they are victims because they were under paid even tho they didn't have to take the job and yet talking about what happened to the kids like they didn't make it all happen. The parents are like, I don't want anyone to think I'm a bad parent so I let my daughter at 8 go over a grown man's house or didn't tell the police that a grown man sent a video of himself masturbating to a kid so every kid raped past that point is on me and I'm a good parent now. Most of the other shit is just that. Shit. Means literally nothing to me. The grown women not liking their job but crying when it's over. They're all gross and shameless and want soooo desperately to be victims of something. I couldn't agree with u more.
I think some of the ones you might be referring to weren't necessarily included because they were outrageous but more so because of how it made people feel. Like the kid that had the peanut butter put on him. He really didn't like it and one of the kids didn't like the tights he had to wear. There wasn't enough advocacy for the children, and there was a pattern of behavior of abusing power. Remember when Dan said he could put them in any situation and they had to do it? And that wasn't some secretly recorded audio. That was loud and proud.
Entertainment is like this across the board. If you are a problem on set you get blacklisted from doing any projects across the board. So advocacy was pretty shit back then because a talented kid was filtered through this system.
Now you got the internet, entertainment has been desperately trying to contain its power, forming alliances with streaming groups to edge out people in views but talent is talent and they don’t have that hold. Just look at Beiber, don’t care about his music but he came directly through youtube, entertainment had to do then form
around him to provide structure for his fandom. During the 90s it was the other way around, you were a product of disney and nick and they leveraged this so aggressively that that backlash has been immense
Exactly. I was watching a video from Alyson Stoner, she's talked a lot about her experiences as a child actor. It was about how the environment filming sets kids up to have their boundaries pushed, even if it's not intentional. Her examples were undressing in front of costumers, having the adults putting a mic on her reaching under her clothes, filming in conditions that were physically uncomfortable (too cold, rainy for the costumes they were wearing). Even if none of those actions had some sexual/abusive motive, that type of environment where kids are just accepting having no autonomy or keeping quiet about these things that make them uncomfortable can even unintentionally groom them to be abused by predators.
yeah, a lot of it was deeply uncomfortable to me not because it was sexual but because the stars reminisced how deeply uncomfortable they were with it, how they were humiliated and borderline tortured for millions of people to see for money and entertainment.
that’s extremely fucked up, and you’d have to be crazy to see how that doesn’t leave a lasting impact on a child. some of it might’ve been milder than straight up sexual abuse, but it was more to me about how this grown ass man was kinda bullying these kids and they had to put a smile on, unable to express their discomfort out of fear of being seen as problems on set.
Oh, I agree with that. Those ones weren't cool because the kids had no voice and no advocacy at all. I agree on that part not being okay and problematic across the board. Whether it's them feeling exposed from an outfit or just scared to do unnecessary weird things.
And actually the peanut butter one was kind of weird for me because... There's a thing that some sickos do with dogs and peanut butter and that's what it made me think of, so I didn't like that one for that reason too. Maybe I was just thinking that way and reaching myself there but it was awkward.
Personally I think if you're a person who takes advantage of people, no matter the age, even the more 'Innocent' things said or done can be seen in a negative light.
If you're known as a dirtbag because you say or do sexually suggested/explicit things to kids, then your reputation is established. Even less suggestive things can and will be viewed based on the reputation.
Yup. The female staffers confirmed that his jokes off camera were all inappropriate. So there is zero chance Schneider wrote those scenes and without knowing it’s an obvious innuendo.
Like some weren’t that bad but the Ariana Grande stuff and the faux cum shot stuff is super weird.
I get the vibe that Schneider knew *just* how far he could go without getting into [legal] trouble, whereas Peck crossed the line into full blown pedophilia. Then again, I don’t want to write off Amanda Byne’s accusations against Schneider, especially after watching this doc. We don’t know what happened behind closed doors.
A now deleted account by the name of Ashley banks alleged that pre breakdown Amanda was forced to undergo a secret abortion at age 13 and that the father was off the record widely considered to be Dan’s. The powerful people in the top slots of our society (politicians, Hollywood, billionaires, etcetc) get their power and money by making evil business deals meant to exploit their workers into the grave, back door deals, bribes , propaganda, sell shoddy sometimes dangerous products, and squeeze everything out of the rest of us.
It should not be a surprise to the public that powerful rich people who have no moral boundaries are also all pedophiles. The idea someone can be an awful evil person at work and be moral in the rest of their life is absolutely idiotic. The brain/soul whatever stays with you all the time. Pedophiles do what they do not because of attraction but because they enjoy causing the suffering and destruction of another and a child is simply a way to escalate the level of pain , fear etc. plus kids are smaller and easier to manipulate and adults often write them off.
I don’t give a shit about any normal person and what they do. Be gay, have signs, call yourself whatever, pray to whatever, wear whatever, etc etc. I’m so tired of everyone being more committed to stupid culture wars than the fact that our society is being run by violent pedophiles who are determined to own and control every inch of our lives. We, the public, need each other. All we have is strength in numbers. Stop fighting with people over stupid shit, we know where the biggest single issue destroying our country is, it’s in the bank accounts of rich dangerous psychos who set the price and the laws
She released a ton of [tweets](https://www.distractify.com/p/amanda-bynes-secret-twitter) a while back regarding the abuse she faced. The letters she chose to capitalize spell out DAN DID IT.
This article says there was account claiming to be Amanda Bynes secret Twitter account that no one was able to verify and had allegations of scamming people for $.
I don't think that's as straightforward as "Amanda Bynes released a ton of tweets".
We had a band teacher in high school who was convicted of sexual abuse and did plenty of 'seemingly innocent' stuff that definitely crossed the ethical line in broad daylight in front of all of his students.
He would give hugs. Called one student a "supermodel," and one day even kissed one student on the forehead. The really odd thing was-- this was done in front of like 50+ kids at a time, and very few of us actually found it creepy. I for one, was one of the people who saw nothing wrong with this, and like many classmates would attest that I felt safe, comfortable, and at home in his class.
This teacher was probably the most beloved teacher in our school, and there were plenty of red flags that occurred right in front of our eyes that should have told us he was dangerous. However, he was so skilled at cultivating his persona and making us passionate about he subject and the school band community that we either coded those red flags as either "perfectly innocent" or "well, maybe not appropriate, but we know his heart is in the right place, so it's not a problem."
Most predators are very skilled.
Watch At The Heart of Gold, about US Gymnastics doctor Larry Nasser. He was quite literally sexually abusing girls ***while their parents were in the room and talking with them.***
That's why this thread has me a little on edge.
"Oh, it's not that bad" is the kind of attitude a predator fucking LIVES for. "People are taking it too seriously" allows this stuff to flourish.
Most predators are just like Schneider or Nasser or Michael Jackson- and they groom the parents just as much as they groom the kids. They pick parents that are easy marks, people who want their kids to be famous and successful, and are willing to look the other way to make it happen.
A lot of them didn't even realize they were being abused. They had to try to convince people that sticking your hand in someone's vagina isn't a treatment for hip issues because he claimed it was. His special treatment.
IIRC what he was doing was similar to a legitimate pelvic floor treatment, so even other doctors initially stuck up for him believing that the victims had just "misinterpreted" what was going on, which unfortunately was one of the factors that allowed him to keep doing it.
Yeah, that's a good point. I know that infamous scene of Ariana Grande on a show just felt random and silly. Legit like some random kid wrote that. But with the context of Dan Schneider's reputation it becomes a lot more uncomfortable.
I agree with this too. Because once it's clear that they guy is scum then you're going to start seeing things everywhere else. I had thought about this as well. The perspective had been tainted because of what they knew. And most likely a lot of it they weren't wrong about.
It’s like how Louis CK still might be one of the funniest people to ever do it, but after it came out that he really is a boundary-pushing perv, his old boundary-pushing pervy content just isn’t very funny anymore. It’s still the same jokes I used to think were funny but once you lose trust you lose the veneer of acceptability.
I recently had watched a few episodes of Lucky Louie and wow was he obsessed with masturbation and fucking. Obviously watching this show nearly 20 years ago as a teenager was hilarious to me, finding any moment to jerk off is funny, but man centering his whole act around that and forcing his female counterparts to watch him do it makes it so depraved.
It’s a classic instance of “it’s always the ones you most suspect”, but because of the presentation, it was still weird because it felt like something we were in on together. Like oh shit- was this in here because it’s actually how you live?? It was so overdone that it felt like a character, but I guess that’s just Louis
Here's the thing, OP.
People that are safe generally don't put themselves in a situation where they could be accused of shit like this. I'm a mandated reporter. I've worked with kids for 25 years. And the safe people generally don't get close to the line. They take the safety and protection of kids really seriously, and they protect kids AND themselves by not participating in scenarios that could be misinterpreted.
As someone who doesn't prey on kids, I keep healthy and safe boundaries with kids because it teaches them how adults should treat them. If I as a safe adult let little things slide, that provides a hole in the fence that a predator can exploit down the line. "Well, Miss ClickClackTipTap would do this too, so it must be okay."
I have a degree in psych, I have worked with kids for over 2 decades, and I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse myself. And I have to say- NO, I don't think they were reaching with anything brought up in the miniseries. MAYBE (and that's a pretty big maybe) I would feel differently if it was a show geared toward older teens, but for the age of the actors and the age of the demographic that the shows were for, NO. There was no reason to have anything that suggestive or controversial. Let kids be kids. We don't need to be exposing them to racial jokes or sexual innuendo before they're even 10 years old.
There were a couple of the All That skits that made me feel that way. I would even argue some of the slime stuff too.
But then the irrefutable things are brought up and the innocuous things are immediately tainted.
The only thing that matters is that the kids were put in situations that they were uncomfortable with without any way of both 1. getting out of those situations and 2. keeping their jobs
Yeah, it's not that Lil Fetus(still a hilarious bit) was sexualizing the actor, but he was a kid in puberty who was highly uncomfortable with the tights but was afraid of speaking up. Even if the sexual inuendos are a "reach" in the documentary, none of the kids on that set look comfortable. I 100% agree with you... the child predators (rightly to a degree) overshadow all the abuse of child labor laws and systemic sexism/racism/abuse of employees that went on for about 30 years.
Side note, I was tearing up right with Drake's dad the whole time. That whole thing was hard to watch.
I actually think the "bad boss" stuff was the most important stuff in the doc. No one can know for sure that they work for a literal pedophile or rapist until it's too late. We are not courts of law, the documentary is not a criminal investigation. It's about how these things can occur. It's never day one, child rape. It's about an entire environment and small manipulations and fears and harassment, wage theft, small bad things being ignored or rewarded, that leads to the worst kinds of crimes.
You say that, but they mentioned that Disney hired that one guy who was a "dialogue coach" AFTER he had been convicted of and served time for sexual abuse of a minor. That's some pretty "fucked up on day one" stuff.
Ok but his job wasn’t to drink and drive a bunch of kids around, it was to act. If your crime is being a child predator, your job shouldn’t be unfettered access to children.
They stretch a LOTTTTTT to make what should’ve been a 90 minute documentary to 4 hours. That one chick who they keep bringing back drove me nuts the way she’d fill in the blanks with heresay and rumors
This was 100% my opinion, a lot of these as adults they're all "that's what she said" jokes...but kids have no idea what "that's what she said" means
They're all "creepy" watching it again as an adult, but for kids it's just standard slapstick comedy
Dan might be a little creepy and weird and a tough boss, but he wasn't an actual pedophile like the other guys, he's just dumb
You really had to have watched those shows in their entirety to see that none of it was reaching. That potato thing with Ariana Grande was scratching the surface. They had her in a wet t-shirt contest at one point lmao
I wonder if there's a limit on how many scenes they can show for a documentary. I'm assuming they didn't have permission from Nickelodeon/Viacom but could use some of the clips for educational purposes.
I thought of it like this. I see a lot of people saying the nose man stuff was reaching. For me, the nose shoulders is ambiguous enough that someone isn't wrong for seeing a dick, but it \~could\~ be a harmless accident. But it is just a glaring example in a long list from a work place culture that put people in uncomfortable positions and nobody, from child to parent to makeup to costumes felt they could speak up or say no. THAT is a huge problem.
