Crystal Aura Gaze

“Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” is streaming on HBO as a four-part docu-series. The documentary exposes the horrors that took place behind the scenes of very popular TV shows that ran on Nickelodeon from the late 90s into the early 2010s.

They called it “the golden age of kids TV” in which children’s shows were gaining a new kind of popularity that peaked right before the rise of online streaming services. I was a kid during this time and watched most of the shows that they referenced: All That!, Keenan and Kel, The Amanda Show, Drake & Josh, Zoey 101, and iCarly. I grew out of kid’s TV by the time that Victorious and Sam & Cat aired, but I’m familiar with those shows too.

Dan Schneider played a huge role in creating, writing, and directing these shows. A few years back, I had heard about his problematic behavior coming out, as people started noticing how strange and creepy this man really is. He put a lot of not only gross, but sexualized, content into these shows. When you look back, you can clearly see so many sexual references — and it’s disgusting to see it coming from child actors on a show that’s meant for children. There is a huge difference between a little bit of “adult humor” thrown into a kids show verses this.

I think that the sexual connotations get progressively worse with the newer shows. I think that “All That!” was fairly clean, it just had a lot of gross humor, and they put the kids into a lot of demeaning situations. “The Amanda Show” was fairly wholesome, although there are a few iffy things like the scene with Amanda in the hot tub with Dan Schneider. I also think that “Drake & Josh” had mainly clean humor. It was more so behind the scenes, that Dan Schneider was abusing his power. There were two female writers on set who expose how horribly he treated them, all of the disgusting things he said to them, inappropriate things he asked them to do.

As you go on to shows that came out in the later 2000s, like Zoey 101, iCarly, Victorious, etc., the sex jokes become blatantly obvious. This is something that a lot of people have been talking about for a long time — there’s many videos on Youtube that address this. I won’t give examples because there are so many. A quick Youtube search of “Dan Schneider being gross” will give you several instances.

The most atrocious and heartbreaking part of this documentary is the pedophilia. There were pedophiles working on the set of these shows. Drake Bell, from “The Amanda Show”/”Drake & Josh” sits down for the first time to publicly share that he was assaulted by a man who worked with him. This man had been arrested for pedophilia but it was kept private who his victim was at the time. Why is Hollywood full of pedophiles!?

It’s important that this corruption is being exposed and that people learn the truth. I applaud those who were brave enough to speak up. Go watch this show and spread awareness. Children need to be protected.