Mr. Meaty: Nickelodeon's Weirdest Show

so have you ever been watching something kind of old maybe a piece of media that came out before you were born or when you were really young only for there to be some strange moment that you realize you've seen before a sort of half memory from your early childhood that you always presume to be a nightmare or an act of your imagination and you're left there sort of overwhelmed as you think wait this was real well if you haven't had that experience before then you probably didn't grow up watching the nickelodeon puppet show mr meaty this misadvised monstrosity found a home on the station from 2005 to 2009 and is something i've mentioned a few times on this show usually is an example of nickelodeon making weird mistakes but i feel like since i've started quintin reviews i've grown a much more fond relationship with content that i used to watch as a kid i'm not bitter anymore i guess i'm not trying to prove something so really when it comes to thinking about mr meaty i wonder if my cynicism has been poorly placed and if it's something that deserves to be re-evaluated basically i went into this video with my full intentions being to find some charm in mr meady did i accomplish that goal well we're about to find out but first a big thanks to today's sponsor who helped me along this philosophical quest that being raycon the amazing wireless earbuds that retain the quality of premium products but at nearly half the price go to buy raycon dot com slash clinton right now to save 15 on your first order once again that's by recon dot com slash q-u-i-n-t-o-n the story of mr meady really starts with the creation of another show many of you might know the nick jr puppet show nana lan the show was created by jamie shannon and jason hopeley two canadian puppeteers who originally created the show as a series of three minute shorts but it was later picked up as a fully linked show in every episode of nana land the three-year-old mona will be dropped off by her mother at her nana's house where she'll spend some time adventuring and learning new things usually assisted by her nana and her dog russell mono speaks in short phrases which she usually mispronounces much like a real child but she's voiced by an adult man which can create a very strange atmosphere to the segments [Music] there's peas in there you now have a computer virus i've been informed that nana land quote hits different when you're high which uh yeah that tracks [Music] one has to presume that the higher-ups in nickelodeon realize that shannon and hopeley were better at making content that was borderline surreal than actually good for preschoolers which probably explains why their next project was so totally different from their first mr medi also originally premiered as a series of shorts which were featured online and in between different episodes during regular nickelodeon broadcasts for those who didn't watch nick at the time it was pretty common back then for whole skits and even shorts to be aired during commercial breaks for instance from what i remember the spongebob campfire song actually premiered this way airing quite a while before that episode actually premiered anyway so here's the setup for these shorts josh and parker are two fast food workers in their town mall and are also horny teenagers josh often spends his time trying to impress girls at the mall so he can get their numbers and parker usually spends his time eating or goofing off other notable characters include edward r carney the rotting elderly founder who the pair defrost from stasis in one of the original shorts and mr wink the franchise's manager who looks so much like a mean-spirited caricature of neil cysteria that it actually kind of scares me i watched a lot of these original shorts in preparation for this video but one in particular kind of made me twitch in a certain way that pretty thoroughly explains how i remember this show now a quick disclaimer and i never thought this would be something i'd have to say on this channel but content warning cannibalism okay so josh is manning the cash register and meets a cute goth girl who kind of gets a weird kink out of the bloody gross nature of the restaurant hoping to get her number he invites her to the back where parker is working however the floor has recently been greased with pigs fat and she slips and accidentally slams her hand into the deep fryer she leaves it in for a strangely long amount of time and when she pulls it out it is burnt charred and black josh insists that that sort of thing happens all the time and to prove it parker does the exact same thing as he pulls his hand out he declares that it also makes for a good snack and begins eating the flesh off of his own bones the goth girl thinks this is pretty metal and also begins eating her own fingers off of her own bones josh says that he suddenly isn't very hungry alright there you go that's mr meany video over the idea that a skit like this convinced some corporate insider to greenlight a show for children is pretty funny but it actually makes total sense when you consider who it was supposed to appeal to you see unlike nanalan mr medi was designed for older kids and younger teenagers teenagers too old to watch nicktoons but still old enough to be tuning into the station tonally it could be looked at as somewhat as a response to things like robot chicken or family guy and indeed many have argued that adult swim is the kind of place where it really deserved to end up but despite nick having its own late night block just for this age group mr midi was typically aired much earlier in the day often on saturday mornings alongside the very shows it was trying to act in contrast to this is generally the