The Secret World of Alex Mack

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One of the fascinating things about looking back at shows you watched as a kid is that the characters never age. Upon revisiting the show you find that while you have progressed into an adult somewhere along the way, the show's characters remain frozen in time. When the show debuted you may have been the same age as the principal players, yet they've been held back in an eternal repetition of their childhood years.

Such is the case with Alex Mack, a middle school-aged semi-superhero of 90s Nickelodeon fame. I always thought of the two of us as contemporaries, so imagine my surprise to find that she's still just thirteen years old. The real-life actress who portrayed her, Larisa Oleynik, has grown alongside me into a more reasonable age of 28, but I related so well to the character that I came to think of her as something of a real person. I half-expected a current Google search for Alex Mack to pull up a YouTube clip of a late-20s version of the character, again clad in a flannel shirt and backwards cap, playing hooky from her office day job by morphing Capri Sun-style into a metallic puddle and slipping out through the heating vent. It was a bit jarring to realize that someone I'd yearned to befriend as as a kid is stuck at thirteen forever. Watching the show, I still kind of want to be friends, but it gives me a sort of uneasy feeling to imagine myself randomly befriending seventh graders. Sure, she might be scientifically significant, but I doubt Mr. and Mrs. Mack would take kindly to the two of us going out for a soda. At least not until after she'd finished her algebra homework, I mean.


The Secret World of Alex Mack premiered in 1994 as part of the Saturday night tween-geared SNICK programming block on Nickelodeon. Featuring a quirky young teenage girl, the show was a natural fit as a replacement for the very popular Clarissa Explains it All. Superpower premise aside, the general genre was a solid match to its predecessor. The show was originally conceived of with a male central character, but the departure of Clarissa led to some retooling. I don't think the boys were too disappointed, though. They all got Larisa Oleynik to drool over, so it wasn't a bad deal in the end.

While Alex's coming of age story is certainly confounded by her unusual chemical circumstances, she's generally just a young girl struggling to find her place in the ever-viney jungle of adolescence. We see her face mean girls, first crushes, and fights with her parents. Okay, so maybe she can move things with her mind and turn into a shiny puddle of echo-voiced goo, but at the end of the day she's just trying to see where she fits into the puzzle of junior high.

The show's subject matter was pretty sophisticated for a children's show. While many programs aimed at a young viewer demographic tend to patronize and dumb down factual information, The Secret World of Alex Mack gave it to us straight. Well, sort of. If you want to get technical, the entire premise and all related scientific data was completely fabricated and improbably at best. Shows with made-up scientific background are probably better-suited to children as we're less likely to question any chemical plot holes. Regardless, The Secret World of Alex Mack treated its viewers more or less like adults. We had a high tech chemical plant, the background on research and development, and some entree into the world of as-of-yet FDA unapproved weight loss aids that have the potential to turn you into a mutant.



Doesn't this opening sequence just stir up all sorts of displaced memories? I haven't watched the show in maybe 10 years, but I'm pretty sure I could recite Alex Mack's voiceover word-for-word regardless. Alex Mack is memorable in a way that few children's shows achieve, though maybe it's proportionate to how badly you wanted to possess her melting and mind-moving superpowers.

In the show's first episode, Alex is doused with the mysterious chemical (henceforth known as the crazy compound GC-161) on the way to her first day of junior high. Alex quickly discovers that the accident has left her with a number of unexplainable side effects, most importantly silver puddle meltability, telekinesis, and the ability to send little shocks out of her fingertips. On the negative, she also turns an unnatural shade of orange in lieu of a more ordinary pink when she blushes. All in all, sort of a tradeoff, but the pros pretty far outweigh the cons in terms of general superheroic symptoms.

If for some reason the show isn't so fresh in your mind, here's the entire first episode for nostalgic restoration purposes:







Alex lets her best friend Ray and her Janine Kishi-esque brainy sister Annie in on her secret, though she opts against telling her parents. Her father is employed by the anonymously ominous local chemical plant and reports directly to the notoriously evil Danielle Altron. Danielle and her plant partner in crime Vince are Alex's main adversarial forces, with the majority of superpower-related plotlines emphasizing Alex's continuous struggle to avoid capture and eventual subjection to creepy testing. Danielle and Vince see Alex as sort of a human lab rat and are endlessly caught up in hot pursuit of their subject. In a clever plot point, the chemical plant is Alex's hometown of Paradise Valley's main employer. That means most people report to Danielle, and few would want to face unemployment by crossing her. Unfortunately, that settles the score at Plant 1, Alex 0. Tough break.

