It's a damn good thing that cartoons are designed for children because man, the innocence of youth is a beautiful thing. Kids can just enjoy them. Adults have to endure them and what I've quickly discovered is that a lot of children's television programming is just plain eye-gougingly awful. Thankfully, The Cigarillo seems to be hip to a variety of channels and I've made damn sure to stay far, far, far away from that satanic purple dinosaur Barney but there are still a few offenders that we really need to talk about, the first of which is Dora The Explorer.
Dear God. Don't get me wrong: I get the whole repetition thing- there's at least some method to the madness and anarchy that is Dora. I also like the bi-lingual stuff- might as well start them early, right? No problems whatsoever. But Dear. God. First of all, she yells a lot. I know you're going to the Big Tree already, dammit. You don't have to yell it at me three times in a row. I think I've literally had nightmares where I get stuck in a car with a GPS system that's constantly nattering at me: 'WHERE ARE WE GOING? (clap clap clap) 'CANDY MOUNTAIN'. Second of all, The Map. The best part of this piece of awesomeness from Funny Or Die is when she slams The Map's head into the table.* The Map's voice is so nasal and so irritating and all it does is repeat over and over again 'I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map...' No shit, Sherlock. Remind me again what you are? Finally there's that god-awful song at the end of each and every episode. 'We did it, we did it, we did it, yeaaah!' I KNOW YOU DID IT. I JUST SPENT THIRTY MINUTES OF MY LIFE WATCHING YOU SAVE THE PURPLE FLOWER FROM THE GRUMPY OLD TROLL!
Dora has also bred two distant cousins: Go Diego Go is one that The Cigarillo hasn't really tuned into yet but somehow involves saving and yelling a lot about animals which can actually be amusing to my juvenile brain sometimes. (The episode where Diego is singing about how awesome beavers are- 'Everybody scream! BEAVERS!' -that actually tickled my funny bone.) NiHao Kai-Lan really excited me for a little bit- I mean, a bilingual cartoon that helps you kid learn Chinese? Sign me up! But then I watched an episode... the animals all have twee, annoying names like Rintu or Toli or Ho-Ho and in a contrast with Dora- who actually goes exploring- Kai-Lan just kind of hangs out and tries to get along with people- which usually involves telling Rintu not to be such a douchebag to Toli and/or Ho-Ho while the Grandpa just hangs out in the background and teaches the occasional life lesson. (I'm increasingly convinced that NiHao Kai-Lan is actually from the world of Firefly, where everybody sounds reliably American but can speak Chinese as well.)
Then there's Bubble Guppies. Let me be clear about how desperately awful this show is- whenever I see an episode come on, I change the channel or risk trying to spend a half-hour not trying to stab myself in the ears and/or eyes. The theme song curls up in the cerebellum like those freaky space slugs from Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan only you don't get to die writhing in agony like Paul Winfield did, oh no, it just haunts you for days. Plus it just doesn't make sense. Are they underwater? Are they weird fish mutants from the future? Why are there farms and supermarkets if they're underwater? Spongebob Squarepants at least recognizes and works with the environment around it- Bubble Guppies just throws it all out the window and says, yeah, they're fish people that just fly around in a world that looks exactly like ours and never once do they eat lunch. (They sing about with Mr. Gruper, their teacher, but I don't think I've ever seen them actually eat.)
It's not all bad though... Yo Gabba Gabba is surprisingly tolerable (I secretly covet DJ Lance's orange hat) and Nickolodeon's version of Peter Rabbit is pretty good- despite Peter Rabbit being kind of a dick sometimes and Benjamin Bunny having severe social anxiety issues. The first time I ever saw The Backyardigans, I literally said out loud: 'Why is a moose in a pink pastel jump suit dancing the merengue?' So that's not too bad. And I am so, so thankful that The Cigarillo digs Thomas the Tank Engine. Granted, Netflix doesn't have any episodes narrated by George Carlin, Ringo Starr or Alec Baldwin and there's a truly frightening amount of rich, detailed history about the entirely fictional Island of Sodor out there but I'll take hours of Thomas and Friends over a lot of other stuff that's out there.
Moral of the story/pro-tip: variety is the spice of life! Television will be varied and limited, I think because I don't want The Cigarillo locking into the television too much and I certainly don't want him getting too attached to certain shows to the point where we have to drop everything at watch it- because knowing my luck, he'll like some truly unbearable shows. Kids these days though... I don't get it. I remember cartoons being a lot cooler, back when I was younger.
*Additional awesomeness can be found here, here and here.
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