100 Favorite Shows: #36 — Drake & Josh
“This is our living room! A room in which we live.”
[Disclaimer: Allegations have long persisted against the creator of Drake & Josh, Dan Schneider. For one, he shared pictures of his show’s child actresses’ feet on social media. For another, he was ousted from Nickelodeon in 2018 following multiple claims of verbal abuse on set and sexual assault allegations. The Huffington Post has the full story.
Additionally, last August, Drake Bell, the lead on Drake & Josh, was accused by Melissa Lingafelt, his ex-girlfriend, of physical and verbal abuse during their relationship. Bell has since denied the allegations, but the full story has been well-reported by Variety.]
After immense success on All That and The Amanda Show, Nickelodeon worked with Dan Schneider to build a series around the hitherto supporting players, Drake Bell and Josh Peck. What came about was Drake & Josh, a comedy for teenagers (and younger viewers) about Drake Parker and Josh Nichols, two step-brothers who learn to blend their disparate personalities when their parents blend their families. Running from 2004 to 2007, it remains one of Nickelodeon’s flagship series with intense nostalgia harbored across the United States. In 2008, the series wrapped with a holiday film, Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh, bringing an end to one of the cable network’s finest eras.
(You’ll find spoilers for Drake & Josh and its three television films in this essay! Essay!)
Growing up, Nickelodeon was the median of children’s television. At least, it was for me. I found the Disney Channel series to be largely too inclined towards morality and lesson-based storytelling. Cartoon Network’s many shows seemed inane for the sake of inanity, as if all of their shows were hellbent on teaching kids self-sufficiency before everyone else. But Nickelodeon fell right within my sweet spot. It was humorous and irreverent, without ever dipping too far into the saccharine or into the ridiculous. Nickelodeon’s series were not preachy; rather, they had heart. Still allowing for their comedies to be centered around the laughs, the heart never went away. It just manifested more naturally into the rhythm of the story. No show struck the balance on Nickelodeon quite like Drake & Josh did.
Gosh, it’s hard to overstate just how much Drake & Josh influenced me while I was growing up. If everyone in the world made a list like this, I’d bet many from my generation would place Drake & Josh highly, in the same way that Saved by the Bell might rank highly for children of the ’90s and The Wizards of Waverly Place might leap frog M*A*S*H entirely on the lists of Zoomers. I watched Drake & Josh reruns (and their highly-touted made-for-TV films) so frequently, man. Their sense of humor bordered on the “Oh my gosh, that’s so random” type from time to time, but it strongly influenced my own ability to find comedy in the most absurd jokes and the most stupid.
One particular dumb joke that comes to mind is in “Honor Council,” when a mechanic arrives to take Mrs. Hayfer’s (Julia Duffy) car out of her classroom and he claims to be from “Quadruple A” services. The joke is obvious and it really doesn’t take an eighth grade completion certificate to come up with it. But I was so tickled by it. The mechanic could’ve easily been Triple A, but in the wacky reality of Drake & Josh where everything is slightly different (there’s no GameCube, but there is a GameSphere. This also an example of how obsessed with shapes and fruits the writing team on Drake & Josh was. Almost every punchline involved a shape or a fruit, whether it was “Tough squash,” or the GameSphere, or combining them to describe cantaloupe as a “spherical fruit”), it really just made me happy that they took the extra step in the mechanic’s characterization.
The episode also features a perfect example of an absurd joke. The conceit of the installment is that the car in the classroom is a prank that Drake has been framed for. In an effort to prove his innocence, Josh defends him to the school’s Honor Council and claims that Drake couldn’t have put the car in the classroom because he’d have had to leave their shared bedroom in the middle of the night and Josh is a sound sleeper. To refute this claim, Mrs. Hayfer’s defendant, Mindy Crenshaw (Allison Scagliotti) pulls up a video from Megan (Miranda Cosgrove), Josh’s step-sister, and her online vlog. It’s entitled, “Doing Stuff to Josh While He Sleeps.” Clearly, Josh is no light sleeper, but the fact that Mindy had the video ready to be played? The fact that Megan made the video at all? The fact that it literally goes on for, like, thirty seconds and no one would ever be interested in web content like that? It’s all such an on-the-nose concoction created solely for the sake of disproving Josh in an absurd manner. It delights me endlessly.
