Quiet On The Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

Mar 19, 2024 14:10:57 GMT -5 castletonsnob said:

Ron Melendez wrote a letter about Brian Peck's "lapse in judgement".

HE SAID THAT SEXUALLY ABUSING A MINOR FOR OVER A YEAR IS CONSIDERED A "LAPSE IN JUDGEMENT".

NOT LOOKING BOTH WAYS BEFORE CROSSING THE STREET IS A LAPSE IN JUDGEMENT. SEXUALLY ABUSING A MINOR IS A f***ING CRIME.

The victim blaming in those character letters was next level. Multiple people saying Peck only did what he did because of extreme temptation is ridiculous. It would be like if a bank robber said, “I couldn’t help it. There was just so much money in one place. I had to take it.”

That segment reminded me of Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis writing similar letters for Danny Masterson. It’s not like you should never stick your neck out for a friend, but you better honestly believe they’re innocent after going over all the evidence first. Or at least be willing to go down in flames with them.

Kutcher/Kunis for Masterson and Joanna Kerns for Peck all recanting their support shows you how naive these celebrities were. It’s crazy to think how little thought they gave to supporting convicted sex offenders.

[MolotovMocktail]

Mar 19, 2024 7:13:10 GMT -5 Ryback on a Pole! said:

Mar 5, 2024 20:25:27 GMT -5 MolotovMocktail said:

Isn’t Drake Bell pretty much an unreliable narrator?

That being said, there’s already plenty of smoke around Dan Schneider.

The fact Dan Schneider hasn't been named yet is bizarre to me. Maybe he didn't actually do anything, but there is so much creepy weird shit that I find it hard to believe.


Edit: Posted this without realising the first episode was out and apparently Dan features.

Drake actually defended Schneider at some points. He said that he was absolutely not aware of Peck’s behavior, and was the only person in Hollywood who continued to support him during Peck’s trial.

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

The fact he's being interviewed by the guy who played T-Bo in iCarly makes this feel like it has gone beyond parody like... the dude is so far in his own bubble he is getting the cast from the shows that are now being looked at scathingly to try and HELP HIM WITH PR

[castletonsnob]

That pickle glory hole scene in All That creeps me out.

I know kids' shows make adult jokes all the time, but usually they're more subtle than that. That's pretty blatantly a glory hole joke.

[Savage Gambino]

Mar 18, 2024 8:56:02 GMT -5 Lizuka #BLM said:

Mar 18, 2024 8:39:21 GMT -5 castletonsnob said:

Reposting what I said in the other thread.

I watched a couple of clips on YouTube, and, I'm not seeing how Nickelodeon recovers from this.

I doubt it'll sink the brand, if only because SpongeBob is an infinite money cheat, but it is definitely going to hurt their standing. And they're definitely spooked by it judging by them pushing the Kids Choice Awards all the way back to July.

Unfortunately, Nickelodeon and their parent companies are such an institution in Hollywood they're basically too big to fail. Add to that, as horrifying at all this was, any C-Level sycophant can minimize it to "well, this was a specific set of bad actors, and they're all gone now". At best, this might raise some questions about Brian Robbins of all people being promoted to Chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures, when he's about one degree separated from all these bastards, but that's about the best we can hope for.

[castletonsnob]

Mar 19, 2024 17:17:14 GMT -5 Savage Gambino said:

Mar 18, 2024 8:56:02 GMT -5 Lizuka #BLM said:

I doubt it'll sink the brand, if only because SpongeBob is an infinite money cheat, but it is definitely going to hurt their standing. And they're definitely spooked by it judging by them pushing the Kids Choice Awards all the way back to July.

Unfortunately, Nickelodeon and their parent companies are such an institution in Hollywood they're basically too big to fail. Add to that, as horrifying at all this was, any C-Level sycophant can minimize it to "well, this was a specific set of bad actors, and they're all gone now". At best, this might raise some questions about Brian Robbins of all people being promoted to Chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures, when he's about one degree separated from all these bastards, but that's about the best we can hope for.

In other words, nobody will suffer any meaningful consequences for this, and no attempts will be made to fix the systemic issues that allowed this to happen. At best, Nickelodeon will release a statement where they "promise to do better".

[BlackoutCreature]

Greg Stevens (Pop Arena) just sent this out on Patreon with his thoughts on the documentary -

I imagine, being one of Youtube’s “Nickelodeon Content Creators”, you want to know what I thought.

