Original subtitles

[static]

Welcomed to "Discontinued."

I'm four-time Fangoria Chainsaw Award winner

and Bruce Campbell enthusiast...

Bruce Campbell.

I'm transmitting from my completely

computer-generated bunker in the year 2037,

where A.I. reigns supreme in a nightmarish landscape.

This show is coming to you from the future,

to cast our gaze upon relics lost in time

so we can cherish them.

[echoing] Welcome to "Discontinued."

[bell tolls]

[Bruce] Ever since we humans hauled our hairy butts

out of caves...

Watson, come in here.

[Bruce] ...we've shared the world with technology.

Computer, do you like "Evil Dead" movies?

[Bruce] We let them in but couldn't get them out.

[computer]Not your parts.

Just the Evil and Dead bits.

[Bruce] And these A.I. a-holes took everything!

Everything, that is, except for the stuff

that was before their time.

So, here I am, Bruce Campbell, sealed inside a cave

with the last shreds of humanity's glorious past...

the stuff we discontinued.

Inside my bunker, I've got a butt-load of relics

that were discontinued,

and I've contacted a crew of reporters

to help me understand why these treasures fell by the wayside.

To do it, they'll prowl the streets of the past.

That's my past, your present, Elvis' future.

Wah-whoa!

♪ Action Park ♪

[Bruce] From a water park run by kids...

It was also called "Class Action Park"

'cause it got sued so many times.

[Bruce] ...to the show that put trash TV on the map...

The most toxic.

Unfiltered.

Snapshot into people's [bleep]-up lives.

[Bruce]...and a beauty device

straight out of a slasher movie.

It's like a torture device for your face.

[Daniel] Ow! It hurts!

Our first topic takes us back

to the innocent early days of the Internet --

before trolls, spam-bots, and Jake Paul.

It was a time when AOL Instant Messenger was king.

A.I.M. was born in the late '90s,

and it started the rapid-fire

social-media communication craze,

becoming the backbone of all Internet chatter.

Let's get ready to LOL like it's 1999.

[Andre] Thanks, Bruce. In the '90s,

the most popular way for America to get online was...

America Online, or AOL.

And AOL had A.I.M.

O-M-G. A little help here.

AOL Messenger and a dial-up and that --

-Mm-hmm. -All that?

AOL Instant Messenger, or A.I.M. --

or "AIM" if you're cool --

is one of the first instant-messaging apps,

and it was free for anyone who could stand

a 3-to-15-minute wait time to get online...

plus hear that beautiful hold music.

-[imitates modem whining] -[modem whining]

[Andre]Any day now. Here we go.

Before the DMs, it was IMs.

[Andre]Ugh! Finally!

[woman] America Online. It's like one big family.

[Andre] AOL Instant Messenger allowed users

to catfish each other in chat rooms

and message their friends with shorthand nonsense

like "LOL," "TTYL," and "IDGAF."

They need to have an acronym breakdown

because now it's gotten crazy.

GTFOH -- get the [bleep] outta here.

It really changed the way that we are able

to actually have chat messaging.

[Andre]A.I.M. was a big deal

and reached 60 million users and put the...

-[imitates I.M. ding] -[Andre] ...on the map.

-[imitates I.M. ding] -[Andre] Opening the door...

-[imitates door opening] -[Andre] ...to never

leaving your house again.

[girl] I spend at least three hours a day.

[woman] What do you do?

I get to talk to people in the safety of a seat

instead of going out and actually having to

be myself around people.

I think the success of A.I.M.

is your fresh, sassy, sexy user name.

[Andre] Spit it out.

That's what I'd tell people, and then they would beat me up.

[Andre] Jeffrey Dahmer has entered the chat.

With your screen name dialed in,

you could safely LOL -- heck, ROFL --

or even drop some advice, IMHO.

A.I.M. was the first time I saw something

that you're not supposed to see.

It was ratchet stuff going down on AIMs.

Half the stuff, I cannot talk about.

First of all, it was the second place

that creepers could talk to kids openly.

I'm not gonna say the first. Or I will -- it's Church.

[Andre]A.I.M. was a safe space

to share your deviant thoughts with total strangers.

Never talked to a single person I knew on A.I.M., no.

Only creepers and weirdos.

I didn't really use it for what it was for, like,

for instant messaging your friends and stuff

'cause I didn't have any of those when I was a kid.

[Andre] Oh, TARV94!

But I would do their chat group things,

which is super dangerous.

[Andre]Because you never knew

exactly who you were chatting with.