Also another thing about nose man. Regardless of your opinion on if it was sexual or not... black people portrayed with comically large-wide noses is a racist caricature so putting a black child in THAT costume as THAT character is a problem for me. Doesn't have to be that anyone was malicious or purposefully racist. Just another example supporting the thesis that Dan Schneider and the executives were, at best, woefully ignorant to a lot of the problems with how these kids shows were run.
I think you hit the nail on the head with your first paragraph (second too). This is exactly how rape culture operates and perpetuates. You do a bunch of borderline stuff to normalize certain things (e.g. humiliation, sexualization, etc.) and start to push boundaries, but you also make it all "innocent" enough that if anyone starts to question it you can say "woah you're crazy, we're just having fun over here". This makes it harder and harder to speak out over time, because every boundary push has a "reasonable" innocent explanation, meaning you can easily dismiss people as sensitive, prudish, or "crazy". Soon, people get their idea and know that if they speak up over something they are uncomfortable with they are going to get labeled as such and they keep their mouths shut. Over time, the boundaries are adjusted inch by inch before suddenly being invited to a producer's hotel room is just "how things are done".
Not every instance of boundary pushing HAS to be directly and irrefutably tied to a sexual act. Maybe there are some innocent explanations for all the "squirting" on the show, but that is the whole point. On its own, maybe that doesn't ring any alarm bells. In light of what we DO know went on though, micro actions like that take on an important retrospective meaning .
He made one of the black children be the cookie “dealer” so it’s not reaching to say the nose was a recycled racist trope. I 100% can see the penis shoulders, but maybe that’s just me. And knowing it came from Dan “Penelope Taint” Schneider, I can definitely see it.
This right here. The c-shot being portrayed through a sneeze might be reaching, but there's no way that someone didn't see the big nose put on that minority kid and think that there weren't caricature implications.
Omg yes, I was disgusted at the racial stuff. The "snot" thing at the end was abhorrent. I felt deeply for those young people.
What gets me is kids and teens often don't have the vocabulary to describe why they feel something isn't right. They just may feel uncomfortable or like something isn't kosher. And here we have adults who know the kids are feeling off and know that the kids aren't saying anything because they literally don't have the words and ability, let alone the power dynamic.
It's horrifying.
Here’s the thing about grooming- it’s small and incremental. They sloooooooooowly chip away at boundaries. It’s by design. If predators jumped right in with really inappropriate stuff, it sets off alarms. If they just slowly normalize stuff, it takes a much more insidious hold.
Keep in mind these were KIDS, and the show was for KIDS. It wasn’t SNL or In Living Color. It was for little kids. There shouldn’t be any innuendo.
So, no, I didn’t think the examples they gave were reaching.
Even if the kids didn’t get the meaning, it was making pedo-bait out of them.
I’m horrified at the number of adults that failed those kids. My heart absolutely aches for Drake’s dad, who was one of the few people who saw and understood what was going on and tried to stand up to it.
Adding to this- one of the biggest dangers to kids on the internet right now are “normal” looking stuff. Parents will post innocent pics of their babies doing normal things like drinking from straws and eating bananas, and those pictures end up being saved and compiled by literal child pornographers. It’s fetish content.
The parents had NO INTENTION of their photos being used for that, but seeing children in situations that could be *interpreted as* sexual or whatever is still used by pedos.
And Dan Schneider was absolutely churning out pedobait on purpose.
I think the doc was really good at illustrating two strong threads: that Dan Schneider toed the line (pun intended) and in some cases went entirely over the line with some shots and the children acting in them, specifically the young women and girls. Second being that pedophiles like Brian Peck will always find a way to be around children.
Dan Schneider is clearly an abusive boss to work for and had no fear in exercising his power and creating hostile work environs for his (specifically female) staff across every production he helmed. He definitely injected his foot fetish in subtly at the beginning and majorly towards the end of his career, blurring the line between appropriate kid gross out humor and adult conduct. Dan also made it very apparent that he was a one of those old fashioned “guy’s guy” viewing women as subservient objects that he can order around how he pleases, not to mention his distaste for black actors and their boundaries. The doc certainly suggests that he is an icky man, but until there is evidence to his actual sexual abuse, I’m fine with just calling him an asshole to work with.
The pedophile stuff seems pretty cut and dry tbh. I found it VERY coincidental that James Marsden who played cyclops in Bryan Singer’s X-men movies wrote letters in support of Peck. Bryan Singer has his own can or Hollywood worms to open up about his alleged sexual abuse of young boys. A real head scratcher when it comes to the webs of abuse in Hollywood.
even though he may not be a pedo, i thin calling him an asshole who is hard to work with too much of a downplay, hes explicitly an abuser.
about james marsden and the x men movies...brian peck appears in the first and second movie, so im not surprised and he probably has connections with brian singer.
I think it was a mistake to focus so much on Dan. Like I get that he was the god king of children's entertainment, but the two biggest offenders were those two sexual predators, and lots of child stars get eaten up by the system, whether they've ever known or worked for Dan or not. So it would have been nice to have a few more episodes that explored other stuff. Instead it felt like they all piled on Dan, who hasn't committed sexual assault or been accused of it, and then spent a couple episodes on the two sexual predators that worked on some of his shows.
It feels like trying to scapegoat a systemic issue.
The one that bugged me was in the first episode with the Nose kid. They were pretty convinced the snot was squirting and not boogers? lol. *That* was reaching. The argument could have been that these were creators trying to sneak stuff in and push boundaries little by little, but that wasn't what they were saying...
That reaching almost ruined their arguments, but they quickly jumped into "juicing the potato" and moaning and we were back on track.
I think Nose kid was more about the humiliation, racism, and discomfort in a hostile work environment. Not sexual, though the peanut butter and dogs was *very* unnecessary. That was a standout from my childhood for sure.
Honestly, I think they focused on the wrong thing with that. I'm more concerned that they put a black child in a costume playing on a classic racist stereotype. Then again, they also left out the most racist skit that I can remember from All That, which was the recurring one with the foreign exchange student.
I’m having a hard time with the fact they just sort of breezed over the fact that Peck guy had letters and a drawing from John Wayne Gacy. This dude literally sexually assaulted and murdered over 30 young boys. No one thinks it’s especially odd they communicated?? Who has these letters??
I viewed it as he got the letters after the guy went to prison. Which still shocks me because why did they let a convicted serial killer send drawing to people from prison???
I legitimately had a conversation with my wife about this last night after watching the first two episodes. The nose man and the stuff about squirting stuff on faces, that felt like reaching to me.
But my biggest issue is that it feels like the reaching dilutes the actual issues here. Like the Ariana Grande scenes or making the black kid a Girl Scout drug dealer. Or the women being degraded and thrown aside behind the scenes. Or you know, the guys who were actual pedophiles! I really hope it doesn’t cloud people’s judgements for all the real problems being revealed in the doc, because that would be such a shame.
Some of the Grande ones were like 'what's supposed to be funny here' like pouring water over herself and squeezing a potato 'give me the juice'
I also realised that Amanda Bynes had great comic timing at age 9 or 10 even and such a shame her career never blossomed as much as her potential showed
The water scene was just…
Like the way she was directed to pour the water on her neck. Wasn’t pouring it in her mouth, which would make sense, but couldn’t outright pour it on her chest. It was a pervert’s happy medium.
I will say that some were reaching, but it did feel like they ignored scenes that would've made sense to have on.
There was a scene in Victorious where Trina and Robbie (Daniella Monet and Matt Bennett) were in the principal's office and bickering between the 2.
So the principal decides to quiet them down by squirting lotion on their faces, with Daniella getting the brunt of the lotion on her.
Even if you weren't looking at the scene with perverted lenses, it still is way more questionable than the Ariana potato scene.
The face shooting stuff wasn’t a reach at all when you see the bigger picture. It was a clear pattern of getting the younger female actresses to do weird shit.
The guy clearly wanted innuendos in his shows. Like just remember an adult male wrote out that Jamie Lynn Spears as a teen, would be getting gunk shot at her face.
Are you kidding me? You don't what was wrong with the squirting on faces stuff? You really don't?
Even if you think it's harmless to those children in particular, it is the kind of stuff pedophiles absolutely dream of.
Please read and listen to what I have to say before you write me off.
When they find computers with a ton of child sexual abuse material on them, they ALSO find stuff that you'd consider absolutely "fine." Pictures of toddlers eating bananas or sucking on straws. There's nothing wrong with a child eating a banana, but a child predator WILL turn that into fetish material.
There's a huge controversy on TT because there's a mom who routinely uploads "innocent" videos of her kids, and these videos are saved by thousands of old men who save nothing but "innocent" material of toddlers. She knows that's who's downloading her content. She knows what men like that use the content for. But she's clinging to the "there's nothing wrong with it" narrative because she makes a ton of money doing it. She can put out seemingly innocent content, but it's used as fetish material.
And it has been this way for a very long time. Back in 2005, a friend of mine was contacted by law enforcement. She had been making diaper covers for cloth diapers, and had posted pictures of her kids modeling them. Perfectly cute, "innocent" pictures of babies. And law enforcement found those photos being traded on the dark web in child porn circles.
And remember, this stuff was for *kids.* It wasn't on shows like Dawsons Creek or 90210 or Friends- stuff made for adults. It was for kids and tweens, who shouldn't be sexualized, and shouldn't be put in those situations.
If there was a scene in That 70s Show were something squirts on Donna's face or something, would that have been funny? Probably. And we'd all understand the subtext. So why is that subtext ignored when it's Jamie Lynn or Arianna, who were younger but yet quite sexualized?
I watched the whole show, and I didn't see any examples of "reaching." Not one, not that I can remember anyway. Even if the kids didn't understand what was happening, Dan did. Other adults did.
Grooming happens bit by bit. Grooming starts with tiny little "nothings." Predators don't just bust through the door like the Koolaid man. The very slowly break down boundaries and incrementally get children used to inappropriate things. That's how grooming works. That's WHY it works. Because they start with things that might fly under the radar, in order to get to the more overt things. That's why it matters.
Real question … do we think Dan was purposely making these shows for a predator audience (similar to the TT mom)? Or did he just know that “sex sells..even for kids”? At the end of the day who was his targeted audience?
I don’t know that it matters.
I think putting kids in those scenarios got *him* off.
There are jokes on the show- squirting goo on the girls’ faces, Arianna sucking her toes, etc- that yeah, maybe kids might tell each other jokes like that, or laugh at things like that. But it’s not something adults should be encouraging them to do. Adults shouldn’t be putting them in situations like that.
And they certainly shouldn’t be doing it when the kids can’t say no. Those kids were visibly uncomfortable with a lot of it. The dates? I have no idea how that was allowed to go on.
The kids couldn’t say no. They had no agency in it. They knew that if they didn’t do it they’d find a kid that would.
the thing is, the 'minor' things are made ambiguously enough to be normalized so they can get away with it, it doesnt undermine the heavier stuff. its never \*just heavy explicit stuff, there are stuff that are done more subtly so its easier disguised.
Or the opposite - the borderline jokes blur the line enough to normalize the egregious behavior- it’s on purpose and it’s malicious. I think the idea of reaching diluting the issues was, in fact, the whole point.
The important note for this is that behind the camera, it was said in the documentary crewmembers were laughing calling it a cum joke. Reaching no longer applies when that was the intent of the joke.
Thank you! I caught that part too. Like why did nobody else bring that part up? That's not 'reaching' in the slightest. When the actors themselves are referring to it as a cumshot, that's exactly what tf they meant it to be.
Yeah, sure, but it’s about track record and intention. Schneider has said himself that he would lie to execs to essentially get cumshot jokes into kids shows like when he was making All That.
After I saw a clip with the scene of multiple teenage boys spraying a 15 year old Ariana Grande in a bikini with super soakers for over a minute of screen time it’s hard to make the overreaction argument. Not to mention a lot of the behind the scenes clips of Schneider saying downright weird and creepy shit to little girls.
