2017 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards Coverage

What is it? Yeah, this whole post is dedicated to answering that question and all the other answers we typically put here, so hang tight.

So we talked about the 2016 KCAs here with all the awful formatting that Blogspot loves to force on us and my incorrect assertion that Jack Black was a producer of School of Rock (and in retrospect I can understand why he wants to separate himself from that dumpster fire) and we talked about the 2016 Radio Disney Music Awards here with a lot of compare and contrast between it and the KCAs, and really how the KCAs absolutely take the RDMAs to school. But really, while both of them are "awards" shows it's clear the KCAs are much more a spectacle in their own right - we've got a hip hop battle between John Cena and Nick Cannon (with people being able to vote on whether it was a hip-hop battle, tutu dance-off or salsa dance-off - although more on that "vote-off" later - along with voting for who won the dance-off), Chris Pratt doing, uh, something in the control room and a lot of air-filling time before he just gets slimed already and that one girl from Game Shakers being turned into a Smurf and sliming Demi Lovato. We also get a lot more movie trailers and promotion (in fact I don't even recall any from the RDMAs at all) and of course the slime. 

The RDMAs don't really feel like being more than just an awards show, while the KCAs actively make you want to be there, even as just a spectator. For that matter there's a lot of audience participation in-studio and at-home, from the audience trying to find the power coins for the Power Rangers promotion, to the arm gauntlet thingies for the Wonder Woman promotion, to of course the online votes and choosing the showdowns against John Cena. 

Was it better than last years? Ehhhh...it certainly had fewer technical problems. John Cena, quite frankly, is a much better host than Blake Shelton (and John Cena didn't have to kill a guy on his way to the KCAs...which is odd because you'd think it'd be the other way around) and Cena actually feels genuinely enthusiastic to be a KCA host. And quite honestly the lack of being forced into Star Wars promotion makes it feel that much less obnoxious (sorry, but I think I've hit Peak Star Wars prior to The Force Awakens even getting an official title). But it also feels much, much more subdued compared to what I remember from last year. Last year we had the cast of Game Shakers very, very clumsily trying to recreate a level from Super Mario Maker using on-stage props and set design, which is still miles of effort better than seeing the cast of School of Rock get roped into a Nintendo Switch commercial. Last year we got a close-out performance by one of my most favorite bands at the moment, DNCE, with one of my most favorite songs from the past year or so, Cake by the Ocean - while this year we got, uh, Cena stand on a slime platform that, uh, shot out a bunch of slime and yay. In previous years we've had slime car washes, slime rodeos, slime drones (though I think the slime drone malfunctioned before it could actually come to fruition during the awards); this year we have...a slide. Not even a slime slide, just a regular freakin' slide. Last year we had Sarah Hyland and Debby Ryan dig through a cake; this year we had the cast of Nicky, Ricky, Dicky and Dawn beat John Cena arm-wrestling over gelatin molds.

...I'm not quite sure which one is weirder.

But I still promise you it's going to be more entertaining and engaging than whatever the RDMAs will cook up in about a month and a half's time from now.

Extra Thoughts

 - I did really like the intro into the KCAs where it transitioned straight from the Henry Danger credits to the Henry Danger set to Jace racing to the KCAs (you only got to see this if you saw the live airing immediately after Henry Danger - it was cut from the rerun, so you only got to see Jace run into Kevin Hart as the KCA kickoff if you missed the live airing). As far as these things go it was halfway clever, not nearly as forced as last year's Star Wars-themed opener and managed to avoid having Blake Shelton kill a guy.

 - Yes, I will always bring that up from now on. It's been a year counting and I've never skipped a beat on bringing it up since.

 - One of the more actually impressive promo dealies was when they had the little girls as Wonder Woman and the little boys as "aviator" (yeah someone needs a lesson on less awkward nouns to use) come out on the stage during the Wonder Woman promo, and had the audience participation to boot - it really drove home the whole "kid power" theme that's been at the very base core of the KCAs from its inception way back in the late 80s. That said, the obvious post-prod effects of the lasers bouncing off the gauntlet thingies that only the TV viewer at home got to see was a little pushing the cheesy side.

 - Well if there's any question about 100 Things to Do Before The Last Knight...though I honestly didn't even know Benjamin Flores Jr. was in it, and obviously it hasn't effected him being in Game Shakers.

 - Speaking of which, I really like how the massive commercial they aired just before the big reveal ended up being a much bigger reveal than the reveal itself. I also like how Micheal Bay took the biggest complaint about Age of Extinction - that it was too grimdark and  how everybody hated humanity treating the Autobots as the bad guys in that movie - and just fucking double-downed on it, because oh you, Micheal Bay! Of course these movies keep earning literal billions so fuck it I guess.