QUIET ON SET, the new four-part documentary detailing inappropriate behavior and abuse on the set of Dan Schneider’s various Nickelodeon shows, starts off on its worst foot, with all the earmarks of trashy tabloid journalism. A couple of gossip journalists walk us through events and interject how you’re supposed to feel about them. There’s one moment where Leon Frierson, former ALL THAT cast member, talks about how uncomfortable some of the costuming made him, about how the noses on a nose-themed superhero costume has some unfortunate phallic resemblances, and then we cut to a writer from Buzzfeed going “and then the sneeze gag is basically a cum shot joke!”

Frierson never says that. In a later episode, a similar comparison is made to a gag on ZOEY 101, but there it’s actress Alexa Nikolas making that connection from the workplace environment she had found herself in. It’s an authentic observation, where in the earlier example it was outsider sensationalization, playing to the “crusaders” on Twitter and Tiktok where the public side of Schneider drama has mostly lived over the past decade. They bring on Marc Summers, Nickelodeon elder statesman who had virtually no presence in this era of the channel, for all of twelve seconds so that he can watch a clip of a Schneider show and go “oh, wow, they aired that?”

You can imagine how the producers' eyes must have lit up when they learned that Brian Peck, former Nick dialogue coach and convicted sex offender, owned a John Wayne Gacy painting. I mean, yeah, that’s f***ed up, but it has virtually nothing to do with anything. It is, however, a perfect “can you believe this” moment that can be clipped and shared on social media for shock value. It’s something that the documentary can ride as a viral moment.

QUIET ON SET was produced for Investigation Discovery, whose bread and butter is schlocky true crime documentaries. Shows like EVIL LIVES HERE and WHO THE (BLEEP) DID I MARRY. Not exactly tasteful television. The channel is owned by Warner Bros Discovery, and was simultaneously released on Max. Warner Bros Discovery owns Cartoon Network. The documentary puts emphasis on Nickelodeon being on the top of the children’s cable game, and often brings up the Disney Channel as Nick’s main competitor. At no point is Cartoon Network mentioned, because, well, nobody wants to say their competitor is doing better than them, and saying you’re doing better than Nickelodeon would defeat the documentary’s narrative.

My point is that I do not believe QUIET ON SET comes from a genuine place. It’s cheap schlock shock documentary filmmaking that wants to attract the same crowd who watch serial killer shows for fun.

However.

It’s also a space where a lot of people who were hurt during this time at Nickelodeon have come forward to tell their stories, and that pretty much nullifies all the gross exploitation elements present in the early parts. When these people start speaking for themselves, the documentary has no choice but to let them speak, and its more garbage instincts fade away. By the time Drake Bell starts telling his story, the gossip journalists all but vanish until the end, and there’s a stronger sensitivity to everything.

The topics raised are harrowing. Workplace discrimination, sexual harassment, child abuse, sexism on set, racism on set, and general mispractice paint a meaningful picture of the toxic environment Nickelodeon was allowing at this time. The stories told by AMANDA SHOW writers Christy Stratton and Jenny Kilgen are infuriating. And then the sexual assault of Drake Bell by Brian Peck. Not an easy watch. It shouldn’t be an easy watch. What a f***ing awful thing. It’s heartbreaking to watch.

The documentary handles it with an unexpected tact and evenhandedness. It doesn’t excuse Bell’s later behaviors, and it allows Schneider to come off as one of the few adults who handled the situation correctly, even if the rest of the documentary is largely against him. I wish this had been the tone of the entire piece.

QUIET ON SET is an important document of a terrible entertainment workplace. It’s a shame they dumped a bunch of trash on top of it. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s one of those things that’s going to be referenced to a lot over the years, and I hope that the people who make children’s television were learn the right lessons from it.

[Lizuka #BLM]

Yeah, I think that's a good sum-up. There's definitely a trashy tabliud cash-in feel to a lot of it, but you still feel the emotion and get a lot of genuine information from it

[J. Hova]

Mar 19, 2024 8:18:16 GMT -5 cosmo said:

Mar 19, 2024 6:18:03 GMT -5 Ben Wyatt said:

Disclaimer: I haven't see any of it yet.

But I'm seeing a lot of "Ohhh. THIS helps to explain Amanda Bynes' struggles" on social media

Yeah, I used be in the "Amanda Bynes is just some lunatic junkie that Corey Feldman'd her career" boat. And then after seeing stories about all the shit that she and other kid actors went through on Nickelodeon, I totally get it.

I'm in the same boat.  I used to think that a lot of these child stars were just nuts from never being told no from the time they started acting until they reached adulthood.  Now, a lot of it is making sense.

[fw91]

Obviously it's not as bad as the actual you know what, but It's a damn shame what that creep did to ruin the relationship between Drake and his father. That dad sniffed out Peck from a mile away. Really makes you wonder about all the wedges that child stars have had with their parents. Was it because their parents were greedy or demanding,(like Jennette Mccurdy) or rather the work of someone else with an alterior motive like we saw with Peck and Bell.

