Dead Television: Noah Knows Best

[TMC]

https://dekkareviews.wordpress.com/2...ah-knows-best/

June 18, 2025
Dave Cameron



The show Nick didn’t want you to know about.

“Noah Knows Best” is one of Nickelodeon’s most elusive relics, a show that, after its abrupt cancelation in 2000, seemed destined to fade from memory. However, after airing just five of its thirteen episodes, Nickelodeon pulled the plug, and “Noah Knows Best” all but vanished. For years, the show became a piece of Nickelodeon’s “lost media,” and it was only available to those who could track down rare Russian TV rips online.

The search for the full series seemed close to an end when Willie Green, one of the cast members, revealed in an interview that Ken Lipman sent him a VHS with at least six episodes that he put in storage, but he’s since lost the tape. As a result, “Noah Knows Best” remained largely unseen by fans of early 2000s Nick, teasing viewers who could only rely on vague memories, and bits of English clips on YouTube.

Then, seven months ago, a breakthrough: Reddit user WesleyMead announced that he had recovered ten of the thirteen episodes from a Nick UK marathon. These episodes, finally in English, were a major find for fans, but they still left gaps. Three episodes were not part of the UK marathon, including the elusive fifth episode (the one where Hanson showed up), which is still only available in brief clips scattered across YouTube. Despite this, the partial recovery of “Noah Knows Best” brings fans closer to a piece of Nickelodeon’s past that had all but disappeared, giving them a fresh look at one of the channel’s most obscure shows.

PLOT

At its core, “Noah Knows Best” is essentially a gender-flipped take on “Clarissa Explains It All.” Much like Clarissa, Noah Beznick breaks the fourth wall to talk directly to the audience, walking us through the plot of each episode and offering commentary on his daily life, particularly his relationship with his older sister, Megan. The show leans heavily into their sibling rivalry, with many episodes revolving around their contrasting personalities and constant back-and-forth: Noah being impulsive and sarcastic, while Megan is more Type-A and polished.

Where “Noah Knows Best” sets itself apart is in its production scale. While “Clarissa” was famously filmed almost entirely inside the Darling household, “Noah Knows Best” had a noticeably bigger budget (or at least, it used it differently). Rather than being confined to their apartment, Noah and Megan’s world felt more expansive. The show regularly ventured into other settings, including Noah’s public school, Megan’s prep school, a neighborhood diner, and even the lobby of their Manhattan apartment building. The cast was also slightly more populated; unlike Clarissa, who mostly interacted with her family and best friend Sam, both Noah and Megan had separate friend groups, giving the show a wider social circle to draw from. Still, the heart of the show remained the dynamic between the two siblings. While not every episode focused exclusively on their relationship, it was the core throughline, always simmering under the humor, plot twists, and quirky New York settings.

REVIEW

There’s one thing “Noah Knows Best” undeniably got right: the cast. Phillip Van Dyke did a great job as Noah Beznick, bringing a charismatic energy to a role that required a lot of talking directly to the camera and carrying scenes with wry humor. Opposite him, Rachel Roth as Megan, his prep school-attending older sister, plays the perfect foil — sharp, confident, and every bit the exasperated sibling. Their chemistry is believable, and they manage to sell the sibling rivalry in a way that feels lived-in rather than forced.

Marsha Strassman and Richard Kline, as the Beznick parents, are solid as well. Both are sitcom veterans, and they do their best to bring some nuance to otherwise thinly written parental roles. In fact, all four main actors put in the kind of performances that deserved a better vehicle, they were the show’s strongest asset, and honestly, the only part that sticks with you once the credits roll.

Unfortunately, everything else about “Noah Knows Best” is largely forgettable. The supporting cast, (primarily Noah and Megan’s respective best friends) come across as generic filler. They’re there to deliver lines, react to the chaos, and not much else. The plots are about as standard as it gets: middle school drama, sibling squabbles, trying to impress crushes, etc. There’s nothing particularly fresh, clever, or emotionally resonant. They’re not bad, just bland, the kind of stories that fill airtime without leaving any real impression.

As mentioned above, people have called the show as a gender-flipped version of “Clarissa Explains It All”, and that comparison is fair. But the problem is that “Clarissa” debuted in 1991, nearly a decade earlier. By 2000, children’s programming had evolved. Shows like “Even Stevens”, “Lizzie McGuire”, and “The Amanda Show” were already pushing the boundaries of what kid’s sitcoms could be, mixing surreal humor, stronger writing, and more memorable characters. “Noah Knows Best” felt like it was trying to revive an early-’90s formula in a post-“All That (Era I)” world. And while the show did have a bit more scope than “Clarissa”, with scenes set outside the apartment, like at schools, diners, and the apartment lobby, the actual content didn’t rise to the occasion. A broader setting doesn’t help when the stories are still stuck in first gear.

And now, for the rant I’ve been waiting nearly two decades to unleash.

I was one of the few people who actually remembered “Noah Knows Best.” I had vague memories of watching it when I was younger, and for years I would type the title into YouTube every so often, hoping that someone (anyone) had uploaded an episode. Eventually, I learned it had only aired five episodes before being canceled, and that the rest had essentially vanished. I thought to myself, “There’s no way I remember this show so vividly unless it was truly great.” In my mind, it became this lost gem, this holy grail of Nickelodeon, unjustly buried. The rarity of it made it feel like it HAD to be something special. I held onto that belief since 2007.

Then WesleyMead came along and uploaded ten of the thirteen episodes from a Nick UK marathon. I couldn’t believe it. I binged them immediately.

And… yeah. It wasn’t what I had built up in my head. At all.

It’s not that it’s terrible, it’s not. But it’s aggressively average. And that’s somehow worse. After all those years of hoping, I realized I had projected greatness onto a show that simply never got the chance (or perhaps never had the depth) to be truly great. Nostalgia can be a powerful thing. Sometimes, too powerful. Watching “Noah Knows Best” didn’t ruin my childhood memories, but it definitely reminded me that not everything you remember fondly holds up when you finally revisit it.

So, was “Noah Knows Best” worth the years of searching? Not really. But now that it’s back, at least the mystery is over and sometimes, closure is the next best thing to greatness.

RANK: 2 out of 5

Next, another Cancelled Cinema looking at multiple movies.