Classic Episode Rundown: Salute Your Shorts, Episode 1-6; "Toilet Seat Basketball"

Three very important issues arose during my viewing of this sports-centric episode in which the camp holds a basketball tournament to determine who will be remembered as legends and whose picture ends up on the cafeteria wall on a toilet bowl labeled "LOSERS."

1. The America in which camp counselors can teach kids about the true competitive nature of a capitalist society by plastering their photos on old toilet bowls is likely over. There are lessons to be learned in losing, including the inefficiencies of selfish play versus teamwork, as Bobby Budnick and his diminishing candy stash could tell you. There are also lessons to be learned in cheating, including its effectiveness until confronted with moralizing do-gooders like Telly who refuse to steal the opposition's playbook. And there are also lessons to be learned in interior design, including the obvious charm of a toilet bowl on a campground cafeteria wall. We will never progress if every kid gets a ribbon, and only the truest douches who see through all this crap will succeed in business as adults, creating an even more total douche-ocracy than already exists.

2. The America in which roving black-and-white handycams makes sports look more awesome is likely over. Sports are always cooler when shot gonzo, without color, from the ground-up. I mean, how else are those color graffiti graphics plastered over your Ollie gonna make it look so sweet? Today's kids are raised on iCarly's top-down MySpace angles that oversaturate everything in false coolness that we '90s kids can totally see through. I dare you to try to look as extreme on your webcam as I did flying around in rollerblades with the wrong date at the bottom of the screen.


3. Booger culture is a shadow of its former greatness. Remember when mucus was so gross/hilarious/great that companies invested in video games like Boogerman: A Pick and Flick Adventure and toys like plastic-head-filled-with-fake-snot Gooey Louie? I was reminded when Sponge got caught digging for gold at basketball practice and was called out for practicing his "pick-and-roll." Ha! Admittedly, I have no idea if today's children understand the appeal (I imagine it's human nature that they do), but it seems like lame adults have filled family movies more with dumb pop culture references and farts than our old, runny friend. Europe may now be the last bastion of snot, and that, citizens, is truly gross.



**************************
Memorable Quotes

Dina - "For your information, nature is out this year. Neoprene is in."

Michael - "Why'd you just stand there?"
Z.Z. - "I was thinking how much I liked birds."

Classic Television Rundown: Salute Your Shorts, Episode 1-5; "Bunk Chief Elections"

Come to write of summer;
See it out my window, through the glass.
Instead I stare at shorts,
Remembering the past.

3 girls in a bunk,
Voting for their chief.
A plot, so it's full of beef.

B plot:
Goats eating clothes.
Cleaning with toothbrushes.
Crying over onions.
Kid stuff.
Especially the goat.

Years pass, and summer turns to school.
Democracy is serious.
Goats still aren't.

More years.
Camp is a memory.
The kids are powerful.
No more goat jokes.
Everything is serious.
The kids forget to B.


***********************************************
Memorable quotes

Donkey Lips (to himself) - "I think relish is my favorite condiment. Mayonnaise next, then mustard."

Telly - "You know what I call this? I call this 'Shove a Pie in Your Face!'"

***********************************************
Iconic Insults: "Tough nuggets!", flunk-a-roo, dorkette

Classic Television Rundown: Salute Your Shorts, Episode 1-4; "Brownies for Thud Mackie"

It seems like every time I watch one of these episodes, I come here with the intent to express some broad talking point about the devolution of culture (pop and otherwise) since the halycon days of my youth. Of course, I'm watching these episodes predisposed to their nostalgic awesomeness and with an assignment to discover something to talk about, so that would be how it ends up, wouldn't it? Maybe I need to view Salute Your Shorts through the eyes of a modern child aka the child of my desired mistress Cameron Richardson whose perfect picture I will post here again because it's become 50% of my will to survive.


