Television Review: Childrens Programming Part II

I'm back, and so are a whole new host of unholy childrens entertainment enemas. Some of them are good, some of them are bad, and some of them are really bad, and some of them give "bad" a bad name, but one this is for sure: they do exist, and that's the saddest thing of all. Onto the reviews!

Pocoyo

I first heard this show before I saw it. I was intrigued by the introduction music, which is horribly catchy. Soon I was forced to watch this breathy little three-year old big-headed compuclaymation kid and his anthropomorphic friends have silly little adventures. Obviously influenced in form and style by anime, Pocoyo is narrated by one of my heroes, Stephen Fry, also known as General "Insanity" Melchett. Pocoyo is an exceedingly cute character, as are all of his friends. The animation is top-notch, the musical score is soothing, and the voices are not irritating. It's a silly little show with no true educational merit, but it's something I don't actually mind watching with ym son, if only to impart some sense of animation style and culture. This show actually gets a 7.9 out of 10.

Hi-5
When they introduce the "guys" on this show, you can almost hear the song from Brain Candy... "I'm gay, I'm gay! He's gay, he's gay!" This show is just creepy... they take five attractive youngsters in the peak of their physical beauty, and at the peak of their post-pubescent raging hormones, and make them frolick around in silly costumes on stage to entertain children. You just know that the after-parties for their shows are bacchanals of drugs, booze, and pixie sticks. To start off, the show is needlessly loud. Their singing skills, which are actually considerable, are usually drowned out by having them sing chorus-style to feet-thumping rhythms which were produced with the "Hit Song" button on a producers keyboard. The skits are strangely meaningless, the acting is god-awful (stop staring at the CAMERA!!!) and the entire show is designed to give kids the physiological signs of a sugar rush, without the actual sugar, resulting in an inexplicable addiction to brightly colored pleather pants and cowboy hats. And that's just the boys. For lowering the standards of normal children everywhere, Hi-5 gets a 1 out of 10.


Bearenstein Bears
The freaking Bearenstain Bears. No more am I allowed to go to sleep without hearing the accursed theme song to this plot-anvil atrocity of a morality injection. The most unrealistically functional family in the Universe shows us that you can be hugely popular no matter how strange you are, that every single trouble you encounter as a child can be solved with a fortune-cookie platitude, and that every day ends with a family more in love with itself than the day before. The sugary-sweet hammer to your forehead reminds you every day that families on TV are better than yours. The animation is good, the music was all right the first eight hundred times I heard that damn violin, but that's where the goodness ends. I hate this show. I hate this show so very, very much. But, it isn't truly BAD, so I am forced to give it a 3 out of 10.


Toopy and Binoo
The story of a sexually confused mouse and his asexual stuffed speechless feline life-partner and their adventures, quite literally, in storybooks. Told with nonstop giggling, the click-and-stretch cel animation is smoothly done, and the voices are pretty good, and there's enough peculiarities in an episode to amuse my brain, but it's still most definitely a show for kids who aren't old enough to find something childish. Often found cross-dressing, wearing lipstick, or just generally wishing he were a princess, Toopy acts out parts from popular storybooks to catchy little piano riffs, while his mute feline companion (who, I have to admit, is really cute) does wierd little asides in the background. It was an effort at a show for little kids that adults could get a chuckle out of now and then, and it mostly worked. 6.75 out of 10


4-Square
This conceptual nightmare of a show is broken into four segments. One: an early twenties psychology student (just guessing) looks at the camera and with a secretive grin on her face that seems to say, "I'm not wearing underwear," she recites a limerick or song or poem. Then a little girl comes and sits next to her, and they go through it together. That's it. Two: The Four Tones, all dressed in green, sing doo-wah songs with the Doo-Wahs, four puppets as shown above. The kids are urged to "Do what the Doo Wahs do!" While the creepy black guy, the creepy Irish girl, and the two 'other' Four Tones sing along, the Doo Wahs make little motions until it's their turn to sing. It grates, but it's good music. Three: Captain Hup and his Stretchy Communist Balet Dancers frolick around, making wierd positions with their bodies while the audience tries not to stare at Captain Hup's amazingly unnecessary codpiece. Four: Four hiply-dressed urban teenagers (three black, and one redhead girl) make silly noises and robotic dance motions in turn, then all together, and most of them are usually racially offensive to three of the four members of this troupe. I ain't saying anything. The show is colorful, lacks a soundtrack, and is shot entirely on one of four solid-color backgrounds. Even Sebby is bored of this show now. 2 out of 10


Big Comfy Couch
Starring the extremely-well-known but hardly-famous Alyson Court, voice of Jubilee in just about every X-Men cartoon, Big Comfy Couch is a strange form of entertainment. Starring exclusively people over the age of 30, it's about a 'little girl clown' named Loonette. She lives on a gigantic couch, which is meant to reduce her to childlike proportions. She has Molly, her puppet, and her Granny Garbanzo (played by the awesomely named Grindl Kuchuka), the postman Major Bedhead (who rides a unicycle well!) and her Auntie Macassar (for those who don't know, an antimacassar is a kind of colorful woven blanket thingie). There are actual plots to these shows, even if they are simplistic. The one that sticks in my memory is where Loonette has some sort of heavy-metal throwdown while singing "I"M MAD!" while flames lick at the screen. I kid you not. That made all the silly episodes so very, very worthwhile. The show isn't condescending, the people radiate friendliness, and the morality-anvils are bearable. There's even interludes with her dolls (who are played by normal people wearing gigantic fuzzy heads) and the Dust Bunnies Under The Couch (who are just sooo CUTE). All in all, this is a strange offering, and I like it. 7.2 out of 10.


Dragon
This bizarre claymation show stars a simple-minded blue dragon, named Dragon. His friends are all as equally cleverly named, except Mailmouse, who has an extra word thrown in there. Dragon spends his days trying to hide the fact that he is mildly retarded, but when he brings a snowman into his house, opens the windows, turns off the heat, and then moves outside into the snow, you can't help but feel a little sorry for the network that is exploiting him. His adventures are brief and silly, and are actually made up of four or five segments, so that an individual segment can be stuck between full-length shows on Treehouse as filler. There's nothing wrong with this show, but nothing amazingly right. It's cute, though.... so 5 out of 10.


Farzzle's World
Ugh. My brain. Although conceptually pretty neat, this show just bugs the hell out of me. The entire soundtrack is composed of stock sound bits of wind, and brooms, and stuff... except for Farzzle himself. His bits are actually sounds recorded from a little tiny baby, and the gibberish is used as the basis for the show. Farzzle plays with flying brooms, gets sucked up into bubbles, flies through space, and does other batshit random stuff to the endlessly-replayed sounds of a baby's oohs, ahhs, and giggles. It's crudely animated (ostensibly on purpose) and, despite that, there's about 90 people in the credits. This show is purposeless, and even my son doesn't really watch it anymore. 2 out of 10


Mighty Machines

This show I don't really mind, since it's pretty much purely educational. It's footage of machines doing what they do, but they're voiced over as if the machines themselves were talking. Awful accents and corny dialogue make it utterly hilarious to watch, as evidenced by the fact that I can drawl out "Ohhh, Kubota!" in a thick Irish brogue and send my entire family into fits of giggles. Thanks to this show, my son knows about skid-steer loaders, underground salt mining machines, combine harvesters, tree barkers, and dozens of vehicles and machines even I don't know the names of. It also helps him get a grasp for engines and mechanics, stuff I still don't totally get. I'm for this show, since it entertains my son (it's one of his favorites!) and teaches him non-stop. 9.1 out of 10