And there were a lot of them-in 2001, the Disney Channel pumped out 10 original movies, which, apparently, is the exact amount necessary for kids to cultivate parasocial relationships with the actors on a made-for-kids TV network. They were expressly for kids of a certain age and almost exclusively featured kids of a certain age, thrusting them into situations both fantastic (she’s living in a futuristic space society) and aspirational (he’s finding community in the local Rollerblading scene).
These movies were spiritual-and, in many cases, literal-extensions of the network’s television series, full of tween-centric bombast and bright lights. The Disney Channel turns 40 years old on April 18, but the Disney Channel really became the Disney Channel around 1997, when it first started airing original movies. Friday night mattered because Friday night was when the Disney Channel would release its latest original movie. Not because school was over and the weekend had arrived, not because you got to go to Applebee’s on Fridays, and not even because of ABC’s TGIF block of shows. If you were born sometime between roughly 19 and were lucky enough to have cable as a kid (and, honestly, if you clicked the link for this ranking), you probably remember a sliver of time in your life when Friday nights were the most important things on the planet.