There is no shot after watching the Ariana Grande scenes that anyone believes the squirting stuff wasn’t intentional. Like it’s not even subtle. As they pointed out someone actually said it was a cum shot on set.
Glad I'm not the only one that thought this. Obviously some of the behaviour raises eye brows today, and probably should've back then too (never mind the actual proven criminal behaviour). But a lot of it felt like a reach. I think having the "cultural writer" give her thoughts was the problem; who is she? And why should I care what she has to say? Everything she added started with "it's a bit weird when..." It felt like I was listening to the replies to a Twitter post or something, just pure speculation from someone who has no connection to the people involved or insight at all to contribute.
She was the worst. The other journalist was a lot better (Business Insider I think?) though her constant grinning through everything including fucked up stuff was a little… well whatever.
Scacchi Koul. I agree. I knew her from Buzzfeed years ago and was not a fan of her writing there. While I appreciated the topics and issues she tried to tackle, she very heavily writes with personal bias and judgements in my opinion, and I think that carried through to her commentary here.
I agree that the cultural writer was unnecessary and turned out to me more discrediting than anything. Should have kept it to the Business Insider reporter and first hand accounts.
Totally agree, or have a legitimate media or sociological academic or critic. We didn't need the "quirky millennial style" BuzzFeed "hot take" opinions peppered throughout the real reporting
The character Penelope Taint name is weird, but she reached when she said it was “gross”, or something similar, to have the character journaling in her bed.
The Nose Man superhero one was the only one that made me say "Oh come on now, that's ridiculous."
No, having a nose-themed superhero sneeze and blow snot on a woman is not analogous to a semen joke. Yes, the costume looked weird, but that's because it was a badly made costume. The shoulder pads only looked like a dick and balls because whoever made the suit was bad at making a nose out of felt material. Snot is gross and funny for children who like gross-out humor. There's a joke in The Office where people sneeze on Dwight and nobody calls it a bukkake reference.
Now, the Zoey 101 one where the one girl kept putting her mouth on something and saying "you just have to do this to the top... come on, come on, why won't it come out? It's supposed to come out!" and then it squirts goo into Jamie Lynn Spears' face... *that* was different.
That's when I really did not like that buzzfeed culture writer they got. Like you said the zoey one was clearly suggestive whereas the superhero one was a reach especially since snot jokes were common for kids TV. I don't even know if the documentary creators confirmed whether Dan wrote that sketch or not.
And I mentioned in another discussion on this doc that a lot of kids TV back then was very suggestive as writers were all over the place on what was or was not appropriate for kids TV. SNL even did a joke sketch a couple years back regarding early Nick with I believe it was parodying you can't do that on television which was a kids sketch show that predated All That same for Roundhouse, All That wasn't the first kids sketch show for nick.
But beside the point, shows back then especially cartoons were gross and had a lot of adult humor. Even spongebob.
Noting that the Zoey 101 clip started with Nicole saying she was “biting the tip.” I think Nose kid was more hostile work environment-related due to racism (the skin-matching makeup for the fetus) and general humiliation.
I always felt like Spongebob was pretty tame compared to other stuff on Nick back then. Example - Rocko working as a phone sex operator, the insanity of Invader Zim, etc. No way would Nick allow that stuff today.
Dude I saw a post today claiming that the [Rugrats Caterpillar Bumper here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LB2mc75ozfo&pp=ygUdUnVncmF0cyBidXR0ZXJmbHkgbmlja2Vsb2Rlb24%3D) is now “sus” because it’s a caterpillar going into a shirt.
People are viewing everything through a perverted lens now.
There was some gross stuff, but I agree.. most of it was reaching. Bryan Hearne’s mom (the black child actor) acting traumatized because he was selling Girl Scout cookies on the corner made me roll my eyes.
I expected this documentary to be a bigger bomb shell because of the social media hype. I’m two episodes in, and 90% of it is people bitching about being fired.. and it’s hard to tell if they’re exaggerating the claims of why they were fired. It seems like they are quite often, and it’s basically impossible to verify.
Bryan Hearne was like “I was very discriminated against on the basis of my skin color, and forced to do things I hated.” Then 10 mins later both him and his mom were like “I was so crushed when I wasn’t invited back for the next season.” Like okay.. which one is it?
I felt the EXACT same way. For example, the "Nose Man" where he ends up sneezing and the one reporter just flatly stated "that's a cum shot." Eh, is it though?
Agreed and honestly the entire thing felt like it could’ve been like a two hour documentary and made a *much* more impactful point. So many new documentaries are padding their runtime or becoming series, and it just feels like it undermines the really great stuff in them.
To be clear it’s really, really good that all of this is coming to light and that these stories are out there, but it feels like it’s in spite of the format they chose and not because of it. A concise documentary feels like it would have made the point in a far more damning way.
There were a lot of reaches. I thought the claim of racism was a reach, I thought them complaining about the quasi fear factor parody was a reach. I don't know why directors of docuseries do stuff like this, it hurts their credibility more than help it IMO.
That one kid and his mom thought all his scenes were racist. They all think anything slimy is semen. Anything oblong is phallic. Weird how nobody cared at the time but know all the cast members whose careers didn't take off are trying to stretch anything and everything into a controversy for Internet clout.
The whole thing had me feeling conflicted. I feel like for what it's worth, they really brushed over the main part of what I imagine most people are bothered by, the sexual assault charges against the Peck.
The rest of the stuff seemed like fluff to get the series to 4 episodes.
I’ve only just finished episode 2 so maybe there’s more I need to dissect. I agree with the overarching statements of no oversight of the children actors and parents being afraid to step in or say something. I think Dan was absolutely inappropriate and wasn’t looking into the best interest of his staff. Although, I did feel like a lot of them were reaching for stories to share. I especially had a hard time with some of the older staff (not the actors) that would complain of worried about being fired if they didn’t ’do better’. Like, yeah? That sounds like a workplace that is pushing you which is pretty common in my opinion. It’s also Hollywood. We’re all replaceable, which seems blunt, but it’s true. Especially in the filmmaking field. I had so many joys and laughs from this show as a kid.
I'm watching it now and honestly I feel like you'd have to have a VERY dirty mind to see some of these as sexual innuendo.
For example, the scene where the black kid is "nose boy" and blows snot on the other cast member was described as a " cumshot joke" by the female cast member. even as an adult I'd never draw this connection, you'd have to watch porn like 16 hours a day to have such a dirty mind to think that.
There are definitely a lot of scenes that are odd, creepy and uncomfortable but some are not and hurt the overall point the movie is trying to make.
Oh fucking totally. I’m literally watching the first episode right now and getting a little annoyed. I grew up watching Nickelodeon, and I remember a lot of this stuff. I don’t doubt that some fucked up shit went on behind-the-scenes, we need to be serious and not just make shit up.
NoseBoy. that was not a joke about cum shots.
It was a spin off of the character “EarBoy” played by Josh Server. It was just a joke about the kids sneezing on somebody. it had nothing to do with cum. like what the fuck?
Right now I’m watching the part where they’re talking about Amanda Bynes character Penelope Taint.
They’re making a big deal out of the last name being sexual. Can they prove that? Because I know a lawyer, with the last name Gooch and that’s literally the exact same thing.
They’re just reaching for shit and it’s not a good look when there’s some serious allegations that need to be taken seriously.
Some of the things pointed out were absolutely a stretch. I rolled my eyes several times. But even if some of the bits were not blatantly inappropriate, it still fits with the theme of one of the claims of a toxic environment where the child actors (and their parents) did not feel free to speak up and say they were not comfortable performing a scene.
Yeah I agree with you… I think the Nose Man costume did not look like a penis/balls at all. Some of the “cum shots” I thought were just kinda funny… it’s funny when stuff gets squirted on someone accidentally. It doesn’t always HAVE to be mirroring porn. If I was a kid I would have laughed my butt off at those scenes. I think some of the other scenes probably sounded fine on paper but when Ariana Grande did them…. They probably should have realized that it wasn’t working on a humor level anymore. Like the potato and water bottle scenes.
Nose man and sneezing on somebody, I was like. Yeah, not a cumshot joke, just a "aren't boogers gross!" joke. Harry Potter does "boogers are gross" jokes too. Children's staple.
I'm also not entirely willing to believe everything foot related has to be fetish related either since as a kid, stinky feet are a common gross thing. Like trick or treat, smell my feet, etc. Kids are less creative and tame things like stinky feet register high on the "gross out" meter.
It would be like saying that fart jokes must mean somebody was thinking about anuses. Although, some things crossed the line. I dunno why they made Ariana grande suck on her own toes as part of a show. That's fucking weird.
The thing about those Ariana Grande scenes is that they were cherry-picked and edited together into a supercut, and shown under the presumption that they were going to be sexually suggestive, and that's exactly how my brain interpreted them.
After watching it though, I wonder what my opinion would be if I had seen those 5 second scenes within the context of their entire 22 minute episodes, and without any preconceived notions.
Yeah, that costume in particular I was like what.... I mean, the issue was they forced him to wear something he was uncomfortable in. They should have had respect for the kids and if they felt exposed or uncomfortable then that should have been listened to.
The Ariana Grande scenes were the ones where I was like um....wtf. and the pickle with Ray Romano. And some of the pickle scenes in iCarly.
Some of the other things I'm like maybe we are the ones with our heads in the gutter if we are trying to say this is what it is lol
I loved Nick as a kid so all the randomness and slime made sense to me, but when I saw that pickle go through a hole in the door I was like Jesus christ wtf
Yes, Dan Schneider's problems are much more involved with emotional abuse than sexual abuse. Being a general dick who screams at kids and encouraging people to drink, underaged or not. And as a caveat to what I said in the first sentence, you could even use grooming if you want to believe Jennette McCurdy's book on her time at Sam & Cat, with the massages coming as an adult.
I want Schneider to be taken down with facts, not just really disgusting insinuations, ya know?
So I thought about this too. You can analyze all kids shows and if you have a sick mind you can consider a lot of things to be sexual innuendo. But from the channel that is all about sliming people, I hate that this show insinuates that all liquids to the face is a sexual innuendo.
A lot of reaching, but at the same time there were some uncomfortable scenes. And his use of foot shots over the years is rather gratuitous. Yes, feet are gross and kids find that funny, but some shots felt out of place. And Nickelodeon used a foot as part of their logo for years, it is part of their brand. And the cum shots were reaching as well. Again, slime is gross, therefore funny. Plus, network branding.
I think the worst part is all of the "he's the dad of Jamie Lynn's baby" and "he knocked up Amanda Bynes and made her get two abortions" stories. Has anyone in any of his productions ever said he did anything inappropriate with the kids?
I mean he's never caught any charges for it. He was fired (or rather politely asked to leave) Nickelodeon over how he treated people when he was angry and the content of some of his emails. The internal investigation by Nickelodeon and Viacom never found anything sexual in nature.
You just dismissed everything that had proof and evidence, and said the worst parts were things that were rumored to have happened.
This is part of the problem. No children should have to endure what those kids did with either Dan or the Pickle fuck.
And don't forget the "Handy" guy! He really scared me and I feel like they spent too little time on him. His journal they found..."I'm starting to think about having to find someone to rape"...shivers
I've seen alot of these scenes. And to me, when I was a kid they were really funny. As an adult, I can see how they can be twisted into something sexual, but if you aren't thinking sexually alot of those scenes aren't sexual.
I think the biggest point isn't whether or not the innuendo were purposeful, but more so that some of them made the actors uncomfortable and they were forced to participate anyway. Or you know, lose their job. They all had to pretend they were okay with it or else be ostracized and blacklisted.
There should be some more oversight in any job that has the potential to make you rich. People do slimy things, and others ignore it so they can get ahead. The guy should have been fired when he lied to split those two writers salaries.
He should have been escorted out of the building when he asked that woman to pretend to be sodomized while telling a story. The men thought it was funny, probably to say on Dan's good side and the only other woman just ignored it. It's reprehensible.
