All That - Format

Format

Borrowing heavily from the 1980s Canadian hit You Can't Do That on Television, All That featured a format of cold open, sketch-comedy pieces and a musical guest in its first six seasons and the final season. The cold opens took place in the green room five minutes before the show was to start. Usually, Kevin the Stage Manager (played by Kevin Kopelow) tries to rouse the cast members to preparation for the show by announcing "Five minutes!". Some of these cold opens included playing spin the bottle and having to kiss a cactus, a squid, or a chair; Kel Mitchell reenacting a fight on Kopelow; and guest star Mark Curry tying up Kenan Thompson and wearing his Superdude costume. All other seasons featured a weekly host introducing and occasionally participating in the various sketches and a musical guest, a format pioneered by Saturday Night Live.

Many of the sketches were original material, although Bill Cosby, Roseanne, Steve Urkel, Ross Perot, and Bill Clinton, were impersonated by Kenan Thompson, Katrina Johnson, Angelique Bates, and Gabriel Iglesias, respectively. The humor was very pre-teen-oriented; Josh Server would do things such as eat his own dandruff, eat a cereal called Lucky Germs or Fruit Poots, or appear on stage wearing only his underwear. From Season 7 onward, the humor was geared more toward younger viewers than the first six seasons.

In the first three seasons, All That used mostly urban musical guests, but in later seasons aimed for more pop and rock acts.