Peas and Slip-Ups Just Part of Mix in Live ‘All That’

Amanda Bynes thinks that Ms. Piddlin’s peas will be somebody’s downfall when Nickelodeon’s “All That,” one of the top-rated non-animated children’s series, marks its 100th episode on Saturday with a one-hour special, “All That Live,” to be telecast live from Hollywood.

“Everybody slips in the peas,” said the 12-year-old leading lady of the relentlessly slapstick show, which features a troupe of seven males and two females ranging in age from 11 to 20 who perform sketches built around a regular gaggle of bizarre characters. One of them, Kenan Thompson’s rotund Ms. Piddlin, is a school cafeteria worker insanely obsessed with the slippery green vegetable that she hurls by the bowlfuls at any of her diners who hint that they don’t particularly care for them.

Slip-ups are normally edited out. This time, with nothing but the FCC-required 7-second delay between such childish antics and millions of viewers, the likelihood of unintended mayhem looms large.

Thus, the noted director of two-hour live specials (“Billboard Awards,” “MTV Movie Awards”) Bruce Gowers was brought in for the occasion.

“I’ve told everybody, ‘Learn your lines!’ ” Gowers barked.

“Yeah, we have to get into the live-show mentabolism,” Bynes said with a giggle, garbling the word between on-set school and rehearsals at Nickelodeon at Sunset Studios, where the weekly show is taped before a live audience.

Bynes’ signature sketch is “Ask Ashley,” in which she reads viewers’ letters, always flying into a rage over inane requests for advice about school and family problems. The show won’t do President Clinton-Monica Lewinsky jokes, but it pokes great fun at anything and everything else that drives kids nuts.

The “Ashley” bit is an unedited three-minute speech, which on a live broadcast is a fair test for any actor. “I’m so glad when I get through it without messing up,” Bynes said.

Though a live show starring kids is indeed a novelty these days, many TV veterans recall when it was all live--and when miscues were worked into the comedy, said Charles Kappleman, CBS West Coast senior engineering vice president, an assistant stage manager 45 years ago on “The Red Skelton Show.”

“I’d be squatting down by the side of the set with the special-effects man, who’d have his wires and stuff, and if something didn’t work right, Skelton would walk over to us, laughing, right on camera and say, ‘What happened, guys?’ ” Kappleman said.

Still, there was unbearable pressure at times. On a few occasions the musical act would have to play on until the comic could be sent into the next sketch, Kappleman recalled.

Maybe the “All That” cast has been feeling pressure too, but series executive producer Brian Robbins, in contrast, has seemed fairly sanguine. Robbins--as a child he played Eric Mardian on ABC’s “Head of the Class”--went through this as a video jockey in the early years of MTV.

“I used to host live spring break specials,” Robbins said. “They’d say you have three minutes to fill until the next video, so make something up.”

Robbins has used his MTV connections to make “All That” a showcase for the hip-hop and R&B; artists who close each episode. For Saturday, he has lined up Busta Rhymes and Lauryn Hill, who will sing a song from her concert at Universal Amphitheatre. Also guest-starring will be Melissa Joan Hart of ABC’s sitcom “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,” and--before that--Nick’s “Clarissa Explains It All.”

Thompson will also reprise a “Good Burger” sketch with Kel Mitchell as the lovably dim fast-food workers. Long an “All That” staple, “Good Burger” was spun off into a feature film. Other favorite sketches--notably “Ear Boy,” whose huge ears set the stage for a sendup of childhood anguish over fitting in--will be revisited with a collection of clips. Guest stars over five seasons have included Chris Farley, John Leguizamo and Sinbad.

Among the new sketches, lead writers Heath Seifert and Kevin Kopelow will have series regular Danny Tamberelli--Little Pete on the Nick series “Pete & Pete”--in a taped segment dashing through traffic and a series of unlikely obstacles trying to reach the theater on time.

And in case of calamity, Kopelow said, the show has a safety net. In a turn that even Red Skelton would approve of, Mark Saul will trot out as Rhinehart the Monkey Boy and tap-dance until the situation is back in hand.

* “All That Live” airs at 9 p.m. Saturday (tape-delayed for the West Coast) on Nickelodeon. The network has rated it TV-Y (suitable for very young children).