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

The thing about Quiet on Set is that a lot of this wasn't even new information surprisingly, a lot of this shit was like... a shocking open secret. I heard news and rumblings about a lot of this shit TEN YEARS AGO because of how deep I am in with Nickelodeon news and insiders and such, years before Dan even left.

Quiet on Set amplified that signal though, very much so. Even Jennette's book amplified it as well at just how horrible the working conditions could be and how she was treated

It's not so much a Bombshell as much as it is an affirmation of the scummy behavior that did in fact happen put into a medium where the most eyes could be aware of it essentially, with more detail and more stories, which now has Nickelodeon in a bad light, and for good reason that any of this was allowed to happen. Schneider should probably never work in anything again, how he was able to go as long as he did is beyond me, but do I think it's the end of Nickelodeon as a whole? No, mainly because all these guys have ben gone for years to decades.

It's definitely gonna leave a mark though, they can't just pretend it didn't happen, and to me it's not a shock their live-action department shows are going the way of the Dodo.

["Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik]

I will always appreciate when folks like Drake Bell feel comfortable telling their stories. I was also molested as a minor and it's really empowering to see someone openly discuss their experiences like that.

[castletonsnob]

Mar 19, 2024 22:44:42 GMT -5 "Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik said:

I will always appreciate when folks like Drake Bell feel comfortable telling their stories. I was also molested as a minor and it's really empowering to see someone openly discuss their experiences like that.

I am SO sorry that happened to you.

[salz4life]

Mar 19, 2024 16:04:26 GMT -5 Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-] said:

The fact he's being interviewed by the guy who played T-Bo in iCarly makes this feel like it has gone beyond parody like... the dude is so far in his own bubble he is getting the cast from the shows that are now being looked at scathingly to try and HELP HIM WITH PR

I watched that entire thing and it felt so scripted.

[Jumpin' Jesse Walsh]

It must've been so heartbreaking and infuriating for Drake's dad.

Imagine some other dude turning your own kid against you. Psychological thriller shit.

[chrom]

*watch the Captain Nose skit 30 years ago*

Haha he sneezed all over her face

*watches it now*

How did that okayed?

[Lizuka #BLM]

So Josh Peck posted a video that basically just consists of, "I'm going to be a massive piece of shit about this whole thing," and naturally people are 1), turning it into antisemitic conspiracy theory fodder, and 2), using it to try to pretend like Drake never did anything wrong in the first place. Not seen this one but apparently the Ned's Declassified cast also came out with a video basically going of, "Nothing happened to us ergo nothing happened to anyone."

[fw91]

Mar 20, 2024 16:33:04 GMT -5 Lizuka #BLM said:

So Josh Peck posted a video that basically just consists of, "I'm going to be a massive piece of shit about this whole thing," and naturally people are 1), turning it into antisemitic conspiracy theory fodder, and 2), using it to try to pretend like Drake never did anything wrong in the first place. Not seen this one but apparently the Ned's Declassified cast also came out with a video basically going of, "Nothing happened to us ergo nothing happened to anyone."

Apparently that video had nothing to do with Drake, and Josh has reached out to him behind the scenes

[xxshoyuweeniexx]

Mar 20, 2024 8:29:08 GMT -5 salz4life said:

Mar 19, 2024 16:04:26 GMT -5 Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-] said:

The fact he's being interviewed by the guy who played T-Bo in iCarly makes this feel like it has gone beyond parody like... the dude is so far in his own bubble he is getting the cast from the shows that are now being looked at scathingly to try and HELP HIM WITH PR

I watched that entire thing and it felt so scripted.

I mean there’s a reason Dan didn’t sit down with actual journalists or 60 Minutes, and instead got asked staged questions by a random actor he hired on one of his shows. It allows him to control the narrative and answer and be seen how he wants to be.

The only actual thing I actually think he’s sorry about is what happened to Drake. Partly because he was one of Dan’s favorites, and partly because despite being a weirdo, an insane boss with boundary issues and a nasty sense of humor..I don’t think he wanted to physically harm children. Though I must stress, he did create this environment where sickos could harm children, and that’s completely on him.

[Jaws the Shark]

I sat and watched all of these yesterday. A lot of it was new information to me, but as awful as it sounds I was surprised by none of it because there are so many similar stories out there. And these are basically the stories that people are willing to share, for every one of these there will be a load more that people aren't willing to go public about, and not just at Nickelodeon, not even just in television, but in film, pop music, everything.