Anyway, this episode finds our default protagonist Michael stumbling into the ire of camp bully Thud Mackie when he accidentally squashes the homemade brownies Thud had hidden in one of those book shells that hides a secret compartment. NO HOMEMADE SNACKS AT CAMP, duh. It may seem like a rule purposed to the plot, but really it's designed to make sure every kid feels as abandoned by their parents as the other kids.

Side story: I was gifted some secret compartment books by my grandma when I was young, disguised as Seymour Hersh's The Samson Option. I would go on to meet Mr. Hersh in a discussion group at an off-campus house during college. I would then go on to deliver sandwiches.

So yeah, my first thesis is this: A standard Salute Your Shorts episode is more complexly constructed than 90% of today's popular procedurals. It may just be a byproduct of comedy versus straight drama, but look: Almost every lawyer/cop/detective show features an investigation that goes from person or place to place or person in a straight line. There may be a B story shining some personal light on the weekly players, but that almost never ties into the A. The whole drama usually ends up being that one of the people along the way lied or some briefly-mentioned object takes on more importance than it previously did. The end.
"Brownies for Thud Mackie" is no work of genius, but it still coordinates itself towards much more rewarding smiles. For instance, the episode starts off with counselor Ug welcoming "foliage fans" to his nature walk, only to find Z.Z. to be the sole fan. With Michael's effort to appease/avoid the bully dominating the episode, vignettes of Ug's and Z.Z.'s plant misadventures seem to provide little more than a sideshow on the surface; however, they work their way back into Michael's story at 3 separate points, sometimes for a simple laugh, yet sometimes to actually further the main conflict.

I know this may sound like 101 level narrative analysis, but I point it out because so many shows - and so many popular shows - persist far below this level. I'm not blaming Hollywood, because they're simply a business catering to demands. I'm simply wondering: What enjoyment do people continue to draw out of the same, drab drama?

Second thesis: The world has changed more in the past 15 years than it has in any 15-year period ever before. Imagine that the 17th century progressed exactly as it did, technology-wise, only television existed and people were able to watch old shows from their youth. They'd be commenting on the different fashions and figures of speech, just like we do today, but otherwise I guess they'd probably focus on all the different empires and plagues that transgressed since their childhood...

To that I say: So what? Politics and epidemics are cyclical forces that really don't deviate anywhere near as much as society supposes they do. The basic social necessity of peer interaction, meanwhile, has absolutely changed since they days of Camp Anawanna.

At the end of the episode, Michael almost leaves camp to escape from the bully. He gets in a van to be taken to the airport and asks Ug how long it will take to get there. "Fifteen minutes, and then you'll be gone forever." And in 1991, he really would be gone forever. Think of all those kids you had intense friendships with for short periods of time that you've never seen again, and may not even remember and therefore can't really think of. Do today's kids face that dilemma? I imagine even children under 10 are exchanging e-mails, facebook pages, etcetera, never facing the threat of completely losing relationships.

The last real farewell?

Now that I think of it, the advancement of plane transportation may be more significant than the advancement of the internet. I mean, when people used to leave home, they would leave home forever. But think about how different everything is from your youth because of the internet. I would be spouting this nonsense to you in person, if I ever even got the opportunity to do that. I'd be spitting and frothing and probably getting half the character names wrong without the resources to refresh my knowledge. Nowadays, I can just place this here, in this intangible space, and wonder if any of my 400 facebook friends will ever read it.

They do have the rest of their lives to do so, since we no longer say goodbye.

********************************************
Memorable Quotes

Dina - "You know I could be creating a whole new fashion here? Sickly is sexy!"

Michael - "Z.Z., you can have my arts and crafts project. It's a tweezer holder. Donkey Lips, you can have half this candy bar. It melted in my pocket, but it should taste pretty good."
********************************************
Iconic insults: Perma-wuss, mega-wuss.

Classic Television Rundown: Salute Your Shorts, Episode 1-3: "The Treasure of Sara Madre"

"Each time she got paid, she buried her money somewhere in camp. One day, Sara took the whole class up to the top of Mount Hoodlu, and she do-si-do's right off a cliff. Splat."

