The History and Influence of Clarissa Explains It All 

Despite probably not being this show's target demographic, being a young black male, I honestly I really enjoyed Clarissa Explains It All. The way she broke the 4th wall and talked to the audience made it seem like she was my friend. And I definitely thought she was very cool. It never felt like it was a "girls show" to me, it was just another show for kids, and I was a kid, so I thought it was for me.

It's almost like.... They treated her as a human with complex emotions and styles

I loved how the best friend came in through the window and everyone one was like, 'Hey Sam.' and went with it. Sure the parents would have preferred he came in through the front door. But it was never a big issue that a boy was alone in their daughters room. This kind of Platonic relationship between boys and girls wasn't shown very often in tv shows.

Ah, this was one of the shows I really really liked. "Look it's a girl, who is a lead character, is smart, has a computer, and expresses what's her mind!" discovering that the actress was actually only four years older than I was also put the show into that head space of "I can do that!"

Mitchell Kriegman : "NO PURPLE" Roses: Uses a purple background

The thing with the bedroom set makes sense. Its originally decorated when she's about 10 (pink, floral, mostly picked by the parents). By the time she's 13/14 she's going to want to personalise it (black checkers, hubcaps). Also a really lovely hint to the parents being cool with their teenager expressing their personality.

Hey I was on Clarissa as the friend "Olivia Dupris" and had a great time filming it. I'm glad to here your spin on it. I was definitely thinking recently that Clarissa was the "original influencer"!!!

The checkers really is such a simple yet perfect addition. Looks exactly like an alt girl finding her own style in her space. Made her room even more realistic while being stylized for tv aesthetic.

I remember seeing this show as a kid and thinking, “wow, girls can be cool too?” It’s so weird that girls in sitcoms were portrayed as so boring and one-dimensional, like they were springboards to incite situations rather than being people situations happen to. I imagine seeing Clarissa educated boys like me as much as it helped girls like Roses.

I spent this whole video staring at Clarissa’s outfits and wanting to copy them

I think this show is the reason why I cannot to this day understand why kids shows can’t seem to find grounding in reality. This was such a good show. I didn’t remember a single episode until you started talking about them and they all came back.

I’m surprised she didn’t mention one notable member of the writing staff: Suzanne Collins of Hunger Games fame. When I learned that it blew my mind.

Sometimes when I see shows that I've watched as a kid I'm freaked out about how young the actors look because apparently I was aging them up in my head as I age. That said I'm really glad to hear this show held up and actually broke some molds back in the day.

*Me, a person who's favorite color is purple:* "So, he's chosen death"

I recall showing my mom an episode of this where Clarissa's mom admitted she was wrong about something. I asked my mom why she couldn't be respectful to me the same way. it worked, my mom changed her attitude towards me for the better after that. it still wasn't perfect.

PushingUpRoses: "Clarissa was sarcastic and snarky." Daria: "Hold my coffee..."

How did we not get the"Sam's ladder" guitar riff even once in this episode???

"Apparent, haha A PARENT GET IT!!" Never change Roses, never change

Are you gonna do "the secret World of Alex Mac"? I watched a ton of all those shows as a kid

"I was easy to babysit before, and now I am impossible to babysit." - I can relate to that _so_ much.

As someone that grew up in a tiny bedroom with mostly bare walls, clarissa's room was a dream, maybe 2nd best room, number 1 being arnold's from hey arnold, that's a tough one to beat

My dad used to call it "Melissa Explains it All" just to drive me crazy. Then when she was on an episode of Nick Arcade and we learned her name actually was Melissa, my 4 year old mind was blown.

For reference, I'm 35. Clarissa Explains It All was one of my favorite shows as a kid. I loved the episode where she wanted to go to a Pearl Jam concert. Oh, you just mentioned that in the video, lol.

Just one tiny remark: Technically, an architect doesn't build a house. He merely designs it. A contracter builds it.

I see a lot of Clarissa in Roses. It's hard for me to explain it.

Boys loved Clarissa too. I just wanted to be her friend, I wasn't even dating yet. I vote for Sam's window ladder being 100% innocent. Their friendship also helped me understand and form platonic female friendships at that age. But she was smart and funny. Is the no purple rule why you put this on a purple background? Punk rock forever, break those rules! Clarissa is very white, but Doug tried to subtly convey that it didn't matter what color you were, even green or blue, people just were their characters.

I went out with a girl called Clarissa once, and on one occasion a ladder appeared at my window when we were in my room. It was only the window cleaner, but sadly, she didn't know the reference. Still, best moment of my life so far.

"What is she? Possessed by the devil?" It's a sure bet that the cameraman didn't have daughters...