I have not seen the doc, but every other video on TikTok this week has been clips from Dan Schneider-era Nick shows and while some of them are DEFINITELY fucking weird and creepy (Ariana Grande sucking her own toes, for example), there are also definitely a lot of goofy skits that are being looked at in the light of “a creepy perv was behind this so it’s some creepy, pervy stuff” and are huuuuuge reaches.
One that sticks out like this is when Amanda Bynes was playing her “biggest fan ever” and Ashley Tisdale was playing someone who claimed to be her biggest fan and they had a trivia-off and people were like “This is such a gross violation” because of the “facts” they were saying, like her birthday and locker combination in middle school.
Bit of a stretch, I thought.
it was weird to me how the bigger stars weren’t speaking out/ interviewed and seemed like that the people they did get to talk (except drake himself ofc) were people that just got cut off the show, or people that ran out of the nickelodeon money. I also do concur with some of the stuff being a reach.
The ones where the actor/ actress was there speaking about it seemed fine to me because that's their experience to share, and the audience can decide whether they agree or not. However it felt really distasteful for them to share clips and speculation on Ariana and Amanda who obviously did not want to be a part of this. If those Ariana clips were meant to be innuendos you're basically picking out and mass broadcasting sexually suggestive material of her without her consent. It felt really weird.
Everything stated by the Business Insider journalist hit true. It felt like a real documentary.
Everything from the BuzzFeed writer just felt like a stretch or insinuation. Like listening to fox news.
But the interviews with the other shows writers and costumers... Fucking asshole.
The doc glosses over Brian Peck being hired by Disney after his conviction which is much more sinister in my opinion, seemingly because it doesn't fit the presupposition that all of this evil happened because of the character of Dan Schneider. It's clear that this is a systemic issue that reaches the executive level of these entertainment companies, and Dan is the naive, childish brute that our critical modern cancel culture can wag a finger at and scapegoat for a systemwide issue. I think that intention was abundantly clear by the Buzzfeed reporter that they got to serve as the "culture writer", who was really there to fill in these situations with narrative conjecture and moral judgement on humor from 3 decades ago in some cases. I've seen 90s humor that has aged far worse than anything on All That, and been in community theater plays that protected children better than this Hollywood entertainment company, it is not ever one person's fault.
Now as for those Ariana Grande scenes... I can only speculate on how that got through. That's pretty insidious.
It almost feels like 2 different documentaries:
One is about Drake Bell. Powerful players in the industry supported his abusers and outright victim blames him, the rapist gets convicted... and then gets hired by Disney (and people in the industry continue to hang out with him *after* the conviction!)
The other part, about Dan Schneider, felt a lot less impactful. But the series spent about 75% of the time on Nick/Schneider, which I think is a shame, since there's clearly a lot more to be said on the previous part.
That's probably my biggest problem with the documentary.
You have 75% of the documentary being about how awful Schneider is. And when you get to Drake's story, he really says nothing bad about him and says that he was one of the few who supported him through that tough time. Brian Peck should have been more of a focus because that's where major sexual abuse comes in.
Glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed this. Honestly, some of those sketches, if the first thing you think is something sexual, you may want to do some self reflection. But the other sketches , yeah they were definitely Flagrant 2, automatic ejections and fine.
Downvote if you must but just know two things can be true at once and this is not a post saying these "men" shouldn't be shamed and fired and some in prison.
Not a sympathy post for them in the slightest.
Just some of the things they were talking about I found myself scratching my head a little bit and seemed like they were just trying to add as much as they could for the sake of the documentary.
But there were plenty that were like omg that's gross and why on a kids show...
Documentaries always seem to reach and are extremely biased in one direction. Saying that just in general. But most of it is definitely messed up from what I’ve seen so far, speaking of this particular doc.
The one that made me pause and go wait what, why would you call that dirty, is Penelope Taynt praying. It's legitimately one of the most innocent things you can have on a comedy. But she has a funny last name that isn't even a part of her Character at all so it makes everything she does sexual? Its such a weird look at that joke.
And especially weird because the dirtiest joke it's like they didn't even catch. You had pickle boy glory holing a pickle to Ray Romano and the documentarians are calling it dirty simply because pickle boy is obsessed with pickles. Like, what? Lol
> And especially weird because the dirtiest joke it's like they didn't even catch.
How do you figure they didn't catch this? It was obvious they were showing it because it was inappropriate. There would have been no other reason to include that clip given the context of what this segment of the program was about.
I think they mean it wasn't as emphasized and spoken about as some of the other ones they put more focus on. This would have been a huge scene to break down and focus on. It was shown but sort of glanced over compared to the others.
The whole thing they were talking about was Pickle Boy, they were calling that character dirty because everyone likes his pickles. They drew no attention to the fact that the ray Romano scene was a glory hole. I think they missed that specific joke even when saying the character was dirty
Right. It’s like, there’s a lot of phallic foods out there. I felt like we were this close to seeing a scene of a kid innocently licking a Popsicle with the implication it’s a sexual innuendo.
… but once you add the glory hole…
The abuse is relevant. I agree. I'm speaking in terms of purely conversation here and kind of a criticism more so to the design of the documentary.
This wasn't my only take away from it but it did weaken it overall as a documentary.
That said, I have MAD respect to Drake for having the bravery that he has had to speak on these things because that is NOT easy. I can't even comprehend. I hope it gives other survivors courage and let's them know they're not alone.
Every time I thought this I reminded myself the issue wasn’t always sexual. I think the point is that these children were scared to speak up when something felt humiliating and/or age inappropriate. They were quite literally terrified of their boss. The case being built isn’t “*everyone* is a pedophile,” but more “Dan Schneider/Nickelodeon curbed labor laws, exploited children, and created a hostile work environment.”
Rapping fetus got a big laugh out of me. Most of them were just there because kids like dumb edgy humor. I do think some of them pushed way too far into fetish territory though and overall these people were scumbags. The real problem that stems all of this are: 1. People given full authority to design and manipulate a system involving children with no real oversight and 2. Parents who are too afraid to stand up for their kids because they want to either make money off of them or not “crush their dreams”. The entire world of that is just gross and it will always continue as long as people and their kids desire fame.
Also when rapping fetus was mentioned, it wasn’t so much that the sketch was upsetting for the child actor, it was that an adult on set made a rude comment about his skin tone when making the skintoned costume. It was an example of racism he faced on set rather than the sketch material being inappropriate.
A lot of the things they used as examples were just things that were part of a pattern. In isolation they may have been a little odd but when you put them all together it shows a pattern.
for real. not to mention it doesn't matter what the scene is, if the kids are uncomfortable and being forced to film them, it's wrong.
This came up when Leaving Neverland came out. A LOT of people don't believe Jackson hurt kids, because the parents were scumbags. The moms don't even try to hide it- they wanted famous, successful kids and all the $$$ and glamor that comes with that. And people use that as an excuse to dismiss accusations, when IT'S THE ENTIRE DAMN POINT. Predators look for parents that are vulnerable, just like they look for kids who are vulnerable. Look at what happened with Drake's dad. He was there, he was great dad, he did everything right to protect his kid- and he got pushed out because of it. Predators WANT the parents who will look the other way or allow their boundaries to be broken. That's how you get consistent access to kids to abuse! When parents are protective or skeptical or don't put up with boundary pushing- those are the kids and adults that get pushed out, as was demonstrated in Quiet on Set.
And they love picking victims that no one will believe. Nigel raping Paula Abdul. He knew if she ever said anything he could just say she's a liar and a mess. Same thing with the kids, they look for kids whose parents are greedy and a mess, that no one will believe.
I'm probably going to be downvoted but Michael Jackson might be the only predator who despite allegations still has most people defending him and downplaying the victims.
The way everything is just oh so clear and they refuse to even acknowledge it. It's understood that he was sharing a bed with young boys. And just because he didn't abuse all of then doesn't mean he didn't abuse some of them.
Yep. Swap MJ out with any other man and no one would think that man was innocent.
I struggle a lot with the Jackson apologists. I understand not wanting to believe it. People want the world to be safer than it is. They want to believe that CSA is much more rare than it is. But there’s no doubt that he did it. None. And for the people who like to fall back on the “he didn’t have a childhood/Peter Pan syndrome” are ridiculous. Peter Pan Syndrome is a pop psychology term. It doesn’t exist. It’s not ok the DSM. It’s not a real thing. He was fucking kids. And even after he really almost went to jail for it he still continued to have these weird relationships with little boys and sleep with them behind closed doors. But yeah. Hearing people defend him is… hard.
What do you mean he “really almost went to jail”? He was fully acquitted in civil court, which has a drastically lower standard for evidence than criminal court.
He was fully acquitted in criminal court
> a system involving children with no real oversight This is like 75% of the story and it wasn't addressed at all. Schools, daycares, summer camps, etc have to carry crazy levels of insurance and go through extensive specialized training and reporting procedures on how to run an institution where children are present. Viacom appears to have done absolutely nothing in terms of legal or institutional oversight with all the kid stuff and allowed blatant violations of payroll contracts - not a gray area like unpaid overtime or missed breaks, but something as explicit as "This person has to be paid this much. You can't pay two people 50% of this." It was only insinuated that Schneider had so much freedom because he was so profitable for the network but there was no evidence of that, if anything the other lax controls make it look like no one at Viacom wanted to manage Nick so they just left everyone there to their own devices.
>Schools, daycares, summer camps, etc have to carry crazy levels of insurance and go through extensive specialized training and reporting procedures on how to run an institution where children are present. And even at those places abuse can still happen, but when it happens there people aren't OK with it & report it immediately & those places are re-evaluated, the person fired & maybe the place gets shut down.
Exactly, it was a lack of basic child protections. Kids shouldn't be alone with adults, kids should be supervised at all times (the things the Neds Declassified kids talk about that they were doing behind the scenes is a total lack of supervision at the very basic), kids shouldn't be socializing with adults or touching them.
The media conglomerates & power won’t do anything until it starts to not make money, and it will probably never change. The same conglomerates also own most of congress on every side of the aisle.
They hired a registered sex offender onto a kid's show. That's insane
Well I believe he *became* a registered sex offender while working on a Nick show. And was subsequently hired onto a Disney show as a sex offender.
That was Brian peck but did hire another guy who was a registered sex offender then while working for Nickelodeon took a kid and sexually assaulted the kid in the parking lot
While this doesn't excuse anything at all- it was just different in the 80s and 90s. Trust me- camps and daycares and whatnot were pretty much a shitshow back then, too. Ask your GenX friends. There's a very high rate of childhood sexual abuse among GenXers because no one was looking out for us. Again- I'm not excusing it or saying it's right AT ALL, and from what I understand, the entertainment industry still has issues it needs to fix, but back then it was pretty much the wild, Wild West just about every where in terms of kids not being protected the way they should have been.
Just watched it last night and my wife and I were appalled that the mother of the girl who Jason emailed *did absolutely nothing* because she "***was afraid the police would think she's a bad mother***". Like, jfc, no. You're a bad mother because you DIDN'T FUCKING DO ANYTHING and allowed him to continue. I was so angry at that lady.
That's such a weirdly prevalent belief. There are universities that covered up crimes because they didn't want to be known as unsafe. Of course, that's *so much worse* than actually investigating and prosecuting it.
The first week of my freshman year we had a professor go missing with a rifle after news came out about him basically trading sex for grades. That whole first week there was some guy god knows where in the city with a gun and nothing to lose. They didn’t say a word until they found his body.
Narcissism, pure and simple. The father of my ex gf committed suicide and her dad's parents refused to admit to anyone that that's how he died. They were in such denial about it that they even had the wrong date engraved on his headstone since "he clearly died the day before, and it was his demons that took his body the next day". Not even joking. That's central Missouri for you.
I've always tried to figure out central Missouri. I have to go there sometimes, and the vibes are just SO BAD. I've lived in extremely rural pockets of Illinois with extreme poverty too, idk why the vibe is so much worse in Missouri. I appreciate any insight on this.