audience that seems to remember it most six to 10 year olds who caught the show super early in the day and not the older rebellious tweens that it was actively designed for in fact i have a theory that mr meady was actually designed almost to be a late night twist on spongebob squarepants the station's most popular show then and today you see spongebob is encoded with this brand of humor that you really only start to understand once you've grown up in the working class that being how the show covers the fast food industry in a semi-positive but entirely sardonic light positing that spongebob's dream job is what most would call a depressing dead-end hell hole that they desperately want to escape from as i've pointed out before the character of squidward is supposed to exist to point out this contradiction but the show still usually takes spongebob's point of view in convincing the audience of some great magic about the krusty krab mr meaty is the direct opposite usually going out of its way to make the titular restaurant seem like a disgusting festering hell hole that serves inedible and semi-conscious food stuff and what's ironic is that at least one vegetarian group apparently tried to boycott the show which doesn't make sense to me mr meady has done more for the vegetarian cause than any other tv show in the last century when i would watch spongebob i constantly wish that i could eat a krabby patty when i watched mr meaty i didn't even want to be in the same room as any of the food they served or even the characters really so i've had a few discussions about this show with friends at this point and they all tend to typically move pretty quickly in the exact same direction which episodes do you immediately remember and what were the weirdest parts of those episodes so instead of beating around the bush from here on out we're gonna be doing just that starting us off is park arena an episode about a burger that makes you trans mr matey predicted the impossible burger so in the story the mr meaty company designs an experimental burger for girls that is packed full of hormones and helps them mature into adulthood parker an obsessive eater begins snacking on these and slurping down the secret hormone sauce until he suddenly begins feeling horrendous pain as josh takes him into the restaurant parker's body suddenly reacts to the hormones in the transburger and transforms him into a woman in a sequence resembling something out of jekyll and hyde why are you looking at me like that oh i'm not cause it would be totally wrong to check out your best friend josh decides to weaponize the situation sending park arena into spy on the other women of the mall to figure out why they've all been so cold to him parker is shocked to discover that the other girls immediately accept her and she begins to feel conflicted about the mission look josh i am just getting comfortable with this whole girl thing okay i don't need your pressure right now look the girls are being so nice to me okay i mean look at this look at this fabulous outfit but upon actually completing her spying task park arena enters the girl's bathroom and discovers the secret truth all women are communists hello comrades welcome natasha she also learns that josh is known by the women of the mall as a user someone who dates women exclusively to get something from them such as free popcorn or borrowed hair products parkourina enraged by this marches with the women to confront josh but then untransitions as the burgers he ate begin to wear off the women enraged begin attacking josh as parker hides in the freezer parker waits out the storm and when he emerges he finds that the women have forced his friend to eat the transburger just call me jocelyn hey baby why are guys such jerks just ignore him now what's fun about this one is that while it wasn't uncommon for shows on nick to do the whole what's it like to be a girl trope they usually use magic or disguises or whatever mr media is the only show i've seen that just told its audience there are hormones you can take that will make you into a girl and to then go on to make that seem like a very positive thing and immediately i think this reminds us of how episodes like this were clearly written for a more intelligent audience in mind not mature necessarily but intelligent for sure let's jump around to episode 10b of season 1. so parker and josh are very eager to get their hands on the next big video game console the game craze 720 however despite camping out at the front of the line their spots are stolen by josh's older brother and they're left bruised and demeaned missing out on their chance to get the hip new console before it sells out parker argues that all they have to do is time travel into the future where the console will be more readily available and probably cheaper and he builds a machine that can make a time portal to take them there however once they get to their final destination they realize they've traveled too far instead of just moving a few months into the future they discover that they have arrived in the year 2676 where the world has been taken over by baboons and the mall is littered with the corpses of humans cannibalized by the new rulers of earth this is actually probably my favorite puppetry in the entire show the baboons are way more creative and energetic than the cynical teenagers in the rest of the program and there's a lot of fun subversion that i actually remember finding pretty funny at the time i think this is the only episode i actually remember enjoying rather than just being mesmerized by it's a lot of fun if you can find it online to jump back into the outwardly upsetting let's look at season 1 episode 2a schnozzola one of the interchangeable female maul