U-Pick Live

U-Pick Live was a popular talk show on Nickelodeon in the early-mid 2000s. It featured a diverse cast of practically unknown scrubs looking to make an impact on daytime television; unfortunately, almost no network (including VH1, looking for a new cast for their show The Surreal Life) would take them, so they had to make due with Nick.

Cast

• Brent Whatshisname as himself; the geeky dork. He wore huge glasses, acted emo, and complained a lot. His segments on the show were widely ignored because he wasn't as entertaining as Candace (or anyone else on the show) despite being one of the hosts. His segments included "15 seconds of fame" (a show were he kisses up to Nick for giving him a chance), "How to be a nerd", and "Places I'd rather be". He was fired after Candace didn't renew her contract. He currently is performing as the lead singer of his indie emo band "Dead Fame".
• Candace Bailey as herself; a dumb, sassy, and hot brunette. She was totally popular. Eventually she decided that the show totally sucked and quit. Because Nickelodeon liked her the best, they decided not to renew the show despite all the other members begging to be signed again for another season. She isn't doing anything of importance after her career failed to take off after her failed stint on U-Pick Live. She did star in that show Jericho (no not named after the wrestler you stupid mark), but nobody took noticed because nobody even watched the show. She is currently doing nothing and is dating Hollywood outcast Seth Green. See I told you her narcisistic attitude would bite her in the ass eventually.
• Antonio Neves as himself (2002–2004); best known by fans on the show as "The floating head of a Hispanic guy. He wasn't shown much on the show and he was known for being very annoying. He continuously ranted on the show about how the network didn't appreciate Hispanics. He was the first to be fired because the network feared he would leak out to much information (mostly the reasons why Nick didn't renew such hit shows as Invader Zim, Angry Beavers, and My Life as an Emo). He currently is protesting outside Nickelodeon studios demanding a reason why he wasn't featured much on the show (even though they had given him a reason a while ago).
• Garbagio as himself (2002–2004); a Mexican Lucha Libre wrestler that somehow found his way on the show. He too didn't get much air time on the show. When he did it was lackluster matches against either food or toys. His matches were so terrible that it put anything the WWE currently does to shame. He currently is doing indie Mexican wrestling shows and is a part time speaker to teenagers. His topics mostly focus on Why kids shouldn't ever work for children's television networks and how to wrestle against cookies and milk.
• Tom Lamberth as Cow; a cow. Okay not a real cow, but some hobo dressed as one. The network was desperate for a mascot and they needed to find an actor to fit a cow suit they found in the studio fast. Ironically, several shows later, Nick decided the show didn't need a mascot since they weren't getting good ratings anyway so they kept him around as a recurring joke. After the show was cancelled, he appeared on "The Surreal Life".

Premire

One day on a boring and sunny afternoon in the spring of 2000, instead of broadcasting their usual programming, this show premiered. At first glace, the network's audience was wondering what the heck the show was they were watching, but then out of curiosity, they watched it anyway. This continued for a week, but soon there after, the show became just like the rest of the network's programming, a watered down, lame, childish, and immature show. The show was originally going to be hosted by Michael Jackson , but due to the show's majority audience being children under 10 and because of the allegations against him, the show instead had at the time, unknown actors, Candace Bailey and Brent Whatshisname host the show. They were soon joined by loud mouth, Hispanic Antonio (who soon adopted the role of Floating Head as a punishment by Nick for the problems he would soon cause the show), expelled Mexican Lucha Libre wrestler Garbage whom would regularly wrestle inanimate objects and food items instead of real people due to his rather embarrassing win and lose record which was a 0-105, a hobo dressed in a cow suit, Cow, and Nickelodeon commercial slave and wannabe superhero, Pick Boy.