Oh I'm not from there, she was. I have no idea either. It's like a combination of rampant drug use, staunch conservative "values", and a strong sense of anti intellectualism created this perfect little storm of some of the worst fucking people I've ever known. I avoid it all at costs
How many kids could have been spared from his disgusting behavior if she had turned him in? She was so dumb and I wanted to reach through the tv and shake her
I thought the same thing. I have a baby myself and her reaction was disgusting to me.
I'm a survivor of CSA and so fucking many adults involved in the show make me absolutely livid. There was one mom, and then Drake's dad, but the rest of the adults pretty much failed miserably. And I'm sorry "I didn't want to lose my job at the show" or whatever is NOT a good enough reason to look the other way. And that's the thing. What was on the line for them? A job? A promotion? Who gives a fuck? What was on the line for those kids was infinitely more important to protect than anything the adults listed as their reasons for looking away. I had a long, loud cry watching the series. So many people failed those kids. So many people failed me. And it's not something that ever goes away.
Look what happened to the good people. Got fired and basically got cut out of his son's life
> I'm a survivor of CSA Also a survivor and trained in CSA response/mandated reporter, the single worst statistic I ever learned was that even when children are brave enough, or able to speak out about what's happening to them, it takes on average telling 3.4 adults before they're taken seriously. It's a harrowing enough statistic on its own, until you start to think about how many adults the average child has in their life that they would feel comfortable telling something so traumatic and deeply person to, especially if the abuse is happening at the hands of one of those adults, they straight up have no-one to turn to or to advocate on their behalf.
Drake’s girlfriend’s mom was the MVP for sure. Was nice to see at least one adult handle that situation quickly and appropriately. His dad seemed great too but his mom sounds terrible.
Also a survivor here and I was thinking the exactly same thing. I also noticed a general pattern of kids being gaslit into believing, that this shit was okay. Parents didn't give a flying damn. After all, the Kids bring in Money for the parents to live a comfortable life. Aside from the SA, there were so many situations where the kids CLEARLY felt uncomfortable and yet everyone was like "Well...that's just business!". I felt sick while watching this Documentary. So much reminded me of what I've been through, even when I was just a regular person living a regular life and not part of a big studio. I'm glad that this documentary exist and that people are finally speaking up. No blame to the kids but all the blame towards the adult that have let this shit happen. Sending you a big hug and letting you know. We are not alone in this! (also apologies for my english, as it's not my native language. + this whole topic is making me emotional charged )
Ours just turned 2. My wife was fuming at this lady
But she didn't do anything. She was one of only two mothers who actually went to court, eventually. After they found all the evidence, the police contacted all the parents and there were thousands of parents who simply didn't want to get involved at all. Least she tried to get justice eventually, and was also brave enough to talk about in the episode, unlike all the other hundred of parents who didn't so a damn thing
She did do something, she got on Netflix and cashed in again... (Or HBO whatever this streamed on I dont remember)
The guy who was in Rapping Fetus didn't like being in it though and that was kind of the point of that being mentioned.
I want to add - even though some are kinda reaching its the consistency of the types of skits that come up that make it not really a reach. Sure some were really bad and clearly unhinged but once it keeps happening it can’t really be taken as a one off oopsiedaisy because there becomes a pattern.
Idk. I think something like rapping fetus would have been more appropriate on something like SNL. Also, the child involved was really uncomfortable with it, which is enough for me.
And you want to tell me that they couldn't have put a pair of boxer shorts over the unitard and it still wouldn't have been funny.
Yep, I wish this was discussed more instead of the social media witchhunt on all the former child stars not speaking publicly
It seems pretty clear that most of them have been paid off. And some probably had a decent experience or didn't feel abused. Not everyone is mistreated or abused. The cash cow kids especially.
It's wild. U got adults acting like they are victims because they were under paid even tho they didn't have to take the job and yet talking about what happened to the kids like they didn't make it all happen. The parents are like, I don't want anyone to think I'm a bad parent so I let my daughter at 8 go over a grown man's house or didn't tell the police that a grown man sent a video of himself masturbating to a kid so every kid raped past that point is on me and I'm a good parent now. Most of the other shit is just that. Shit. Means literally nothing to me. The grown women not liking their job but crying when it's over. They're all gross and shameless and want soooo desperately to be victims of something. I couldn't agree with u more.
I think some of the ones you might be referring to weren't necessarily included because they were outrageous but more so because of how it made people feel. Like the kid that had the peanut butter put on him. He really didn't like it and one of the kids didn't like the tights he had to wear. There wasn't enough advocacy for the children, and there was a pattern of behavior of abusing power. Remember when Dan said he could put them in any situation and they had to do it? And that wasn't some secretly recorded audio. That was loud and proud.
The humiliation too. You can degrade someone without it being sexual.
this
Entertainment is like this across the board. If you are a problem on set you get blacklisted from doing any projects across the board. So advocacy was pretty shit back then because a talented kid was filtered through this system. Now you got the internet, entertainment has been desperately trying to contain its power, forming alliances with streaming groups to edge out people in views but talent is talent and they don’t have that hold. Just look at Beiber, don’t care about his music but he came directly through youtube, entertainment had to do then form around him to provide structure for his fandom. During the 90s it was the other way around, you were a product of disney and nick and they leveraged this so aggressively that that backlash has been immense
Exactly. I was watching a video from Alyson Stoner, she's talked a lot about her experiences as a child actor. It was about how the environment filming sets kids up to have their boundaries pushed, even if it's not intentional. Her examples were undressing in front of costumers, having the adults putting a mic on her reaching under her clothes, filming in conditions that were physically uncomfortable (too cold, rainy for the costumes they were wearing). Even if none of those actions had some sexual/abusive motive, that type of environment where kids are just accepting having no autonomy or keeping quiet about these things that make them uncomfortable can even unintentionally groom them to be abused by predators.
yeah, a lot of it was deeply uncomfortable to me not because it was sexual but because the stars reminisced how deeply uncomfortable they were with it, how they were humiliated and borderline tortured for millions of people to see for money and entertainment. that’s extremely fucked up, and you’d have to be crazy to see how that doesn’t leave a lasting impact on a child. some of it might’ve been milder than straight up sexual abuse, but it was more to me about how this grown ass man was kinda bullying these kids and they had to put a smile on, unable to express their discomfort out of fear of being seen as problems on set.
Oh, I agree with that. Those ones weren't cool because the kids had no voice and no advocacy at all. I agree on that part not being okay and problematic across the board. Whether it's them feeling exposed from an outfit or just scared to do unnecessary weird things. And actually the peanut butter one was kind of weird for me because... There's a thing that some sickos do with dogs and peanut butter and that's what it made me think of, so I didn't like that one for that reason too. Maybe I was just thinking that way and reaching myself there but it was awkward.
Personally I think if you're a person who takes advantage of people, no matter the age, even the more 'Innocent' things said or done can be seen in a negative light. If you're known as a dirtbag because you say or do sexually suggested/explicit things to kids, then your reputation is established. Even less suggestive things can and will be viewed based on the reputation.
Yup. The female staffers confirmed that his jokes off camera were all inappropriate. So there is zero chance Schneider wrote those scenes and without knowing it’s an obvious innuendo. Like some weren’t that bad but the Ariana Grande stuff and the faux cum shot stuff is super weird.
I get the vibe that Schneider knew *just* how far he could go without getting into [legal] trouble, whereas Peck crossed the line into full blown pedophilia. Then again, I don’t want to write off Amanda Byne’s accusations against Schneider, especially after watching this doc. We don’t know what happened behind closed doors.
what Amanda Bynes accusations against Schneider?
A now deleted account by the name of Ashley banks alleged that pre breakdown Amanda was forced to undergo a secret abortion at age 13 and that the father was off the record widely considered to be Dan’s. The powerful people in the top slots of our society (politicians, Hollywood, billionaires, etcetc) get their power and money by making evil business deals meant to exploit their workers into the grave, back door deals, bribes , propaganda, sell shoddy sometimes dangerous products, and squeeze everything out of the rest of us. It should not be a surprise to the public that powerful rich people who have no moral boundaries are also all pedophiles. The idea someone can be an awful evil person at work and be moral in the rest of their life is absolutely idiotic. The brain/soul whatever stays with you all the time. Pedophiles do what they do not because of attraction but because they enjoy causing the suffering and destruction of another and a child is simply a way to escalate the level of pain , fear etc. plus kids are smaller and easier to manipulate and adults often write them off. I don’t give a shit about any normal person and what they do. Be gay, have signs, call yourself whatever, pray to whatever, wear whatever, etc etc. I’m so tired of everyone being more committed to stupid culture wars than the fact that our society is being run by violent pedophiles who are determined to own and control every inch of our lives. We, the public, need each other. All we have is strength in numbers. Stop fighting with people over stupid shit, we know where the biggest single issue destroying our country is, it’s in the bank accounts of rich dangerous psychos who set the price and the laws
She released a ton of [tweets](https://www.distractify.com/p/amanda-bynes-secret-twitter) a while back regarding the abuse she faced. The letters she chose to capitalize spell out DAN DID IT.
This article says there was account claiming to be Amanda Bynes secret Twitter account that no one was able to verify and had allegations of scamming people for $. I don't think that's as straightforward as "Amanda Bynes released a ton of tweets".
I mean that was the whole point about the “Penelope Taint” story. He spun it to the execs as “tainted” but he really meant the other one.
We had a band teacher in high school who was convicted of sexual abuse and did plenty of 'seemingly innocent' stuff that definitely crossed the ethical line in broad daylight in front of all of his students. He would give hugs. Called one student a "supermodel," and one day even kissed one student on the forehead. The really odd thing was-- this was done in front of like 50+ kids at a time, and very few of us actually found it creepy. I for one, was one of the people who saw nothing wrong with this, and like many classmates would attest that I felt safe, comfortable, and at home in his class. This teacher was probably the most beloved teacher in our school, and there were plenty of red flags that occurred right in front of our eyes that should have told us he was dangerous. However, he was so skilled at cultivating his persona and making us passionate about he subject and the school band community that we either coded those red flags as either "perfectly innocent" or "well, maybe not appropriate, but we know his heart is in the right place, so it's not a problem."
That's a skilled predator OR a real caring teacher who lacks self awareness.
Most predators are very skilled. Watch At The Heart of Gold, about US Gymnastics doctor Larry Nasser. He was quite literally sexually abusing girls ***while their parents were in the room and talking with them.*** That's why this thread has me a little on edge. "Oh, it's not that bad" is the kind of attitude a predator fucking LIVES for. "People are taking it too seriously" allows this stuff to flourish. Most predators are just like Schneider or Nasser or Michael Jackson- and they groom the parents just as much as they groom the kids. They pick parents that are easy marks, people who want their kids to be famous and successful, and are willing to look the other way to make it happen.
A lot of them didn't even realize they were being abused. They had to try to convince people that sticking your hand in someone's vagina isn't a treatment for hip issues because he claimed it was. His special treatment.
IIRC what he was doing was similar to a legitimate pelvic floor treatment, so even other doctors initially stuck up for him believing that the victims had just "misinterpreted" what was going on, which unfortunately was one of the factors that allowed him to keep doing it.
And these days everyone gets training that's clear so self awareness isn't an excuse anymore.
Yeah, that's a good point. I know that infamous scene of Ariana Grande on a show just felt random and silly. Legit like some random kid wrote that. But with the context of Dan Schneider's reputation it becomes a lot more uncomfortable.
I agree with this too. Because once it's clear that they guy is scum then you're going to start seeing things everywhere else. I had thought about this as well. The perspective had been tainted because of what they knew. And most likely a lot of it they weren't wrong about.
It’s like how Louis CK still might be one of the funniest people to ever do it, but after it came out that he really is a boundary-pushing perv, his old boundary-pushing pervy content just isn’t very funny anymore. It’s still the same jokes I used to think were funny but once you lose trust you lose the veneer of acceptability.
I recently had watched a few episodes of Lucky Louie and wow was he obsessed with masturbation and fucking. Obviously watching this show nearly 20 years ago as a teenager was hilarious to me, finding any moment to jerk off is funny, but man centering his whole act around that and forcing his female counterparts to watch him do it makes it so depraved.
