Kids' Shows
2014-02-14
A few years back, my sister gave birth to a little girl. Then, about a year and a half later, she gave birth to another kid. Point is, for nearly half a decade now, I've had to watch quite a lot more children's programming than I generally care to. So much, in fact, that I feel entirely qualified to call myself an expert in the subject. This entry will serve as a review for a handful of the more prominent shows.
Sprout
Okay, Sprout isn't really a 'show' so much as it is a 'network,' but back when my niece was younger we'd spend most of her TV time watching it. It's an annoyingly saccharine network that plays boring and shitty leftover content from Canada and Europe. When it isn't doing that, it's telling kids to take naps or having people play with puppets so shitty they'd be laughed off an elementary school stage.
There is one nice thing about it: The main 'face' of the network, the woman who tells the kids to sleep and chats with a star muppet, is ridiculously hot. She almost made it worth watching the network. Almost.
Cailou
If I had to boil this review down to two words, those words would be "Fuck Cailou." This is a show about some annoying little bald shithead in Canada. Most episodes consist of Cailou running around, being a whiny fuck and acting like an asshole toward his younger sister. However, there are a couple of things about this show that are enjoyable.
The first thing is that the show is racist, which I find to be pretty funny. Cailou knows three black kids: A giant girl who's good at sports and two other little black boys who look identical to each other ("twins," they call them). It's also got a little Asian girl who's smarter than the other kids.
The second thing I like about this show is the ongoing theory that Cailou is dying of some sort of cancer. It explains a few things, like why he's bald and why his parents put up with his being such a whinging little asshole. Kid's only got a few months left, right? Let him have his fun. Not much point in teaching him life lessons anyway.
Max and Ruby
This is another show that pisses me off. It stars two young anthropomorphic bunnies mainly, though sometimes it features other characters like their grandmother.
Max, the younger of the two, is an ornery little fuck who needs to be slapped around. Every episode is just him deliberately annoying his 'older sister' because doing so amuses him. She displays so much patience for his antics that I just want to kill them both and feed them to the poor.
Of course, there's also a saucy subtext to this show. I haven't watched every episode, but I've watched a fair few and I've noticed that their parents are never around; only the grandmother. I believe that this is because Ruby, the 'older sister,' is actually Max's mother. She got knocked up at a young age (you know how rabbits are) and, to spare their family the scandal of having a daughter that gets pregnant mere days into puberty, they've pulled the ol' mother-sister switcheroo.
It is the only possible explanation I can come up with for why she hasn't throttled Max yet.
Jake and the Neverland Pirates
This show isn't as bad as the other two, but it still sucks. In fact, every kids' show where the protagonists break the fourth wall and talk to the audience all the time is fucking trash.
"Do you see where the hexagon is!? ... ... ... ... Oh! There it is! Haha!"
"How many stars are there? ... ... ... ... Right! Five! Five stars!"
I hate these shows so much that my sister's kids don't even like watching them with me anymore because I can't help but yell at the screen. Shut the fuck up Jake, I don't care how many gold doubloons you got for helping the sea turtle wipe its ass or whatever. Stop looking at the screen, and while you're at it, stop smiling so goddamn much. All these kids look like they're touched in the head the way they run around with shit-eating grins permanently affixed to their stupid fucking faces.
Another thing that pisses me off about this show, and it's something that's pissed me off even when I was kid watching kids' movies, is the fact that it's one of those shows where the children are always able to outwit, outmaneuver and overpower full-grown adults.
Listen... no. Not unless the kids in question have superpowers or something. There's no earthly excuse for Hook to not have gutted these little shits ten-thousand times over, and you're never going to convince me otherwise Disney Junior. I don't care how much fucking pixie dust they have; Hook's a pirate with guns, blades and cannons. Eat my shit Jake.
Dora the Explorer
I have no idea how this show got so popular. It's like every other kids' show except with random Spanish thrown in and a particularly shitty art direction.
Everything on the show is sentient. Is that what sells? Turning fucking backpacks and maps into thinking, feeling creatures? I mean yeah, Pee-Wee did it but that show was deliberately retarded. It was made for stoners.
Why does everything in this show have giant eyebrows? It's like they tried to make everything look like some weird molesty Italian grandfather.