Run

In the beginning, the show was considered to be cutting edge. U-Pick Live was in fact the very first show on Nickelodeon to not need the use of slime unlike the television show it ran against Slime Time Live (which ran an hour before U-Pick Live. During the last few days of it's run, it was purchased by Cartoon Network, but unfortunately because Nickelodeon had ownership of most of the shows and slime, and because it's cast was under contract to Nickelodeon, the show couldn't run on it's network and thus the show died within a matter of days. Nick would brag about how they had screwed Cartoon Network outta a crap load of money)at the time was so incredibly stupid not even 10 year olds could enjoy it. The show featured many enjoyable segments (even though they were pointless, irrelevant, and at times vulgar), and the show's cast was rather enjoyable. However as the show continued it's run, many problems began to happen. The show began to adopt many pointless segments such as Candace's Corner; a segment in which Candace ate up 15 minutes talking about how much more important she was then the rest of the cast (it's a well known fact Ms Bailey is a massive narcissist. In fact she ranked #40 in People Magazine's 100 Most Narcissistic Celebrities), 10 seconds with Bret; a segment in which Brent did his best to either sell himself as an important member of the show or to promote his indie emo band, and a list of other pointless segments. Soon after tensions between the cast began to grow. Candace would begin to increase the minutes in her segments and the other members began to fight with her during the show, Antonio began to shoot on Nickelodeon on it's alleged "disrespect for the Latino community", and a crap load of other problems. Celebrity involvement; a part which usually gave the show many memorable moments soon began to kill the show. Many celebrities that hurt the show's credibility included:

• Vince McMahon (and trust me his involvement really hurt the show)
• Michael Jackson (Actually he somehow got past security and made it to the broadcasting room. The kids ran away from him till security dragged him out of the building)
• Ashlee Simpson (Was the musical guest on one of the episodes. She was caught lip syncing (again) and much like her SNL accident she did a hoe down when she didn't know what to do and blamed the incident on her band "cuz' they like totally played the wrong song" when she clearly was the one responsible. It ain't your band's fault you can't sing. Afterwards, she was booed off stage by the entire audience (much like her Orange Bowl incident)
• Bob Dole
• George Bush
• Samuel L. Jackson (Although he was incredibly vulgar on his visit to the show, he was funny doing it)
• William Shatner
• Hulk Hogan (Perhaps the only person on the planet with a bigger ego than Candace)
• Triple H (Okay scratch that, yet another person with a bigger ego than Candace)
• Kiss
• Dave Chappelle (He did some stand-up, but was so vulgar that the network couldn't bleep him out. They would have had to bleep out every second of his segment)

and many more that would hurt the show's credibility.

Dying Days

During the last year of it's run, the show became a massive disaster. The show had become so watered down, boring, vulgar, and included so many unscripted and explicit moments that it made WCW 's dying days look like good television. Nickelodeon made many attempts to bring the show back to it's former glory. However it's glory days were when it had real competition, it's segments didn't feel like they were dragging ass, and it's cast didn't act like a bunch of dumbasses. In the months that followed, U-Pick Live would receive it's lowest ratings ever (even though their ratings were never stellar) and plentiful lawsuits and complaints from it's audience. Then one day, Antonio during one of Candace and Brent's segments, knocked both cast mates out and delivered a harsh and vulgar promo. It contained practically every single curse word you can possibly imagine, many racial slurs, and a ton of other irrelevant nonsense. At first people got lost in his entire rant that they didn't quite catch on what the hell Antonio was so pissed off about, but then they realized it was yet another one of his long complaints about how Nick unappreciated the Latino community.

Here's a small and understandable segment of his near 20 minute rant.

