(originally published unedited on the comedy blog We Are All Horrible People, which contains material written by myself, my friend Jeff Steinbrunner and fellow TCG blogger Nick Miller)
An Open Letter to Nickelodeon:
What happened to you, man?
You used to be so cool. We used to hang out all the time. Every day, remember? We'd get home from school and watch 'Salute Your Shorts' and 'All That.’ I would watch Clarissa every day but I couldn’t figure out what exactly she was trying to explain, because it certainly wasn’t ‘it all.’ Maybe it was how to sneak into your neighbor’s room with a ladder. I’d stick around through 'Hey, Dude' even though it sucked. Occasionally I’d even get through an episode of 'Are You Afraid of the Dark' without running from the room in horror (true story).
And that’s just weekdays. Absolute top notch programming like 'The Adventures of Pete and Pete,' 'Aaah, Real Monsters,' and 'The Angry Beavers' would then come on the weekends. 'Figure it Out' wasn't that bad either. And it doesn’t end there! 'Rocko's Modern Life?' Come on! 'Double Dare?' 'Wild-n-Crazy Kids?' For gosh sakes, 'Doug!' That's good stuff.
But one show... one show was better than all the other Nick shows combined. One show outperformed any other show in the history of television. My love for old school Nickelodeon was led by one show, one singular program.
'Legends of the Hidden Temple.' The greatest television program ever made.
They filmed 120 episodes of Legends... in 3 seasons. That's quality and quantity. Sure, 'GUTS' had the Aggro-Crag and that was cool, even when they did the ill-advised 'Global GUTS' and it became the Mega-Crag, but that’s a dark time in my childhood and I don’t like to talk about it. Even the awesomeness that is Mike O’Malley and the Crag pale in comparison to the wonder that was Legends, with your intrepid host Kirk Fogg.
Why would you ever cancel that program? It had everything. It had 10-year-olds trying to complete ridiculous challenges for Pendants of Life. It had teams like the Blue Barracudas and the Green Monkeys (I could name all 6, but I'll save you the time). It had cool t-shirts with the team logos and gold spray painted helmets and matching elbow and kneepads and a live studio audience. It even had an informational aspect with the Steps of Knowledge. How else would I have known who the first Emperor of China was or how the French defeated the Germanic Tribes in the early 400s on the banks of the Rhine? I wouldn’t have, that’s how.
Best of all, it had Olmec, a 15-foot tall stone head with a voice like Barry White. I was a troubled child, but when Olmec was on my TV screen I knew everything was going to be okay. He was the greatest co-host in television history, and just in case you were wondering, Trolley from Mr. Rogers and Andy Richter tie for a distant second.
That would have been enough to rope me in, but no! That was all foreplay, leading up to the main course, the Piece de Resistance: Olmec's Hidden Temple. You can keep your Dome of the Rock or your Vatican; my spiritual center resides somewhere in Orlando, Florida, in a two story, 13 room structure on a back lot somewhere at Nick Studios. You want the famous Nose Ring of Babe the Blue Ox or Atilla the Hun's famed gold goblet or Lindhburg's missing weather maps? You got to beat the Temple baby. It’s a glorious triumph of foam core, particle board and spray paint, a labyrinth of strange puzzles and absurd Styrofoam obstacles that would make Rube Goldberg proud.
And watch out for the Temple Guards! There's always one in the Swamp room, don't go in there unless you absolutely have to or if you have one of the two pendants handy, because you know he wants them. Those crazy Mayan guys like it in the room with all the fallen pillars, too.
Here’s what you do: start in the Cave of Size, no need to go upstairs just yet, climb the Mineshaft then move to the Shrine of the Silver Monkey, those are easy ones. Or at least they should be the easy ones, but it never fails that some dumb idiot can’t put the (expletive) monkey together. It’s a three-piece puzzle, (expletive). If you can’t figure that out then you’re an embarrassment to the whole human (expletive) race. The one where you pull books out of the skeletons’ chests isn't too tough either. Don't get cheeky and try to put all the tiles in the right order, that takes far too long and you don't have time for that tedious (expletive).
Keep your eyes on the prize. You have two minutes, just bust through the wall in the Viper's Lair. Quit trying to guess which pot the key is in, the Dark Forest is there if you need to get to the Jester's Court, and all you need to do there is hit the button on the wall. I mean, for (expletive) sakes, the freakin' treasure is in the Quicksand Bog! Stop wasting time in the Observatory and get to the (expletive) Tomb of the Ancient Kings already, or else you won’t have enough time to get back out of the Temple! And if you don’t get out in time then you don’t win the cruise to the Bahamas, you just get the stupid (expletive) racecars.
I sense I've lost some of you in that last section. It's okay, let's move on.
Really, Nickelodeon...
By the way, can I call you Nick?
What is this (expletive) you're playing now, Nick? No longer do 'Kenan and Kel' grace my television with their presence. Instead we have 'The Amanda Bynes Show,' that no talent over-sexualized 14-year-old. Now the Rugrats aren't the 'Rugrats' any longer; they're 'All Grown Up.' 'Invader Zim' has been replaced by 'Jimmy Neutron.' Sadly, little quality programming remains.
And the worst offender? I'll give you a hint: he livse in a pineapple under the see. Absorbant and porous and yellow is he. I give SpongeBob full points for a clever opening theme song which I have memorized, by the way. Don't judge me. But the show is awful. Plot summary: stupid yellow Porifera in quadrangle pants with pet snail befriends pink Asteroidea and annoys anyone and everyone within earshot with incompetence traditionally reserved for only those on MTV dating shows.
If I wanted to watch a bumbling idiot wreak havoc with his equally bumbling idiotic friends I'd watch the president on C-SPAN.
I no longer have the in-depth plots and twists or the quality writing I expect from you, Nickelodeon. Not only that, but even worse than that, now I don't have a source to learn how the Vikings defeated the English. Was it their ships? Their weaponry? Good looks? I will never know… now that Olmec's gone; I now have SpongeBob, and he doesn't teach me (expletive).
Nickelodeon, you need to pick up the slack. When 'Fairly Odd Parents' is the best show on your network you need to work on something.
Or else I'm sending the Temple Guards to your house, and I didn't see you earn any pendants in the Temple Games.
Reubs
Tags: Not Mtg But You Cannot Deny The Awesomeness Of Legends Of The Hidden Templ
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