Why does Dora speak in such an annoying way? She ends almost every sentence with the same patronizing 'kid-friendly' inflection. It makes me want to take her map and shove it down her goddamn throat.
What the hell is up with this show (and every other fucking kids' show) trying to make everything cute and cuddly? Not everything is adorable guys. Bears, Lions, Tigers, Snakes, Crocodiles: These are just a few of the dangerous animals that, if these shows are to be believed, are precious creatures that just want to be hugged, loved and talked to. I wonder how many children have been indirectly murdered by Dora the Explorer as they walk around trying to pet snakes and shit. I watched this one show where a T-Rex was trying to help some kids rescue a Pterodactyl. You can fuck right off, Little Einsteins; T-Rexes were killers.
Anyway, I'd complain more about this show except I can't remember anything about it. I've watched probably twenty episodes but everything's just a jungle or a dirt road or a bridge. The entire thing is a blur.
Henry Hugglemonster
Well, as far as the craft at work is concerned, the production quality on this one is actually pretty good. Good animation, good voices, all that.
This is another one of those shows trying to make everything cute (in this case, monsters), but at least it doesn't go as far as Dora. In fact, monsters are basically the only things that exist in the Hugglemonster universe, so it's easy to forgive.
Overall, this show is fucking lightyears ahead of the likes of Dora or Jake and the Neverland Pirates. It's got comparatively interesting and complex storylines, and the characters aren't nearly as one-dimensional as they that exist in the other shows. I wouldn't recommend watching it on its own merits, but if you've just got to watch a show with some little kids, you could do worse.
Peppa Pig
This show sucks. The first thing that pisses me off about it is that it's another one of those shows where the father figure is depicted as some idiotic oaf while everyone else (in particular, the mother) is always portrayed as wise. You can't go ten minutes without seeing this shit in television, but what makes it especially vexing here is that even the kids are out-foxing their old man.
Listen here you little shits: He puts a roof over your heads and food on the table. If he wants to eat chocolate cake instead of salad and that offends you, go outside and drown in a mud puddle.
What's worse is I know this shit sinks in. Years and years of Captain Planet and other after-school specials and all of a sudden, every 20-something is a Toxic Avenger. It's indoctrination, it's effective, and I fucking dread the thought of dealing with the kids who grow up on this empty-headed bullshit.
Even without that subtle and casual political dig (an angle so common that it's very likely unintentional), the show still sucks shit through a straw. The kids are annoying as fuck, always giggling and snorting and jumping around. The only good thing about this show is the voice actor for the father pig. I imagine what it would be like to hear him doing something less shitty and that takes a little of the edge off.
Team Umi Zoomi
Another annoying-as-fuck show where the characters are overly-cutesy and constantly talking to the audience. I don't have much else to say about it, except for that fact that it's not quite as bad as Dora since there does seem to be some genuine intent to educate with this show (numbers, patterns, shapes, colors, etc.).
Yo Gabba Gabba
I almost don't want to include this show with the rest of them, because I'm pretty sure it isn't made for kids so much as it's made for teenagers who are high.
If you consider this to be a kid's show, then yeah, it's annoying and stupid. If you consider it to be for people who've been smoking entirely too much weed, as I do, it's almost brilliant. Overly patronizing characters, a sorta-cool-but-weird host guy, regular bands doing weird kiddie music and a number of retro-gaming nods; it's a show I can tolerate (in small doses) because it knows exactly what it is, and it's in on the joke.
Jaspar and Lisa
I don't know if I've spelled that right, but this show sucks so I'm not going to bother looking it up. The various characters and plots, while certainly better than the likes of Dora and company, are still pretty bad. They're about on par with Peppa Pig.
But that's not what drags this show down. What makes this show terrible are the voice actors and the quality of the animation. First, the actors are annoying. They're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing, but they just get under my skin with how they sound. Second, and this is a big one, the graphics and animation are total fucking garbage on this show. I've spent about two weeks screwing around with Blender. Not in combined man-hours, just a couple weeks where I'd follow a new tutorial every day. I feel pretty confident that even I could produce better character models and animations than whoever the hell's pinching these out on what I have to assume, given the quality, is a daily basis.
