Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, ID's four-part docuseries about the abuse suffered by various Nickelodeon employees during the reign of mega-producer Dan Schneider—including Drake & Josh star Drake Bell, who revealed his own horror story involving pedophile staffer Brian Peck—painted an ugly picture of a toxic culture and the wreckage it caused in the lives of both children and adults.
Now, following its debut as well as ensuing responses from those at the center of its tale (including Schneider), the exposé receives a brand new fifth installment dubbed “Breaking the Silence” that aims to drop more bombs about the network’s heyday. What it offers up instead, however, is a combination of platitudes and filler that’s mainly notable for its overarching air of self-congratulation.
“Breaking the Silence,” which premiered Sunday night, opens with a montage of TV news clips and headlines (including from this site’s review) that convey the shock and outrage which greeted Quiet on Set. This set-up adequately justifies why we’re receiving a follow-up to co-directors Emma Schwartz and Mary Robertson’s series, and also suggests why it’s such a hastily assembled addendum.
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Eschewing its predecessor’s straightforward non-fiction form for a talk-show configuration, it features host Soledad O’Brien chatting with some of those who participated in Quiet on Set as well as an additional former Nickelodeon player who’s “speaking out for the first time.” Alas, don’t hold your breath for revelations from that individual, who turns out to be All That alum Shane Lyons, since he has nothing to add to this saga except a paltry anecdote about how, once in a backstage green room, on the heels of a conversation with others about blue balls, Peck asked Shane if he knew what blue balls were. In response, Shane said that he assumed they were racquetballs.
This is what passes for fresh must-see material in “Breaking the Silence,” as the remainder of its time is spent rehashing things we’ve already been told. In his first official interview since the series’ premiere, Drake Bell speaks from Mexico City via Zoom to O’Brien, who tosses him one softball after another.
Bell admits that “the choice to participate [in Quiet on Set] was a tough one,” and that it was nice to hear (on an audio podcast) that Boy Meets World star Will Friedle now regrets his decision to go to court in support of Peck. He confesses that he hasn’t personally heard from anyone else who stood by Peck during that traumatic period, and he reiterates that—contrary to others’ portrayal of him—Schneider was “really the only one from the network who even made an effort to help me and make sure I was OK.”
Moreover, he cursorily praises his Drake & Josh co-star Josh Peck and blames journalists for letting Nickelodeon’s abuse go unpunished, declaring, “I think there being no media coverage played a huge part in that.”
“Breaking the Silence” presents a never-before-seen clip from Quiet on Set in which Bell talks about how he processed his ordeal via music (which is his “diary” and his “therapy”). Yet when it comes to his own seemingly relevant pedophilic scandal—he pled guilty in 2021 to felony child endangerment for grooming a 15-year-old girl—the episode pretends that it never happened and lets the actor gloss over it with generalities like, “There was a lot of things happening in my personal life that were really difficult.” Bell’s segment wraps up with a clip from his new music video “I Kind of Relate,” which directly deals with his abuse, thereby underscoring the soft-and-cuddly nature of this entire affair.
Elsewhere, “Breaking the Silence” checks in with All That veterans Giovonnie Samuels and Bryan Christopher Hearne, who make negative comments about the snippets shown from Schneider’s apology video, restate that many of the jokes on All That and like-minded Nickelodeon comedies were inappropriate, and not-so-subtly imply that Schneider and company were racist—because Giovonnie and Bryan were the only two Black people on the show during their tenure—until O’Brien outright prods them into agreeing that they felt like “stereotypes and tokenized roles.”
Hearne is subsequently joined by his once-estranged mom Tracey so they can both discuss how watching the docuseries was a “lightbulb moment” that showed them that their fractured relationship was all caused by his firing from All That. Both treat this as a nasty slight (Hearne says he now understands that “these folks had it out for y’all”), and they’re similarly offended by a never-before-seen clip of The Amanda Show’s Raquel Lee Bolleau recounting her displeasure with a gag in which Amanda spit water in her face. “That’s racist. Period,” says Tracey, and per the proceedings’ superficial formula, O’Brien makes no effort to ask any follow-up question.
“Breaking the Silence” adds nothing to Quiet on Set save for some repetition, a few soundbite-y claims that it can’t be bothered to investigate, and obvious back-patting. As such, it mainly plays as a victory lap—and thus fittingly ends with Hearne making sure to note that he appreciates Schwartz and Robertson for being “real people” and wanting “to get the truth out.”