The Secret World of Alex Mack lasted a solid four seasons, culminating in Alex's secret exposed. As the following finale teaser boomingly intones, "She can morph, but she can't hide..."



Alex Mack differentiated itself from other superhero shows in many ways, the most important of which may have been the fact that Alex would have preferred to be a normal kid over a wanted superhero. Even with all she had to gain from the incident, she was just an average kid at heart. Alex never asked to be extraordinary, nor did she possess some natural capacity for leadership or do-goodery. We could relate to her because she represented the rest of us far better than her comic book superhero contemporaries. She wasn't out saving the world; she just wanted to make it through seventh period English. With its cliffhanger ending, though, we're left to decide for ourselves whether Alex took the antidote. Feel free to speculate for yourself with the last clip of the series finale below. I'm still losing sleep over this one.

Before They Were Famous: Our Favorite Stars' Early TV Bit Parts

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It's hard to imagine major TV or film stars as anything less than bona fide celebrities, but all of them had to work their way to the top. In Hollywood terms, that usually means paying your dues in sitcom or soap opera appearances until you're eventually discovered and whisked off into a series of starring roles. It's got to give us hope for those of us who aren't quite at the eventual level of achievement we envision for ourselves; heck, at our age, George Clooney was still just a random handyman on Facts of Life and Quention Tarantino was a second-row Elvis impersonator on The Golden Girls. I guess that means we've all got a good twenty years or so to grow into two-time Sexiest Man of the Year or wildly successful quirky screenwriter/producer/actor/director.

That's certainly reassuring, considering many of these stars have gone on to achieve fame and fortune that outstrip even our wildest of future fantasies. It's nice to see that once upon a time, these well-known celebrities were putting in their time and trying to make it just like the rest of us. So sit, back, relax, and luxuriate in the realization that you have plenty of time to reach our ultimate goals. It's even further consolation to know that by the time we meet those goals, some of these stars may be relegated to beauty pageant hosting gigs and Dancing With the Stars appearances. Circle of life and all that.

While many, many television and movie actors started with bit roles on sitcoms or daytime soaps, I present to you a random smattering of both the memorable and the obscure:


George Clooney: Facts of Life


People are always saying Clooney has gotten more attractive with age, but watching him in this mid-80s clip I'd have to argue that he was always pretty darn good looking. 80s and 90s TV tended to be wholly unoriginal in assigning names to guest stars, often simply assigning the actor a fictitious last name to supplement their real-life first. Accordingly, Clooney played be-mulleted handyman George Burnett for two seasons on The Facts of Life. He took on a number of other bit parts, including roles on Roseanne and The Golden Girls, before striking figurative TV oil with ER.



Leonardo DiCaprio, Hilary Swank, Matthew Perry, and Brad Pitt: Growing Pains

That's Hilary Swank at her locker, in case you missed her

Apparently Growing Pains served as a functional launching pad for all sorts of young stars. DiCaprio played Luke Brower, a homeless kid the Seavers eventually adopt. Luke was a Cousin Oliver-type character, a last-ditch attempt to win over people with a cute kid and distract them from the show's decline.

Hilary Swank had a much smaller role (you can see her at her locker in the first clip), but her few lines managed to garner her some attention from Hollywood agents. She'd have to suffer through The Next Karate Kid before eventually segueing into more respectable roles like Beverly Hills, 90210. Oh, and you know, those Oscar roles of hers. Not too shabby for a girl who had just a few lines on Growing Pains.

Brad Pitt: dreamy even with a borderline mullet

Some people are so attractive it's essentially their service to society to become celebrities. In the case of Brad Pitt, I'd say he owed it to us. 80s and 90s sitcoms had a bad habit of recasting the same actors in multiple bit parts, apparently assuming their entire audience had severe short term memory loss. Along this vein, Pitt played two parts on GP: once as Carol's short-lived romantic interest and another as Ben's favorite rock star. He wasn't an especially nice guy in either role, but most of us were pretty won over by his dreamy physique. I don't care how mean he was to Carol; I still would've gone for him




Matthew Perry also appeared on the show as Carol's boyfriend Sandy, who was killed off in a drunk driving accident after just a few episodes. He actually first appeared in the short lived Growing Pains spinoff Just the 10 of Us, but apparently they'd liked him so much they shuffled him back over to the original. And then, you know, killed him off almost immediately. How thoughtful.



Ben Savage: Wonder Years



There he is at 4:20. How cute are the two of them? Boy Meets World's Ben Savage is Wonder Years' Fred Savage's younger brother, so it was of course adorable to have the two guest star in this Valentine's episode. They're pretty good at pretending to be strangers, what with the whole, "Hey you! Kid!" ruse they've got going on.



