Saturday Nights with the Midnight Society

Most of us will remember our childhood television lineup very fondly. In fact, 90’s nostalgia apparently happens to be very in right now. Girls remember our crushes on Jonathon Taylor Thomas, guys playing with Pogs and everyone wearing those sneakers that lit up when you walked. The mid 90’s demonstrated that Nickelodeon was the go to place for the most popular children’s programming. While stations like ABC aired shows like Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Nick just seemed to have the best selection. The channels offered shows like the variety show “All That”, the cartoons “Ren and Stimpy”, “Doug”, and “Rugrats”, sitcoms like “Clarissa Explains it All” and “Salute Your Shorts” and great contest shows like “Guts” and “Legends of the Hidden Temple.” However the channel also offered great supernatural TV. The shows that I remember particularly are Ah! Real Monsters, Alex Mack, Pete and Pete (in a magical realism way) and most specifically “Are you Afraid of the Dark?” All of these shows are great examples of supernatural TV in one of its most fun forms. In adult supernatural TV, the supernatural is always seconded guessed and sometimes, if not unconvincingly, can ruin a show completely. Due to the audience, children’s shows can allow for even the cheesiest supernatural elements and have a successful run.

“Are You Afraid of the Dark?” (intro linked) adapted the anthology series format, starting each show with several friends calling themselves the Midnight Society meeting by a campfire to tell scary stories. It aired regularly Saturday nights during SNICK along with three other shows. Now I don’t know about you guys, but I remember having to prep myself before watching the show to deal with how scary the episodes were. Even now, clips of the show will pop into my head and give me chills. The episode “The Tale of Laughing in the Dark” was about a kid who steals the nose of a cigar-smoking clown he doesn’t believe is real. He instantly regrets this when the clown comes to life. I wouldn’t hesitate to blame my fear of clowns on this particular episode. “The Tale of the Captured Soul” tells the story of a family who vacations in a house where the owners are slowly stealing the life of the visiting family through the mirrors. “The Tale of the Pinball Wizard” is usually one people remember, where a boy gets stuck inside a mall after dark and suddenly finds himself stuck in a life size pinball machine. While none of these plots seem particularly scary now a days and most if not all are borrowed plots, at the time, I always tuned in to scare my self to death every Saturday night.

The sad thing about this is, is today’s Nickelodeon is relatively barren of not just supernatural TV, but good TV in general. While Sponge Bob Square Pants has it’s moments, the channel is filled with shows like Drake and Josh and The Amanda Show. My younger sister watched shows like “That’s So Raven” and “Lizzy Maguire” that had a supernatural tinge, but they didn't air on Nick and played to an older audience. The show "Fairly Odd Parents" is particularly hilarious for older people who get the jokes, but I don’t see it having the following that 90’s Nick shows had when we were growing up. When they did revive “Are You Afraid of the Dark” recently it missed the mark of what the original show had tried to accomplish. While most of the Nickelodeon shows I watched growing up had a more surreal element to them, today’s shows are mostly lame varieties or sitcoms and this is truly a shame.