Originally airing the week after "Zeke the Plumber," this episode offered a less horrific take on classic campfire legends. A cynic could warn the show against running the legend well dry, but when that well is so authentic and intricate to its muse - summer camp - I say let it flow. You'd be surprised how many of my Boy Scout camps seemed to be situated right next to sanitariums.

Salute Your Shorts here sets out the shoes Nicholas Cage hoped to fill with National Treasure, in the sense that both plots focused on finding some analogue of gold (in the show, a dead lady's paychecks; in the movie, the TRUTH, you lying government patsies!). Both also featured a lot of sneaker-wear, I'd assume, because: a) That's what kids wear, and; B) Bruckheimer's costumers probably tried to make Cage look like he was still a boy at heart or something. Other than these most basic premises of adventure, the two really aren't alike. I just wanted to talk about National Treasure.


You know, this episode may itself be stepping into the shoes of 1948's Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I can't make the comparison because it was made before Cage was born enough to be cast in anything (thus I haven't seen it), and it really doesn't matter. So long as a story can stand on its own, references to others past or present serve merely as a seasoning for those well-seasoned. This is why Hot Fuzz will live forever, while Epic Movie is already dead.

Speaking of Salute Your Shorts (oh yeah that's what's going on here), Budnick and his crony Donkey Lips once again mastermind a get-rich-quick scheme, which in the context of '90s summer camp means tricking everyone out of their boom-boxes. The deadly sin he attacks this week is greed, which pulls everyone apart as they search for the the deceased dance counselor's money. Dina should've recognized the evil of his intents (and the insight of her instincts) in the beginning, before she and the others ended up in a dangerous, rock-strewn dirt shoveling fight: "Come on, Budnick. You're our friend, and you can't put money over friendship... Whoa, listen to me." If the hunt hadn't turned out an expertly-plotted goose chase and real dough were at stake, friendships would've been severed and people could've died. People like Sara Madre.

By the way, I'd be excited for the lust-themed episode if that weren't so wrong, yet I still have to ask my young self a serious question: How come, instead of having a crush on human Dina, you dreamed of Gadget from Rescue Rangers?! Dina may be materialistic, but Gadget's a totes nerd! Get your priorities straight.

My dream girl?

Throughout the entire episode, Counselor Ug is busy prepping the baseball diamond for a brochure photo, which he does using a technique that I somewhat believed adults used on their lawns for years to come - trimming the grass with scissors. It's a perfect, quiet B story that serves for passing humor before masterfully tying back into the climax of the A. And since I'm being so absurd and confusing today, I'm not going to reveal how that works. I'm just going to emphasize that it is ABSOLUTELY PERFECT JUST LIKE GADGET'S TAIL

Oh god... Young me is rising from my subconscious, threatening to derail my post, my family, and my career (pending). Soon he's gonna start posting all those disgusting HOT pictures that turned up when I searched for "Gadget." I haven't even gotten a chance to mention how funny/cute it is that everyone has to dance their way to the treasure..."Take 6 cha-cha-cha's from the fireplace. Take 3 rumbas to the right..." MONTEREY JACK WINKED AT HER BEHIND YOUR BACK

In conclusion, it's a fun, well-written episode with a satisfying PAIR OF GOGGLE ON THOSE WIGGLY EARS

I'm just gonna cut to the quotes.
************************************
Memorable Quotes

Michael (looking at the picture of Sara Madre) - "Tasty-looking babe!"

Dina - "How much do you think there is?"
Sponge - "A trillion smackeroos!"

Donkey Lips (presenting Budnick's new surround sound system) - "On box number 1: Metallica. On box number 2: White Snake. On 3, 4, and 5, we have... NUCLEAR WINTER!"

Michael - "What do you want?"
Budnick - "Peace of mind."

Telly - "What would he need a hacksaw for?"
Dina - "I just figured it out: They're serving meatloaf tonight."

Budnick (when he hears Donkey Lips is looking for a metal file with which to steal the treasure map) - "A file, huh? I'll file him under 'D' for 'Dead Donkey.'"

