These shows don’t deserve this. #ROASTED #EXPOSED #grounded
Why did I do it? Why did I go out of my way to watch the fall 2024 PBS Kids lineup in the first place? I have no kids. I have no nephews. Why did it happen?!
Besides basic curiosity, I actually have sound reasons for this. Firstly, my older sibling is working in children’s media, and as a close younger sibling, I have a psychological obligation to be interested in whatever they are interested in. Second, assembling a bunch of cartoon pitch bibles lately has had me wondering, in the back of my mind, what kind of thinking goes into TV shows.
Combine this and you get me wondering, seemingly out of the blue, “How do educational kid’s shows put together curriculums? What would it be like to me to make a story with a curriculum? Would it be awful? Jeffrey Scott says it would be awful.” This question morphed into a general one about what various children’s show producers are doing right here, right now. Instead of running to Cocomelon, I had to go to the old guard: televised PBS Kids.
Then I watched pretty much everything my local affiliates are airing. Now it’s time to make fun of them.
Disclaimer: I won’t be poking and prodding at every show I watched. Just the ones I came up with wacky shit to say about. Also, this blog is rated PG-13. Sorry.
Lyla in the Loop
When this came on, my immediate reaction was confusion, a kind of confusion that most kids probably wouldn’t have. “I don’t get what this show is about,” I thought. “There’s no hook.”
Okay, so there’s two things that are kind of hooklike: this girl named Lyla who shows viewers her zany loving family and their realistic neighborhood, and Stu, a zany blue character. But I don’t watch a show just because it has Zany Blue Character, and as for stories about people showing you their families and neighborhoods, I’m spoiled for choice. So why did PBS fund it?!
The core of this show is problem-solving, and I think it’s supposed to teach STEM skills—more specifically, the kind of problem solving that helps with programming: phrasing things exactly right so you can run the program.
In this case, Stu is “programmed.” In the episode I watched, Stu has to help Lyla and her friend win a basketball game, so they tell him things like, “Throw the ball in the hoop!” He makes an amazing throw, but it goes in the wrong hoop. Oh, that cad! But Stu didn’t mean to mess up. Also, notably, he is perpetually happy even when he makes a mistake. If you chastised him, he would just make Minion sounds and do the GoAnimate dance.
Stu has no common sense. He is simply a programmable entity. In the other part of that episode, Lyla wants to have Stu drive a tiny car. He has trouble steering at first because he’s too short to see over the dashboard. Motherfucker didn’t even tell anybody.
There is a reality where Lyla builds a model city and tells Stu to go on a rampage to destroy it: “No, not that city!” There is another where we dive into Stu’s tormented heart and learn that he is, as a friend pointed out to me, Mr. Meeseeks.
Does Stu have an origin story? I don’t think so. The theme song says nothing, and the first episode summary online doesn’t hint at it. Stu is an anomaly. And he just won’t stop baby-giggling and doing the GoAnimate dance.
Sesame Street
Throughout my life, Sesame Street has always been there for me.
When I was 4, I stared at it thinking, “Boring, boring, bori—OH SHIT, HERE COMES THE ELMO’S WORLD SEGMENT! OH FUCK, THERE’S MR. NOODLE!!”
In high school, I flipped through channels, only to stop and think, “Wow, this show has gone downhill, and I didn’t even like it before. I hate these new segments. Why does Elmo have a musical?”
In college, I heard the Count’s voice in internet memes, and smiled.
Now, we can all agree that my high-school-era criticisms were fair and just. After all, I was certainly in the show’s target demographic and paying my utmost attention to craft a good review. But I’m pleased to report in my infinite wisdom that the state of the show has improved!
There’s no reversing the Curse of Elmo. He’s just the main character and now and forever he always will be. Big Bird is, at best, his second banana; it is why he’s yellow. But y’know, Elmo, Big Bird, Cookie Monster…they’re a solid trifecta. Though I’m pretty sure Big Bird didn’t even appear in the episode I watched.
Abby, however, made an appearance. She was a newfangled creation when I was aging out of the show. Being pink and a fairy, she’s certainly marketable, so no wonder she tends to hang out with the similarly marketable Elmo.
