The 10 Best Nickelodeon Shows of All Time
By Robert Rich
Nostalgia is a beautiful thing. It lets us transform what were probably some pretty mediocre eras of our lives into this historical time of beauty and amazing happenings that we’ll always look back on fondly. But sometimes, it’s based in cold hard fact. My childhood with Nickelodeon is just that. So many Nick shows of the ’90s kept me entertained throughout my younger years, and when Teen Nick started its “The ’90s Are All That” block of programming a couple of years ago, I got the chance to re-live some of the greatest kids’ shows of all time and realize just how lucky I was to watch them when they first ran. With that in mind, here are the 10 best Nick shows ever.
I could have, and frankly, wanted to make this list huge, but I felt I’d be doing a disservice to the great shows that dominated Nickelodeon. By only letting myself pick 10, I was forced to think long and hard about which ones were truly great.
One thing to note: All That does not appear here, because that show sucked. Deal with it.
10. Kenan and Kel
Before Kenan was “What’s up with that?”-ing his way onto the SNL stage, he was cracking wise with his buddy Kel, who just wanted some damn orange soda. Kenan and Kel broke the fourth wall before each of their shows by standing onstage and chatting with the audience before breaking off into the main crux of the episodes, a format that became commonplace for comics both good (Dave Chappelle) and bad (W. Kamau Bell). The comedy was hit or miss, but dammit, the two put their heart and soul into it, and I remain convinced that many of Kenan’s cockamamie schemes would work brilliantly in real life.
9. Clarissa Explains it All
Not only did Melissa Joan Hart’s titular character become the first female lead of a young adult program, the show itself showcased some pretty trendy parenting. Her best friend Sam’s allowed to enter and exit through her second story window whenever he chooses? Clarissa’s mom isn’t a regular mom, she’s a cool mom. Before shows like Degrassi chose to handle teen issues by diving facefirst into naked Canadian orgies, Clarissa Explains It All approached it with a little more restraint, subtly referencing issues like teen drinking and sex without spelling them out. It attracted both male and female viewers and drew them in by, like in Kenan and Kel, breaking the fourth wall and letting Clarissa speak directly to the audience.
8. Hey Arnold!
We all know that football shaped head and that creepy as shit shrine in Helga’s closet. Hey Arnold! beautifully intermingled navigating city life with the urban legends that tend to crop up in smaller communities. It was a uniquely diversified show, but never came across as a ploy to be all inclusive, it simply modeled itself after the real melting pot cities of America and portrayed the mixing to perfection.
7. The Secret World of Alex Mack
Alex Mack was my first crush. Larisa Oleynik played the role to perfection, and I tuned in every week just to look at her. The premise of the show wasn’t half bad either, a teenager doused in a strange chemical that gives her special powers, but the casting of Oleynik sold the series for me, and undoubtedly millions of other kiddos who grew up with her. I’ll tell you this, when she turned into liquid form, I melted too. *rimshot*
6. Ren & Stimpy
This is quite possibly the show that started it all. It’s still a wonder that so many episodes of Ren & Stimpy cleared Nickelodeon’s Standards & Practices staff, but they did, and the results were glorious. The gross-out humor, borderline offensive jokes, and sexual euphemisms were all groundbreaking for kids’ shows at the time, and there’s no doubt the show inspired such eventual adults only cartoons like South Park. Like the latter, Ren & Stimpy was a show my parents didn’t want me watching, which only made it that much more intriguing, and that much more amazing when I feasted on the episodes.
5. Rocko’s Modern Life
It stars a wallabee and it’s hilarious. Honestly, I’m not gonna spell it out for you. If you get it, you get it.
4. Doug
Doug is the quintessential standard animated sitcom that blew up. For the most part, it featured the same thing as many other Nickelodeon programs at the time: a title character with a distinctive physical appearance, surreal dream-like sequences, and exploration of standard childhood and adolescent issues. But Doug had heart. His lifelong attempt at winning Patti Mayonnaise is some of the most tragically beautiful television we’ll ever get the chance to see. And that theme song. Man, that theme song was the balls.
3. Legends of the Hidden Temple
Greatest game show of all time? Probably. Before we just threw people in physical hellholes for our entertainment, we gave them, as children, a little mythology behind their gauntlet. Legends of the Hidden Temple pitted 11-to-14-year-olds in all kinds of strenuous tests, including that dreaded of all subjects, geography, in order to retrieve hidden “artifacts.” A buddy of mine has an original Silver Snakes shirt and it is the singular focal point of every jealous feeling I’ve ever had about anything.
2. Rugrats
Tommy Pickles was a G. It’s amazing that one of Nick’s longest running and most popular shows among kids even into their teenage years revolved around the lives of a bunch of babies. Diaper-clad, incoherent (at least to their parents), sniveling infants. It may be a reach, but I think Rugrats serves as a beautiful piece of encouragement for risk-taking, in school, in love, and in life. These babies were fearless, and they approached everything without hesitation and without fright, unless we’re talking about Chuckie, of course. We all want to be Tommy, but more than likely you’ve got a lot more Phil and Lil in you than you’d care to admit.
1. Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Episodes of Nick’s long-running horror anthology were some of the scariest kid-focused things on the block when they aired, and many of them still hold up today. From clowns to monsters to demons and everywhere in between, AYAOTD searched every nook and cranny of the terror lexicon to scare the pants off of every kid who chose to watch. I consistently made the show a part of my Saturday night routine and can recall countless evenings that were spent under the all-burning glow of my bedroom light. Nickelodeon, for obvious reasons, chose to place most of its bets on comedy, but in the end, it was the network’s one genuine attempt at throwing a little Stephen King into the mix that rose to the top.