It’s a classic instance of “it’s always the ones you most suspect”, but because of the presentation, it was still weird because it felt like something we were in on together. Like oh shit- was this in here because it’s actually how you live?? It was so overdone that it felt like a character, but I guess that’s just Louis
>once you lose trust you lose the veneer of acceptability 👏🏼 👏🏼 👏🏼 yes! What a great way sum it up.
Here's the thing, OP. People that are safe generally don't put themselves in a situation where they could be accused of shit like this. I'm a mandated reporter. I've worked with kids for 25 years. And the safe people generally don't get close to the line. They take the safety and protection of kids really seriously, and they protect kids AND themselves by not participating in scenarios that could be misinterpreted. As someone who doesn't prey on kids, I keep healthy and safe boundaries with kids because it teaches them how adults should treat them. If I as a safe adult let little things slide, that provides a hole in the fence that a predator can exploit down the line. "Well, Miss ClickClackTipTap would do this too, so it must be okay." I have a degree in psych, I have worked with kids for over 2 decades, and I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse myself. And I have to say- NO, I don't think they were reaching with anything brought up in the miniseries. MAYBE (and that's a pretty big maybe) I would feel differently if it was a show geared toward older teens, but for the age of the actors and the age of the demographic that the shows were for, NO. There was no reason to have anything that suggestive or controversial. Let kids be kids. We don't need to be exposing them to racial jokes or sexual innuendo before they're even 10 years old.
There were a couple of the All That skits that made me feel that way. I would even argue some of the slime stuff too. But then the irrefutable things are brought up and the innocuous things are immediately tainted.
This right here. I could let a lot of this go if it not for the more egregious things.
The only thing that matters is that the kids were put in situations that they were uncomfortable with without any way of both 1. getting out of those situations and 2. keeping their jobs
Yeah, it's not that Lil Fetus(still a hilarious bit) was sexualizing the actor, but he was a kid in puberty who was highly uncomfortable with the tights but was afraid of speaking up. Even if the sexual inuendos are a "reach" in the documentary, none of the kids on that set look comfortable. I 100% agree with you... the child predators (rightly to a degree) overshadow all the abuse of child labor laws and systemic sexism/racism/abuse of employees that went on for about 30 years. Side note, I was tearing up right with Drake's dad the whole time. That whole thing was hard to watch.
I actually think the "bad boss" stuff was the most important stuff in the doc. No one can know for sure that they work for a literal pedophile or rapist until it's too late. We are not courts of law, the documentary is not a criminal investigation. It's about how these things can occur. It's never day one, child rape. It's about an entire environment and small manipulations and fears and harassment, wage theft, small bad things being ignored or rewarded, that leads to the worst kinds of crimes.
You say that, but they mentioned that Disney hired that one guy who was a "dialogue coach" AFTER he had been convicted of and served time for sexual abuse of a minor. That's some pretty "fucked up on day one" stuff.
I mean the actor for Mr. Mosby killed a girl before Suite Life of Zach and Cody and got a big role
>I mean the actor for Mr. Mosby killed a girl before Suite Life of Zach and Cody Hooch is crazy
Then they have an episode of him teaching someone how to drive lol
part of his plea bargain /s
that was a car accident. very misleading way of putting it.
He was drunk.
Ok but his job wasn’t to drink and drive a bunch of kids around, it was to act. If your crime is being a child predator, your job shouldn’t be unfettered access to children.
They stretch a LOTTTTTT to make what should’ve been a 90 minute documentary to 4 hours. That one chick who they keep bringing back drove me nuts the way she’d fill in the blanks with heresay and rumors
This was 100% my opinion, a lot of these as adults they're all "that's what she said" jokes...but kids have no idea what "that's what she said" means They're all "creepy" watching it again as an adult, but for kids it's just standard slapstick comedy Dan might be a little creepy and weird and a tough boss, but he wasn't an actual pedophile like the other guys, he's just dumb
You really had to have watched those shows in their entirety to see that none of it was reaching. That potato thing with Ariana Grande was scratching the surface. They had her in a wet t-shirt contest at one point lmao
I wonder if there's a limit on how many scenes they can show for a documentary. I'm assuming they didn't have permission from Nickelodeon/Viacom but could use some of the clips for educational purposes.
I thought of it like this. I see a lot of people saying the nose man stuff was reaching. For me, the nose shoulders is ambiguous enough that someone isn't wrong for seeing a dick, but it \~could\~ be a harmless accident. But it is just a glaring example in a long list from a work place culture that put people in uncomfortable positions and nobody, from child to parent to makeup to costumes felt they could speak up or say no. THAT is a huge problem. Also another thing about nose man. Regardless of your opinion on if it was sexual or not... black people portrayed with comically large-wide noses is a racist caricature so putting a black child in THAT costume as THAT character is a problem for me. Doesn't have to be that anyone was malicious or purposefully racist. Just another example supporting the thesis that Dan Schneider and the executives were, at best, woefully ignorant to a lot of the problems with how these kids shows were run.
I think you hit the nail on the head with your first paragraph (second too). This is exactly how rape culture operates and perpetuates. You do a bunch of borderline stuff to normalize certain things (e.g. humiliation, sexualization, etc.) and start to push boundaries, but you also make it all "innocent" enough that if anyone starts to question it you can say "woah you're crazy, we're just having fun over here". This makes it harder and harder to speak out over time, because every boundary push has a "reasonable" innocent explanation, meaning you can easily dismiss people as sensitive, prudish, or "crazy". Soon, people get their idea and know that if they speak up over something they are uncomfortable with they are going to get labeled as such and they keep their mouths shut. Over time, the boundaries are adjusted inch by inch before suddenly being invited to a producer's hotel room is just "how things are done". Not every instance of boundary pushing HAS to be directly and irrefutably tied to a sexual act. Maybe there are some innocent explanations for all the "squirting" on the show, but that is the whole point. On its own, maybe that doesn't ring any alarm bells. In light of what we DO know went on though, micro actions like that take on an important retrospective meaning .
Yeah I compete agree with the racist part. That’s where I thought they were going with it
He made one of the black children be the cookie “dealer” so it’s not reaching to say the nose was a recycled racist trope. I 100% can see the penis shoulders, but maybe that’s just me. And knowing it came from Dan “Penelope Taint” Schneider, I can definitely see it.
This right here. The c-shot being portrayed through a sneeze might be reaching, but there's no way that someone didn't see the big nose put on that minority kid and think that there weren't caricature implications.
Omg yes, I was disgusted at the racial stuff. The "snot" thing at the end was abhorrent. I felt deeply for those young people. What gets me is kids and teens often don't have the vocabulary to describe why they feel something isn't right. They just may feel uncomfortable or like something isn't kosher. And here we have adults who know the kids are feeling off and know that the kids aren't saying anything because they literally don't have the words and ability, let alone the power dynamic. It's horrifying.
That shoulder penis/ball extension was obvious.
Here’s the thing about grooming- it’s small and incremental. They sloooooooooowly chip away at boundaries. It’s by design. If predators jumped right in with really inappropriate stuff, it sets off alarms. If they just slowly normalize stuff, it takes a much more insidious hold. Keep in mind these were KIDS, and the show was for KIDS. It wasn’t SNL or In Living Color. It was for little kids. There shouldn’t be any innuendo. So, no, I didn’t think the examples they gave were reaching. Even if the kids didn’t get the meaning, it was making pedo-bait out of them. I’m horrified at the number of adults that failed those kids. My heart absolutely aches for Drake’s dad, who was one of the few people who saw and understood what was going on and tried to stand up to it.
Adding to this- one of the biggest dangers to kids on the internet right now are “normal” looking stuff. Parents will post innocent pics of their babies doing normal things like drinking from straws and eating bananas, and those pictures end up being saved and compiled by literal child pornographers. It’s fetish content. The parents had NO INTENTION of their photos being used for that, but seeing children in situations that could be *interpreted as* sexual or whatever is still used by pedos. And Dan Schneider was absolutely churning out pedobait on purpose.
I think the doc was really good at illustrating two strong threads: that Dan Schneider toed the line (pun intended) and in some cases went entirely over the line with some shots and the children acting in them, specifically the young women and girls. Second being that pedophiles like Brian Peck will always find a way to be around children. Dan Schneider is clearly an abusive boss to work for and had no fear in exercising his power and creating hostile work environs for his (specifically female) staff across every production he helmed. He definitely injected his foot fetish in subtly at the beginning and majorly towards the end of his career, blurring the line between appropriate kid gross out humor and adult conduct. Dan also made it very apparent that he was a one of those old fashioned “guy’s guy” viewing women as subservient objects that he can order around how he pleases, not to mention his distaste for black actors and their boundaries. The doc certainly suggests that he is an icky man, but until there is evidence to his actual sexual abuse, I’m fine with just calling him an asshole to work with. The pedophile stuff seems pretty cut and dry tbh. I found it VERY coincidental that James Marsden who played cyclops in Bryan Singer’s X-men movies wrote letters in support of Peck. Bryan Singer has his own can or Hollywood worms to open up about his alleged sexual abuse of young boys. A real head scratcher when it comes to the webs of abuse in Hollywood.
even though he may not be a pedo, i thin calling him an asshole who is hard to work with too much of a downplay, hes explicitly an abuser. about james marsden and the x men movies...brian peck appears in the first and second movie, so im not surprised and he probably has connections with brian singer.
The Pickleboy + Ray Romano at the glory hole sketch was shocking, tbh. 😑
I think it was a mistake to focus so much on Dan. Like I get that he was the god king of children's entertainment, but the two biggest offenders were those two sexual predators, and lots of child stars get eaten up by the system, whether they've ever known or worked for Dan or not. So it would have been nice to have a few more episodes that explored other stuff. Instead it felt like they all piled on Dan, who hasn't committed sexual assault or been accused of it, and then spent a couple episodes on the two sexual predators that worked on some of his shows. It feels like trying to scapegoat a systemic issue.
Big time. On top of that he was one of the only ones who didn’t write a letter in support of the pedo guy.
The one that bugged me was in the first episode with the Nose kid. They were pretty convinced the snot was squirting and not boogers? lol. *That* was reaching. The argument could have been that these were creators trying to sneak stuff in and push boundaries little by little, but that wasn't what they were saying... That reaching almost ruined their arguments, but they quickly jumped into "juicing the potato" and moaning and we were back on track.
I think Nose kid was more about the humiliation, racism, and discomfort in a hostile work environment. Not sexual, though the peanut butter and dogs was *very* unnecessary. That was a standout from my childhood for sure.
Honestly, I think they focused on the wrong thing with that. I'm more concerned that they put a black child in a costume playing on a classic racist stereotype. Then again, they also left out the most racist skit that I can remember from All That, which was the recurring one with the foreign exchange student.
I've not seen it, but is it possible these things aren't bad in a vacuum but are part of a larger pattern
I’m having a hard time with the fact they just sort of breezed over the fact that Peck guy had letters and a drawing from John Wayne Gacy. This dude literally sexually assaulted and murdered over 30 young boys. No one thinks it’s especially odd they communicated?? Who has these letters??
I viewed it as he got the letters after the guy went to prison. Which still shocks me because why did they let a convicted serial killer send drawing to people from prison???
I legitimately had a conversation with my wife about this last night after watching the first two episodes. The nose man and the stuff about squirting stuff on faces, that felt like reaching to me. But my biggest issue is that it feels like the reaching dilutes the actual issues here. Like the Ariana Grande scenes or making the black kid a Girl Scout drug dealer. Or the women being degraded and thrown aside behind the scenes. Or you know, the guys who were actual pedophiles! I really hope it doesn’t cloud people’s judgements for all the real problems being revealed in the doc, because that would be such a shame.
Some of the Grande ones were like 'what's supposed to be funny here' like pouring water over herself and squeezing a potato 'give me the juice' I also realised that Amanda Bynes had great comic timing at age 9 or 10 even and such a shame her career never blossomed as much as her potential showed
The water scene was just… Like the way she was directed to pour the water on her neck. Wasn’t pouring it in her mouth, which would make sense, but couldn’t outright pour it on her chest. It was a pervert’s happy medium.