Donkey Lips - "I bunny-hopped into something really nasty back there."
*******************

Iconic insults used in this episode: Ex-lax, cha-cha-chumps, roll-o, greedy little weasel, stooge, Raiders of the Lost Fart.

Classic Television Rundown: Salute Your Shorts (Ep. 1-10), "Cinderella Play"

Bear with me, folks. Thanks to some slipshod research, I accidentally jumped ahead 7 episodes. I'll go back, but please try to remember that the social environment surrounding this episode's airing was that of June 24, 1991, NOT June 7, 1991. So if you're wondering why this episode evokes the strange feel of June 17, 1991's exhumation of Zachary Taylor's body to investigate whether or not he was poisoned by arsenic, that is why. Duh.

Bear with me in general on these episode recaps, as well. I'm not really in the business of straight up detailing what's happening on-screen. Television's a visual medium, and the show is relatively accessible for your viewing pleasure. I'm more interested in working out my personal post-graduate complexes by extrapolating some menial, momentary point of the show into a sociological treatise on the decline of today's youth. Seriously, that's what I'm gonna do here; except for the bibliography, bitches!

Grizzly bear with me on something else, too, folkettes. I love cheesy wordplay.

"Cinderella Play" is the episode in which all your favorite characters get together to put on a show. Theater is every school-age sitcom's meat and potatoes, because who doesn't love to watch one of their fictional friends turn nutsy director while another reveals herself to be a flawed diva. It's my understanding that Glee is trying to trample this trope into the ground, but I'm still a sucker for the formula. Heck, make anything with teens that incorporates a play and ends at the prom, and I'll watch it. Partly that's because I can't let go of youth; mostly, though, it's just a perfect formula for simple drama. Live theater is so much more exciting than the movies, especially when it's in the movies!

After rejecting Donkey Lips' idea for a musical Return of the Jedi, as well as disappointingly shooting down Budnick's "Amazon Girls A Go Go", Counselor Ug announces that the camp will be putting on a performance of Cinderella. Being the only corporeal adult in camp I know of, Ug anoints himself director and contracts the accompanying neurosis. A brief catfight ensues between Dina and Telly for the lead role, yet there was little ever doubt our diva would get her part. Dina is destined for Hollywood, don't you know? She sure does: "I was born to be a star!... If I win an Academy award, I'll wear this really rad red dress that'll make Madonna look so sick, and then I'll go nightclubbing with Charlie Sheen." Apparently 1991 propped pop icons with staying power, as the campers also name-dropped Barbra Streisand and Johnny Depp. Who's replacing these allusions on today's shows, and where will they be in 19 years? (Answer: Lady Gaga, who will be in Las Vegas. The new Las Vegas on the moon colony.)

When Dina learns that the neighboring camp's resident hunk Richie Garber is going to be in attendance, a bout of stage fright inevitably overcomes her. Thanks to some savvy coaching from Sponge ("Imagine that there's a giant chicken in the audience"), plus a handy chicken costume, all's well that ends well blah blah and all the world's a stage... upon which Richie Garber gives flowers to Zizi instead! He's no chicken. He's a big, old turkey.

Time for me to get crotchety and dole out some cod wisdom yet? As mentioned before, this episode is little more than a pleasant take on a proven formula, yet still it manages to twist my snarl-stuck mouth into a smilette. We have Michael begging to rehearse his kiss with Dina, Donkey Lips playing a rapping mouse, and Budnick auditioning with the contemporary poetry of his class ("Beans, Beans, the musical fruit"). It's timeless humor that can and should transcend generations for as long as Johnny Depp remains a viable, awesome reference.

In contrast, here is what one of my sister's kindergartners told her he got up early to watch before coming to school last week - Saw V.

I imagine I'd be pretty loose with my kids' consumption. I'd be the parent who gets the call about his child's Apocalypse Now diorama. Nevertheless, I imagine I might have to draw the line at torture porn during breakfast.

