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All That was a American live-action sketch comedy-variety show that aired on Nickelodeon. It drew favorable comparisons to Saturday Night Live for its short comedic sketches and weekly musical guests. The theme song for All That was performed by TLC.
The show first aired on April 16, 1994 as a "special preview" and debuted as a regular series on December 24, 1994. All That originally featured mainly young adults, but from Season 7 onward, it made a big switch to feature only preteens. The show was also successfully broadcast internationally, including in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.
The show was very popular during its run. In fact, some of the cast members got their own spin-off shows including Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell (Kenan & Kel), Amanda Bynes (The Amanda Show), Nick Cannon (The Nick Cannon Show), Jamie Lynn Spears (Zoey 101) and Lil' JJ (Just Jordan). In 1997, Thompson and Mitchell starred in a big screen version of the sketch Good Burger. The sketch Action League Now! made a few appearances on All That before moving to a new Nickelodeon series in 1996 called KaBlam!; they later spun off into their own short-lived series. Also, Kenan Thompson has gone on to work on Saturday Night Live, where he (like on All That) has honed his famous Bill Cosby impersonation.
Format
All That featured a format of cold open, sketch-comedy pieces and a musical guest in its first six seasons and the final season. The cold opens took place in the green room five minutes before the show was to start. Usually, Kevin the Stage Manager (played by Kevin Kopelow) tries to rouse the cast members to preparation for the show by announcing "Five minutes!". Some of these cold opens included playing spin the bottle and having to kiss a cactus, an octopus, or a chair; Alisa Reyes reenacting a fight on Kopelow; and guest star Mark Curry tying up Kenan Thompson and wearing his Superdude costume. All other seasons featured a weekly host introducing and occasionally participating in the various sketches and a musical guest, a format pioneered by Saturday Night Live.
Many of the sketches were original material, although Bill Cosby, Roseanne, Steve Urkel, Ross Perot, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush were impersonated by Kenan Thompson, Katrina Johnson, Angelique Bates, Johnson, Gabriel Iglesias, and an adult, respectively. The humor was very pre-teen-oriented, such as Josh Server eating his own dandruff, or appearing on stage wearing only his underwear, or a cereal called Lucky Germs or Fruit Poots. From Season 7 onward, the humor was geared more toward younger viewers than the first six seasons.
In the first five seasons, All That used mostly urban contemporary musical guests (i.e. hip-hop and R & B), but in later seasons, All That aimed for more mainstream, pop and/or modern rock oriented acts.
All That lasted 10 seasons before it was cancelled in 2005. The last episode aired on October 22, 2005.
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In conjunction with the seventh season, All That brought in weekly special guest stars who helped open the show and participated in some of the sketches. All That had featured some guest stars previously, including Dr. Joyce Brothers in one segment of Ask Ashley, Chris Farley in a Cooking with Randy sketch, and Sherman Hemsley in a cold open, and again in a Good Burger sketch.
Among the guest stars who appeared during this period were former cast members Kenan Thompson and Amanda Bynes. Thompson reprised his Principal Pimpell character in a Harry Bladder sketch, lunch lady Miss Pidlin in a Sugar & Coffee sketch, and Superdude. Bynes appeared as herself in a Sugar & Coffee sketch and reprised Ashley in a blooper "from the late-Nineties." Other special guest stars included, in no particular order: Melissa Joan Hart, Frankie Muniz, Tony Hawk, David Arquette, Britney Spears, Aaron Carter, Will Friedle, Christina Vidal, Matthew Lillard, Ray Romano, Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara (Spy Kids), Nick Carter, Justin Timberlake, Buddy Hackett, Barry Watson, Jennifer Love Hewitt , Tom Green, and Brittany Snow[11] Some viewers didn't appreciate the intensified emphasis on special guest stars since All That (unlike the 90 minute long Saturday Night Live or even the 60 minute long MADtv) was only a 30 minute program (including commercials).
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