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Home > Television > Nickelodeon > The Fairly OddParents > Watching the Premiere of The Fairly OddParents
Note that I am referring here to the official
premiere of the series on 30 March 2001, which consisted of the two episodes The Big Problem!
and Power Mad!
aired together in a single half-hour timeslot; I am not referring to the 1998 airing of the pilot episode (entitled simply The Fairly OddParents!
), in which Timmy first acquires his fairies, which was broadcast as one animated short alongside two others in an episode of the Oh Yeah! Cartoons series. (My memories of seeing reruns of that pilot prior to March 2001 are rather clear, and with regard to the other Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts of The Fairly OddParents, depending on the particular episode my memories of it range from being quite distinct to almost non-existent.)
I can recall that, by the time of the premiere, as I had watched and enjoyed some (and probably all) of the Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts that had preceded the regular series, naturally I was pretty interested when I learned that a new episode was going to be shown, and so I took care to watch it when it aired at 8:30 P.M. on Friday, 30 March 2001. Compared to the Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts, this March 2001 premiere remains very vivid for me—or, at least, half of it does: of the two episodes, it is undoubtedly Power Mad!
(which begins at the 11:47 mark of the video I linked to) that I remember much better, and which made a far stronger impression upon me at the time. In truth, when in the course of writing this page I thought back on this event, I couldn't even recall what other episode was shown alongside Power Mad!
, and I had to resort to looking it up to determine that it was The Big Problem!
; even then, however, I could not summon any specific memories of viewing the latter during its premiere (though the episode itself is still very familiar to me, as over the years I have accumulated many viewings of it).
By contrast, with Power Mad!
I remember watching its premiere with complete attention as a kid; doubtless this was due to the focus of the episode being on not merely a video game, but a magical virtual reality video game. Although at that point I had already played many video games on my Windows 95 desktop PC, they had overwhelmingly been children's educational games with only 2D graphics, and I would not get my first video game console until (at least) two years later, so as a result I was extremely fascinated by, and certainly also desirous of, what Timmy, A.J., and Chester were experiencing. I found the episode to be incredibly futuristic and cool, as it depicted something which, at that time, I had not the means personally to experience, and even today it is still one of my favorites of the entire show—it is a true classic even amongst the other unquestionable classics of the first season of The Fairly OddParents, and after seeing it, my interest for the show, which up till then was not really firm, became very strong. It was Power Mad!
that truly got me hooked on The Fairly OddParents, and over the years, whenever I watched a rerun of this episode, I was invariably reminded of these feelings of captivation I experienced during its premiere over two decades ago.
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This page last modified on 17 May 2021.