Monday, June 8, 2009

Dipping into the Shallow End of PBS' Programming

Today's post is going to be short because I'm friggin exhausted. Libby couldn't sleep last night. USUALLY, it's her job to wake up with Gabe before even the butt crack of dawn. It is her duty because I blame her for the fact that he gets up before 5:00. For the last year I've said, "Ignore him until 6:00. Sooner or later he'll figure out what time we're willing to get him up an around." But she's never been able to do it, and he just keeps getting up earlier and earlier.

Last night, though, she was stressing out about an early morning meeting and the fact that she couldn't sleep, so I volunteered to get up and let her sleep in. Of course, KNOWING that I had to get up far too early made it impossible for me to get to sleep too. Still, I started dozing around midnight, only to be woken with a start by a nasty thunderstorm that blew through. Thus it was after 1:30 before I finally fell asleep, and I woke up every half hour thanks to dreams that Gabe was awake and making noise, until he finally woke up at 4:50. Freaking ugh.

So I thought I would briefly discuss some of the PBS shows that I can't stand--mostly because I'm in that kind of mood today. I'm not sure that PBS is producing much in the way of pre-K shows right now aside from "Sesame Street" and the new show "Sid the Science Kid," both of which I'll hit on later. They seem to be focusing on their K+ shows that run in the afternoon, so most of what runs in the morning for the younger crowd is reruns of older shows (like "Clifford" which stars the voice talent of the not-recently-departed John Ritter). Nonetheless, there's still plenty of stuff that shouldn't have been made in the first place to dislike.

"Barney"

Barney is stupid. There's no need to mince words about it. It is insulting to me, my family, my friends, children everywhere, and the concepts of intelligence as a whole. Barney is a gelded moron and the kids on show are creepy music spewing drones--some FAR too old to be on there in the first place. Avoid "Barney" like the plague.

"Caillou"

"Caillou" is an import from the French Canadians. I could actually rant for quite some time about how much I despise this show, but I won't. It follows the plodding and pointless antics of a four year old boy named Caillou. The show is, for some reason, a perpetual "flashback," with softened, whited out edges and corners. I have no idea WHY they do this. They do flash back considerably in the show, but even at the beginning when, presumably, the show is in the present, the flashback graphics are being used. And speaking of graphics, the animation is deplorable. An episode was on the other day wherein the little sister was going to pick up a toy car. The car was on the bottom of the screen. She descended from the top of the screen down to about the middle and bent over, then the car was magically in her hands instead of where it had been down below. Awful.

Bugger. I can't think of another PBS show that I really, really hate right now. There are several that I can take or leave, but it would be unfair of me to lump them in with these two stinkers. Even the unwatchable "Teletubbies" and "Boo Bahs" aren't so bad that I think they belong here--they do, after all, have a FEW positive aspects. Oh well. More later.


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