 - Why do I have a feeling that the actual quality and awesomeness of a movie is going to be inversely proportional to the quality and awesomeness of the actual promotion it got at the KCAs? Which means hopefully Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 will indeed be awesome, and if this is a trend I'm hoping Wonder Woman will buck it (as having the most awesome movie promo of the whole night).

 - Also I hate giving sequels "Vol x-number"

 - About the whole viewer voting thing - I just kind of find it interesting that both John Cena and Nick Cannon were backed up by highly choreographed hip-hop dancers during their dance-off, but rumors of these votes being gamed - both the event votes and the actual blimp awards votes that really matter - are nothing new.

 - Once again, the actual viewer-at-home participation portion of the KCAs was a dumpster fire through a disaster of a website. I would say it's probably a consequence of the web developers prizing sheer laziness above all else, but I'm pretty sure the site got worse this year than it did last year, which implies actual effort. In fact I've never been able to see any true smooth operation of the KCA site during the actual live events during the entire time I've been using the site/app since the '13 KCAs, and it's become a bit of a running joke among informed and experienced viewers. Also, I'm pretty damn sure the KCA live site bricked my freakin' phone. Hooray.

 - Speaking of bricked phones, the Verizon commercial about getting kids to choose STEM careers instead of more glamorous careers is well-meaning but extremely problematic for a large variety of reasons so numerous I have trouble keeping track of them. It really deserves its own blog post but perhaps that's for a different blog entirely.

 - I wanted Thundermans to win best show, but to be brutally honest I'm just glad it's not Girl Meets World.

 - I did like Jace's acceptance speech, but honestly the jokes about Moonlight and La La Land are a little overplayed by this point. It'd at least be better and make more sense contextually if he used another Nick show instead, like say Thundermans or NRDD.

- I was really surprised Miranda Cosgrove was at the KCAs especially given how she was a no-show during the '14 KCAs where nearly everyone associated with Dan Schneider showed up when he was presented a lifetime achievement award. Even Kenan Thompson, who had a valid excuse for being a long-standing SNL host (fun fact: the longest-standing SNL host in that shows' history in fact - yes, longer than Chevy Chase, Will Ferrell, what have you!) was at least able to tele-conference it. In fact the only real no-shows were Miranda (who had taken a break from acting to pursue higher ed at the time and thus didn't have much of an excuse not to show up, especially since the KCAs were taking place adjacent to her UCLA campus anyway) and Jennette who really didn't have an excuse seeing as how her show Sam & Cat was up for awards and she herself was up for best actress, leading to some rather nasty rumors (you probably have an idea exactly what kind of rumors at this point, given Dan Schneider and all). 

 - This is the first time I realized Naomi Scott is going to be in the new Power Rangers movie. You don't remember who Naomi Scott is? Sure you do, she was in Lemonade Mouth!

 - Hunter Street will get its own review later, maybe Monday?

 - Oh, and in case you're wondering, yes I did see the "DCOM" (biiig quotes there, but more on that later) Tangled Before Ever After and expect a review of that and the original movie soon. I was kind of hoping to maybe put it up before the KCAs but...eeeehhhhh. Really at this point Nickelodeon deserves higher priority over Disney Channel anyway, and for a bit of a light spoiler on my thoughts on Tangled Before Ever After...yeah, it doesn't do any favors to Disney Channel to change that.

 - Also Walmart is giving out free cupcakes tomorrow for some reason. Thanks, Jace!


Yeah, I'm responding to this really late and it's possible that no one will ever see this, but just in case, I want to let the world know I participated. Hopefully, when Kids Choice Sports comes around, I'll be more interested in taking part.

I'm honestly surprised that this is John Cena's first time hosting the KCAs. As someone that's been following his career for almost ten years, this role seems tailor made for him. Of course, some of the lines he was given sounded way too rehearsed and unnatural (what he said about The Loud House at the beginning was just horrible), but it's not that different from the lines given by the WWE creative team so what's really the harm?

I definitely agree on the whole thing with Jace's Moonlight joke. The problem with stuff like that in this day and age is that everyone makes fun of these incidents like, the day after they happen. So for him to get on stage in front of a bunch of kids that have either heard the joke before or have absolutely no idea what happened at the Oscars, and then make that same joke is just weird. He didn't even get a reaction when he said it. It's the same thing as a recent awards show where they made the joke and I was just questioning why. But to be fair to him, his actual speech was really good.

I found it funny how JoJo Siwa was talking about how most people there probably don't know where Nebraska is. Way to talk down to the people who voted for you and got you out of Nebraska in the first place. It's not like you live in Guam or something.

Isabela Moner looked.....weird. I can't even put my finger on it, but with the haircut and what she was dressing like, it's almost like I was looking at a whole new person. I just hope she doesn't become another one of those actresses that Hollywood pimps out due to her losing her sanity.

Overall, I thought this awards show was much better than the recent ones I've seen. Enough to make me interested in watching it next year? Nope, screw that.