Confusingly, there’s also a girl with similar hair named Gabrielle and she also hangs out with Elmo. Is one of them the fairy version of the other? If they meet, will one evaporate? Does Elmo have a “type” already? No idea, but why didn’t they just give Gabrielle a more distinct hairstyle? The question plagues me.
I recall that several years ago, Cookie Monster was going through a phase where he ate few or no cookies and deemed them a “sometime food.” Allegedly, children and parents alike were outraged! The move was good-intentioned, but to hear a creature named Cookie so blatantly denounce his own family name was pretty unconscionable. Nowadays, Cookie Monster runs a food truck (all-inclusive). I think having him chow down on a single cookie in the theme song (in uberdramatic slow motion) and making him generally omnivorous elsewhere is a good move.
His teammate is Gonger, named after Engine Sentai Go-Onger. Gonger, who represents a golden lion tamarin, is not a totally random new creation but comes from a spinoff called The Furchester Hotel, where he would announce tea time by banging a gong. That has nothing to do with cars that transform into fighting robots, so I’m not sure where they got that from. Anyway, Gonger provides a vital service as Cookie Monster’s straight man. It’s a bit of a thankless job because I don’t ever see him being iconic or breaking out beyond the food truck environment, but hey, you never know. Plus, this supercut of him screaming has over a million views.
I watched this episode with my sibling, considering it children’s media research (roughly construed). We both wish the Count had a larger role. In particular, we wish his character would play into the vampire thing more. Extended segments could involve other characters spilling bags of rice, then the Count kneeling down to count said rice. Good opportunity for intense camera angles, lingering shots of pinching fingers, knees and feet. It would just elevate Sesame Street to an artistic height we’ve never seen before.
Rosie’s Rules
Every episode, Rosie kind of also does the GoAnimate dance.
Cyberchase
How is this piece of stale bread still going?!
We live in a world post-Arthur. Even Clifford ended, for Pete’s sake (…and then got rebooted. Shit). And throughout all of those years, I never once looked at Cyberchase and thought, for any reason, “This is a show I want to watch.”
Its vibrancy and character designs were intriguing. For something on PBS, its digitized setting was astoundingly high-concept. But turn the thing on and the whole world sleeps.
Actually, there are two things about Cyberchase I always liked: the theme song and the pilot. Oh, right, and as I got older, I came to appreciate the live-action “Cyberchase For Real!” segments at the end. Now I’m old enough to appreciate at least some earnest corniness.
And hey, since Cyberchase now is approximately the same as it was ten years ago, fans need not worry! Cyberchase still gets Real. It’s still got that same rockin’ theme song.. And it’s limping toward the title of Longest-Running American Cartoon, like The Simpsons but with one-hundredth of the hype.
Donkey Hodie
Okay, check this out:
I hate the punny name of this show (she couldn’t even be Donkey Jodie?) but c’mon, look, they’re PUPPETS. Fred Rogers Productions is still at it, bringing new puppet action to the masses.
Speaking of, the eponymous neighborhood of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is now a sprawling multiverse. First we had Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. Now we’ve got Donkey Hodie. If the latter two can cross over somehow while retaining their original art styles, we’re gonna have a new Jimmy Timmy Power Hour on our hands. It’ll be the best crossover since Albert Einstein taught Peg + Cat to ascend to another dimension.
Nature Cat
All these animals look like they’ve been stung by bees
Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum
Before I go any further, let’s get one thing out of our systems: this art style. Don’t you instinctively like it? Doesn’t it evoke both Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes in a way that is fun and comforting? Doesn’t it look utterly innocent, capturing childlike sincerity, to the exclusion of all else?
Yeah, it looks nice. Let’s talk about this poor pathetic asshole, Brad:
This guy just got the short end of the stick on every front. Imagine Charlie Brown with glasses. Saddest thing I ever heard. He’s Captain Planet’s Wheeler, Chuckie Finster, Doug from Doug and Arnold from The Magic School Bus all rolled into one. He provides nothing of value except for laughter: laughter from his peers and from the audience.
Whenever he joins Xavier and his little sister Yadina on a trip through time, he’s tripping over his Doug cape/Linus blankie and going “woahoahoah!” like a little pissant. He’s often going on about how he’s scared or he needs water. As a team member, Brad is worth negative points. He’s an active liability. But to be frank, he has more character traits than Xavier, who’s just…”boy.” I mean, Xavier does wear a sweet hoodie with headphones, but still. He’s “boy.” So Brad seems like a more likely pick for Favorite Character, meaning he might secretly be the best.
