So, about kids shows

I am apparently old, because I'm about to go on one of those when-I-was-growing-up rants.  I am not going to say I walked to school in the snow...up hill...both ways...all year...while carrying a wounded puppy, but I am about to absolutely rail on kids shows.  Now before you go clicking on to some other website, be careful.  If you are planning to have kids, or if you will soon become a grandparent, this is your official warning about the current state of kids programming.  If you already have kids, well, you already know you're pretty much trapped with this drivel.

My son was home sick from school this week so he watched tv during part of the day.  I don't know why his shows bothered me yesterday (who knows how many times I've seen the exact episodes I watched yesterday), but they did.  As in I wanted to go on youtube and show my son what kids shows should look like.  You know the kind we had when were were growing up, they featured muscle bound heros in cod pieces (hello He-Man), complete gratuitous violence (GI Joe, ThuderCats, Tom & Jerry, Popeye or any of the 8,000 versions of Scooby Doo), a ton of robots (Transformers and Gobots) and Disney shows that didn't try to teach you a damn thing (Ducktales, Rescue Rangers, and Darkwing Duck).

Instead of the Pulitzer Prize worthy literature we had growing up, my son has some of the oddest, most annoying and mind-dulling television to choose from.

Lets start with this weird craze that involves real life actor shows.  Aside from Mr. Rogers (all bow in a moment of silence for a legend) and Sesame Street, I don't really remember shows with real actors being geared towards kids.  Now, it seems you have can't avoid them.

There is the show called The Fresh Beat Band. Basically it's about some 30 year old looking actors pretending to be in grade school (??) and they sing and play instruments.  I hate this show for so many reasons, but the top one is they are constantly smiling.  Nobody is that happy, ever, so clearly they are on drugs.  That means a major network is telling my kids to get high and just start singing in the middle of the street...THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET PEOPLE!!!  Do you know how hard it is already for me to keep my three year old daughter to hold my hand while walking to the bus stop without her desire to bust into song and some odd jazz step now?  It is nearly impossible.

We also have the completely trippy Yo Gabba Gabba.  I can not tell you what this is about, because I have no idea.  I have very little desire to do a google search on the names of the characters, so I will just refer to them as what they look like, which is by far my biggest issue with this show.  There is a character with a flower growing out of her head (I assume it's a her since she's pink).  She looks like she was rejected from the Teletubbies (there's a hot mess I'm glad my kids missed).  There is some monster-looking thing with really long arms, that are not controllable.  It is essentially the inverted-T Rex, in that they both have useless arms and can not use them for anything except for comic relief. We also have some guy that is wearing an orange uniform that looks like a guard from The Wizard of Oz.  I do not know what his deal is, he is a giant or they are small, but sometimes they are not, I have no idea. Finally, there is the worst of them all, the red thing.  I have no other way to describe this character other than what it really looks like, a vibrator.  Now before you get all offended, here is what it looks like.  Look at it and tell me I am wrong...you can not do it, can you?

Then we saw five minutes of Spongebob Squarepants...go to  hell Spongebob.  I think that sums up my feelings on him.

Apparently in the world of bunnies, it is not only ok to let a 5-6 year old and a preschooler live alone, it is genuinely accepted practice. Max and Ruby is a show on Nick Jr. that has the 5-6 year old sister, Ruby, of the preschooler Max walking the town trying to peddle some crappy brownies from a wannabe girl scout troop.  Apparently there is a grandmother, but she must too busy to really care about her grandchildren (she's probably cashing some sort of check from the dead bunny parents, kinda like Frank from Shameless).  Max doesn't talk a lot, he will usually just get distracted by a butterfly or a bubble that leads him to accidentally solve the brain-busting problem of the day (like how to remember a dance step that was solved when Max accidentally threw a football at his sister).  I do not like the bunny world, it is too cruel a place.

Finally, there is the cartoon Caillou. This show is educational, teaches kids to like school, be creative, be nice to their sister, eat different foods, never features a video game, encourages using their imagination and teaches your kid how to be an all-around giant whiner that makes Fran Drescher sound like James Earl Jones.  It really sneaks up on you how much you want to drop kick the little bald kid (what's up with that anyway, is he being played by a 30- something year old actor trying to play five years old?).  Every time, and I mean every time, he does not get his way he whines.  I now know what a dog must hear when a dog whistle is blown, because I can be downstairs doing laundry and somehow I will still hear that incessant whine from upstairs, "but maaaaaaahhhhhmmmm!"  I can feel the migraine kicking in just thinking about it. 

If Caillou was a live-action show, my son could get the lead (provided I held him down long enough to shave his head).  I have done everything I can think of to get him to stop whining, including cancelling the Sprout Channel from my DirectTV package, but Caillou is still on PBS, and really who can cancel PBS (a communist, that's who)?  I yearn for the day where Caillou's mom (who must have a lithium drip hidden under her shirt) just flips out and grabs the bottle of Jack Daniels out of her secret hiding place and tells Caillou to go find his father while she takes some "alone" time.

Alas, I can only imagine the shows will get worse with time...where have you gone Charlie Brown (wait...you're bald too...crap)?