Oh, man. How many girls did I ask out

on Instant Messenger -- like, "Do you wanna be my girlfriend?"

And then they'd just go, "No."

Yeah, if you're wondering where my insecurities came from...

But if you really wanted to make someone squirm,

AIM allowed you to leave an away message while you were AFK.

My favorite were the passive- aggressive away messages,

"I'll be away for the next hour because I'm crying

'cause I'm mad at somebody and I won't say their name,

but they didn't get me anything for our anniversary."

And it's like, "Megan, we've been 'together'

for two weeks. Relax."

A.I.M. offered limitless ways to torment other users,

and it was free, but free stuff doesn't usually make money.

[man] In the case of AOL, they are putting a lot of stress

and a lot of load on their central servers

because they essentially have all the six million people

coming in through one main pipe.

AOL just couldn't justify

such an expensive cost to keep AIM up.

[Andre]And once cellphones could text,

no one wanted to carry

a 600-pound computer in their pocket.

In December 2017, A.I.M. finally left the chat

-but left the door open. -[imitates door opening]

It really set the precedents for chat as we know it today.

Yeah, if you're asking me if A.I.M. was the beginning

of the end of society as we know it, yeah, absolutely.

And we should go back in time. We should kill Hitler.

But number two on the list is we should kill AOL.

AOL Instant Messenger will always be remembered

as the Dark Web in text.

Back to you, Bruce. Blooooo!

Thanks, Andre, and now it's time for another

"Discontinued in the Wild" from the past in the present.

My special correspondent Andrea Lopez

is out on the streets of L.A. with some fun trivia.

You da bomb, Bruce.

We are in the gorgeous Venice Beach,

and we're gonna get the inside scoop

on iconic '90s phrases today.

So don't be trippin'. Let's go.

Did you ever use the term "Yadda, yadda, yadda"?

You feel me? Yadda, yadda, yadda.

One thing led to another. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

-I haven't heard that one. -No?

It's like you're talking about something,

-and yadda, yadda, yadda... -Okay.

You're talking a lotta bullshit in the side of my ear.

Hearsay. Fugazi dust. You're just -- You're just --

Yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda. Shut up.

-Trippin'. -You trippin'.

Like, they're doing something weird.

Wackado. It means that you're losing your mind.

Buzzkill.

Hey, you're killing the vibe, weirdo.

Talk to the hand.

'Cause the face ain't listening?

[laughs] Yeah.

Why would I talk to your ugly-ass hand?

You need to put some lotion on that nasty shit.

I'm gonna tell you that right now.

-They're ashy. -Psh! Err! Brr!

As if.

As if! As if! No!

Oh, as if! Like, it's like, "Get outta my face."

My sister would go out of her way to tell me, "As if."

Preppy girls would use that phrase.

Yeah, "as if," and this, that, and the third.

And my sister was a dirty ghetto girl from Indiana.

You Black. You dark. You just like me.

You ain't supposed to be as if'ing shit.

-As if! -Mm-hmm.

[Bruce] Coming up, it's not "Mad Max." It's...

♪ Action Park ♪

No rules. No regulations.

[Channing] The '80s were a different time.

They didn't give a shit about your well-being.

[Bruce]When "Discontinued" continues.

It's time for some honest Bruce talk.

Gone are the carefree days of the '80s,

when kids could go on unsupervised trips

to break bones and suffer a few harmless concussions.

And the place to do just that was New Jersey's Action Park.

The place had the reputation of being the world's

most dangerous amusement park.

It was the worst thing you could do in New Jersey...

outside of going to New Jersey.

Hang on as we take a wild ride to one of the most insane

amusement parks that ever existed.

Welcome to Vernon, New Jersey,

a place to unleash your inhibitions

and leap headfirst into waters unknown.

So buckle up and hold on tight...for your life.

Nothing in the world like Action Park!

♪ Like to take you where the action's hot ♪

♪ Action, Action Park ♪

Every attraction, no rules, no speed limits, just pure fun!

-That's what Action Park was. -There's no rules.

It's unbelievable. It's the biggest rush I've ever had.

[Channing] At Action Park, they would actually

throw your ass down a waterfall.

And the whole time, the ride is...

[man screaming]

That doesn't sound fun.

These are the most amazing rides in the world!

-[woman screams] -I love it here.

Action Park opened in Vernon, New Jersey, in 1978.

Only in New Jersey would they be like,

"Oh, let's make a water park, but not for wimps."

That can only exist either in Jersey

or, like, Eastern Germany.

[announcer]Where you can slide, dive,

and splash into coolness!

Action Park had 40 water slides.

