Or more specifically, why I never found it funny....cause I very much enjoy the thought of seeing a gal get water, slime, shampoo, or some other element poured on her head:

Take the classic slapstick shorts like the Stooges or Buster Keaton. The reason their comedy works is because the gags work *in the context* of the setting they're in.

Yes, the Stooges get soaked when they're working on plumbing, but that makes sense...cause they're working as plumbers. When they're in the old West, mud winds up in Curly's face...that only makes sense, for the location.

The entire joke of YCDTOTV is "trick someone into getting slimed". That's literally it. That's the joke. Every conversation they have is build-up to that joke....and the payoff is nothing that special; it's just someone getting slimed, and then they beat that joke to death. No context, people could get slimed literally anywhere by saying the magic phrase; the entire emphasis is about pouring slime on peoples', heads, that's it, and getting to it......not having any of it work in the actual context of the setting.....unlike with acts such as the Stooges or Buster Keaton.

Not only that, the Stooges and Keaton have *timing* down; a slapstick joke MUST be timed for full effectiveness. ESPECIALLY when transitioning to TV, writing always seems to suffer in this territory. The effort is never genuinely there, and it was painfully obvious with YCDTOTV.

So why was YCDTOTV so successful? First of all...it really wasn't. It was doing well to make the name for a network that was otherwise unknown at the time. Once more people got Cable, ratings dropped. Second of all......the masses enjoy "lowest common denominator" writing; they don't think too much about whether a gag genuinely works, they just clap like trained seals over it. That's why.

Incidentally, it was SNL's recent parody that got me to fully realize this; that they're actually now at the point where they did a parody of YCDTOTV indicates to me that bottom of the barrel wasn't quite low enough for them to fall.

Wanted to share my thoughts, lmk what you think.

And I want to thank every single creator who has used YCDTOTV as reference to create incredibly hot photo and videoshoots with models.....and part of me even hopes they could get some of the vintage actresses--or even slime-in winners, and GS shampoo commercial star--to come back as adults to do it again

Let's face it: The show itself was a pretty obvious rip off of the "Laugh In" formula of rapid fire comedy sketches. It was never going to win any awards or provide a Chaplin-esque insight into the human condition. But, the show was probably a pioneering influence on the gross out humor that became the norm for decades on end.

And I don't think they could ever do a modern take on the show, as been popular with so many recent reboots. The show is best left in its own era.

Fascinating you bring that up, because several years back....a close friend of mine asked me if YCDTOTV could likely ever be brought back today, I told him flat out "no".

First of all, we're talking about a TV format and audience; TV is basically dead now, anyway. The ratings are DEFINITELY not there, even for something as low budget and niche audience as this show was.

Second of all, the humor that the show was known for was honestly just bleeding dry the comedy that was at the height of its popularity from the mid-60s thru the 1970s.....again, mostly not done that well, but I repeat...the audience was basically trained seals that would laugh and applaud anything.

That the only thing people honestly get out of it all these years later is watching people get slime and water poured on their heads--again--goes back to the fact that they wound up revolving the entire show pretty much around that premise; a one-trick pony, really. There's nothing else to do with it. The comedy wasn't even funny on it then, but if a few people want to nostalgically enjoy it on Paramount's streaming service, there ya go.

Again, I enjoy what our community's creators do with it, but there's really nothing further than can be done with it.

Even the concept of the doing the Slime-In Winners pretty much took a dead horse they were beating, and basically performed necrophila on it, otherwise.

I have to defend the humor of the show here. Admittedly, I never found the sliming, pies or water to be funny because I was too busy being aroused or disappointed it was a boy getting it. That said, I laughed often whenever Barf said "Diiiiiii HEARD THAT!"

Les Lye had really terrific timing and delivery. And he was so good at transforming himself between characters. Ross, Dad, The Executioner, The Dungeon Master, Barf, The Teacher, etc. were all quite funny.

He had one Teacher scene where he was reading the word "Argentina" off the board and he read each syllable slowly "ar..gen...tin...nin...nin....ia". I laughed so hard. I STILL SAY it like that 40 years later. lol

There are two things I enjoy. Green slime and sketch comedy. I never thought about it, but it makes sense.

Slapstick comedy can be wildly varying in its quality and levels of sophistication. It's often better executed when the makers understand the nuances of the form properly and put in the required work.

I'm of the 'Today is Saturday Wake-up And Smile' generation. The comedy behind it was quite studied as the talent involved were, for the most part, professional comedians. Whilst they held back on the swearing and direct smut due to the general audience they understood that they needed to entertain the parents as much as anyone else.

