All posts in Television

On almost every sin­gle episode of Blue’s Clues the human char­ac­ter (either Joe or Steve, or in the UK, Kevin) and the dog Blue “ski­doo” some­where, which is an amaz­ingly sim­ple form of tele­port­ing (trans­port­ing one­self from one place to another instantly), whether onto the sur­face of a globe or into the image on a pic­ture or a com­puter game or into a dio­rama, but it always involves our human pro­tag­o­nist and Blue being trans­ported to some­where else that moments ago they weren’t. It seems that other char­ac­ters on the show can also ski­doo, like Mr. Salt when he needs to go to the gro­cery store.

And ski­doo­ing is an impor­tant plot point to the show, because while on their ski­doo adven­tures the char­ac­ters have learn things and get to play and also may find a Blue’s Clue, whichis  great and all, but you wanna know who else could really use ski­doo­ing, espe­cially in these try­ing eco­nomic times?

The mil­i­tary. Could totally help them out.

One top of all of the bud­get cut­ting that could be done, get­ting rid of trans­port planes/ships that are no longer required, there’s the instan­ta­neous ben­e­fits of such a power. Does the pres­i­dent need to insert a highly skilled team of Navy SEALs into Tehran RIGHT NOW to take out Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad before he does some­thing else crazy? Done! Does South Korea want to finally fin­ish the Korean War once and for all and ski­doo into Pyongyang and take on the entire pop­u­lace of North Korea before they can com­pletely mobi­lize? It’s doable. Any­thing could be doable, as long as we have a pic­ture of where we need to put our mil­i­tary and our boys could remem­ber those easy to recite words — “Blue ski­doo, we can to.” Maybe end it with a “Sir, yes sir,” too.

If Robert Oppen­heimer had been work­ing on a secret ski­doo project instead of the Man­hat­tan Project our boys could have ended WWII early and got­ten to Berlin even before the Russ­ian army was think­ing about mov­ing west­ward from Stal­in­grad and we never would have had to invade North Africa or Italy or oblit­er­ate the Atlantic Wall. And LBJ could have won the Viet­nam War, prob­a­bly, if we’d been able to ski­doo into Hanoi and con­vince Ho Chi Minh that we really did want him to be in favor of democ­racy. He might even have decided to run for reelec­tion and change the course of history.

The major draw­back is that our peo­ple need a pic­ture on the other end of the ski­doo to return the same way. If they lose that picture…well, Mr. Sec­re­tary of Defense, order a new trans­port, since we got rid of them after the bud­get cuts allowed through ski­doo­ing. Enjoy hitch­hik­ing home, soldiers!

But we could get rid of Air Force One, also, just keep that lit­tle blue dog with the Pres­i­dent when­ever he goes on the road.

I think Blue would have to remain non-partisan though. Can’t be favor­ing one polit­i­cal party over another. He’d also have to have a code name.

Any­way, just an idea. A com­pletely cool idea, but just an idea.

My old­est son loves the Curi­ous George show on PBS. He laughs along with it and after­wards will tell me the intri­cate plot points that moved the show from point A to Z. He has his favorites and his not-so-favorites, but gen­er­ally he enjoys all of them, some­what, even if he doesn’t love all of them.

I think Noah likes the show because it reminds him of him­self. George is curi­ous, fairly bright, and always get­ting into sit­u­a­tions that he’d be bet­ter off not get­ting into. He’s smart and funny and cute, just like George, and he prob­a­bly smells bet­ter than George, even though TMWTYH bathes George regularly.

But the show does one thing that, the first time I heard it, I knew imme­di­ately what it meant when I heard it.

In between the two CG seg­ments of the show they will cut to kids tak­ing some les­son that George learned and put it to prac­ti­cal real-world use. Kids will make tele­scopes out of paper towel tubes or trace their shad­ows and watch the sun move and stuff like that, but they always say the same thing after each car­toon seg­ment: “George is a mon­key, and he can do things that you can’t do.”

