5 Classic MTV Shows Every Gen X ’90s Kid Was Obsessed With

Karen Ruud March 6, 12:00 pm

1990s MTV shows collage — Everett Collection

MTV in the 1990s ditched the music videos that made the network a pop culture lexicon and rolled out a slate of original TV series that ’90s kids became just as obsessed with. It truly was the birth of a new era of TV, which is still present today. Like the epic launch of the video era, MTV is credited with launching the modern reality TV craze with its hit The Real World in 1991. If unscripted TV wasn’t enough, it also created huge animation hits with Aeon Flux, Beavis & Butt-Head, Daria, and more. Quirky game shows such as Remote Control, hosted by future Saturday Night Live alum Colin Quinn, Singled Out, hosted by Chris Hardwick, later of Talking Dead fame, and more were also part of the rotation.

While the network is a shell of what it once was, here are the Top 5 shows Gen-Xers were completely obsessed with, and that brought the MTV generation into the next decades to follow.

The Real World

Reality television changed forever when The Real World premiered on MTV in 1992. It originated the format of putting strangers together in a shared living environment and is one of the longest-running programs in MTV history. The Real World aired for 32 seasons on MTV from 1992-2017 and featured “strangers picked to live in a house” in various locations across the world. The Real World inspired plenty of similar shows in the years that followed its premiere, but there will never be another series that has its influence.

Beavis and Butt-Head

MTV/courtesy Everett Collection

Animated comedy Beavis and Butt-Head premiered on MTV on March 8, 1993, and just five months later, Rolling Stone called the characters “the voice of a generation,” adding that the “two thunderously stupid and excruciatingly ugly pubescent males” had “become the most acute commentators on TV.” Of course, the teens’ puerile humor and mischief-making won them just as many critics as fans. And amid controversy over the show’s storylines, MTV added a disclaimer to the start of every episode: “Beavis and Butt-Head are not real. They are stupid cartoon people completely made up by this Texas guy who we hardly even know. Beavis and Butt-Head are dumb, crude, thoughtless, ugly, sexist, self-destructive fools. But for some reason, the little wienerheads make us laugh.” That “Texas guy” was Mike Judge, who went on to cocreate King of the Hill and direct films like Office Space and Idiocracy.

Singled Out

Carin Baer/MTV Prod./Courtesy Everett Collection

It was every college kid’s spring break fantasy (minus the sun, sand and beer kegs, of course): 50 attractive women vying for the attention of one stud, and 50 equally hot dudes falling all over themselves for one righteous babe. It was silly. It was eye-rolling. It was — dare we say — fun. It was the hit MTV dating game show known as Singled Out, which premiered on June 5, 1995. Comedian Chris Hardwick hosted with just the right amount of bemused detachment from the hormone-fueled chaos. Singled Out was a bona fide hit show for MTV, largely due to cohost and breakout star Jenny McCarthy, later replaced by the equally buzzworthy Carmen Electra.

Daria

MTV/Courtesy: Everett Collection

On March 3, 1997, Daria premiered on MTV as a spinoff of the Mike Judge animated series Beavis & Butthead. It was created by Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn (without involvement from Mike Judge) and ran for five seasons following the life of Daria Morgendorffer, a sharp, monotone, and unfashionable 16-year-old who is too intelligent and witty to blend in with her peers. Formerly the only female acquaintence of Beavis and Butt-head, Daria moves with her career-driven parents, Helen and Jake, and her relentlessly popular younger sister, Quinn, from Highland to the suburban town of Lawndale, where she navigates high school alongside her artistic best friend, Jane Lane. Regarded by classmates and teachers with a mix of curiosity, confusion, scorn, and occasional respect, Daria uses her dry humor and insight to turn adversity to her advantage, capturing the social hierarchies, frustrations, and emotional realities of late-1990s adolescence and leaving a lasting cultural impact on a generation of teens.

Total Request Live

C. Taylor Crothers/MTV/Courtesy Everett Collection

MTV started as a network for music videos, and Total Request Live was THE place to watch them. It premiered in 1998 and ran for 10 years (though it had a few revivals from 2014-19). The show’s format gave fans the power to vote for their favorite music videos, airing a daily countdown that pitted the biggest songs of the moment against each other. Celebrity guests added to the appeal of the show, and the video jockeys (VJs) themselves became famous in their own right (Carson Daly, Vanessa Lachey and others got their start on TRL). Crowds gathered outside of the MTV studio in Times Square for hours to try to get a glimpse of what was going on inside. TRL‘s run was before DVR and streaming, so you had to literally be seated on your couch every day to catch up with the countdown.