As for 'You Can't Do That on Television' I don't remember it ever being shown in Britain so most of my knowledge of it at all is through WAM parody.

(While we're on the topic I never liked The Three Stooges, but I loved Laurel and Hardy. Latterly I worked out why. It was the quality of the short films. The Stooges were a funny act - but they were low rent and let down by clunky, poorly made films in comparison with the likes of Laurel and Hardy whose greater success lavished them with much more creative control over their shorts.)

So it's probably hit and miss whether I would have been watching certain entertainment shows regardless of or because of their wider entertainment value. As I got older I began to despise most of the shows I watched simply because they were a 'container' for WAM. One such being 'Noel's House Party'

This is similar to why I don't like the messy scenes that are scripted. We all know what's going to happen and when so it doesn't feel organic. We know the target is not going to escape the mess as that's what we paid for.

I prefer the no-nonsense, just get the messy approach, or the game playing between two folks where 1 will avoid the mess and the other will get it.

As a Brit, I've always found YCDTOTV a bit of a curiosity. As far as I know, it didn't make it on this side of the pond at all, and if it weren't for my interest in WAM it's unlikely I would be aware of its existence. In fact, in Britain if anyone references the show, they're probably outing themselves!

Which is strange, because it seems quite similar to the sort of thing we would show over here. It's seems pretty bleak and low-budget, and the predictable and somewhat mean humour would seem to fit in well with general British sarcasm and schadenfreude.

I love the style of sliming it's inspired among WAM producers where models look up and take the slime in the face, but I can take or leave the general homage to the show as it doesn't mean a lot to me. I remember there was a thread a while ago asking whether producers should call time on the "I don't know" phrase. I'd have to say I've really understood the joke anyway. I get why saying "water" gets you covered in water, that's simple enough, but why does "I don't know" get you slimed? I understand it became a trigger phrase and a tradition but how did it start? On its first usage did everyone watching just go "eh, why did that happen?"

I think YCDTOTV could be brought back today. In fact, something like that probably does exist right now on YouTube or TikTok. I agree that the TV medium probably won't be the thing that delivers it, but there's always room for something stupid and pointless.

What this thread is realizing is that YCDTOTV was a kids show and but for the fact that we have a specific connection to pies, slime and water, it would probably be rotting in the waste basket of our memories today. But if you have kids, grandkids, nieces or nephews, chances are they're watching something with the same one-note silliness as that show. There might not be as much slime (though there might be, as indicated by the "Youtube find!" threads we still see here), but there's always space--especially to young audiences--for broad overbeaten humor.

Yeah I feel like this show is one of those unique successes that couldn't work at any other time. It was pure 80's, and couldn't be modernized to any other generation. I think for the generation of us who watched it as kids it was totally unexpected and absolutely senseless and that's what we wanted. The 80's were inundated with heavy marketing for children with Saturday morning cartoons, Nickelodeon, toy commercials, and sugar filled snacks. The 80's were so fueled by cocaine, everything was loud, brightly flashing, and entirely spastic. MTV and the WWF and GLOW was also influencing us, so a show like YCDTOTV just fit right in with American programming. And the documentary they made on it explains how it wasn't even as popular in Canada as it was here in the states. We simply loved it here, we were just crazy enough to go for it. For me personally, I never had a sophisticated sense of humor at the ages of 6-9 years old, which is when it was still airing on television when I was watching it. At those ages I thought it was hilarious, all of my friends did, we were too young to care if it made any sense. But for me the concept that you could trigger someone to get slimed was brilliant. I am more attracted to WAM for the humiliation aspect rather than the humor aspect so I appreciated that part of the show.

I actually far prefer Laurel & Hardy to the 3 Stooges myself, though I love both. Incidentally, from what little I've seen, slapstick isn't as heavily incorporated into Laurel & Hardy's act either. That's kinda the thing with slapstick: it's a very cheap gag to get a quick laugh, but the proper execution takes a lot of work. It might also explain why the Stooges worked for peanuts. They wanted their art to transcend eras, but it means "elevating" an art form that.....is kinda low-rent, and that takes extra time, resources, and money that most aren't willing to fork over, understandably.

Roger Price (the producer of the show) gave the most elaborate, "psychological" explanation for that I've ever heard in my life, and I won't be repeating it here cause I don't buy it myself, honestly.

(Bogart accent): Of all the WAM partners I have had in all WAM joints in all the world.....