Despite this being an extreme case, I am worried about the change in children's consumption, which I believe is also something you can die of on the Oregon Trail. Whereas Donkey Lips auditions for the play with some MC Hammer beat-boxing, I imagine today's teens would be quick to produce some profanity-laced misogyny. This isn't so much a comment on their character as it is on what's generally popular, and 20th century media was always drifting towards the open sea, but I don't want the lighthouse to disappear completely over the horizon.

If the beacon of good-natured fun that is Camp Anawanna managed to produce roustabout nihilists such as myself, I don't think I want to witness Jigsaw's world.


**************************
Memorable Quotes

Donkey Lips (rapping) -
At first I'm a mouse
And I live in a house
And they think I'm a louse
And then I turn into a... horse?

Ug (to Zizi) - Quick rewrite. You're no longer a flying godmother. You're a... hopping godmother.

Telly (calling out Dina's "memorization" technique) - She's got the first act on her arm, and the second act behind her leg.
Budnick - I can't wait to see where the third act is.

Dina (responding to a mustache graffiti-ed on her headshot) - I can't believe they defaced my picture! What's next? A beard on the Lincoln Memorial?

Dina - The thought of going onstage... gives me bumps in my stomach. These lumps keep getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger...
Sponge - That's just last night's meatloaf.

Dina - I can't imagine Richie Garber as a chicken. He's a hunk!
********************
Salute Your Shorts, Season 1, Episode 10
"Cinderella Play"
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Classic Television Rundown: Salute Your Shorts (Ep. 1-2), "Zeke the Plumber"

A parrot bit off his nose in the Philippines. Consequently, he couldn't smell the gas leak as he went to strike a match...

Besides part of his upper lip, all they found left after the explosion was a toilet plunger.

So goes the story of Camp Anawanna's resident ghost – Zeke the Plumber - a monster that Ringu-ed his way out of the television and into my childhood. My siblings and I could terrorize each other simply by picking up a plunger, and thinking back on it, the fact that we sometimes would threaten each other's faces with the used household tool is pathologically terrifying.

Still, I defy you to find a children's villain more disturbing than this:
Augh! You can see the blood soaking through the bandages! I don't know if the creep factor comes through in a still shot, but Zeke embodies a quorum of traits sufficient to scare any sheltered pre-teen, most notably his ability to steal your secrets. If word gets out that I pushed my sister that one time she was playing with her dolls, I'm doomed.

In the realm of Anawanna, Zeke is resurrected by who else but Bobby Budnick during a campfire (sic flashlight) story hour. Our moral beacons Michael and Telly unwittingly touch the cursed plunger artifact, and so begins the haunting. Michael “wakes up” later that night to find his cabin empty sans Zeke and a toilet - a toilet from which is pulled a soaking stuffed animal. “Harry the Hippo?” Michael asks, recognizing his friend. “Where'd you get him from?”

“From inside your head,” crackles the voice Jigsaw wishes he had. When requested not to reveal Michael's secret safety toy, Zeke pulls out a megaphone and broadcasts it to the camp, then moving his plunger in for more gray matter before the sleeping victim awakes. With the cabin back to normal, Michael gets out of bed, grabs Harry from his luggage, and dumps him in the garbage. Innocence lost.

Returning to the beast's weapon, I have to admit that plungers bother me a bit even today. Outside of its (un)cleanliness, I feel there's an inherent embarrassment in having to use the tool, especially if you're not at your own house. It's inconsequential, I know, but I don't want to have to walk down to the front desk of a hotel and ask for a plunger. The transaction itself is simple, yet for a moment you're back in diapers, depending on another's assistance to facilitate your defecation needs.

Then again, whoever keeps using public restrooms ahead of me doesn't seem to care. In fact, he seems to be trying to clog the toilet. If so, well done. Now please stop.

Upset at Budnick's engineering of their anxiety (and at his general jerk-wadness in general), the others dare him to stay out all night in the forest where Zeke supposedly died. I won't spoil the details, but everyone attempts further efforts to scare Budnick while he's out there, and all of them are thwarted... until Budnick runs into a pansy little spider web.