John Stamos: General Hospital



Obviously this feathered look was his hairstyle of choice for many, many years. It took all the way from General Hospital in 1983 to the early Full House years. Stamos is by far the best actor in this scene, though for a soap opera his style is a bit understated. He seems a little too relaxed in the midst of all the drama.



Christina Applegate: Family Ties



Before she was dizzy 90s blonde Kelly Bundy on Married With Children, Christina Applegate had a number of small sitcom roles. Applegate appeared on Family Ties in an episode shamelessly geared toward launching Tina Yothers' misguided music career. Applegate plays one of her band members, and I must say, in this clip she really rocks those shoulder pads. What else would you expect from the fashion maven of Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead?



Michelle Tratchenberg: Pete and Pete



Even before her starring role in Harriet the Spy (complete with signature Nickelodeon bright orange-VHS tape), Michelle Tratchenberg played Nona on The Adventures of Pete and Pete. It's a far cry from her mean-girl act on Gossip Girl these days, but she is pretty adorable in an un-self conscious, desperately needs-braces type of way.




Jennifer Aniston: Ferris Bueller



Following the success of John Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the movie was optioned as a TV show starring none of the original cast. Jennifer Aniston was virtually unknown at the time, debuting in a reprisal of Jennifer Grey's Jeannie Bueller. The show lost steam quickly and was canceled after just a few episodes, but we did get something good out of it: a mid-season replacement Blossom. And Jennifer Aniston's burgeoning career, of course.



Ricky Martin on General Hospital



He may not be a household name today, but in the late 90s we were all pretty loco over singer Ricky Martin. Somewhere in between his Menudo days and his rise to astronomical fame as a solo artist, Martin find the time to play Miguel, a singer/bartender on General Hospital. His acting wasn't anything to write home about, but like most of these 80s and 90s soap-starting stars, his hair may have been.



Jessica Alba: The Secret World of Alex Mack



Oh, this one really takes me back. Just hearing them reference "GC-161" is enough to bring me back to the day of Alex's ill-fated chemical spill. When her mom tries to saddle her with that Trolls lunchbox, it's pure 90s. There's Alba at 7:25, playing the stock mean girl character. Her acting isn't especially impressive, but she's cute enough for us to overlook it. I'm guessing this means she never went through an awkward stage. When the rest of us were gawky and awkward, Alba was well on her way to Amazonian goddesshood. Then again, I saw photos from her few months post-baby bikini photo shoot--I think she's got some sort of genetic upper hand on all of us.



Parker Posey on As The World Turns



If you don't know already, I'm a pretty devoted fan of Christopher Guest Films. I've always found Parker Posey to be hilarious, with great comic timing and spot-on deadpan. Imagine my surprise, then, to learn that Posey actually paved her path to independent movie fame with a recurring role on daytime soap As The World Turns. It's always a little jarring to realize an actor or actress you respect once appeared on a soap; it's like finding out that an esteemed author once ghostwrote Sweet Valley High novels. You might have found them entertaining, sure, but it's not exactly a claim to fame. This stint has probably moved pretty far down on Posey's resume, though. I think she's redeemed herself from the uncertain fate of wooden-acted soap roles.



Quentin Taratino: Golden Girls



This isn't the best quality video, I know, but these specific TV moments are sometimes hard to pinpoint in the vast expanses of cyberspace. In case you missed him in that one-second video-recorded-off-the-TV clip, here's a handy photo helper from Motivated Photos:


Yes, that's right...Quentin Tarantino appeared as one of the many Elvis impersonators who mistakenly populated the audience at Sophia's wedding to Max Weinstock. Is it troubling that I could rattle off all of those details off the top of my head? I've seen this episode more times than I can count, but I never once noticed Tarantino. He's not exactly in a prominent role, but it is definitely an interesting piece of trivia to know. That Motivated Photo poster cracks me up, too. I am totally going to greet him that way if I ever run into him.


Like I said, all of these big names started from pretty meager beginnings, so there may be hope for you yet. Their equivalent of entry-level positions might be a little more exciting than our own, but it's a small comfort to know they had to work their way up. Plus, based on what we've seen in the above clips, I'd say each and every one of you is probably a qualified enough actor to have a supporting role on one of those soap operas. Really.

