Edit : I stole this comment from a post of r/askreddit or something
I’m trynna find the comment, as I find it I will link it
Edit2 here is the original comment https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/n0jxcp/youve_been_kidnapped_30_mins_later_your_kidnapper/gw7c28e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3


The premise was basically four best friends discover that the Evil Dr. Merkin is planning to release his Y2K bug into cyberspace (aka, the Cyber Zone). Picture a Great Value boy band style of archetypes: A bad boy, a jock, the prankster (me), and the brainy one. The brainy one, Takeshi, builds a portal to the Cyber Zone, so we could battle the computer bugs in a very poor CGI world (basically Reboot/VR Troopers/Code Lyoko). We each had a specialty, and a color scheme, where I was cast as the green Bugchaser, Louis “Snot” Bukowski, who was equipped with a slime cannon and other gross bug traps, stink bombs etc.

There were a ton of ongoing gags, particularly between myself, Takeshi, and our big sister Melissa. If you’ve been keeping up with the names so far, you may have noticed that Takeshi, who was the yellow Bugchaser, has a significantly more Asian sounding name than “Louis” or “Melissa” Bukowski. This is never explained, this is never even addressed, even with 13 episodes shot and 26 planned, it wasn’t even touched upon. Anyways, our big sister would usually tease him for being a dork, or get mad at me for being gross, and she’d always get her cumuppence for being an outright bitch. She’d get zapped fucking with electronics, have sink bombs go off on her, and even got sucked through the portal into the infamously disgusting “cyber slug zone”. You know how each Walking Dead episode had that one scene that was just gratuitously disgusting for no other reason than to try and one up the previous episode? That became a thing with Melissa, but it took a far more skeevy route.

Firstly, let’s cut to the chase (get it?). You’re probably more wondering what happened to this show and my career. The show was straight up cursed. It was supposed to go along with an arcade shooter and Sega Dreamcast game, with basically no other merchandising. The death of arcades and the Dreamcast flopping nixed that. The blue Bugchaser, Johnny (the jock wielding a long ranged bug zapper) was paralyzed while his mother was driving drunk, and wheelchair bound right before the fourth episode was shot. They told him they were just gonna “roll with it”, but ended up replacing him. I won’t forget the heartbreak on his face when he showed up to the set only to find out he had lost more than his mother, and use of his legs, but the chance to defeat Dr. Merkin and be the hero kids need. The animation department was never given the funding they needed to begin with, but also suffered a “computer virus” that required them to turn in their machines to the police. The resulting CGI was about 5 years behind its time, and couldn’t grab kids’ attention.

The characters were barely likeable to boot. Takeshi was a nerd, and his main job was to do technical stuff for the group and he didn’t even get a cool weapon. Not that the weapons were terribly cool with Disney trying their best to avoid anything too gun-like (the red Bugchaser had a fucking flyswatter). Johnny had been replaced after 3 episodes, meaning they reshot a couple scenes where they could, redubbed lines, and ultimately cut a lot of material featuring that character. I was the most well liked character by far, being the zany little scuzzball that I was. My mom was fucking the producer, so I think my character got a little bit more to work with. That, and how my character played off of Melissa.

You know how Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider has a little girl foot fetish? Our producer, Mitch Michaels, had a sticky little girl fetish. It was only mildly noticeable on screen, maybe her shirt was just slick enough with green slime to make out her bra line, maybe it was the way she spit take’d the slug mucous, but it was way worse on set. Mitch put way too much time into reshooting these scenes, which often required multiple wardrobe changes (just off set too, not in a dressing room). I won’t bore you with those details, because there was also quite a bit of racism on set.

Aside from the very on-the-nose casting of an Asian kid as the yellow Bugchaser, Johnny had it worse as an African American. Takeshi was typecast as a nerd, but Johnny was supposed to be the bad boy, with a very negative thug like personality. They didn’t change it because of complaints though, no, they changed it when Mitch was informed that, much like the red power ranger, the red Bugchaser was sure to be the most popular. That’s when the one black kid was essentially demoted from red to blue. When Johnny 1 was replaced by Johnny 2 and they were forced to do reshoots and edits, something was said to the effect of “they’ll never even notice if it’s a different black kid, they’re all the same.” All he saw was a black face filling a roll; he even started making us call eachother by our character names off camera, until there was no Johnny 1 and Johnny 2, but just Johnny. I don’t even remember the original Johnny’s real name.

But I do remember the money shots. So Melissa was being pushed into increasingly sticky situations, with way more takes of spare footage than any slapstick gag deserved. Mitch insisted that they were the main selling point of the show, and even started using the term “money shot” each episode. On the episode after the midseason finale, we were supposed to fight an invisible spider bug in the “dark web”. The solution was for me to spray glow in the dark slime on it so the others could see it. The prop gun was a unique custom build that was way more important than the modified supersoakers I was used to (the premise was that we had janky Kids Next Door style gear that was “digimorphed” into cool equipment when we went through the portal). I wasn’t allowed to goof around on set with this custom prop because it had to function just so. Melissa walked on the set and was given the half assed setup of blowing dust off of her diary (there was a subplot there about stealing it, losing it in the cyber zone, then having to go back and fight some dust bunnies for it or whatever), it gets blown in my face, I sneeze, and accidentally set off the glow goo gun. This squirted a thick, creamy rope of pale colored goo directly on her face.

She tastes it.

“Is this frosting?”

End scene.

There was a hushed murmur around the room, as Mitch stood there almost wheezing. He had the type of face that a starving man gives a hibachi chef as he waits for a shrimp to get tossed his way. There wasn’t a second take, the scene died on the cutting room floor without ever being matched with a laugh track; it died as stark and naked as Melissa’s innocence. We were all hurried out of the studio by flustered parents, whose reaction made us feel a sort of nervous shame. The cumshot heard around our world.

The show was cancelled shortly thereafter, having only half a season air. Mitch was fired, and there was a huge class action lawsuit based around a pedophilia case. The computers that were taken by the authorities had child porn on them, many of which were pictures of child actors. My mom got too full of herself and wouldn’t take the settlement, insisting on a lead role for me instead, but her mouth couldn’t influence them nearly the way it influenced Mitch. My role was half voiceover work, and my character usually wore goggles even in the real world, so my face was mostly forgettable. This would be the end of my show business career until my work on an adult film set years later…

…but that’s a different story.