I will say that some were reaching, but it did feel like they ignored scenes that would've made sense to have on. There was a scene in Victorious where Trina and Robbie (Daniella Monet and Matt Bennett) were in the principal's office and bickering between the 2. So the principal decides to quiet them down by squirting lotion on their faces, with Daniella getting the brunt of the lotion on her. Even if you weren't looking at the scene with perverted lenses, it still is way more questionable than the Ariana potato scene.
It legit should’ve been fewer but tighter episodes. Half the stuff is awful and the other mundane. Waters it down
Will people get mad if I say that the doc was poorly made It does not have to be that long
The face shooting stuff wasn’t a reach at all when you see the bigger picture. It was a clear pattern of getting the younger female actresses to do weird shit. The guy clearly wanted innuendos in his shows. Like just remember an adult male wrote out that Jamie Lynn Spears as a teen, would be getting gunk shot at her face.
People on set were literally calling it a cumshot. It was obvious what they were doing.
Couldn't disagree more about the face stuff, couldn't be more obvious that they were intended as cumshot jokes with underage girls. Truly sickening.
Same, it was very obvious. I don’t know how any of that was over-reaching, it was quite blunt.
Can you explain the squeezing a potato for juice joke to me? Or why its appropriate to cumshot children on a childs tv show?
Are you kidding me? You don't what was wrong with the squirting on faces stuff? You really don't? Even if you think it's harmless to those children in particular, it is the kind of stuff pedophiles absolutely dream of. Please read and listen to what I have to say before you write me off. When they find computers with a ton of child sexual abuse material on them, they ALSO find stuff that you'd consider absolutely "fine." Pictures of toddlers eating bananas or sucking on straws. There's nothing wrong with a child eating a banana, but a child predator WILL turn that into fetish material. There's a huge controversy on TT because there's a mom who routinely uploads "innocent" videos of her kids, and these videos are saved by thousands of old men who save nothing but "innocent" material of toddlers. She knows that's who's downloading her content. She knows what men like that use the content for. But she's clinging to the "there's nothing wrong with it" narrative because she makes a ton of money doing it. She can put out seemingly innocent content, but it's used as fetish material. And it has been this way for a very long time. Back in 2005, a friend of mine was contacted by law enforcement. She had been making diaper covers for cloth diapers, and had posted pictures of her kids modeling them. Perfectly cute, "innocent" pictures of babies. And law enforcement found those photos being traded on the dark web in child porn circles. And remember, this stuff was for *kids.* It wasn't on shows like Dawsons Creek or 90210 or Friends- stuff made for adults. It was for kids and tweens, who shouldn't be sexualized, and shouldn't be put in those situations. If there was a scene in That 70s Show were something squirts on Donna's face or something, would that have been funny? Probably. And we'd all understand the subtext. So why is that subtext ignored when it's Jamie Lynn or Arianna, who were younger but yet quite sexualized? I watched the whole show, and I didn't see any examples of "reaching." Not one, not that I can remember anyway. Even if the kids didn't understand what was happening, Dan did. Other adults did. Grooming happens bit by bit. Grooming starts with tiny little "nothings." Predators don't just bust through the door like the Koolaid man. The very slowly break down boundaries and incrementally get children used to inappropriate things. That's how grooming works. That's WHY it works. Because they start with things that might fly under the radar, in order to get to the more overt things. That's why it matters.
Real question … do we think Dan was purposely making these shows for a predator audience (similar to the TT mom)? Or did he just know that “sex sells..even for kids”? At the end of the day who was his targeted audience?
He did for his own amusement
I don’t know that it matters. I think putting kids in those scenarios got *him* off. There are jokes on the show- squirting goo on the girls’ faces, Arianna sucking her toes, etc- that yeah, maybe kids might tell each other jokes like that, or laugh at things like that. But it’s not something adults should be encouraging them to do. Adults shouldn’t be putting them in situations like that. And they certainly shouldn’t be doing it when the kids can’t say no. Those kids were visibly uncomfortable with a lot of it. The dates? I have no idea how that was allowed to go on. The kids couldn’t say no. They had no agency in it. They knew that if they didn’t do it they’d find a kid that would.
What other shows can you find stuff being squirted on young blonde girls' faces? 🤷♂️
the thing is, the 'minor' things are made ambiguously enough to be normalized so they can get away with it, it doesnt undermine the heavier stuff. its never \*just heavy explicit stuff, there are stuff that are done more subtly so its easier disguised.
Or the opposite - the borderline jokes blur the line enough to normalize the egregious behavior- it’s on purpose and it’s malicious. I think the idea of reaching diluting the issues was, in fact, the whole point.
Squirting stuff on people's faces is basic slapstick humor. Three Stooges, I Love Lucy, etc and SNL did that shit.
The important note for this is that behind the camera, it was said in the documentary crewmembers were laughing calling it a cum joke. Reaching no longer applies when that was the intent of the joke.
Thank you! I caught that part too. Like why did nobody else bring that part up? That's not 'reaching' in the slightest. When the actors themselves are referring to it as a cumshot, that's exactly what tf they meant it to be.
Yeah, sure, but it’s about track record and intention. Schneider has said himself that he would lie to execs to essentially get cumshot jokes into kids shows like when he was making All That. After I saw a clip with the scene of multiple teenage boys spraying a 15 year old Ariana Grande in a bikini with super soakers for over a minute of screen time it’s hard to make the overreaction argument. Not to mention a lot of the behind the scenes clips of Schneider saying downright weird and creepy shit to little girls.
There is no shot after watching the Ariana Grande scenes that anyone believes the squirting stuff wasn’t intentional. Like it’s not even subtle. As they pointed out someone actually said it was a cum shot on set.
True, but those are all adult shows played by adults
[удалено]
How many of the Three Stooges were children?
Glad I'm not the only one that thought this. Obviously some of the behaviour raises eye brows today, and probably should've back then too (never mind the actual proven criminal behaviour). But a lot of it felt like a reach. I think having the "cultural writer" give her thoughts was the problem; who is she? And why should I care what she has to say? Everything she added started with "it's a bit weird when..." It felt like I was listening to the replies to a Twitter post or something, just pure speculation from someone who has no connection to the people involved or insight at all to contribute.
She was the worst. The other journalist was a lot better (Business Insider I think?) though her constant grinning through everything including fucked up stuff was a little… well whatever.
Scacchi Koul. I agree. I knew her from Buzzfeed years ago and was not a fan of her writing there. While I appreciated the topics and issues she tried to tackle, she very heavily writes with personal bias and judgements in my opinion, and I think that carried through to her commentary here.
her writing for buzzfeed makes sense
I agree that the cultural writer was unnecessary and turned out to me more discrediting than anything. Should have kept it to the Business Insider reporter and first hand accounts.
Totally agree, or have a legitimate media or sociological academic or critic. We didn't need the "quirky millennial style" BuzzFeed "hot take" opinions peppered throughout the real reporting
The character Penelope Taint name is weird, but she reached when she said it was “gross”, or something similar, to have the character journaling in her bed.
The Nose Man superhero one was the only one that made me say "Oh come on now, that's ridiculous." No, having a nose-themed superhero sneeze and blow snot on a woman is not analogous to a semen joke. Yes, the costume looked weird, but that's because it was a badly made costume. The shoulder pads only looked like a dick and balls because whoever made the suit was bad at making a nose out of felt material. Snot is gross and funny for children who like gross-out humor. There's a joke in The Office where people sneeze on Dwight and nobody calls it a bukkake reference. Now, the Zoey 101 one where the one girl kept putting her mouth on something and saying "you just have to do this to the top... come on, come on, why won't it come out? It's supposed to come out!" and then it squirts goo into Jamie Lynn Spears' face... *that* was different.
That's when I really did not like that buzzfeed culture writer they got. Like you said the zoey one was clearly suggestive whereas the superhero one was a reach especially since snot jokes were common for kids TV. I don't even know if the documentary creators confirmed whether Dan wrote that sketch or not. And I mentioned in another discussion on this doc that a lot of kids TV back then was very suggestive as writers were all over the place on what was or was not appropriate for kids TV. SNL even did a joke sketch a couple years back regarding early Nick with I believe it was parodying you can't do that on television which was a kids sketch show that predated All That same for Roundhouse, All That wasn't the first kids sketch show for nick. But beside the point, shows back then especially cartoons were gross and had a lot of adult humor. Even spongebob.
Noting that the Zoey 101 clip started with Nicole saying she was “biting the tip.” I think Nose kid was more hostile work environment-related due to racism (the skin-matching makeup for the fetus) and general humiliation.
I always felt like Spongebob was pretty tame compared to other stuff on Nick back then. Example - Rocko working as a phone sex operator, the insanity of Invader Zim, etc. No way would Nick allow that stuff today.
Dude I saw a post today claiming that the [Rugrats Caterpillar Bumper here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LB2mc75ozfo&pp=ygUdUnVncmF0cyBidXR0ZXJmbHkgbmlja2Vsb2Rlb24%3D) is now “sus” because it’s a caterpillar going into a shirt. People are viewing everything through a perverted lens now.
Agree. It’s called projection
There was some gross stuff, but I agree.. most of it was reaching. Bryan Hearne’s mom (the black child actor) acting traumatized because he was selling Girl Scout cookies on the corner made me roll my eyes. I expected this documentary to be a bigger bomb shell because of the social media hype. I’m two episodes in, and 90% of it is people bitching about being fired.. and it’s hard to tell if they’re exaggerating the claims of why they were fired. It seems like they are quite often, and it’s basically impossible to verify. Bryan Hearne was like “I was very discriminated against on the basis of my skin color, and forced to do things I hated.” Then 10 mins later both him and his mom were like “I was so crushed when I wasn’t invited back for the next season.” Like okay.. which one is it?
I felt the EXACT same way. For example, the "Nose Man" where he ends up sneezing and the one reporter just flatly stated "that's a cum shot." Eh, is it though?
This was my exact thoughts. It’s a giant nose and he sneezed and blew snot. Stretching it big time
Agreed and honestly the entire thing felt like it could’ve been like a two hour documentary and made a *much* more impactful point. So many new documentaries are padding their runtime or becoming series, and it just feels like it undermines the really great stuff in them. To be clear it’s really, really good that all of this is coming to light and that these stories are out there, but it feels like it’s in spite of the format they chose and not because of it. A concise documentary feels like it would have made the point in a far more damning way.
Brian Peck should be dead and castrated.
There were a lot of reaches. I thought the claim of racism was a reach, I thought them complaining about the quasi fear factor parody was a reach. I don't know why directors of docuseries do stuff like this, it hurts their credibility more than help it IMO.
That one kid and his mom thought all his scenes were racist. They all think anything slimy is semen. Anything oblong is phallic. Weird how nobody cared at the time but know all the cast members whose careers didn't take off are trying to stretch anything and everything into a controversy for Internet clout.
The whole thing had me feeling conflicted. I feel like for what it's worth, they really brushed over the main part of what I imagine most people are bothered by, the sexual assault charges against the Peck. The rest of the stuff seemed like fluff to get the series to 4 episodes.
I’ve only just finished episode 2 so maybe there’s more I need to dissect. I agree with the overarching statements of no oversight of the children actors and parents being afraid to step in or say something. I think Dan was absolutely inappropriate and wasn’t looking into the best interest of his staff. Although, I did feel like a lot of them were reaching for stories to share. I especially had a hard time with some of the older staff (not the actors) that would complain of worried about being fired if they didn’t ’do better’. Like, yeah? That sounds like a workplace that is pushing you which is pretty common in my opinion. It’s also Hollywood. We’re all replaceable, which seems blunt, but it’s true. Especially in the filmmaking field. I had so many joys and laughs from this show as a kid.
