Growing up part of Generation X, the very benchmark of teenage comedy for me was The Breakfast Club, the tale of three boys and two girls, not diverse in any sort of ethnic sense but still very different from one another, who spend a detention Saturday bonding and growing together (except Bender — I don’t think he evolved at all). Since then, every few years I have to bare my teeth at people who claim that this movie is “the new Breakfast Club” or that group is “the new Brat Pack.”

But nothing will ever equal it, no matter how many pies are being defiled. The thing about that movie is that it’s as much for teenagers as it is ABOUT being a teenager, and in that sense it helped an entire generation feel like we were seen and heard and that we were…”normal,” for lack of a better word. It changed the game completely in terms of teenage entertainment. Bare all that in mind when I say that cult Canadian cartoon series 6Teen did the same 20 years later.

Things are a little more even this time around. We meet six diverse teenage friends, three boys and three girls, as all of them start a new job in the local shopping centre, an anachronistic monument to spending sprees probably modelled after the gargantuan West Edmonton Mall. The boys’ side counts Jude the skater dude, who may be much wiser than his dimwitted demeanour suggests; Wyatt, the coffee drinker whose talent for music is inversely proportional to his luck in love; and Jonesey, the womanizer who came here to chew gum and break rules.

Their girls counterparts are Nikki, a ’90s-style angry girl who won’t take nonsense for an answer; Jen, the Olympic hopeful but romantic desperate; and Caitlin, who’s as cute and bubbly as the rest of them are not. Together they tackle the most confusing time of their lives: first loves, parental pressure, social disasters and a Chris Walken-like rent-a-cop who has it out for them.

At first glance, the main cast of characters may appear cliché. But pretty quickly we sense depth and purpose in everything they say and do, which directly leads to the show’s success in using broad comedy and irresistible laughter to tackle serious issues of every day teenage life. Such as the boys trying to navigate the three girls having synchronized periods. Or frenemies having to share a bathroom when forced to become step-siblings. Or the hopeless romantic who has to keep working with and for the dream girl who dumped him for an older guy.

It might seem silly from the perspective of a full-grown 9-to-5 laborer, but keep in mind those silly little things could mean the end of the world when we were still high schoolers. Like other great animated kid shows (the early Spongebob Squarepants seasons come to mind), 6Teen provides a whole lot for just us adults to burst out laughing (watch Spongebob Seasons one to three, and try telling me ALL the jokes are meant for young children).

Launched on Canada’s Teletoon channel in 2004, 6Teen was an immediate hit with a Season One average viewership of 2.5 million for a teen-targeted cartoon in CANADA. As a comparison, the CW network in the U.S hasn’t had a single show reach the 1M mark in at least two seasons. It was quickly sold on the U.S. market where it only banked 1.8M viewers for Nickelodeon, which dropped it after 6 months, to be later picked up by Cartoon Network which ran it for three years.

6Teen ended its run after four seasons, two 45-minute specials, and multiple awards including a Daytime Emmy in 2009 for Outstanding Original Song. However, even when celebrated for its relevance in Canada, storylines that dare tackle more directly issues like teen sexuality prompted the U.S. market to censure or entirely dismiss a whopping 24 of the show’s 95 episodes. Wanna watch it NOW, dontcha?!

The show’s animation style almost appears, in hindsight, as testing grounds for producer Fresh TV, who launched, on the heels of 6Teen’s final season, their hugely popular Total Drama franchise, using similar character designs (and sharing a voice cast). The same producers offered soon after a sort of spiritual spin-off called Stoked, which was about young adults working at a tropical seaside resort, but the quality and popularity never came close to the original.

A series of short PSAs were produced starting in 2018 to raise awareness toward current social issues, like registering to vote or masking up during the pandemic, which prompted a since-defunct hope that the show would be revived. This hope got further squashed when cancel culture came calling for Jude’s voice actor, Christian Potenza (who also lent his chords to Total Drama’s villainous host Chris McLean) with some quite disturbing allegations and accusations. He was promptly replaced on Total Drama to polarizing results, and no one wants to hear Jude played by someone else (okay, yes, I LIKE the new Rick & Morty voices, but Jude is Jude, period).

The one, absolute highest praise I can offer 6Teen is that it is endlessly rewatchable. Some series make you crave to know what’s going to happen next, yet once you do you have no real interest in revisiting the whole thing. Gems like this one make you wanna come back over and over and keep hanging with this bunch to see them relive their misadventures countless times. In MY household, 6Teen has quickly replaced background music, always playing on my PC while we go about our daily lives, knowing at any moment we can stop and enjoy a genuine smile thanks to those young Canadian troublemakers. Best part is the whole thing is free on YouTube courtesy of the Retro Rerun channel and on Tubi when they feel like it.