Stop what you are doing right now because Netflix has recently added the Nickelodeon show "Victorious" to its streaming service, and the people who grew up watching it are thankful to say the least.
For anyone who didn't grow up with "Victorious," it is a show about a talented singer named Tori Vega (Victoria Justice) who gets accepted into the very chaotic and quirky performing arts school called Hollywood Arts. Once she gets there, she meets André Harris (Leon Thomas III), Cat Valentine (Ariana Grande), Robbie Shapiro (Matt Bennett), Jade West (Liz Gillies), and Beck Oliver (Avan Jogia). The show follows this group of friends as they navigate bizarre situations.
When I was rewatching the show, like everyone else I felt the same attraction to Beck, the annoyance over the fact that Jade and Cat didn't get the attention they deserved, and the love for the absolutely iconic songs featured on the show.
But I also noticed a lot of dirty jokes that definitely should not have been in a show meant for kids.
For example, in the episode "A Christmas Tori," André is wondering how someone can go from an A to a D (his grades), and Jade responds by saying that it happened to her in eight grade (her bra size). There was a similar joke made in "Tori the Zombie" when Tori's sister, Trina (Danielle Monet), is on the phone with a doctor and asked about the age of consent for cosmetic surgery and quickly glanced at her breasts before being cut off.
Also, the school counselor's weird obsession with lotion, why was that a thing? Like, there is a scene in the episode "The Wood" where the counselor squirts lotion on Trina repeatedly, looking like a scene from an adult film rather than a kid's television show.
In the episode "Survival of the Hottest," there is a scene that shows Cat getting sprayed with water by a bunch of boys while running around in a skimpy swimsuit. As a child, I remember watching this scene and not thinking anything bad of it. Now, looking at it, I'm not sure how to feel about it.
A weird, on-going joke throughout the show was feet. In the episode "Cat's New Boyfriend," the subplot is basically about foot fetishes. Trina buys illegal Pooka fish from a guy in a van, and the fish are supposed to suck the dead skin off your feet and make them soft. Throughout the episode, André, Beck, Jade, and Robbie partake in the Pooka fish experience and end up in the hospital from diseases in the fish. The final scene is the doctors, nurses, Tori, and Cat rubbing the feet of everyone who used the fish. I remember thinking that it was funny because feet are weird and random. But what makes this odd subplot very weird is the fact that rumors of a foot fetish have surrounded the creator of the show, Dan Schneider.
Don't even get me started on the episode "The Breakfast Bunch," which was a parody of the movie "The Breakfast Club' This episode was full of references and adult jokes made in the movie. For example, there was an entire conversation about being "vegans," which parodies "virgins." Also, there's the scene where the cast from "Victorious" is eating tacos, which was a reference to the scene from "The Breakfast Club" where they are smoking weed.
Any show made by Dan Schneider was obviously going to have some adult jokes thrown in there every now and then. But, rewatching it was shocking for how many were thrown into one episode. "Victorious" is a great show, and I am very glad I grew up watching it, but who wrote these jokes knowing that they are writing for a kid's show?