I can understand having a limited budget, and I get that maybe they were trying to go for a unique art style, but they really shouldn't have. Everything is low-poly, but not in an interesting or experimental kind of way; everything looks like it was from a game made early in the PS2's lifespan. They also seem to have neglected most shading, again maybe in an attempt to be different. Not at all a good idea.
Shows about trains
Why are there so many fucking children's shows about trains? I mean, I guess trains are okay, but are they really so fascinating that we need two or more television shows about them airing simultaneously? No, they really aren't, because every show about trains is the same goddamn thing:
Oh, look, the train needs to transport some cargo or passengers to some other place. Looks like they need to do it in a hurry too! Better not be too reckless. Oh no! Something went wrong because the train in question wasn't being as careful as it should have been. Everything's going to go wrong now! Except not, because another train will come along and save the day. The end. Every goddamn episode.
Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood
So I guess Mr. Rogers died a while ago. I don't know, I don't keep up. Anyway, it seems that the execs at PBS just couldn't let the franchise go to waste, and this show is their clumsy attempt to wring some blood (and loose change) out of that stiff old corpse.
The show follows the exploits of one Daniel Tiger (I think that's his name), a cute little predator that apes the mannerisms of our dearly deceased Mr. Rogers while also incorporating a number of the more modern elements of kids' programming that makes it so insufferable. These include the usual 'talking to the camera' shtick, ridiculously over-indulgent parents and bad decision-making that never seems to lead to bad outcomes. There's a life lesson for the kiddies: Doesn't matter how stupid you act, someone else will clean up your mess.
It takes place in the 'Mr. Rogers universe,' so it's got the trolley and a bunch of other stuff from the old show, except all in cartoon form. Daniel's friends are other cute little animals that Daniel would prey upon in a second if cartoons today weren't made for (and by) giant pussies.
Whatever. Fuck Daniel, I hope he gets turned into a rug.
Doc McStuffins
This show is amazing compared to everything else on the list, with the arguable exception of Henry Hugglemonster. Man, is that ever a sentence I never thought I would type.
Anyway, while it's a kids' show and therefore somewhat shitty by nature, it's still my go-to whenever I need to find something for the kids to watch and there's nothing on. The graphics/animations on this show are far superior to everything else on the list with the possible exception of Hugglemonster. The voice actors are very well-cast and good at what they do. The songs are ten-million times catchier than anything else I've mentioned up to this point. The premise is adorable in a way that doesn't piss me off, and the storylines presented, while not anything that will keep you up at night thinking deep thoughts, are perfectly fine for the type of show that it is; again, as good or better than everything else mentioned.
The main character is infinitely less annoying than in any other modern kids' show I've seen. In fact, she doesn't piss me off at all. I have no beef with Doc whatsoever; she's even sort of endearing. Some of the supporting cast I could do without, but it's a show made for children so I'm not really too stressed about it. Her parents are fine, and the show doesn't do the 'stupid dad/smart mom' thing; they're both presented as realistic people. Doc's brother is fine. Her friends are fine. I really don't have any huge problem with this show, other than the fact that it's not terribly stimulating for me as an adult.
As far as shows aimed at little kids go, Doc McStuffins is among the best I've ever seen. It's entirely appropriate, subtly teaches them decent life lessons (for the most part), isn't patronizing and seems to entertain both of my sister's kids pretty well.
There's also something else about this show that impresses me. It's about a little black girl who's a doctor, meaning it's hitting that sort of 'empowerment' angle for two separate groups of people: Girls and black kids. Most shows that do this can't do it without pandering or furthering a manufactured threat narrative, but this fucking kids' show manages to walk the line without alienating anyone. It makes me wonder just how lazy a lot of these other shows (aimed at adults no less) really are.
I could go on about why I think Doc McStuffins is probably one of the best shows for a 4-year-old girl (or boy) to watch, but I'm sleepy and I'm sure other people have written about it. It's very clever in its execution, and for that, I tip my neckbeard fedora to the people writing and producing this television show for children.
Anyway, that's about all I have to say on the subject. For the most part, if I had my way, I'd probably just make my sister's kids watch the early '90s Ninja Turtles cartoons instead. With very few exceptions, modern children's programming is fucking awful, and the only thing worse than watching it is reading some fat weirdo blogging about it.