130. The Purity Decade With Porn Slipped in the Side Door

Drake Bell, left, and Ariana Grande in the Nickelodeon years

The new HBO docuseries about Nickelodeon’s dark side, Quiet On the Set, reveals the bad things that can happen when kids do adult work while actual adults behave like (troubled) kids. Child stars can be ultra-performers: Michael Jackson, Judy Garland, Ryan Gosling, Britney Spears, Olivia Rodrigo. But at what cost? Let’s ask Amanda Bynes and Drake Bell. (Or the cast of Diff’rent Strokes.) How many child stars will lose their marbles before we agree that a heady mix of celebrity, toxic task-masters, freeloaders, and easy money isn’t wise for a demographic that would otherwise be hanging at the mall? So much to discuss.

Also covered:

• Do girls pee in jars when they’re stuck in the car? Ask Nancy …

• Lizzo is O-U-T

• Shame! Shaaaaame! Games of Thrones called the current moment

• Vanderbilt and TamponGate

• Nancy starts a beef with Sarah’s parents by trash-talking Panera

• We are PRO-Rule of Law

• OK, so maybe the magazine wasn’t called Chubby Chaser?

• Herman Hesse vs. Howard Hesseman

• Is Dan Schneider the Harvey Weinstein of Nickelodeon, and even though the answer is clearly NO, can we ask it anyway? Doesn’t it sizzle?

• Child Labor Laws, discussed

• The Drake Bell situation

• TV lessons of Gen X vs. Gen Z vs. millennials

• The Amanda Bynes situation

• What Stephen King bought his wife after he sold his first book

• Texas Monthly’s new true-crime podcast!

• Did the Kennedys spill to Marilyn Monroe about the Bay of Pigs?

First Sunday Zoom! Coming up April 7, 8pmET/5pmPT, we are talking about the movie The Long Goodbye. Paid subscribers get Zoom link day-of. It’s not too late!

A personal note from Nancy: When I visited NYC in 2017, I met Bill Schulz when he and I appeared together on The Fifth Column podcast, jackass-ing with Matt Welch. Afterwards we all went to a bar where there was a band playing hokey music and of course, Bill and I danced. The next day, I went on his show, Mornin’!!! with Bill and Joanne, for what would prove to be the first of more than a dozen appearances, usually with Welch. It was always a blast, as is Bill, whom I still hang out with in bars and love immeasurably.

Sparks Steakhouse, November 2023

After seven years, Mornin’!!! is ending its run at Compound Media. A fan made this video farewell. Wherever Bill and Jo land, we will be there, too xx