At times, the humor — which could have been typical TeenNick groaners — actually seems to be taking a page from the Airplane! flight manual. Josh tells a mail carrier in “Treehouse” to have a nice day and he responds literally, “Don’t tell me what to do.” The judge in “Honor Council” permits one last bit of evidence from Josh on the grounds that it “keeps [him] from going home to [his] wife.” Megan listens to whale noises in “Josh Is Done” and Drake asks, “What was that?” She replies, “Humpback” and, offended, he shoots back, “Jerk.” When you’re just a kid watching Drake & Josh before going to bed on a school night, these jokes are so stunning. It was the first time I’d ever heard humor like that and I couldn’t wait to repeat them in elementary school and pretend I came up with them on my own.
Ultimately, the show’s sense of humor worked so well because much of it was mined from the killer chemistry maintained by Drake and Josh, who will go down as one of our generation’s favorite comedic duos. Each episode began with their opposing worldviews as they spoke vaguely about the episode’s happenings to us, beyond the fourth wall. Josh was a nerd who thought briefcases indicated professionalism, loved board games (he also enjoyed improv games, like the alphabet-based “worst game ever” in “Treehouse”), and piloted remote control vehicles. Drake was an idiot who wanted to eat candy for dinner, didn’t know the difference between “con and cone,” and came up with the name, “St. Illness,” when tasked with creating a fake hospital.
Ultimately, they do manage to bond, even when their disparately wacky personalities seem destined for endless strife. When they become friends with their parallels (Drew and Jerry) to make the other jealous, it’s clear that Drake and Josh are more like one another than even they know. Adults respect neither of them (Police yell, “Grab that nerd!” to Josh. Mrs. Hayfer frequently regales Drake with her hatred) and they’re forced to hold onto each other in a world where it seems like neither of them are ever trusted by the figures they’re supposed to trust the most.
In “Treehouse,” Drake downplays his interest in the model rocket Josh had delivered. In “Josh Is Done,” Josh blows off studying for his chemistry exam so he can play ping pong with Drake. Without Drake, Josh tips too far into obsessive academic territory. Without Josh, Drake becomes a full-blown basket case. Their bond is necessary for enduring high school and they blend together as well as their mixed soft drink combination of Dr. Fizz and Root Beer.
There’s still plenty of room for the two brothers to rag on each other, though. For example, Drake’s utter lack of common sense results in many great Dorothy Zbornak-esque sarcastic rejoinders on the part of Josh. When Drake forgets to cut out the door in the treehouse, he suggests tying a message to a squirrel’s tail. (“The first thing I do when I see a squirrel is check its tail for messages!” Josh retorts.) Josh runs over Oprah Winfrey and says it’s his worst birthday ever and Drake asks why.
Although, Josh does get foolishly mistaken for the Theater Thug and Drake is the one who unwisely downs a Peruvian Puff Pepper. Neither of them are that world-weary and I doubt either of them would actually be able to put the treehouse together when it took both of them hours to remember that the drill that sealed them in the wooden box also had a reversible setting.
It’s Megan who is the Parker-Nichols sibling who actually knows what she’s doing in any given episode. Her endless schemes and villainous lairs are the result of years of evil plotting and technical know-how. At times, it seems like Megan’s character exists to antagonize Drake and Josh, but ultimately, they kind of ran in the same circles as her. Their parents (Nancy Sullivan and Jonathan Goldstein) are typical kids’ show parents in the vein of Jimmy Neutron, but their friends fit all types. Craig and Eric (Alec Medlock and Scott Halberstadt) are the local nerds. Gavin and Crazy Steve (Jake Farrow and Jerry Trainor) are the movie theater weirdos, employed by Helen (Yvette Nicole Brown). In real life, probably none of these people would get along with one another. But in the world of Drake & Josh, their circle is the same. Megan occasionally cares about her brothers. Craig and Eric occasionally get a win. Crazy Steve occasionally saves the day. In their world, they can be what reality would have never allowed them to be.
In that aforementioned “Honor Council” episode, things seem pretty dire for Drake. When he is initially suspended by Mrs. Hayfer (she sends him to the nurse, inexplicably), it seems like the kind of story that should have happened to Ferris Bueller. Instead, it’s quickly revealed that Drake was wrongly accused and the episode instead uses an O.J. Simpson-esque media circus to unpack the stigma attached to kids in school who try their best and are wrongly sent to discipline by the teacher before they are ever given a chance to prove their innocence. In a way, the episode has streaks of American Vandal in it and while the satire isn’t quite as nuanced as it is in the latter, it’s still a worthwhile discussion for the teenagers to experience.