Man the 90s, what a weird time. Still doesn't feel like it was almost 30 years ago.

"Exweeze-me? Baking powder?" aight, you cool

I remember my girls watching this program while I worked from my home office at my drafting table. They have children now. Years turn into decades amazingly fast...

YES! she was SO influential to me growing up. I emulated so much about Clarissa and it really influenced how I approached life as I grew up.

When i was a kid clarissa and sean seemed so much older. now looking back they look like children. LOL.

As a person named Jade I fell even harder in love with Clarissa during that first monologue of her’s in the pilot. This show was so representative of actual 1990s pre-teen/teen life - as crazy as that seems looking at it now.

I loved Clarissa Explains It All. She felt like a real person since she had feminine traits as well as masculine. Her relationship with Sam is also a big reason why I love platonic female/male relationships. They can and do exist!

I wanted her room so bad as a child. Clarissa was everything.

I remember being so impressed that Clarissa knew how to make her own video games! In fact, seeing that as a kid may have been the first time I realized that video games don't just appear out of nowhere, but are actually created by people. I wonder how many kids were inspired to become game designers because of her?

Carissa’s room is like the ultimate Generation X’s bedroom. Some kind of 20 something Generation X or probably be doing.

I was always so impressed by Clarissa's mad programming skills as a kid. I've been a professional software engineer for well over a decade now I still can't whip up a sick video game with the speed of Clarissa. She would have made a killing in the early days of the app store!

"Miniature shrubbery. I love this!" Alright, Clarissa's Dad is basically the best.

“I just build your house!” That tone sounds familiar Old vine: “I didn’t get no sleep cause of Y’all! Y’all not gonna get some sleep cause of me!” Hmmm...

I’m psyched that I happened to run into this channel! I was a 90’s kid, born in 1987 (Male). “Clarissa Explains It All” was one of my favorite shows growing up. I don’t remember feeling any type of way that the main character was female. Another one of my fav shows that had a female main character was “The Secret World of Alex Mack”. I was OBSESSED with Nickelodeon! The Orlando Studio with the live audience was amazing! Shows like “Guts”, “Wild & Crazy Kids”, “All That”, “What Would You Do?”, “Nick Arcade”, “Legends of the Hidden Temple”, “Are You Afraid of the Dark?”, “Pete & Pete”, “Salute Your Shorts”, “Hey Dude”, “Keenan & Kel”, “Double Dare”, “Hey Arnold”, “Doug”, “Rugrats”, “Rocko’s Modern Life”, “Ahhhh Real Monsters”, “CatDog”, “Angry Beavers”, “Rocket Power”, “The Wild Thornberry’s”, “Allegra’s Window”, “My Brother & Me”, “The Amanda Show”. Every Saturday, I couldn’t wait for “Snick”! Weekdays after school, I had my boy “Stick Stickly”! Kids today have no idea!!! My Father would always come in the room & jokingly make slick remarks making fun of whatever Nickelodeon show I was watching at the time, but I always noticed him sit down & watch “Clarissa Explains It All” anytime I had it on. He was interested & liked that show on the low lol.. I don’t know why this specific night sticks out to me so much, but I had a great childhood growing up. One of my favorite nights was a random night when I was about 7 or 8 in 1994-1995. It was snowing in early December, my family was decorating the house & the tree for Christmas, obviously. A marathon of “Clarissa Explains It All” happened to be on Nickelodeon. I’ll never forget how happy I was that night.. I know it’s random, but this video reminded me of that night lol..

Clarissa was my jam! I loved her style and everything about her. She was my icon which didn't always sit well with my parents. They wanted me to be what the studio wanted Clarissa to be. Great video. It really makes me want to go back and rewatch and share it with my kids. P.S. She used to go to the restaurant my husband worked at when she would visit her husband's family. She was very nice and a good tipper.

Hey Roses. This time you hit me from a soft spot. As a geeky male teen who had trouble interacting with the females of my age, I wished that I had a friendship like Clarissa & Sam. I had to wait until senior year of high school for something like that and I believe Clarissa taught me a lot about how to empathize with other people and form strong friendships and relationships.

What is your opinion of “The Secret World of Alex Mack”? I remember seeing a teenage girl accidentally gaining superpowers and the stress that is teenage-life enjoyable and quite dramatic. If you’re going to make a video about it in the future, check it out and share your opinions as well...!

Nickelodeon really needs to create a streaming service, they had all the best kid shows

Melissa Joan Hart also has this radiance that’s like impossible to look away from...like Daniel Radcliffe in the first HP, Culkin in Home Alone, Gosling in Goosebumps or even a young Billie Eilish, it’s like angelic energy or something. I cannot put my finger on it and never have been able to.