girls ashley steinberg has come down with a ghastly zit on her nose and she proclaims that any person who can make a for sure perfect sick cream will surely become rich and famous overnight josh overhearing this proclaims that he has such a cream and he enlists parker to help form a mixture that will eradicate her unwanted nose visitor parker uses the radioactive fuel rod of the mr meaty microwave to mix their serum and when applied to ashley's face it does actually destroy the zit and her nose falls off [Music] is that my news oh no suddenly promising that they can reapply her nose without any issues the two prepare to do surgery in the back of the mr meaty kitchen however just when they're ready to glue the nose back on parker accidentally knocks it onto the grill and then into the deep fryer and then into a container of bacon bits oh no actually that looks delicious in the panic over what has happened the two accidentally knock it onto the floor where it is stolen and eaten by the restaurant's occupant rat panicking over how to satiate ashley they decide to attach a sausage to her face causing her to have a breakdown however they tell her that beauty is on the inside and that trends are made by confidence and soon enough meat nose has become the biggest new craze at the mall despite the food literally beginning to rot within the first few days in season 1 episode 9a we explore a new machine at the mr media restaurant which is designed to grow more meat for burgers artificially however parker realizes that if one simply adds dna to the mixture the machine can now be used to grow sentient life after josh breaks up with another girl because she isn't hot enough for him they gather the dna of all the women in the mall and some of josh's dna and use the machine to grow the perfect woman only for her to literally turn out to be a sentient blob of rotting meat the other mall tenants bully the woman until josh declares that he still loves her kissing her in an act of tolerance although her lips fall off in the process the two then have a long liaison with josh head over heels only to discover that she has been cheating on him with other hunks of meat josh is defeated but has learned his lesson never play god every episode we've talked about so far is pretty weird and many of you probably remember these however one episode seems to undeniably represent the legacy of the program more than any other season 1 episode 3b mooch master p aka the tape worm episode after josh brings in a homemade sandwich to the restaurant so he can have some actually good food parker intrudes and asks to have a bite josh says no but parker takes a bite anyways and eats almost the whole thing infuriated josh declares that parker is a moocher and tells him to go moot somewhere else parker does just that and begins eating the food of patrons all around the mall taking anything in without stopping to think parker soon declares himself the mooch master and is so ahead of the game that he steals a burger josh is preparing while it's still raw and uncooked parker soon tries to eat more food but discovers that it all disappears before he can no matter what it is no matter what he tries all the food he tries to eat vanishes in front of his eyes josh decides to film parker as this happens and then slows the video down this reveals something that would haunt the dreams of many children who saw this episode a tape worm looks like the moocher has become the moochie buddy you got a tapeworm buddy must have been that raw burger you ate however josh constructs a plan to get the tapeworm out he sets a sausage out on a fishing line causing okay that's still weird they managed to get the worm out of him and into a steel cage and a steve irwin parody pays them to let him keep it as he allows the worm to go down his throat and into his stomach and uh that's the tapeworm segment roughly two minutes of an episode that every person my age probably remembers now you may have noticed that all the episodes we've talked about today come from the first season that's because after the first 10 episodes nickelodeon started to clearly regret the show the baboon time travel episode aired in december 2006 but it wasn't until may 2009 that the final episode aired the network carried such regret for this program that it took them three years to finish airing it after it was presumably cancelled and even though there are a lot of other episodes that most die hard meatheads probably adore i think the show is mostly interesting as a cultural analysis of the impact it had on its audience thus i don't really see a point in going into any of the season 2 episodes alright so let's cut to the chase i said at the start of this video that it was my goal to walk away from this with some greater respect or admiration for this little puppet show is that what ended up happening well as the magic conch would say no you see i was ready for the show to be edgy i was ready for it to be weird or surreal but what i wasn't preparing for was it to be boring sure there's a lot of episodes that are shocking and gross and probably messed me up as a kid but it feels like for every one of those there's five episodes that are just not even worth talking about like tater turf an episode where josh gets into a dance competition what is this [ __ ] rocket power there are essentially 32 individual episodes that were made for nickelodeon and i only remember a select few from my childhood i went into this presuming that this meant that i only saw the episodes that i remembered because i figured the rest of the show would be just as memorable and thus i wouldn't remember them but i eventually realized that wouldn't make any sense mr meaty is one of those shows where each