It was one of the first water parks in the country.

One thing that most of the Action Park rides had in common

is that they were all incredibly dangerous.

[woman screams]

No rules. No regulations.

The most dangerous theme park of all time.

To the point where they made a movie about it

with Johnny Knoxville...

Now, "Action Point" is based on Action Park.

[man screams]

...um, where he literally got injured...

[grunts]

...making a movie...

Ohh!

...about the park that injured so many.

[groaning]

That didn't feel great.

Action Park [bleep] ruled.

I don't want my kid

to feel sheltered and safeall the time.

[screaming]

[announcer] Action Park turns bungee jumping upside down!

[Cody] Action Park started as a ski lodge

by this business man named Eugene Mulvihill.

[Andrea] But the bleak New Jersey winters

only lasted three months,

so to squeeze out a few more bucks,

Mulvihill added a water park for those bleak

New Jersey springs, summers, and falls.

Here's how bad the rides were.

No one insured them! So they insured themselves!

-[record needle scratches] -Like, what?

[Andrea] To dodge high insurance costs often associated

with life-threatening injury,

Mulvilhill's insurance company was based

in the "not at all renowned for financial scams" haven

of the Cayman Islands.

[announcer] Discover the world's most innovative

theme park -- Action Park!

They were like, "No, we're gonna design our own rides."

We're gonna have a water slide with a loop-de-loop.

How's that gonna work? We don't know. [Bleep] physics!

[man] Action Park was wild and, quite frankly,

a lot of people got hurt over there.

People would, like, have teeth lodged in somewhere

that their teeth should not be lodged in.

Anywhere where there's teens that are in charge of safety?

Death trap.

[Andrea] Teenagers, whose concept of risk/reward

is often called limited, ran the whole place.

Horned-up "supervisory" teens.

It was like "Lord of the Flies" with booze and weed.

[Andrea] So, naturally, the concept of safety

was also limited.

-Eh, let God sort 'em out. -[man groans]

[chuckles]

No shade to Jersey, man. We love you.

[Andrea] With the inmates running the asylum...

Every member of my family was injured in that park.

[Andrea] ...injuries were a frequent occurrence.

And we're not just talking about scraped knees here.

They called it "Traction Park."

It was also called "Class Action Park"

'cause it got sued so many times.

Just go to Action Park. There's no other park like it.

At Action Park, you don't come home with a stuffed animal.

You come home with a broken leg.

-Whiplash. Stitches. -Busting their backs.

You came home with a stack of medical bills up to here

that's gonna cause your parents to separate...

[man screams]

...and you'd have years of trauma.

[girl screams]

And inevitably that divorce will cause you to get a divorce,

and then your kids will hate you,

and it all boils back to...

♪ Action Park ♪

Action Park would do something this incredible.

[Andrea] To reassure the public, the park needed a refresh,

and their well-known slogan changed from

"There's nothing in the world like Action Park"

to the less official...

"More thrills. Less spills."

I mean, was it proven to be less spills?

Sometimes chasing thrills can lead to a dark place.

[Cody] Across its crazy-long 20 years of existence,

Action Park had six deaths.

One of the reasons they got away with it

was because of the lax regulations.

The '80s were a different time.

They didn't give a shit about your well-being.

[Andrea] Gene Mulvihill's ode to reckless teenage abandon

finally came to an end in the '90s

when Action Park declared bankruptcy.

The park ran for nearly 20 years.

I am glad Action Park's no longer more in action.

It was a wild time of thrills and deadly spills,

but, thankfully, this hell ride came to an end.

This is the Rejuvenique Electric Facial Mask.

Launched in the late '90s, this battery-operated mask

uses electric impulses to tone my face.

[as Hannibal Lecter] "Hello, Clarice."

[woman screams]

[Bruce] While I continue to pulsate my face,

let's explore the story behind the mask.

Yeah, you think the front is bad? Look at that.

It's like you're getting punched in the face 52 times.

Thanks, Bruce. Beauty is pain. Am I right, girls?

Well, this next product had a unique --

or dare I say Rejuvenique take --

and proved that actually it's agony!

Oh, boy. This one's a doozy.

It's like a torture device for you face.

Hm! Yes!

I actually have one of these.

I have, like, seven of 'em.

Do you!

[Andrea] In the mid-'90s, George Springer

invented a mask with little probes in it

which was connected to a 9-volt battery.

What kind of torture chamber is this?

[Joe] I guess it would electrocute you

into being beautiful?

[Andrea]The designers set out to create

a device dedicated to beauty.

