In its own right, All That was a weirdly subversive little show. It never explicitly crossed the line into “mature” territory, but it constantly flirted with the limits of FCC-approved family-friendliness. Take, for instance, the “Ask Ashley” sketch. A barely tween-aged Amanda Bynes (Seasons Three to Six), played an adorably wide-eyed video advice-columnist. Ashley (“That’s me!”) would read painfully dimwitted letters from fans with clearly solvable problems. (Example: “Dear Ashley, I live in a two-story house and my room is upstairs. Every morning, when it’s time to go to school, I jump out the window. So far I’ve broken my leg 17 times. Do you have any helpful suggestions for me?”) She would wait a beat, smile sweetly into the camera, then fly into a manic rage; emitting a stream of G-rated curses, always tantalizingly on the verge of spitting a true obscenity into the mix.

All That had its moments of being downright radical, too. Consider the “Loud Librarian” sketch: Lori Beth Denberg (Seasons One through Four) played a school librarian who, in her efforts to maintain absolute silence among the stacks, ends up being far more disruptive than her students. “QUIET, THIS IS A LIBRARY,” she screeched into a bullhorn on one occasion. Was it the most sophisticated humor? No—but viewers loved “Loud Librarian” all the same. After all, what kid hasn’t experienced the maddening realization that authority figures are often, in fact, totally prone to hypocrisy?

What’s more, at a time when TV programming remained largely segregated by race (think Seinfeld and Friends; Martin and Living Single), All That featured an effortlessly diverse cast both in terms of ethnicity and gender. “I thought it was awesome because none of us look like each other,” cast member Alisa Reyes (Seasons One to Three) told Complex. “We were like a total melting pot of diversity.”

The original cast included four girls (Denberg and Reyes, with Angelique Bates and Katrina Johnson) and three boys (Kenan Thompson, Kel Mitchell, and Josh Server); three white performers, and four performers of color. Compare that to the concurrently running Season 20 of Saturday Night Live (1994-95), which featured a cast of 17. Only four were women, and only two were of color.

All That’s producers knew its audience would be diverse, too, and embraced that fact wholeheartedly. The opening credits were scored with an original song by TLC, and weekly musical guests ran the gamut of late ’90s and early 2000s pop, alternative, R&B, and hip-hop acts: Aaliyah, Coolio, Sugar Ray, Nas, Erykah Badu, Britney Spears, Missy Elliott, Barenaked Ladies, and *NSYNC, to name a few.

Furthermore, the kids of All That were refreshingly normal-looking. Some were traditionally attractive, sure. Others were still growing into their features. Absent were the hyperactive, over-costumed Disney Channel tweens (Lizzie Maguire, et al), or the pouty, brooding 26-year-olds playing 16 on The WB (like the weirdly grown-up high schoolers of Dawson’s Creek or Popular). The cast of All That reflected the nature of its audience: They were growing up—lanky limbs, zits, and all.