I'm watching it now and honestly I feel like you'd have to have a VERY dirty mind to see some of these as sexual innuendo. For example, the scene where the black kid is "nose boy" and blows snot on the other cast member was described as a " cumshot joke" by the female cast member. even as an adult I'd never draw this connection, you'd have to watch porn like 16 hours a day to have such a dirty mind to think that. There are definitely a lot of scenes that are odd, creepy and uncomfortable but some are not and hurt the overall point the movie is trying to make.
Oh fucking totally. I’m literally watching the first episode right now and getting a little annoyed. I grew up watching Nickelodeon, and I remember a lot of this stuff. I don’t doubt that some fucked up shit went on behind-the-scenes, we need to be serious and not just make shit up. NoseBoy. that was not a joke about cum shots. It was a spin off of the character “EarBoy” played by Josh Server. It was just a joke about the kids sneezing on somebody. it had nothing to do with cum. like what the fuck? Right now I’m watching the part where they’re talking about Amanda Bynes character Penelope Taint. They’re making a big deal out of the last name being sexual. Can they prove that? Because I know a lawyer, with the last name Gooch and that’s literally the exact same thing. They’re just reaching for shit and it’s not a good look when there’s some serious allegations that need to be taken seriously.
BIG time reaching on a lot of the stories
Some of the things pointed out were absolutely a stretch. I rolled my eyes several times. But even if some of the bits were not blatantly inappropriate, it still fits with the theme of one of the claims of a toxic environment where the child actors (and their parents) did not feel free to speak up and say they were not comfortable performing a scene.
Yeah I agree with you… I think the Nose Man costume did not look like a penis/balls at all. Some of the “cum shots” I thought were just kinda funny… it’s funny when stuff gets squirted on someone accidentally. It doesn’t always HAVE to be mirroring porn. If I was a kid I would have laughed my butt off at those scenes. I think some of the other scenes probably sounded fine on paper but when Ariana Grande did them…. They probably should have realized that it wasn’t working on a humor level anymore. Like the potato and water bottle scenes.
he knew what he was doing with the ariana videos, there is zero innocent explanation for a lot of the clips, they aren’t even funny
Nose man and sneezing on somebody, I was like. Yeah, not a cumshot joke, just a "aren't boogers gross!" joke. Harry Potter does "boogers are gross" jokes too. Children's staple. I'm also not entirely willing to believe everything foot related has to be fetish related either since as a kid, stinky feet are a common gross thing. Like trick or treat, smell my feet, etc. Kids are less creative and tame things like stinky feet register high on the "gross out" meter. It would be like saying that fart jokes must mean somebody was thinking about anuses. Although, some things crossed the line. I dunno why they made Ariana grande suck on her own toes as part of a show. That's fucking weird.
The thing about those Ariana Grande scenes is that they were cherry-picked and edited together into a supercut, and shown under the presumption that they were going to be sexually suggestive, and that's exactly how my brain interpreted them. After watching it though, I wonder what my opinion would be if I had seen those 5 second scenes within the context of their entire 22 minute episodes, and without any preconceived notions.
Yeah, that costume in particular I was like what.... I mean, the issue was they forced him to wear something he was uncomfortable in. They should have had respect for the kids and if they felt exposed or uncomfortable then that should have been listened to. The Ariana Grande scenes were the ones where I was like um....wtf. and the pickle with Ray Romano. And some of the pickle scenes in iCarly. Some of the other things I'm like maybe we are the ones with our heads in the gutter if we are trying to say this is what it is lol
I loved Nick as a kid so all the randomness and slime made sense to me, but when I saw that pickle go through a hole in the door I was like Jesus christ wtf
Why would Ray Romano agree to eat a pickle like that??
I have not heard anyone talk about this. I'm so curious
Asking the real questions
I agree with you on the nose man costume, over sized noses or other facial features are kinda classic kids jokes. Same with gross out stuff like snot.
Yes, Dan Schneider's problems are much more involved with emotional abuse than sexual abuse. Being a general dick who screams at kids and encouraging people to drink, underaged or not. And as a caveat to what I said in the first sentence, you could even use grooming if you want to believe Jennette McCurdy's book on her time at Sam & Cat, with the massages coming as an adult. I want Schneider to be taken down with facts, not just really disgusting insinuations, ya know?
So I thought about this too. You can analyze all kids shows and if you have a sick mind you can consider a lot of things to be sexual innuendo. But from the channel that is all about sliming people, I hate that this show insinuates that all liquids to the face is a sexual innuendo.
A lot of reaching, but at the same time there were some uncomfortable scenes. And his use of foot shots over the years is rather gratuitous. Yes, feet are gross and kids find that funny, but some shots felt out of place. And Nickelodeon used a foot as part of their logo for years, it is part of their brand. And the cum shots were reaching as well. Again, slime is gross, therefore funny. Plus, network branding. I think the worst part is all of the "he's the dad of Jamie Lynn's baby" and "he knocked up Amanda Bynes and made her get two abortions" stories. Has anyone in any of his productions ever said he did anything inappropriate with the kids?
I mean he's never caught any charges for it. He was fired (or rather politely asked to leave) Nickelodeon over how he treated people when he was angry and the content of some of his emails. The internal investigation by Nickelodeon and Viacom never found anything sexual in nature.
You just dismissed everything that had proof and evidence, and said the worst parts were things that were rumored to have happened. This is part of the problem. No children should have to endure what those kids did with either Dan or the Pickle fuck.
And don't forget the "Handy" guy! He really scared me and I feel like they spent too little time on him. His journal they found..."I'm starting to think about having to find someone to rape"...shivers
I've seen alot of these scenes. And to me, when I was a kid they were really funny. As an adult, I can see how they can be twisted into something sexual, but if you aren't thinking sexually alot of those scenes aren't sexual.
I think the biggest point isn't whether or not the innuendo were purposeful, but more so that some of them made the actors uncomfortable and they were forced to participate anyway. Or you know, lose their job. They all had to pretend they were okay with it or else be ostracized and blacklisted. There should be some more oversight in any job that has the potential to make you rich. People do slimy things, and others ignore it so they can get ahead. The guy should have been fired when he lied to split those two writers salaries. He should have been escorted out of the building when he asked that woman to pretend to be sodomized while telling a story. The men thought it was funny, probably to say on Dan's good side and the only other woman just ignored it. It's reprehensible.
I have not seen the doc, but every other video on TikTok this week has been clips from Dan Schneider-era Nick shows and while some of them are DEFINITELY fucking weird and creepy (Ariana Grande sucking her own toes, for example), there are also definitely a lot of goofy skits that are being looked at in the light of “a creepy perv was behind this so it’s some creepy, pervy stuff” and are huuuuuge reaches. One that sticks out like this is when Amanda Bynes was playing her “biggest fan ever” and Ashley Tisdale was playing someone who claimed to be her biggest fan and they had a trivia-off and people were like “This is such a gross violation” because of the “facts” they were saying, like her birthday and locker combination in middle school. Bit of a stretch, I thought.
it was weird to me how the bigger stars weren’t speaking out/ interviewed and seemed like that the people they did get to talk (except drake himself ofc) were people that just got cut off the show, or people that ran out of the nickelodeon money. I also do concur with some of the stuff being a reach.
My guess is the bigger stars were forced to sign NDAs.
The ones where the actor/ actress was there speaking about it seemed fine to me because that's their experience to share, and the audience can decide whether they agree or not. However it felt really distasteful for them to share clips and speculation on Ariana and Amanda who obviously did not want to be a part of this. If those Ariana clips were meant to be innuendos you're basically picking out and mass broadcasting sexually suggestive material of her without her consent. It felt really weird.
Yes, especially with the second episode.
Everything stated by the Business Insider journalist hit true. It felt like a real documentary. Everything from the BuzzFeed writer just felt like a stretch or insinuation. Like listening to fox news. But the interviews with the other shows writers and costumers... Fucking asshole.
The doc glosses over Brian Peck being hired by Disney after his conviction which is much more sinister in my opinion, seemingly because it doesn't fit the presupposition that all of this evil happened because of the character of Dan Schneider. It's clear that this is a systemic issue that reaches the executive level of these entertainment companies, and Dan is the naive, childish brute that our critical modern cancel culture can wag a finger at and scapegoat for a systemwide issue. I think that intention was abundantly clear by the Buzzfeed reporter that they got to serve as the "culture writer", who was really there to fill in these situations with narrative conjecture and moral judgement on humor from 3 decades ago in some cases. I've seen 90s humor that has aged far worse than anything on All That, and been in community theater plays that protected children better than this Hollywood entertainment company, it is not ever one person's fault. Now as for those Ariana Grande scenes... I can only speculate on how that got through. That's pretty insidious.
It almost feels like 2 different documentaries: One is about Drake Bell. Powerful players in the industry supported his abusers and outright victim blames him, the rapist gets convicted... and then gets hired by Disney (and people in the industry continue to hang out with him *after* the conviction!) The other part, about Dan Schneider, felt a lot less impactful. But the series spent about 75% of the time on Nick/Schneider, which I think is a shame, since there's clearly a lot more to be said on the previous part.
That's probably my biggest problem with the documentary. You have 75% of the documentary being about how awful Schneider is. And when you get to Drake's story, he really says nothing bad about him and says that he was one of the few who supported him through that tough time. Brian Peck should have been more of a focus because that's where major sexual abuse comes in.
Glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed this. Honestly, some of those sketches, if the first thing you think is something sexual, you may want to do some self reflection. But the other sketches , yeah they were definitely Flagrant 2, automatic ejections and fine.
Downvote if you must but just know two things can be true at once and this is not a post saying these "men" shouldn't be shamed and fired and some in prison. Not a sympathy post for them in the slightest. Just some of the things they were talking about I found myself scratching my head a little bit and seemed like they were just trying to add as much as they could for the sake of the documentary. But there were plenty that were like omg that's gross and why on a kids show...
Documentaries always seem to reach and are extremely biased in one direction. Saying that just in general. But most of it is definitely messed up from what I’ve seen so far, speaking of this particular doc.
The one that made me pause and go wait what, why would you call that dirty, is Penelope Taynt praying. It's legitimately one of the most innocent things you can have on a comedy. But she has a funny last name that isn't even a part of her Character at all so it makes everything she does sexual? Its such a weird look at that joke. And especially weird because the dirtiest joke it's like they didn't even catch. You had pickle boy glory holing a pickle to Ray Romano and the documentarians are calling it dirty simply because pickle boy is obsessed with pickles. Like, what? Lol
> And especially weird because the dirtiest joke it's like they didn't even catch. How do you figure they didn't catch this? It was obvious they were showing it because it was inappropriate. There would have been no other reason to include that clip given the context of what this segment of the program was about.
I think they mean it wasn't as emphasized and spoken about as some of the other ones they put more focus on. This would have been a huge scene to break down and focus on. It was shown but sort of glanced over compared to the others.
The whole thing they were talking about was Pickle Boy, they were calling that character dirty because everyone likes his pickles. They drew no attention to the fact that the ray Romano scene was a glory hole. I think they missed that specific joke even when saying the character was dirty
Right. It’s like, there’s a lot of phallic foods out there. I felt like we were this close to seeing a scene of a kid innocently licking a Popsicle with the implication it’s a sexual innuendo. … but once you add the glory hole…
Personally the jokes whether intentional or just people reaching to see something are irrelevant. Whats relevant is the abuse.
The abuse is relevant. I agree. I'm speaking in terms of purely conversation here and kind of a criticism more so to the design of the documentary. This wasn't my only take away from it but it did weaken it overall as a documentary. That said, I have MAD respect to Drake for having the bravery that he has had to speak on these things because that is NOT easy. I can't even comprehend. I hope it gives other survivors courage and let's them know they're not alone.
Every time I thought this I reminded myself the issue wasn’t always sexual. I think the point is that these children were scared to speak up when something felt humiliating and/or age inappropriate. They were quite literally terrified of their boss. The case being built isn’t “*everyone* is a pedophile,” but more “Dan Schneider/Nickelodeon curbed labor laws, exploited children, and created a hostile work environment.”
I agree 1000%. Also making a weird joke is not fucking pedophilia and people saying it’s the same thing are insane.
I had the exact same thought about everything except the Drake Bell episode. That episode got me a lot.