segment is 11 minutes long and a half hour episode is actually two shorter episodes aired in one block and what i discovered over the course of this video is that i never remembered two episodes in a row if i remembered episode 1b then i didn't remember episode 1a if i remembered episode 2a then i didn't remember episode 2b that doesn't make any sense unless i watched both parts and i ended up just forgetting anything that wasn't outwardly weird or upsetting turning on an episode of mr meady was basically a roulette wheel between being completely and utterly traumatized and being kind of bored until the next thing came on so will i know that the proverbial hot take everyone expects is if the showed out on adult swim it would have been a hit i don't think that's the case because even if it had ended up seen by the right target audience it's my personal belief that a colossal soul-shattering failure is the most interesting thing mr meady could possibly have proved to be otherwise it would have just been another mindless half hour of tv that i wouldn't even remember the title of a decade and a half later call it challenging call it bizarre but an unsung classic mr meady is not okay so in just a moment i have two big announcements about the future of this channel and they're both things that you guys are probably going to be really excited by so i hope you'll stick around till the end of the video but first a big thanks to raycon for being the sponsor of this little review i've been wearing this pair of everyday e25 earbuds pretty much every single day and so what i do usually in a typical day in my life is i uh i put this pair of earbuds on i i listen to some music and i try and brainstorm video ideas you know write scripts in my head try and get the creative juices flowing you know put on some temporary secretary or um you know mainly just that song i put on temporary secretary and and that that creates videos like this in my head and that creative process wouldn't be possible if not for raikon itself and reikon earbuds are just as great as any other earbuds you know but cost nearly half as much as premium brands but if you're still unsure raycon also has a free 45-day return window so if you get your pair and you decide that they're not quite your thing you can get your money back without any hassle it really is a risk-free purchase so get yourself a pair right now by going to buy recon dot com slash clinton or the link in the description once again that's by recon dot com slash q-u-i-n-t-o-n okay so like i said now that we're at the end here i just have two quick announcements first of all this is my halloween set i put together uh it's all special and nifty and i have no idea if i'm gonna be able to shoot another video with this set so appreciate it damn it in fact i'm just i'm just i'm just gonna leave for a second see you can look at it [Music] okay and on to those announcements okay first of all my plan right now is that i'm going to make a small follow-up to this video more generally about nickelodeon halloween specials you know episodes and certain shows are just standalone movies things like that and if i have time to finish that video during this month then i would love suggestions from you guys in terms of what you would like to see covered in a video like that now i i'm only gonna do this video if it doesn't end up upsetting the rest of my schedule but things are looking good so if you want any specific thing from the history of nickelodeon in terms of halloween episodes or specials suggest that in the comment box down below and the second thing we have to talk about is icarly uh in one of my most recent videos i asked you guys if an icarly video is something you would be interested in and the overwhelming response is that everyone seems to want me to do this video but my schedule is so packed for the rest of the year and it would take such commitment that i really don't know when i'd be able to get to it but i wanted to make a deal with you guys if we can get to 400 000 subscribers i will do the icarly video and you know it might be a really long video it might end up being a super in-depth thing i'm not sure yet uh but it's gonna take some time to work on probably and i think that'd be a really cool way to celebrate that milestone but once again i think i'll only do that if we get to 400 000 subscribers so let's say our goal is we get to 400 000 subscribers by december 31st and uh if we can accomplish that that when i come back icarly will be the first thing we do and if we can't pull that off i don't know maybe maybe we just won't do that that's the terms and conditions that's our next big goal and i was also thinking we should maybe set up some stretch goals you know like if we get to 400 000 subscribers like really early like additional things we can aim for that uh you know otherwise wouldn't end up on the docket like maybe an anamorphs video or a high school musical video a planet sheen video i don't know just you know we'll figure that out if it happens but let's just see how quickly we can get to 400 000 subscribers so if you aren't subscribed if you don't even use that feature if you don't even have an account you know consider you know doing your part making sure you're subscribed making an account to subscribe because oh i just want i just want to hit that goal so much and i'll mean the world if we accomplish this with that i've been quitting reviews and that's all you bleed [Music] check out these playlists i'm sorry about that [Music] oh

Channel: Quinton Reviews

Views: 426,257

Rating: 4.9277792 out of 5

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Id: 1u4D43HbiXA

Length: 26min 31sec (1591 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020