“ You know, I'm so sick and tired of those smile sipping bigots in the big office telling me I'm crazy. Almost everyday, when I walk in this god forsaken building, I'm constantly being told what to do and what to say when my two non-Latino cast mates cracka Candace Boring and Brent Who the heck cares what your last name is get to write their own segments and say exactly what they wanna say. Even the freakin' masked wrestler dude whom doesn't even appear on this show for more than 5 minutes and wrestles freakin' cookies and milk, has more freedom than me. Well, I'm so sick and tired of those morons in the main office telling me what to do all the time. They always tell me that I'm totally insane and tell me they aren't racist towards the Latino community. But, BUT, if that's the case, what the heck happened to GOOD Nickelodeon shows like The Brother's Garcia, Tiena, Dora The Explorer, you know all those shows? ”

Needless to say, Antonio totally misunderstood the situation for what it really was. Nick wasn't prejudice to him for being Latino, they were basically just giving him his daily working routine, but because he went on air and acted like a nutcase, the network punished him by making his character on the show a "floating head". Following this decision, the company sent him a letter. It said the following.

“ Now you got a reason to be upset XD! ”

Brent himself treated the show's audience to yet another crazy and completely unscripted moment. However, unlike Antonio whom ranted because he was too stupid to understand the real situation, Brent basically went off and sobbed like a baby on air for real. He basically kissed the collective ass of the network and begged them to treat him as good as they treated Candiace and to increase the time of his segments. However before he could continue, the network cut to a commercial. The segment lasted 2 minutes.

Seeing as how wrestling was still somewhat popular and seeing how as celebrity involvement had always seemed to work, Nickelodeon had WWE chairman, Vince McMahon and Former 38th President of the United States and World Heavyweight Champion/WWE Supreme Ruler/Demi God,Triple H. Needless to say, as it turns out neither helped boost the show's credibility; in fact it hurt it far worse than anyone could imagine. Vince declared the episode of U-Pick Live Vince McMahon Appreciation Day and demanded that each one of the children in the audience give 1 good reason why they loved them. Of course, since practically nobody still watches the WWE since both WCW and ECW none of the children knew who the heck this crazy man was. Triple H managed to damage the show's reputation further. He cancelled Candace's normal segment; Candace's Corner for his 1 hour talk show, It's Game Time!. In the segment, H didn't do anything to sell the show as an interesting product and instead chose to use the segment to talk about how great he was an how he would be the World Heavyweight Champion for all eternity. The children fell asleep 5 minutes into the segment. Neither guest's appearance helped to bring ratings up and U-Pick Live was pretty much old news and viewership quickly shifted to Nickelodeon's new cutting edge TV show, SpongeBob SquarePants, a show in which details the true life of an animorphic spounge and his friends whom live somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. The show not only had no need for slime or useless dragging ass segments and instead brought viewers in by using fresh jokes, subliminal messaging, and dark undertones. The premiere episode which aired on a Monday at 8:00pm ended up scoring a rating of 5.0 as opposed to RAW's 3.4 and U-Pick Live's 0.0. At that moment, Nick came to the understanding that U-Pick Live was finished.

Death

Sadly (well...not really), in the fall of .....um....ah who cares, Nick made the decision to cancel the show. The reason behind the decision was because Candace didn't want to renew her contract. Nick was devastated that the actress chose not to renew her contract. Evidently, Miss Bailey thought she was too good for the show (but that mentality would bite her in the ass later in her career). The other members (mostly Brent) said they would gladly renew their contracts, but Nick decided not to bother since they weren't all that important. Brent cried like a baby as security dragged him out of the building. Antonio had already left the company a week prior so he dodged the completely creepy last moments of the show. Pick Boy happily accepted a contract by Nick to do a line of commercials for the company and to star in some of it's other shows (a decision he would ultimately regret). Garbage returned to Mexico to work some indie Lucha Libre wrestling shows/ He would go on to lose to the likes of Rey Mysterio, La Parka, Psicosis, and Nacho Libre. Cow, left the show quietly and he was never heard from again (He joined the Surreal Life, but people that star in that show are never heard again because that's the point of their careers where nobody would ever hear from them again). Nick closed the doors on the once interesting and cutting edge Nick tv show after something something years (ugh...who cares? Everyone lost interest after the first 3 weeks of the show).