I came of age in the late '80s and early '90s, and in retrospect, I'm not sure there was a single more powerful influence on those formative years than Nickelodeon. Pinwheel and Danger Mouse colored my earliest memories, Double Dare and Mr. Wizard arrived a bit later, Salute Your Shorts and Ren & Stimpy spoke to me as a pre-teen... it seemed that as I grew and matured, so did the network, catering its programming to meet what I wanted or needed at that specific point in my life.
Looking back at it here, through a wide-angled lens, I was startled by how much of this material has lingered in my long-term memory banks and still, subtly, feeds my personality today. That's where The Orange Years makes its hay: coasting through a laundry list of beloved short-run TV shows and catchy pre-commercial bumpers, refreshing fond recollections in its audience while serving a dash of backstage skinny to better humanize the men and women behind this little network that could. And that's really what it was, at least in the early days: a boutique cable channel, catering to a very specific market, in an era before that was a proven formula.
The peeks behind the curtain are wonderful and inspiring - happy conversations with stars, creators and executives who are still jazzed about the product, twenty years after moving on - but the greater urge to service nearly every original property with some degree of inspection grows tiresome after nearly two hours. Should've been twenty minutes shorter.
Looking back at it here, through a wide-angled lens, I was startled by how much of this material has lingered in my long-term memory banks and still, subtly, feeds my personality today. That's where The Orange Years makes its hay: coasting through a laundry list of beloved short-run TV shows and catchy pre-commercial bumpers, refreshing fond recollections in its audience while serving a dash of backstage skinny to better humanize the men and women behind this little network that could. And that's really what it was, at least in the early days: a boutique cable channel, catering to a very specific market, in an era before that was a proven formula.
The peeks behind the curtain are wonderful and inspiring - happy conversations with stars, creators and executives who are still jazzed about the product, twenty years after moving on - but the greater urge to service nearly every original property with some degree of inspection grows tiresome after nearly two hours. Should've been twenty minutes shorter.