U-Pick Live

Just a reminder, guys: she did nothing wrong.

U-Pick Live was a popular talk show on Nickelodeon during the early to mid-2000's and was the kid-friendly (and short-lived) competitor to Total Request Live. It aired for 2 hours every weekday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm (and then later, moved timeslots from 5pm until 7pm) and featured a diverse cast of practically unknown scrubs looking to make an impact on daytime television. Unfortunately, neither Disney Channel or Cartoon Network would hire them at the time... so of course, they had to make their paychecks due with Nick.

Cast

• Candace Bailey as herself – A sassy, slightly ditzy blonde (then later, a brunette) who was highly popular with older audiences. After U-Pick Live ended, Bailey faded into relative obscurity and has done little of note, though she did star in that show Jericho (no, not the wrestler), was the new co-host of G4's Attack of the Show! after Olivia Munn's departure and briefly dated Seth Green. Also, oddly enough, she was in a Burger King commercial and a Maroon 5 music video? Anyway... fast forward to years later, she is now a mother. She also used to have a talking belly button that sang Diana Ross's 'I'm Coming Out'.

• Brent Popolizio as himself – The token glasses-wearing nerd who secretly was a simp towards Candace. His segments on the show were rather unpopular, as he wasn't as entertaining of a host as Candace (or anyone else on the show). He used to be the drummer of former indie band Dead Fame, which has since been disbanded. Since then, Popolizio has faded away from the limelight, living a more private life and is now a father.

• Jeff Sutphen as Pick Boy – An adventurous, silly, and sometimes annoying guy who would select random audience members and make them pick prizes from the prize wall. Of course, millennials remember Sutphen as Pick Boy... but soon after U-Pick ended, he would then be introduced to gen Z as the host of BrainSurge. Since then, he has faded away from the spotlight, living a more private and grounded life.

• Antonio Neves as himself {2002-2004} – Best known by fans on the show as 'the floating head of a Hispanic guy', Neves wasn't shown much on the show, and he was known for being very annoying. He continuously ranted on the show about how Nickelodeon didn't appreciate Hispanics. He was the first to be fired because the network feared he would leak out too much information (mostly the reasons why Nick didn't renew hit shows such as Angry Beavers, Invader Zim and My Life as a Teenage Robot). Rumor has it that decades later, he's still protesting outside Nickelodeon studios demanding a reason why he wasn't featured much on the show (even though they had given him said reason a long time ago).

• Kevin Maher as Garbagio {2002-2004} – A Mexican Lucha Libre wrestler that somehow found his way on the show. He also didn't get much airtime, but when he did, it was lackluster matches against either food or toys. He currently is doing indie Mexican wrestling shows and is a part-time motivational speaker to teenagers. His topics mostly focus on 'Why Kids shouldn't ever work for children's TV networks' and 'How to wrestle against cookies & milk'.
• Tom Lamberth as Cow – Well... it's a cow. (Just kidding.) It's actually not a real cow, but some hobo dressed as one. The network was desperate for a mascot and they needed to find an actor to fit a cow suit they found in the studio fast. Ironically, several shows later, Nick decided the show didn't need a mascot since they weren't getting good ratings anyway, so they kept him around as a recurring joke.

Premiere

One day, on a boring and chilly afternoon... on October 14th, 2002, instead of Nickelodeon broadcasting their usual programming, U-Pick Live premiered. At first glance, the network's audience was wondering what the heck was this show that they were watching, but then out of curiosity, they watched it anyway. This continued for a few weeks, but soon thereafter, the show became just like the rest of the network's programming, a watered down, lame, childish, and immature show. The show was originally going to be hosted by Michael Jackson, but due to the show's main audience being children aged 6 to 12 and because of the allegations against him, instead, the network hired unknown actors; Brent Popolizio and Candace Bailey to host the show. (During the first season, Popolizio was 27 and Bailey was freshly 20.) They were soon joined by loud mouth, Hispanic Antonio (who soon adopted the role of Floating Head as a punishment by Nick for the problems he would soon cause the show), expelled Mexican Lucha Libre wrestler Garbagio, whom would regularly wrestle inanimate objects and food items instead of real people (due to his rather embarrassing win and lose record which was a 0-105), a hobo dressed in a cow suit, Cow, and Nickelodeon commercial slave and wannabe superhero, Pick Boy.