What they actually produced

resembled a serial killer's alter ego.

[woman]During a facial toning session,

the system delivers a mild impulse.

That would exercise your face.

[man] If you can get the idea of what doing eight sit-ups

a second would do for your stomach...

[Andrea] Maybe abs like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

...you have an idea of what Rejuvenique would do for your face.

[Andrea] Maybe a face like Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Electrifying yourself.

[Andrea]If the "Bride of Frankenstein" taught us anything,

it's that tasing your own face will make you more attractive.

She's alive! Alive!

This looks like a comic-book villain origin story.

It's like you're about to be murdered.

What's that one movie? "Halloween."

[Andrea]Before the Rejuvenique,

a mask just like it was made famous

by the villainous Michael Myers

in 1978's horror blockbuster "Halloween."

That is not made for a nose like this.

This is not meant for Sicilian people.

[Andrea] In the mid-'90s, the Rejuvenique

was top-of-the-line,

no-expenses-spared beauty technology.

Well, for the time.

This is analog as [bleep], right?

Okay, first of all, it's a land line.

Why is it a phone cord?

And what you don't know is that this red knob calls the police.

It calls an ambulance and the fire department

'cause you're gonna need all three.

[Andrea] From the bright, firm plumpness

of Michael Myers' exquisite skin

to other sublime-skinned potential serial killers.

How ugly do you have to be

to where you have to put your face in the electric chair?

Does it work?

[buzzing]

I'm joking. [laughs]

[Andrea] And, obviously, you can't apply raw electricity

to your face without some kind of helpful slime

to ease the process.

Because that'd be crazy, right?

[Tammy] You have to put a conductor gel on first

to make sure that this doesn't burn your face!

But I'll try.

Anything that comes with a bottle of lube is king.

We're gonna rejuvenate our skin, and then all of a sudden,

I'm ass-up in an alleyway in Amsterdam.

There's "Phantom of the Opera," and then there's this.

[Andrea]The horrors of the Rejuvenique

knew no bounds, all the way to the spokesperson.

Hi. I'm Linda Evans.

They got Linda Evans from "Dynasty"

to be the spokesperson for this thing.

[Daniel] That's like a Halloween costume in a box.

It's ding-dong. "Trick or treat! I'm Linda Evans!"

You!

If you do a side-by-side of Linda Evans' face

and the Rejuvenique face mask...

I think they look very similar.

[Andrea] And contrary to what you're probably thinking,

the consumer response wasn't great.

[Daniel] Ow! It hurts!

There were a lot of user complaints.

Like, people had red marks on their face.

I'm not sure how effective it is,

plugging a stun-gun to your face.

[woman screaming]

I feel great, right? I look good, don't I?

I actually tried it, and I thought my beard

was gonna burn off.

I wore it for Halloween one year, and I took it off,

and a little dribble of blood was coming down my forehead.

[Andrea]There were so many complaints,

the FDA sent a warning letter to the manufacturers.

[Joe] This is gonna be a shock to you.

The FDA caught wind of the Rejuvenique face mask,

and they said, "You should probably stop making this."

Shocking. You don't say.

[woman screams]

FDA is a bunch of sadomasochists.

I'm sure this is right up their alley.

[Andrea] And after the FDA's warning letter,

it took a whole year for Rejuvenique

to go through the proper channels

to finally be approved for human use.

Don't spend your money on this.

Spend it on therapy to make you like yourself better.

Instead of saying goodbye to wrinkles,

it's sayonara to this mask of mayhem.

I mean, I think we know what happened to Linda Evans' face.

Buyer beware. [chuckles]

[Bruce] Coming up...

True...ratchet...trash TV.

[Bruce]When "Discontinued" continues.

[Bruce] Our next topic is the magic and brilliance

that was "The Jerry Springer Show."

The program defined the beginning of the '90s

"anything goes" trash TV.

"The Jerry Springer Show" was the original hangout

for people to clash over affairs, race, and gender

before Facebook took over those duties.

Let's visit the asylum of "The Jerry Springer Show."

Thanks, Bruce. I'm here in the current timeline,

gathering intel on a talk show that gave us a glimpse

inside the traditional American nuthouse.

Did you ever watch "The Jerry Springer Show"?

My mom did religiously.

She told me that my cousins were on it one time.

-What?! -You really didn't wanna

tell anybody you watched it, but everybody watched it.

Now, why would she say that?

[Andre] Ohh! Oh, my.

Oh, this is nuts. This is...

The most toxic.

Unfiltered.

Snapshot into people's [bleep]-up lives.