Now, they would have never gone so far as to say that Drake was on a pipeline to prison or anything like that, but they do show some flaws in the education system when suspension is the first thing levied by the teacher in a false accusation.
Ultimately, “Honor Council” morphs and it’s about more than just Drake’s innocence. It’s also about the long-gestating rivalry between Mindy and Josh. Mindy had previously beaten Josh at the science fair (she cloned her dog and he built a big magnet) and was hellbent on continuously one-upping Josh at every turn. As a kid, the twist that Mindy was the one who put the car in Mrs. Hayfer’s classroom was as shocking as it was indicative of the many global injustices that awaited me in the future. There was hope for the future, too, though. After all, Drake was innocent. And Mindy and Josh eventually fell in love when she came back from whatever the Nickelodeon equivalent of rehab is.
It was my earliest exposure to the enemies-to-lovers trope that has now persisted into series like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The Mindy Project, and Never Have I Ever. The only twist bigger than Mindy framing Drake was Mindy loving Josh! All throughout the show, we, the audience, had seen Josh as a hapless nerd who was persistently unlucky in love. But he manages to date a girl he has genuine affection for and he does it all without any help from Drake. Josh has grown by this point (“Mindy’s Back”) where he can function as an independent teacher and forgive someone who had done nothing but tease and belittle him in years prior. Josh didn’t really need Drake anymore, but they were brothers and brothers choose each other every day.
That’s what makes the aforementioned “Josh Is Done” episode such a watershed installment for the series. Remember that chemistry exam Josh forewent? Well, on the day of the test, Drake couldn’t care less about it and he willfully blows Josh off after leaving the home to see about a girl (not Will Hunting style either), leaving Josh stranded without a ride to the test. When he misses the test as a result (and gets docked a full letter grade), Josh tells Drake that he’s not angry with him, he’s just “done with him.” No Sit ’n’ Bounce or Dr. Fizz changes Josh’s mind. He’s really just done with Drake.
Steadily, Drake’s life begins to fall apart while Josh flourishes like never before, but Drake refuses to believe it. He tells Megan that Josh needs him more than Drake needs Josh, but eventually he cannot ignore that this is simply untrue. It results in a chemical shower-soaked Drake interrupting the latest chemistry test to tearfully lament to Josh, “I need you way more than you need me.” Josh is left speechless and Drake runs from the classroom and when I rewatched the episode for this essay, I was just as floored as I was as a child.
Back then, I thought comedies were made for laughter and it was jarring when one made me feel genuine emotions in my eyes and my heart. To have Drake, who was a paragon of coolness akin to The Fonz for me, admit so devastatingly that he was lost without Josh, was a seminal instance in my own relationship with television. Never on The Amanda Show or on The Fairly OddParents or any Nickelodeon show I used to engage with had a character transformed so deeply from when we’d first been introduced to him. Drake Parker exists as one of the most dynamic teen characters ever created and his emotional breakthrough helped show me from a very young age that being kind, honest, and open with your loved ones was vastly more important than trying to be cooler than them or pretending you didn’t need them.
To this day, Drake & Josh, even with its laugh track and youth appeal, still shows how much heart it really had. Eventually, Drake and Josh reunite with no real dialogue of apology between them. Brothers can just pick up some ping pong paddles (or maybe even a really big shrimp) and things go back to normal. The love was never gone; they just needed to be reminded of it. And I’m reminded of that every year when I watch Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh with my family and the 2008 wrap-up film (read: gift) to the series ends with Drake, Josh, their family, and their friends having a cheese-based snowball fight with one another. It’s sweet to watch them have fun and to watch them play, not knowing what college or adult life holds for them. The camera zooms out to Backhouse Mike and they’re all in a snow globe, crystallized in perfect youth for all time. In that snow globe, there are no pangs of envy for lofted beds or stings of jealousy over wedding invitations. It’s just the same episodes I grew up with and saw hundreds of times. Each of them capturing a specific time of our lives on film. Each of them begging us for one more, “Hug me, brotha!”
