The name Christine McGlade might not sound familiar, but if you ever watched Nickelodeon’s “You Can’t Do That on Television,” you know who she is.
Week after week, the antics of the cast kept us all captivated as we flipped between Nickelodeon and MTV. Not knowing at the time it was a Canadian show that had finished its production run years earlier, we looked forward to seeing Christine or another cast member get slimed, or hearing the character Barf utter his patented phrase “What do you think’s in the burgers?”
“You Can’t Do That on Television,” or YCDTOTV, was a weekly Saturday-morning variety comedy sketch show filmed between 1979 and 1990 for an Ottawa TV station, designed and marketed toward an American audience.
I was surprised, at first, to learn that McGlade not only ended up choosing a career outside of show business, but also distanced herself from the TV series. Not only did she and her husband begin raising the first of their three children, she also has done very little acting since she left YCDTOTV in 1986, making her a symbol of a more simplistic era that has long-since ended.
However, when I thought about how little effort seems to go into modern sitcoms and how easily anyone with a digital camera can record a comedy sketch now, I see what work entertainment used to be, how many post-production people were involved, and why it was even a bigger risk to attempt TV success in those days. It must have been very draining.
McGlade’s character, “Moose,” was one of the main personalities on the show, which many Americans know from its run on Nickelodeon — the last several years being all reruns. The jokes, lines and gags on the show, especially the patented green slime, were fairly basic, but it was “good clean fun” made simple.
The TV career of McGlade, 52, represents a unique point in time, when cable TV was linking regions, nations and consumer choices and creativity still ruled the day. Who would have thought a show with teenagers enduring buckets of green slime being dumped on their heads would be an international ratings bonanza? Apparently, some visionary entertainment executive had this same question.
Sure, McGlade was a star partly because she is attractive, but not everyone can handle the pressure of something like taping a weekly TV show and improving it. There is a real difference in both the writing and the scene execution between the first couple of years and the 1984 and 1985 seasons, and the show looked much smoother and is funnier as the years went by.
The splat logo of Nickelodeon is largely associated with the sliming of YCDTOTV. It’s one of the shows that really helped grow the network, even though it wasn’t even one of the network’s own products. The package of “Nick at Nite” syndicated classics and McGlade’s show helped keep the network growing during the cable-tedious 1980s.
It wasn’t until “The Ren & Stimpy Show,” “Hey Arnold,” “Clarissa Explains It All” and “SpongeBob SquarePants” became hits in the 1990s that Nickelodeon had something closer to homegrown, in-house blockbuster hits.
There’s not even a mention of the show on Nickelodeon’s Wikipedia page. However, McGlade and the cast and crew of YCDTOTV know their hard work and natural comedy ability helped pave the way for Nickelodeon to become the cliché of children’s TV networks.
McGlade and many other cable TV stars from the early days probably wouldn’t stick around long if they returned to the business. It’s not that their work ethic isn’t high enough; it’s that they might get frustrated with how easily produced a TV product looks today.
• Contact Jason W. Brooks
at jbrooks@newtondailynews.com