Man I had a crush on Clarissa when i was a kid, got to meet her, Sam, and her parents at Nickelodeon Studios in Florida back when the show was at its peak, one of the biggest highlights of my life.

I loved watching this show when I was a kid. This, Rugrats (pre-movies and baby Dill), and Pete & Pete were some of my absolute Nickelodeon favorites that helped me form the basis of understanding the human condition.

When I was in third grade , we had to hand out Valentines cards. My mom bought Clarissa themed cards for me, because I was a fan of the show. As a boy, i was embarrassed to admit I was fond of a “girl show,” so, I didn’t sign them. Oh, the 90’s

I'll never forget Clarissa Explains It All in my life. When I was a kid, that's what I was watching when my family came into the living room for the first ever family meeting we had ( And last ). I was told to turn off the TV and my parents informed us they were getting a divorce.

Cool fact: The kitchen and living room set for Clarissa Explains It All ended up being redesigned as the indoor set for Gullah Gullah Island. If you watch both TV shows back to back, you will see it. 🤯😲🤯😲

I'm a guy and I really enjoyed this show as a kid. As an adult I don't remember too much about the show but I do remember Clarissa's mom bringing up gingko trees a lot.

The Keith Haring art in this show still warms my heart.

I have had that "who's gonna build your house?" Thing stuck in my head for nearly 25 years.

"Of course girls aren't sweet little angels that don't burb or get into fu-" *ad plays* Wait what!? *ad ends* "-nto fights." Oh.

I knew in my heart as a kid that Clarissa was giving me something closer to how girls really we were than the rest of television was. So I didn't care when I got s*** for watching a "girls show". Carissa was giving me the MF goods.

I never appreciated how spot on the casting of Clarissa's mother was

oh my god the architect song! i haven't thought of that in years. my mom and i used to sing the "da house da house" part even way after i became an adult. thanks for the walk down memory lane :)

Weird. I remember thinking that clarissa “wore weird clothes” but I never really thought of it as being a style. I never really thought of her as being typical either. I always kind of assumed she was meant to be “weird”. But I’m not sure the concept of a style even occurred to me as a concept until 4 or 5 years later.

Clarissa Explains it all and Adventures of Pete and Pete were two of my favorite shows of that era. Both have the best themes too

This is barely connected to the video sorry but is it weird that I thought BOTH Sabrina's aunts were hot? O_O I was a weird kid.

“Whose favorite band is Vanilla Fudge?” _slowly raises hand_

For her getting the awesome name of Clarissa, Ferguson really got the short end of the stick on the name game. lol and her parents were incredibly open to a boy just going up a ladder to her room all the time.

I really liked the personal monologue. Most RU-vid essayists try to remove themselves from the material as much as possible.

That simple yet catchy theme song. I'd hear that from the kitchen and would appropriately find a bowl of cereal and the couch.

In the book Slimed: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age, Mitchell Kriegman explained the concept of Sam climbing in Clarissa's window removed the need for him to interact with Clarissa's parents downstairs and "was a way to get him in her bedroom and start interacting faster. And it was also a way to show that they had this real friendship that wasn't about anything sexual. They were friends, and I wanted to keep it pre-sexual."

Clarrisa: The Proto Daria On a more serious note, I do agree about the "girls don't fight boys" thing. Mainly cause my own sister actually got into a few fights with other boys back in school. lol

LOL my little sister's name is Paisley, and I agree.

I think the actors who played Clarissa's parents cameod in the first season of Sabrina as a married couple with a son who steals Salem "a Girl and Her Cat" or something like that. It wasn't shown in the UK until 1993/1994. A BBC Saturday morning kids variety show (live & kicking) showed it during intermissions of live action stuff. Nickelodeon didn't really take off in the UK until the late 90s. Prior to that is was really low budget neverending reruns of a very small library of programs on a loop, augmented with old Viacom owned non Nickelodeon cartoons. Clarissa definitely was a unique show. Although the UK had shows with teenage girls who were ambitious, opinionated before.. "press gang" amongst others. She was perhaps a refreshing anomaly in the USA however considering the things you mentioned.

I love this 90s fashion style and want it to come back 😂😂😂😂😂

I still get that song stuck in my head on a routine basis

This week on PushingUpRoses, at least 25% of every crush I had as a kid.

I too was a little girl when this show first came out and it was one of my favorites. Thanks to my job, I have a free Paramount+ subscription and I can rewatch my old favorite Nick shows. My father also passed away when I was little...when I got older I got more aloof and quiet. Listening to you feels like I am listening to an old friend, you have a new sub from me :)

I think it would be interesting to do an episode on the obscure late 80’s family sitcom “Out of this World”. It was about a teenage girl who’s dad was an alien, and she talked to him through a crystal box, since he was on his home planet. She had powers because of being half alien.