This unfortunately leads to a rather weak conclusion, in which the bully completely drops his guard and screams for help. It's a nice gesture to humanize our bad boy, but it's not developed very well... unless you consider that Budnick, on this show for kids, is supposed to be a kid himself. I'd almost forgotten that after the pitch-perfect first episode and the introduction of a monster plumbed from the abandoned journals of Guillermo del Toro. I don't think David Simon was on the writing staff until the second season (if at all), so I guess I'm okay with suspending my disbelief. At least it helps to wash away the all-too-realistic stench of Zeke the Plumber... a stench he could never smell himself.

I have one more point of order here in my attempt to beatify this series, and that is authentic groaning. In the modern world of Demi Lovato, comedy sometimes works as such:

1) Side character says something unfunny.
2) “Audience” laughs.
3) Starlet tells side character that what he/she said wasn't funny (despite the aforementioned laughter).
4)“Audience” laughs again.

In this episode of SYS, Donkey Lips asserts his sincerity by saying, “Cross my heart and hope to die. Stick a pizza in my mouth.” His campmates respond with a groan. They move on. It's just a little taste of realism, and it's incredibly pretentious of me to point it out, and still I stand by it as a crucial moment. A small touch like this is part and parcel of the prime position this show holds in my memories.

I don't care how deep Zeke plunges. He's not getting himself out of my head.
*********************************
Great insult names used in this episode: Jaboney, wuss, priss, melonhead.

Memorable Quotes

Sponge – This is camp. This is what's known as the big gray rock, cuz it's big and gray. This path that I'm walking on is called “the dirt path.”

Zeke (with megaphone) - Attention everyone. Michael Stein sucks his thumb, and he has a stuffed animal at camp. Heh... You baby!

Budnick - I'm the Master of the Universe! Nobody can scare me!

Dina (to Budnick) - And even knowing what a jerk you are, we still came to the rescue.
Budnick - Why?
Michael - That's a good question.
Budnick - Because you're my friends?
Telly - No.
**********************************


**********************************
Salute Your Shorts, Season 1, Episode 2
"Zeke the Plumber"

Classic Television Rundown: Salute Your Shorts (Ep. 1-1), "Michael Comes to Camp"

Going into this retro review, I was afraid. Afraid that I'd made a bad choice in what I was watching, that my nostalgia for classic Nickelodeon was a result of young me's critical immaturity instead of actual show quality. I was afraid I was going to taint a significant part of my suburban childhood and lose more of that innocence I'm so desperately going to need in court when questioned as to why I'm watching shows starring young teens.

In reality, however, contemporary clothing had already shown me the way – NO FEAR.

Salute Your Shorts was, and still is, an excellent program. I don't mean anything absurdly superlative by that. This is not Emmy material (then again, neither is any CBS comedy). Nor is this a program that's going to inspire any serious emotion beyond the one that time has already given it, but that emotion is all it needs to have. Nostalgia. Hey! Remember when I mentioned nostalgia way back in the first paragraph? Haha yeah... Good times... Seriously, though. It turns out nostalgia may be what the show succeeded in all along, even when it first aired. I can't speak for anyone other than myself (who was the target audience), but I imagine this light-hearted program about a co-ed summer camp is reflective enough of the actual experience to tweak the light heartstrings of kids beyond the '90s. Not that there's much targeted tweaking going on. That comfort you feel is just a byproduct of the show's existence.

The craftsmanship is obvious in the first 2 minutes of the premiere, with almost every major character receiving meaningful screen-time. Dina attains early status as the queen bee as she orders the raising of a welcome banner, which is immediately crashed through by the bus carrying first-time camper Michael. Counselor “Ug” Lee rushes by as the wormy Sponge optimistically greets our lens to this new world.

Sponge – You made a major mistake coming to Camp Anawanna. The food bites. Bugs bite. Activities bite. Everything bites!
Michael – It wasn't my choice.
Sponge – It never is.

