How About That Thing?

So lately, I’ve been looking through Paramount Plus for something to watch. As of this writing, Paramount Plus is the streaming service where you can find such must-see TV as South Park, and… Uh… Well… Did I mention South Park?

There’s also a lot of classic Nickelodeon shows on there… though maybe not in their entirety. Shows like Rocko’s Modern Life are fine, but I’m pretty sure they skimped on others. Which made research for this article kind of wonky.

One of the shows I watched on their classic Nickelodeon block was a little number by the name of Salute Your Shorts. For those who’ve never seen it, Salute Your Shorts was a Nickelodeon show that played rather often throughout the early 90s. It lasted two seasons, and as of this writing, Paramount Plus is hosting a grand total of ten of them. Why only ten? Fuck if I know.

The show was so low budget that even I, a wee child who knew nothing about TV production could tell. And yet, I still liked it. The low budget look and feel really added to the show’s overall charm, and I’m pretty sure it internalized a belief that you don’t ALWAYS need expensive equipment to make a masterpiece.

The name of the show came from an old summer camp prank where in the resident asshole would steal your underwear, and pull it up the flagpole to wave free and gloriously. When met with this situation, you really had only one option: to salute your shorts.

The show had a lot of memorable characters:

• Budnick: the asshole. He spread mayhem wherever he went, and pretty much everybody hated his guts.
• Donkeylips: the token fat kid. At the beginning of the series, he was basically Budnick’s hinchman, threatening to sit on his rivals’ faces and farting on them. (INSERT DAN SCHNEIDER JOKE HERE.] As the series progressed, though, he’d become a lot more sympathetic.
• Sponge: the nerd.
• Telye: The tomboy. Some would probably crack a joke about when she grew up, she became part of the WNBA, and got married to the pointguard. I’m not one of them… But if it ends up being true, I wouldn’t be shocked, necessarily.
• Dina: the rich bitch. How she ended up at this dump, even she doesn’t seem to know.
• ZZ: The hippy.

And then, there was the main character.

This is Michael. Michael was, for all intents and purposes, the audience proxy. He was the new kid going to this summer camp completely oblivious and unprepared, and he learned the hard way about such horrors as Zeak the Plumber, and the dreaded “awful waffle.”

FUN FACT: nobody really knows what an awful waffle actually is. From what I remember from the show, it MIGHT involve whipped cream and a tennis rackit, but that’s all I remember off hand. That, and the kids all chant “AWFUL WAFFLE!” as they circle around the intended victim.

As an audience proxy, Michael was great. He had enough of a personality to be an actual character, but was also relatable enough for any kid to put himself in Michael’s shoes.

We’ve all been that awkward kid who came to summer camp with no clue what to expect. I’m sure, dear reader, that you could look at Michael’s stay at Camp Annawanna, and draw parallels to your own personal hell of a summer camp. Mine happened to be Camp Barnabis, which is especially ironic, because Camp Barnabis was a CHRISTIAN camp. But I digress.

Overall, it was a fine show. For the first season.

Then, season 2 happened. And Michael wasn’t there anymore. In-universe, Michael came down with the chickenpox, and was sent home before it could spread anywhere else. Behind the scenes… Fuck if I know. Maybe a contract dispute?

It was a bummer for two reasons.

The first reason was that after spending the entirety of the first season’s episodes that focused primarily on him trying to find his way out of this hell hole of a camp, he ended up getting exactly what he wanted. I mean yeah, chickenpox suck, and I’d only wish it upon my worst of enemies, but even then, he still got his wish. There’s officially no conflict anymore.

The second reason? Because they replaced Michael with this guy.

This, my friends, is Ronnie Pinsky. Now I’m not about to go on some hyperbolic rant about how much I hate the guy, and how he ruined the show, and how I want his head on a stick… But I’d definitely say that the show kind of went down hill the moment he replaced Michael. I wouldn’t say the show started to SUCK, mind you, but the dynamic of the cast, and the direction of the stories definitely took a turn. Upon retrospect, I’m not entirely sure I liked a lot of this sudden shift in story telling.

While Michael was the audience proxy that any kid could relate to, Pinsky was basically just one of the guys. He could match Budnick move for move, he got along with everybody, he was in on the mayhem just as much as the other boys… In a way, I guess you could say he was the anti-Michael. And that was my problem with the guy. He wasn’t relatable, he never struggled to fit in… As memory serves, he usually instigated most of the shenanigans just as often as Budnick! And Budnick was an asshole!

Frankly, my dislike for Pinsky was so strong, I found myself referring to other characters who replaced others in similar manners as the Pinsky of the show. For example: Randy from That 70s Show, or Near from Deathnote.

The Pinsky isn’t just a new character. He’s a new character who’s specifically designed to replace a main character, an integral character, or even just a popular character. Furthermore, the attempt at replacing just doesn’t work. God bless the new guy for trying, but you’re no Michael.

Of course, I say all this, knowing full well that Donkeylips was actually my favorite character. Especially in later episodes. Thankfully, HE never got replaced. But at the same time, you could definitely tell he wasn’t intended to be the main character like Michael was.

Maybe you agree with this, or maybe you don’t. Knowing my luck, I’m probably in the minority. Either way, Pinsky was never my favorite character.