Almost incredibly, virtually NONE (except my first) were Stooges fans, NONE ever saw You Can't Do That On Television, and most didn't even like Slapstick....and yet.....when it came to WAM roleplay....they were "all in."

I stopped trying to analyze why we are wired in certain ways long ago after I asked a noted psychiatrist and woman who I grew up with why we are hard wired in certain ways.

Her response was to shrug her shoulders and then invoice me.

Interesting thread...

The 'legacy' of YCDTOTV was picked up ('inherited') by the cable TV network Nickolodeon, and, imo, achieved a much purer/distilled entertainment product...wherein it was 'cool' to get slimed and pied. There were numerous innovations too, in the delivery of the mess (pie or slime)...machines/contraptions: multiple slimings at once (Big Shabooee), giant pie slides, piepod, etc. (completely dispensing with the 'joke set up').

What made WWYD better was that the slapstick was presented as a challenge, forfeit or FUN punishment (not as the semi-mean punishment-punchline to some terrible old joke, with canned laughter)...even the 'humiliation' aspect was softened (because everyone was 'in' on the joke, and even wanted to be the recipient; would-be audience members had to sign waivers that they accepted the chance they might get pied or slimed during the taping of the show)...even as it was presented to/packaged for a new generation of kids...and it was taped live (like the old Truth or Consequences show and others)...Nick deconstructed (yes, I said that) slapstick into its basic forms, and then re-imagined them (to quite good effect) bigger, better.

I don't doubt that someone is already reimagining messy slapstick for a new show, a new generation, as we speak (as it were)...and some critic/reviewer will write that immortal sentence: 'Everything old is new again'

To piggyback off Robby's comments....
For at least a decade, most all the models I worked with had some vague notion of YCDTOTV, or people getting messy on Nickelodeon. Sometimes it was slime, sometimes pies, sometimes they brought up another show... But nearly all the girls had some "frame of reference" where they could go, "OK, I know what you're going for here. Sounds like fun!"

(None of them had any idea about the Three Stooges... except for Brin, God bless her. A unicorn even then.)

These days, those late Gen X'ers and millennials are married with kids and no longer modeling. The few that ARE still going, in their late 30s and beyond, are still easy to "recruit," because the notion of a YCDTOTV-style shoot still means something.

In addition to all the other reasons why it's incredibly hard to recruit younger models now, your average 21 year-old has ZERO frame of reference about this... beyond poorly done "recreations" of the original on YouTube and other platforms, that throw out all the comedy & setup in favor of just the money (pie) shot. So there's now more YCDTOTV-inspired content than ever.... but with none of the spark or personality of the original, or even the many cheap copies of it that came along in the early 2000s. The girls who "get it" have been replaced with those who seem to be, "Okay, you want be to react like this girl in this video and make this face. Sure."

A copy of a copy of a copy., as fellow disgruntled Gen X-er Trent Reznor would sing....

Hmmm...'my' model Maddy recently thanked me for introducing her to 'wam' ("So much fun!")...and she was born in the middle years of Nick (WWYD); too young to have Nick shows imprinted on her memory, really. She understands the fun of it (as well as the sexiness)...and her reactions were (at least in my case) not rehearsed...it was just how she interpreted the scene, instinctively.

But that is the beauty of the Internet: the entire history of human culture (well, a LOT of it) is available to view and experience by anyone, at any age. The frame of reference for this new generation is MUCH wider/broader than any we had growing up (even though we watched the Stooges in B & W [made in the late 1930s, mostly])... my point about Nick was that it turned 'funny' (what used to be funny, anyways) into something FUN...it became a form of 'play' for mass entertainment.

Perhaps because I saw YCDTOTV when I was older; I never found the humor/jokes that funny (if at all; occasionally the show would elicit a laugh)...Ok, so maybe the comic 'set up' was diminished on WWYD and Big Shaboozee (actually, transformed into a game penalty, in some form)...but on any given show, you'd see more messy slapstick than in a whole season's worth of YCDTOTV. The 'set up' was the show itself (kind of like Crusty the Clown on one episode of The Simpson's coming out on stage and saying: "I'm going to cut out the jokes and get straight to the pie throwing." Watching Nick you knew you were going to see multiple persons get pied or slimed.

Not sure where I was going with this, but I wrote what I wrote.

Same. While I do appreciate the elaborately choreographed slapstick stunts brilliantly executed in the classics like The Three Stooges, YCDToTV is definitely not that. However, I just wanted to add a little historical context for why this show and it's comedic style was so unique and special for the American generation who grew up with it.