Born in 89, watched Nickelodeon almost exclusively. This one hit.

Clarissa was the first thing I ever watched on Nickelodeon. It was the "No TV" episode and it rated highly with me at the time as I'd never before seen anything like it. I ended up watching all the episodes and enjoying them. and then i moved on to Sabrina The Teenage Witch and my family enjoyed watching that as well.

This was a good overview but idk if the tgif lineup had “cookie cutter” fams. Maybe the family from Family Matters but they were a family of color and showing that united family was important. Full House had children being raised with no mom & 3 male parents and Step by Step was a pretty modern blended family of divorced and remarried parents and a live in cousin who was there so he wasn’t homeless. I guess the Dinosaur family was kinda cookie cutter but they were talking dinos sooo yeah .

Thanks so much for doing this video! I feel the same way you do about Clarissa! I once got to visit Nick Studios and just missed being able to go to a taping and honestly have never gotten over it! I’m also gutted that the whole show has never been released on DVD!

I posted this video on Melissa Joan Hart's Facebook page. Hopefully she will watch it.

"miniature shrubbery... I love this stuff." As someone whose choices where 'create tiny bushes from scratch' or 'buy tiny bushes premade', I can respect this mindset.

I was so obsessed with this show back in the day. Thank you for making this video.

I was 7 when Clarissa Explains It All came out. I loved it and looked to her like a big sister in a way as I was an only child. I loved her fashion and her room and I actually got to see the set when I went to Universal Studios one summer.

Mellisa Joan Hart, the first girl I thought was "cute".

I wanted nothing more than to have a compilation of the games the Clarissa made to play on my own PC

Ok, I'm a guy and I loved Clarissa! That and P&P were my tween life. I loved her computer, her funky room which I sort have styled my room after. This show had just fantastic writing. Great vid. Thanks for the memories.

Are you at all familiar with the pilot for "Clarissa", the sequel series? It did indeed pick up where the original left off with Clarissa in NY as she searched for a Journalism job. I think it was originally pitched to be on CBS since it was more 'mature' but they passed. I believe Nick did show it once, several years after the fact.

I wrote Clarissa Explains It All fanfic in my notebooks! Well, we'd call it fanfic today, but at the time I was five

"THESE ARE MEMORIES FROZEN IN TIME, PEOPLE!!!" 🙂

Awe, you're adorable. I'm from your generation, maybe a little older. But I was watching this. We went to Universal Studios for vacation one year and I got to SEE her room... from across the studio. It was a highlight of my life. Great video.

THANK YOU for doing this. such a great flash back! :)

*Network:* Clarissa is rude for speaking up against her mom! And girls would NEVER pick up a fight with a boy. *Me:* You’ve never even met a teenage girl before, have you? Edit: (Discovers what you’ve said about formative years.) (Remembers I spent half of mine isolated in the middle of nowhere with no friends, in an unfamiliar country) This explains way too much

Blossom’s hats were accurate though. So many terrible 90’s childhood photos of me in dumb hats.

I've always loved Clarissa since I was a kid. I've been enjoying re-watching all the episodes on Paramount+. I loved Clarissa's sharp wit and humor, her 4th wall breaks, all the charts/graphs/diagrams/news-style graphics that would appear on screen, all the random cutaway segments, and I especially love all the sound effects and background music. They'd often pay over-the-top dramatic music and sound cues, which really added to the humor and feel of the show (especially Ferguson's dramatic, pompous, presidential fanfare that would play whenever he spoke). Most of the episodes took place basically 99.9% of the time in Clarissa's home, but they were still very entertaining. The show still holds up today as a great early '90s time capsule that is funny and full of charm.

The episode of this show that sticks with me most after all this time is when Clarissa becomes an advice columnist, then has a crisis of confidence when someone who's deeply depressed writes in and she realizes she's not qualified enough to help. In a TV landscape where every problem was solved in 22 minutes, a kid admitting that some troubles really don't have easy fixes was striking.

I remember liking this show as a kid, even though I would have rather watched cartoons. Still would in fact.

I had never heard of Punky Brewster, but it looks like the 8 year old actress is now returning as the mom in a new show. I like that they went full circle.

Oh, I have been waiting for this one. Very well done! Thank you so much for this nostalgia. Cheers!

so happy you're 1.) a fellow Chicagoan, and 2.) talking about this show. I'm a boy but grew up watching Clarissa and she probably had the best 90's sitcom bedroom ever.

Technically architects design your house not build it.