Den of the Cyphered Wolf

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Nick The All That Spin-Offs

Ah the great grand tradition of the spin off. Trying to preserve that which made a great show even when the show has to end, or using it as an opportunity refocus old ideas. Some of my favorite shows were spin-offs, Daria, Angel, Batman Beyond, A Different World, Xena heck even The Simpsons.

But I'm not here to talk about every spin-off. I'm here to talk about the All That Spin offs. First off let me get into what all that was.

Back in the early days of Snick, a lot of what Nick was trying to do was create kid friendly versions of various genres of television. For your Twilight Zone/Outer Limits style anthologies you had Are You Afraid of the Dark?. For your Star Trek style science fiction you had Space Cases. For your Matlock /Murder She Wrote style mysteries you had The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. And for your Saturday Night Live style, (I've said it before and I'll say it again this is where Kenan Thompson got his start.) you had All That.



All That wasn't Nick's first sketch comedy show but it was it's longest running, not counting the weirdness that is You Can't Do That on Television, clocking in at six or ten depending on how you look at it, seasons (they canceled it for a while and then brought it back.) . It's also the sketch show people tend to remember.



Anyway even during All That!'s original run Nick had a few spin-offs and eventually some of those spin-offs off got spin-offs. It's the six degrees of All That people.
Anyway lets get started.



Kablam!


The next few are going to be weird. One of the segments for All That! was Action League Now. Eventually Action League Now! moved to Kablam! which was a cartoon anthology series. It was fun and cooky, just the way I like it. Back in the day Nick made a lot of shorts. A lot of them got their own shows. (I'll get to the wonder that is Pete and Pete later) Which leads me to...

Angela Anaconda


I like it when revenge is carried out on jerks. Besides that I don't remember a lot about this one folks.

Action League Now!

I love It's Just Some Random Guy. The style and comedy is very similar to Action League Now. First it was on All That, then Kablam, then finally it got it's own show. The show was very arc based, but was still very surreal, largely thanks to the characters being cloud cuckoolanders.

Kenan and Kel


During their All That days Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell were a pretty popular comedy team.



So popular in fact, that Nick decided to give the two their own show. It was a sitcom with Kennan playing the straight-man to Kel. Kenan would think up so scheme to get the two money, or girls, and it would backfire, partially because of Kel's cloud cuckoolander tendencies, and because it was a bad plan from the start.



The Amanda Show


And now ladies and gentlemen I will begin to show the linkage between All That and I-Carly. Not unlike Kenan and Kel, Amanda Bynes eventually became popular enough for own show.





It was a variety show not unlike All that, and like most sketch comedy shows it had lots of characters. My favorite was Penlope Taynt Amanda's biggest fan that was obviously Amanda. Anyway here's a clip that serves the duel purposes of showing Penelope and introducing the next show.






Drake and Josh



By this point you know what I'm going to say. These two, Drake Bell and Josh Peck as well as Nancy Sullivan, eventually became popular enough for their own show. Which now I think on it was a lot like Kenan and Kel. Actually I think the living room set might have even been the same though I'm not sure.

ICarly


Miranda Cosgrove was, wait a sec. Eh whatever. Miranda Cosgrove was immensely popular on Drake and Josh and eventually got her own show ICarly. Though unlike all those other shows she's not danzaing it.


P.S. When I originally wrote this I forgot one show

The Nick Cannon Show



Right before they canceled, the the first time around , All That, Nick Cannon was one of the actors and well you know the drill.

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