At the time, the show was NOT just another run-of-the-mill show, but something very different. Back then, when more "wholesome" content like educational programs, cartoons, and traditional sitcoms were the order of the day for that target audience, YCDToTV broke all conventions. It had several innovative features, and didn't really compare to anything else on the air at the time. The show proved to be a cash cow for the network, dwarfing all other shows in popularity for many years, and inspiring elements of many subsequent shows; an impressive feat for a low-budget production based in Ottawa. There's a reason TV scholars often acknowledge the influence the show had on its network.

Specifically regarding the style of humor: The show relied heavily on surreal humor. It created this strange world where water and slime would fall from nowhere at the utterance of special words, people seemed to reside inside their lockers when not telling jokes, and apparently restaurants were never visited by health inspectors. We also had that show-within-a-show element. It was off-the-wall, a bit anarchistic, and often rude. Indeed, the show's very title suggests a break in what is normally considered acceptable TV viewing for that demographic. In short, completely different from the more prim and proper shows aimed at this audience of the preceding decades.

There was plenty of edgy humor that pushed the envelope, too. Heck, I even remember an episode about "vandalism" that showed someone starting to paint the F-word on someone's shirt. So it's obviously not highbrow humor, nor was it meant to be. Certainly the production values wouldn't hold up to today's standards. But at the time, and for that TV audience, it was revolutionary.

Exactly. YCDTOTV was pushing the envelope at a time when most kids' programming did anything but. Forget that the show routinely broke the 4th wall and teetered on the edge of anarchy half the time. To have a show where the few adults were portrayed as lazy/selfish/completely uncaring.... and where kids were chained up in dungeons or paraded before firing squads (or covered in slime for their own ignorance).... That felt revolutionary.

At least it did to me, raised on "educational" programming and "very special" episodes of family sitcoms.

But again, you don't get any of that from a 30-second "Hot girl gets slimed" clip on YT. (Or a 3-minute version of the same, for sale in the usual spots.)

First of all, I fully understand TV historians looking back on the show as the defining vibe for productions moving forward; that is 100% agreed upon. I never said the show wasn't a ratings smash for them, but that's also keeping in context of the viewership Cable had in general, at the time. And as more people got Cable, ratings declined, and they decided to start associating the slime aspect with shows like their game shows.

The thing is....there were plenty of other somewhat "anarchistic" productions at the time that honestly I think did it far better ...one in specific being the National Lampoon movies, starting Chevy Chase.

And by the mid-80s, they were going overboard with the slime emphasis, literally waxing philosophically about it on the show, creating fake rock bands in tribute to it, saying they found where the levers for it were; there's just a point of beating a joke to death where the original intent is lost....and the fact that Green slime is all the majority really seem to remember about the show Imo really sums that up.

If it's an "anything goes" show, the writing and execution have to be there, and for me it never was.

What I got out of it was finding a major fetish, mostly....but I always wanted to understand what the hell I even saw, and what I was "missing", as it were

I liked the show because I was the target audience. I didn't even associate anything sexual with it. But let's face it, at the time Nickelodeon did not have a ton of content for kids and so this was rerun many many times. I would liken its success to 90210. When 90210 first came out basically no one watched. Then Fox reran the fuck out of it and it became a hit. When there is nothing on and people are bored, they are more likely to try new things.

I think that YCDTOT would work in today's environment in a fashion. I think there is still a place for shows like that and like all that. Granted that space is probably Disney or another streaming service. Which means the jokes will be toned down. Sure you would probably get the slime or water part but I doubt it would be ever episode or as often.

YCDTOT was shown in the UK Trouso mate in the early 90s on The Children's Channel/TCC cable channel as that's were I started to know about it from when growing up.

Ah! That explains it. I didn't have satellite or cable TV.

Zoomer here!

Unsure about the states but I feel like slapstick comedy has lingered on throughout British culture in spite of new reimaginings. When I was growing up in the mid 2000s I still saw plenty of pies and slime and all that business even if it was usually decontextualised with usually little setup (I still love the chuckle brothers but it's hardly fuckin Chaplin like and to be fair it doesn't need to be)

Anyhow the copy of a copy of a copy statement holds true. If ya read fisher or baudrillard or Derrida or Fredrick Jameson or Debord then they get onto the same thing. Modern culture, neoliberal and post fordist, is pretty much incapable of creating new things. It's heavily reliant on nostalgia and even then it's mostly false. Since we have "lost futures" cos of the financial crash people look back on things they weren't even alive for to sort of wish and recreate an imagined past that was utopian and faultless. All bullshit of course but only way of coping with a world set to destroy itself in the next 100 years.