The bus drives off to reveal lurking predator Bobby Budnick and his stooge Donkey Lips, who have come prepared with their own style of greeting. Instead of shaking Michael's hand, they knock him over, steal his bag, and head over to the flagpole for the eponymous prank. Our leading ladies (who, outside of Dina, are consigned to a post-introduction introduction) begin to giggle as they see the “new kid” signal rise to the sky.

Michael – What is my underwear doing up the flagpole?
Sponge – Looks like it's flapping in the breeze... I suggest you stand at attention, click your heels, and salute your shorts.

And so we move into what really is an iconic credits sequence. The theme itself is perfectly quaint, emitting the appropriate campfire aesthetic, but its greatest power lies in its incompleteness. We never know how exactly the song goes, because as we go through the second verse of the song in which each character individually recites a line, we are treated to a crash course on their personas (which may or may not include an enthusiasm for Anawanna). Yet as they come back together for the closing beat, we at least know they're having enough fun to give us a good show.

I won't go into detail, but the remainder of the episode plays out with antics on the sports field, in the cafeteria, and, most crucially, in the bunkhouses. The simple rundown is that Michael and Budnick get into a fight, are consequently tortured by Ug (literally tortured, I believe, according to the Geneva Conventions), yet end up coming to some sort of peace accord so long as Michael agrees to raid the girls' dorm. Drama ensues when Michael accidentally breaks tomboy Telly's glasses, a crime which the campers decide is punishable by a torture I don't believe the authorities in Switzerland have yet had the guts to touch:

Budnick first fingers a random dweeb for the crime, but Michael comes clean, and, in the end, we are treated to a sincere moment of burgeoning friendship between him and Telly. Sincere, that is, unless you consider their reconciliation a distraction tactic used by Telly to free up the boys' dorm for some serious toilet-papering. Summer camp, baby!

At this point I'd like to take a brief moment to comment on Salute Your Short's lack of a laugh track, something which I haven't seen on a live-action children's “sitcom” since Even Stevens. I know my condemnation of this tool is a byproduct of the post-Arrested Development era, but shows like iCarly (somewhat good) and Hannah Montana (not good) really do put a lot of stock into audience laughter. I know because I've watched, okay. Sheesh.

Oh wait! Jamie-Lynn Spears' Zoey 101 may have been the most recent one with no laughter, and I do consider that a well-produced show. None of the kids could act, but it almost felt like they could because the world we were seeing was filmed to be a legitimate world. For the same reason, my brain interprets Salute Your Shorts to exist in a more realistic universe than M*A*S*H*. Keeping the focus on today's tweens, though, it really is disheartening to see the kind of “acting” currently encouraged by Disney and our old friend Nickelodeon. Miley Cyrus literally yells at the screen, as do all of her co-stars and competitors. Yell something abrasive/funny. Pause for laughter. Yell again. It is a style of comedy birthed (in my mind) by All That, and it is a problem I'm considering for a future dissertation.

But enough tangential whining. We are gathered here to celebrate my renewal of vows to Salute Your Shorts. I may be blinded by nostalgia; however, it's through no fault of my own. In fact, it's probably the point.

Memorable Quotes

Michael – Is this where [the raccoon] died?
Sponge – No. That's just where it suffered.

Sponge – Trounce [Budnick] and he'll trounce you back. It's called the “Transitive Property of Pain.”

Dina (on Telly wearing glasses) – Seeing good instead of looking good? Priority check!

Budnick (to Zizi on the baseball field, as the ball zooms by her) – What are you doing?
Zizi – I was thinking of a poem.

Budnick – Stop dreaming and glue your macaroni onto something.
Donkey Lips – I can't. I ate it.

Zizi – Why do you have such a guilty look on your face?
Sponge – It's not guilty. I'm just trying to chew.

Ug – Bell peppers. People like bell peppers. Thin crust... Thin crust...
********
Salute Your Shorts, Season 1, Episode 1
"Michael Comes to Camp"
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3