Double Dare is 40 years old!

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This week, Nickelodeon’s Double Dare turned 40. The first of 65 season-one episodes premiered on October 6, 1986, with a new episode every evening at 5:30.

I don’t know how it’s possible that it’s been four decades, because I started watching when I was around 10 or so, and in my head I’m still about 27. But I’m bad at math.

Double Dare’s iconic physical challenges looked like so much fun, and I’m sure they were the start of my love of competition reality TV challenges. That obstacle course slide! Picking the giant nose!

Double Dare was also a show that I could have been part of: not only were they casting kids my age, but they filmed in Orlando, just four hours from where I lived. Viewers could become the show’s stars.

If you’d like to revisit the 1980s and 1990s via Double Dare, you can find episodes scattered around online, but Paramount+ has:

• The reboot of Double Dare, which has Marc Summers as co-host/announcer and is pretty great!
• Some episodes from the first season

I’m glad the anniversary has brought attention to the show and host Marc Summers’ work—and all that he went through. (People talked to Marc about OCD, for example, and the NYT did a Q&A with Marc.)

Since Double Dare ended in the early 2000s, Marc worked in TV—and was on TV, as host of Food Network’s Unwrapped.

I was thrilled when I spotted him and producing—and vacuuming—on another Food Network show. But Double Dare felt forgotten, at least until the reboot.

A decade ago, before the new Nickelodeon show, I went to Indiana to see and report on Marc’s one-man show about his life. I wrote about him for The L.A. Times:

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• Andy Dehnart is a writer and teacher whose reporting and criticism has appeared on NPR and in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Vulture, The Atlantic, Salon, Playboy, The Daily Beast, and other publications. Andy’s work on reality blurred has won an Excellence in Journalism award from NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists (2023) and an L.A. Press Club National A&E Journalism Award (2021), and was honored with Florida Society for Professional Journalists awards (2015, 2021, 2023). He’s president of the Television Critics Association, and a member of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and The Authors Guild. He holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction writing and literature from Bennington College, and his memoir-in-progress, I’m Here to Make Friends, was longlisted for the 2022 First Pages Prize.

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