Double Dare

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Why don't we offer the Physical Challenge as a viable alternative to difficult tasks anymore? It always worked for our pals on Double Dare. Just picture it. You're in a crowded classroom taking your bar exam and you come across an exceptionally confounding question. Imagine how much simpler things would be if you could simply alert the proctor you were going to take the Physical Challenge instead. You'd get up from your desk, put on the giant clown pants, and proceed to catch flying pies catapulting toward you at breakneck speed. "Pie in the Pants" was a credible recourse for baffled minds on 90s kids game shows; why not extend it to other arenas? At the very least, it would give some much needed excitement and spontaneity to those boring hours-long tests.

In actuality, not much of the Double Dare world translates into real life. It's a testament to the show's creators' creativity--or insanity, depending on your sense of whimsy and wonder. It was like some sort of alternate kid fantasy universe: children slimed their parents, slid down a giant Sundae Slide, and went home with armloads of cash and prizes. It was crazy and nonsensical and criminally messy, but it was undeniably pure kid-driven fun.

It's another one of those Nickelodeons 80s and 90s anomalies where you'd just got to wonder what was running through the network executives' respective heads when the Double Dare creators pitched them the show. "We open with a messy challenge, see. Then we move onto a random, disjointed trivia round that's actually an excuse to stump kids and have them opt for an even messier challenge. Next, the team with the most points attempts an utterly insane obstacle course, searching for flags in piles of sloppy food, swimming through vats of jello, running on a giant hamster wheel, and monkey barring their way over to the spewing Gak Geiser. If they make it, they go to space camp and get to thow up on one of those anti-gravity simulation spinny rides. How does that sound?" To which we can only imagine the Nickelodeon bigwigs replied, "Excellent! We'll take 500 episodes."

The show went through a series of reformatted and re-imagined incarnations, but the underlying structure remained the same. First up, we had Super Sloppy Double Dare:



It seems the major differentiating feature of Super Sloppy Double Dare was that it was not just regular sloppy but indeed super sloppy. The original version of Double Dare was messy, but SSDD brought disgusting sloppiness to a whole new level. The challenges existed for the sole purpose of creating the most explosive mess imaginable. This version had more thematic episodes and gimmicks, but the main change was probably in the significant increase in the number of janitors employed by the show.

There was the quickly-dropped Celebrity Double Dare concept:



This version never actually made it into production, so all we have to remember it by is this pilot footage. It was mostly like Double Dare, but everything was just a tiny bit off, meaning fans would probably never accept it. It was hosted by a feathered-haired Bruce Jenner, who depending on your generation is either that dashing Wheaties box-gracing Olympian or the frozen-faced dad on Keeping Up With the Kardashians.


Next up we had the popular Family Double Dare:

This clip hails from the Nickelodeon (not FOX) era. Just in case you were curious.

For this version, the show had a brief stint on the Fox network in a Saturday night timeslot. As the name implies, this version pitted two families against one another in lieu of all-kid teams. Teams included two parents and two children. Families cycled through the same segments as in the original Double Dare (Opening Stunt, Physical Challenges, Triva, Obstacle Course) but it was a new plane of funny to watch adults wade through knee-deep slime ravines. The show moved back to Nickelodeon in 1990, where it continued to humiliate parents everywhere through the cunning use of pies.

We also had Super Special Double Dare, which was basically a pared down retooling of Celebrity Double Dare. We had sports stars, Nick stars, and minor celebrities competing for charity. I don't know if it necessarily lived up to its promise of being Super Special, but it was at the very least averagely special.

Unfortunately, the Double Dare book didn't close then. There was actually a Double Dare 2000 version, or as 90s children may better know it, The Version That Shall Not Be Named. Heresy, I tell you. Um, hi, they called the Obstacle Course the Slopstacle Course. Really? Really? They should be ashamed of themselves. Where's my beloved host Marc Summers? What? Relegated to an executive consultant credit? For shame.


Can you believe this was already ten years ago? Depressing, no?

Speaking of Marc Summers, Double Dare and his ever-expanding portfolio of other Nickelodeon hosting duties turned him into the poster child for irony. Unbeknownst to the world (and to Marc, until he was diagnosed at age 43), Summers suffered from obsessive compulsive disorders. Yes, that's right. The man who brought us our daily dose of super sloppiness later went on to co-author the book, "Everything in its Place: My Trials and Triumphs with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder."



Double Dare lived on in syndicated reruns for many years following its 1992 cancellation. As Summers remarks in his book, "We had enough episodes on tape to do reruns forever." Indeed, the pure volume of episodes must speak to the high demand for this type of purely entertaining children's television programming. Yes, the show had a trivia question or two thrown in for good measure, but it was far from educational. It taught us something far more valuable: how to have fun and be kids. Oh, and how to dig a flag out of a Super Sloppy Blue Plate Special. I'm still thinking that one's going to come in handy someday.