My core point still stands, though. Not only is he the team coward, he also wears glasses. That’s just kicking a man when he’s down.
But! Genuinely, I think this character type should be retired in children’s shows. Maybe fold his neuroses into someone else. We’re already phasing out the dunce with the classic dunce voice. We’ve done away with the ambiguously Eastern European clown boy. Do we really want our heroes to be a confident brown kid with zero traits, a younger brown kid who’s a little feisty, and white Charlie Brown kid but he wears glasses and says “oy vey” instead of “good grief”?
I haven’t even gotten to the worst thing about Brad. One of the episodes I watched just happened to include a segment where Brad excitedly tells a flying robot friend that he’s about to draw his comic Bradman and Berby. I already hated Quailman; what is this fresh hell? Not only that, but Brad can’t just draw that shit in his room. He has to monopolize George Washington Carver’s secret garden.
Why are you using George Washington Carver’s garden to draw your Quailman ripoff?! How fucking myopic can you get?!
Well, uh, wait, I didn’t get to the concept of this show. It sounds like the greatest thing ever. Xavier Riddle lives in the Secret Museum, whose backrooms contain endless cubbies of random historical artifacts. As cool as this place is, it is surprisingly unimportant, because every episode sends Xavier, Yadina, and a third kid back in time to meet a historical figure when they were a kid. Then they learn a life lesson!
Here are pictures of several of the historical figures they meet as children. Tell me if you notice anything off:
Holy shit, a historically accurate version of a young Theodore Roosevelt is out here teaching them to speak softly and carry a big stick? What’d they even do, exterminate bison together?
Woah, they got Winston Churchill in this?! Wow. He’s really looking shabby. Finally I feel sorry for him.
WHY IS CONFUCIUS IS IN THIS?!?!
Any kid’s show or movie that involves historical figures in any capacity is such an easy target. Even if all their picks were eminently likable and did nothing wrong ever whatsoever, it would still be so easy for us to make our own imaginary episodes. Come on. We could follow up “I Am Thurgood Marshall” with “I Am Pol Pot.” You can try it at home! It’s the easiest game since the Minions served Napoleon because he was “the biggest villain on Earth,” then were lost in the Arctic for the duration of the two World Wars for some reason.
There are also a few guest stars who are questionable for other reasons. I won’t even name them. You can look the list up for yourself. They’re picks that make you go, “Wait, didn’t that person not only die, but die tragically, before even fulfilling their dream in life? What a great example of Kid Power!” Xavier Riddle is based on a book series called Ordinary People Change the World with a few picks that are even more dire. You know that one historical figure who famously died young? Yeah. She’s here. She could be canon! I seriously hope they don’t animate that one!
Oh, and there’s another thing that baffles me about this show. At the end of every episode, the characters ask themselves, “Okay, Harry Houdini is clearly a great magician, but did he ever accomplish his dreams?” I don’t know why they’re anxious about this point—99% of the people they visit are famous for, like, doing a big famous thing—but it happens.
So Berby the robot comes over and flings them through a time portal, at which point they hastily go, “WOAH, WE’RE 31 YEARS IN THE FUTURE!” Then—look! Over there! It’s Harry Houdini! He really is accomplishing his dream! In front of millions of spectators! Only he looks like a kid because it’s symbolic it’s a cost-cutting measure, they couldn’t be assed to draw a new character model for him. What the fuck? You say “woah it’s totally 31 years in the future” and expect me to BELIEVE THAT? ARE YOU KIDDING?!
Work it Out Wombats!
They roll on their enormous heads, which is distressing.
Writing progress here at JMassatBlogCorp has been…um…not as steady as I theoretically would want. While last month my job brought a dearth of work, this month I now have a deluge of work. It’s been a relief not having to release chapters right in the nick of time for a while, at least. And I haven’t been getting nothing done.
Thank you for reading and supporting. And Patrons, thank you for Patreonning.
For more kids’ TV-related nonsense, check out my report on the GLORIES of 4Kids theme songs and some things you probably shouldn’t do on television. And how about some Choose Your Own Adventure-ing?