So we'll never have the stones, disco, the fall, Chaplin ect ect, but we'll have the bare minimum carbon copy's of the masterpieces. Not in parody but pastiche. Even YCDTOT, falls into that low ball category and even that's ripe for pastiche. How do ya escape from that? Cultural revolution really, but can't see that happening again anytime soon

Modern culture? Everyone has looked back. Slapstick comes from pantomime, which was commedia dell'arte, a conscious copying of Roman comedies from the AD/BC turn, which in turn were copies of Greek comedies from 300 years before.

There are new things now (or recently) but we may not notice them, because they're underground, or laughed at. NFTs are a classic example. The idea of not selling a painting, but a string of digits associated with a digital copy, is something that could not exist 20 years ago.

There's a reason for that. Roger Price, who masterminded the show, was British and had essentially worked out his formula producing You Must be Joking, You Can't be Serious and Pauline's Quirkes. He moved to Canada in the 80's and basically just tried to replicate the same kind of British variety show he spent the 70's producing. That's why early ycdtotv had music and interviews and stuff. Nickelodeon cut those parts out and eventually Price got the point and just focused on sketches and slime.

Northern WAM:

While I often agree with your erudite cultural critiques, there is an inherent problem with the notion that "modern society/culture produces nothing new" ('Having no future, it turns in upon its past' Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle) ...and will not do so until its inevitable end sometime in the net decade, or two, or three..etc.

All of the innovations that you mention happened at a time and place in history, prior to which it did not exist (and while a seminal or antecedent innovation may have 'prepared the way', no one made the connection -- because it hadn't been innovated/invented yet. This seems obvious (always in hindsight) -- nothing 'new' happens until something new suddenly happens. A period of time passes, and we look back fro some reason, and we see something new HAS happened (often a reconfiguration of the past innovation] but sometimes something mostly original [invention]).

Keeping this to comedy, we have seen all kinds of parody (pseudo reality/documentary comedy, like The Office [Brit and American] and American Family, absurdist shows like Seinfeld's "Show About Nothing" (reminiscent of some 'No Exit' plays from the 60s), Reno 911 (post modern Keystone Cops ?)....'gross out' (horror but with humor) / 'animal' comedy (Animal House, Jackass)...many other hilarious and innovative/sometimes inventive comedy shows...Horror Comedy (Zombies, Ghosts, Vampires, oh my!)...an excellent primer on the origins of the gross-out/animal comedy movement (in film) is 'Laughing and Screaming' by Paul Williams.

Rich: I will concede that YCDTOTV was indeed innovative and 'pushed boundaries' (for youth targeted television)...I had forgotten some aspects that you noted. I will only say that, at the time it was being made...I had been working with an improv acting troupe with some extremely off-the-wall, outrageously silly, and inventive people...many sketches and sight gags we came up with were absurd and surreal and original (or original takes on old gags) ...and so, when I first saw YCDTOTV, I found it to be mildly amusing, at times, but not as innovative as the improv troupe's material (so, I am biased by my unique personal experience).

Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah, a lot from that show would probably leave anyone thinking, 'What the heck did I just watch??' I kind of wonder how much of that was intentional (because they were trying to be so weird), and how much just came down to sloppy production (pardon the pun). Thanks for elaborating your point. I definitely agree that the writing/dialogue was not one of the strong points for the series. In terms of the show's decline, I mean, it had been on for over a decade, and by the early 1990s, it just didn't seem fresh and new anymore. Times were changing and they had to move on.

That's a bit..harsh take on a kid's show. I haven't seen it in over 30 years, but as a gradeschooler it was cool, funny, entertaining. If I watched it as an adult, IDK maybe I'd think it was horrible, or maybe I'd think it was quaint. (I recently watched Benny Hill again and thought it was rather trite and boring, the fact it wasn't as enjoyable 20+ years later made me sad, had I changed, or was the show just not that good to start.) I was als the right age to be a teen when DD was ending and shows like Guts and WWYD were coming on-air. I enjoyed them as well at the time but never saw them again. IDK man, just feels a bit harsh.

I do agree with you on not liking most producers content. I'll look at photos over videos or like WAM alerts and non-WAM messings, as they just feel more natural, unscripted, and mostly not poorly acted out. I think I'm just rambling now. Later dudes.