Run

In the beginning, the show was considered to be cutting-edge and ahead of its time. U-Pick was in fact the very first show on Nickelodeon to exclude the usage of slime unlike the program it ran against, Slime Time Live (which ran exactly 1 hour before). During the last few months of the show's run, it was actually considered to be purchased by Cartoon Network, but unfortunately because Nickelodeon had ownership of most of the shows, and because its cast was under contract to the network, they turned the offer down, and thus, the show died within a matter of weeks before its eventual end. At the time, Nick would brag about how much they had screwed over Cartoon Network out of a crap load of money.... that statement alone was so incredibly stupid not even 10-year-olds could like it. The show featured many enjoyable skits (even though they were pointless, irrelevant, and at times juvenile), and its cast was actually very entertaining (with the exception of a few of them). However, as the show continued its run, many problems began to happen and so many kooky shenanigans occurred. It began to adopt many pointless segments such as Candace's Corner; a segment in which Candace ate up 15 minutes of airtime talking about how much more important she was then the rest of the cast (it's a well-known fact that Ms. Bailey is a massive narcissist. In fact, she was ranked #40 in People Magazine's 100 Most Narcissistic Celebrities), 10 seconds with Brent; a segment in which Brent did his best to either sell himself as an important member of the show or to promote his indie emo band, and a list of other pointless segments. Soon after tensions between the cast began to grow. Candace would begin to increase the minutes in her segments and the other members began to fight with her during the show, Antonio began to call out Nickelodeon on its alleged "disrespect to the Latino community", and a shit load of other problems.

Dying Days

During the last year of its run, U-Pick became a massive disaster. The show had become so watered down, boring, immature, and included so many unscripted and explicit moments that it made the dying days of WCW look like good television. Nickelodeon made many attempts to bring the show back to its former glory. However, its glory days were when it had real competition, its segments didn't feel like they were dragging on, and its cast didn't act like a bunch of dumbasses. In the months that followed, U-Pick Live would receive its lowest ratings ever (although, their ratings were never that great) and plentiful lawsuits and complaints from its audience. Then one day, during one of Candace and Brent's segments, Antonio knocked both castmates out and delivered a harsh and vulgar promo. It contained practically every single curse word you can possibly imagine, many racial slurs, and a ton of other irrelevant nonsense. At first, people got lost in his entire rant that they didn't quite catch on what the hell he was so pissed off about, but then they realized it was yet another one of his long complaints about how Nick unappreciated the Latino community.

Here's a small and understandable excerpt of his near 20-minute rant:

“ You know, I'm so sick and tired of those smile-sipping bigots in the big office telling me I'm crazy. Almost every single day, when I walk in this god forsaken building, I'm constantly being told what to do and what to say when my two non-Latino castmates Candace 'Cracker' Bailey and Brent 'who the hell cares what your last name is' get to write their own segments and say exactly what they want to say. Even the freaking masked wrestler dude who doesn't even appear on this show for more than 5 minutes and wrestles freaking cookies and milk, and Pick Boy who is always incredibly annoying, both have more freedom than me. Well, I'm so sick and tired of those morons in the main office telling me what to do all the time. They always tell me that I'm totally insane and tell me they aren't racist towards the Latino community. But, BUT, if that's the case, what the heck happened to GOOD Nickelodeon shows like The Brother's Garcia, Taina, Dora the Explorer, you know all those shows? ”

Needless to say, Antonio totally misunderstood the situation for what it really was. Nick wasn't prejudice to him for being Latino, they were basically just giving him his daily working routine, but because he went on air and acted like a nutcase, the network punished him by making his character on the show a "floating head". Following this decision, the company sent him a letter. It said the following.

“ Now you got a reason to be upset, haha! ”

Antonio later left Nickelodeon in fall of 2004.

Meanwhile, Brent treated the show's audience to yet another unhinged and completely unscripted moment. However, unlike Antonio who ranted because he was too dumb to understand the real situation, he crashed out and sobbed like a baby on live television for millions of people to witness. Basically, he kissed the collective ass of the network and begged them to treat him as good as they treated Candace and to increase the time of his segments. However, before he could continue, his crying session was cut straight to commercial.... it lasted 2 minutes.

Soon enough, U-Pick Live was old news, and Nick quickly replaced its timeslot with more reruns of SpongeBob SquarePants. Because of course, when in doubt... there's always SpongeBob.

Death

Sadly (well... not really), on May 27th, 2005, Nickelodeon made the decision to cancel U-Pick, and the 401st (& final) episode aired. The reason behind the decision was because Candace didn't want to renew her expired contract. Nick HQ was devastated that the actress chose not to renew it. Evidently, Bailey thought she was too good for the show (but, later in her career, that mentality would soon bite her in the ass). The other cast members (mostly Brent) said they would gladly renew their contracts, but Nick decided not to bother since they weren't that important. After the series finale wrapped filming, Brent cried like a baby as security dragged him out of the studio. Antonio had already left the company a few months prior, so he dodged the completely creepy last moments of the show. Jeff happily accepted a contract by Nick to do a line of commercials for the company and to make a slew of cameo appearances in their award shows & events as Pick Boy (a decision he would ultimately regret). Garbagio returned to Mexico to work some indie Lucha Libre wrestling shows, and he would go on to lose to the likes of Rey Mysterio, La Parka, Psychosis, and Nacho Libre. Cow quietly left the show, and he was never heard from again (He joined the Surreal Life, but people who star in that show are never heard of again because that's exactly the point of their careers). Nick closed the doors on the once interesting and cutting-edge tv show after something, something years (ugh...who the fuck cares? Everyone lost interest after the first 2 years of the show).