YMMV / Wayside

• Awesome Music: The theme song needs to be heard to be believed!
• Can't Un-Hear It: If you watched the cartoon first, then you may have trouble reading the books without hearing Kathleen Laskey as Mrs. Jewls or Denise Oliver as Maurecia (adaptational personality changes notwithstanding).
• Cult Classic: When it originally aired on TV, the pilot episode and the show itself had mixed reactions, and the series developed some pretty strong detractors (mainly those who grew up with the books and disliked the changes). However as years pass by, the series has gained a noticeable fanbase from those who grew up with the series or have little to no familiarity with the books.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Any of the minor students, mostly Jenny and Shari.
• Genius Bonus: In the episode "Music Lessons," Stephen, a student obsessed with Halloween and cosplay, plays a theremin. Not only is the theremin a fairly obscure instrument, it's most well-known for its bizarre, eerie sound, often used in older sci-fi and horror movie soundtracks.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the Pilot Movie, Michael Cera plays Todd, a dorky ginger-haired boy with a blue-haired rollerskating love interest. Five years later, Cera would play Scott Pilgrim, a dorky ginger-haired guy with a (sometimes) blue-haired rollerskating love interest. Who has to fight her ex-boyfriend, Todd.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • In "Kindergarten King", after Todd saves a kindergartener's stuffy, all of the kindergarteners make him their king and obsessively serve him to the point that they won't let his friends get any where near him.Todd is left rocking around in the corner of the kindergarten castle and singing Patty Cake.
    Kindergartener: Why would you need friends when you have us?
  • The ending of that same episode, where Kidswatter finds his stuffed teddy bear and the kindergarteners watch from behind the window. He understandably hides back in his trash can.
    Kidswatter: I wuv my stuffy.
    Kindergarteners: And we love our stuffies too.
• Retroactive Recognition: Michael Cera plays Todd in the Pilot Movie, being one of several Nelvana cartoons he did voice work in as a child until he broke out into Hollywood acting.
• Seasonal Rot: Fans consider season 2 to be inferior, due to the downgrade in the show's animation and the humor becoming less clever.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus on Wayside is that while its extreme divergence from the books makes it one of Nelvana's less stellar entries in its long history of making Animated Adaptations of kids books, the show is still pretty decent on its own merit and can be very funny and clever sometimes.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The show will often play what is essentially not even this trope, but essentially an exact cover of Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor, but with the chords changed.
  • This background track that sounds similar to "Just Can't Get Enough" by Depeche Mode.
  • Another background track sounds slightly similar to "We Like To Party" by the Vengaboys.
  • Even more egregiously, this background track sounds almost exactly identical to the intro of "Respect" by Aretha Franklin, even being in the same key.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: To be expected when it's a series based on a beloved kids' literature series. For some fans, they cite that making a TV show off it did have merit, but the execution was a bit lacking and wished it followed the books more closely. Some likewise weren't keen on the simplistic animation used in the show, feeling it didn't really convey the quirkiness of the school and the characters.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Any student who isn't Todd, Maurecia, Myron or Dana barely had a role in one episode at best.
• The Woobie: Todd for constantly getting sent home on the kindergarten bus. It's even moreso than the books, due to Todd being the Only Sane Man, and him being subjected to Maurecia's abuse.

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