[Andre]In the war for TV ratings,

"The Jerry Springer Show"

sounded the loudest battle cry.

[crowd chanting "Jerry!"]

-Jerry! -Jerry!

True...ratchet...

trash TV.

And that was the first time America found out

that we like trash.

[Andre] And one man's trash

is another man's face on his butt.

[Springer]My name's Jerry Springer.

Imagine that I could take a few minutes here

and discuss the merits of 18-year-olds as a voter.

[Andre]Uh...what's going on here?

Jerry Springer -- he studied to be a lawyer

and eventually got into politics.

Didn't know that.

I mean, I love being in politics.

So he started out with very serious topics.

When you were talking...

[Andre] Blah, blah, blah! Snooze fest!

Nobody was really interested.

Boring.

[Andre] Once he landed "The Jerry Springer Show,"

whether it was transgender misrepresentation

or just an angry grandma, he made everyone feel better...

Well, my grandson met this ol' bitchin' whore.

[Andre]...about themselves.

TV was Jerry-rigged.

And people started to tune in...in droves.

I used to play sick just to watch "Jerry Springer."

'Cause everybody likes watching a train wreck.

[engineer] All aboard!

-[man] I cheated... -[engineer] Next stop...

...two weeks after we got married.

[engineer]...Dysfunction Junction!

My husband is married to another woman.

The girlfriend is mad because she pregnant

by the sister's husband, but the sister don't care

because she's messin' with her husband's sister.

[Andre] I'm confused.

You have a baby with her husband, and she's your aunt?

Well, Brad, I have to tell you. I'm a man.

[Andre]He's confused?!

Sometimes you like,"I knew that was a man!"

[Andre]But she's not confused?

There was an episode where a guy married a horse.

[Andre] So, who is the "beast" man at the wedding?

Like, what the -- I -- How --

Why you think Black people love Jerry so much?

It is only the grown-ups, such as you,

that teach our children to not like that person

because of their color of their skin.

Why do you do that?!

[D'Lai] He didn't just highlight Black people

doing ratchet shit. Everybody got it!

And I think they were probably one of the first people

to have, like, transpeople on there,

and they would have gay people on there and straight people,

and all these different walks of life would be on that show.

[Andre] Jerry was an equal-opportunity

character destroyer.

[Ester] You were watching "Jerry Springer"

to see people fight.

[Andre]It was an elegant dance.

Rilin' the crowd up.

Security's pulling people apart.

Wigs all over the goddamn stage.

-[Andre] The fur flew. -I was ready to fight.

[Andre]Fists met face.

That was great American television.

[Andre]It was beautiful bedlam

that redefined the genre.

I like to call it sort of the precursor to reality TV

that we see right now.

[Vinny] Just come over for Christmas Eve, film our family,

and you have a whole season of "Jerry Springer."

It'd be fist fights and who's sleeping with who.

[Andre] But the "Jerry Springer" home edition

didn't come with one important piece -- the audience.

They participated in all of the drama, as well.

The audience was -- They was having the best time.

Why would you cheat on Eminem

with a knock-off overweight Mr. Potato Head?

Both y'all dropped something -- your standards.

What kind of haircut is that, dude?

Man! You're cold.

[Andre] In 2018, after a whopping 27 seasons,

which is about 3,700 paternity tests

and 57,000 fist fights in Jerry math,

the legendary talk show was finally discontinued.

But just a few years later, we lost the legend himself.

So, on April 27, 2023,

Jerry Springer passed away from pancreatic cancer.

It was a very brief battle.

He didn't let a lot of people know.

So shout-out to Jerry Springer. We love you. We miss you.

Jerry Springer, man. We miss you, bro. Rest in peace.

Ah. Rest in peace, Jerry.

There's never been a moment

in the 25 years of doing this show

that I ever thought I was better

than the people who appear on our stage.

[voice breaking] I'm not better, only lucky.

I gotta give Jerry his flowers or showing us the difference

between what our life is and what it [bleep] could be.

Okay. Time to recap.

AOL Instant Messenger connected us all

and forced us to reveal our embarrassing screen names...

Action Park delivered adrenaline-fueled excitement

while crushing some dreams and a few spleens...

and you saw the wonder that is my face

after using the Rejuvenique face mask.

"The Jerry Springer Show" took trash TV

to new lows and even lower lows

before ending up in the non-recycle bin.

Though relegated to history, we've breathed life

into these things once again by honoring them now.

I'm Bruce Campbell, signing off from my bunker

and leaving a massive void in your lives

until you see me again on "Discontinued."

♪♪

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