Really? It’s really come to that? Telling kids that a mon­key might be able to climb up tele­phone poles and swing from power lines with­out being fried to a crisp? Or that he can knock down an entire dinosaur exhibit and put it back together before some sci­en­tists return? What is the mean­ing of this?

If you’re like me you already know what this is — the legal dis­claimer. Yes, George is a mon­key, and he can do things that you can’t do, like get kid­napped from his home­land in Africa and be brought to New York City (wait — some peo­ple a long time ago did do that), or go up in a rocket and repair a satel­lite (that’s been done too), or go ski­ing and res­cue a pig (I’m sure some­one has done those exact same things on a ski trip before).

Get real, PBS. Kids are just as smart and brave and crafty and mis­chie­vous as Curi­ous George, and while the dis­claimer could read “George is a mon­key, and he can do things that you shouldn’t do with­out ask­ing your par­ents first,” all of the things he does are in fact doable, but some lit­tle kid might get hurt or die doing what George does on your show.

When I was a kid there was a park near my house and it had great things to play with there. My favorite thing to do there was swing as high as I could on the swings and then jump off the swing at its high­est point, fly­ing prob­a­bly ten feet or so from a height of about nine to ten feet in the air. It was pretty thrilling to do, and I never broke my arm or ankle, and I could have, but it was fun. And Curi­ous George has fun too, but PBS, don’t tell kids they shouldn’t be adven­tur­ous. That some­times takes all the fun out of being a kid, and if that’s the case you might as well just call him Dullard George.

If you’ve read this blog for any period of time you know that I’ve loved, and then hated, and then loved “Lost”. It started out with a (lit­eral) bang and then went down­hill for awhile and then came back up and then kinda mud­dled around and then really hit its stride a sea­son or two ago. And we’re com­ing down to the end on May 23 with a 2 1/2 hour series finale that pro­ducer Damon Lin­de­lof has already said won’t answer every ques­tion out there. But it will answer some and I guess that’s what matters.

What will it answer and how will it answer it is the big ques­tion though. Will we ever be told why no chil­dren could be born on the island? Will we ever know who built the statue that Jacob lived inside of? Will we be told who even­tu­ally fin­ished the don­key wheel project started so long ago by Jacob’s brother, the Man in Black? Will it be explained what was wrong with Sayid before he com­mit­ted hari kari with the bomb in the sub­ma­rine? And where is Daniel Fara­day? I want him back one more time.

There’s a lot to answer, and judg­ing from last week’s episode focus­ing on the rela­tion­ship of Jacob and his brother, the showrun­ners are in no hurry to get to the fin­ish line that they set out for them­selves two sea­sons ago. Yeah, we got the answer from sea­son two on who the bod­ies were in the cave, but that deserved a whole hour ded­i­cated to one sim­ple question?

I don’t think that the peo­ple who make the show are going to end it as some hal­lu­ci­na­tion in Hurley’s crazy head or a dream that Aaron started hav­ing before he was born or fast for­ward­ing five to 10, or more, years into the future and see­ing whomever took over for Jacob down­ing another air­liner or crash­ing a cruise ship or some­thing. I just want a sat­is­fy­ing end­ing, not every­thing has to be explained and I know that every­thing won’t be explained (like how that plane was able to drop a food ship­ment on the island if nor­mal peo­ple aren’t really able to travel to the island) but I want cer­tain peo­ple to live (mainly Hur­ley) and for their sto­ries to end with sat­is­fy­ing end­ings. Not much to ask.

Also, I’m going to see the Times Talks Live:Lost on May 20 where New York Times enter­tain­ment edi­tor Lorne Manly is going to be talk­ing live with pro­duc­ers Carl­ton Cuse and Lin­de­lof. I’m sure they won’t give any­thing away (the finale is only 3 days later) but I bet they’ll hint at some­thing. Maybe I’ll tweet it — that would be fun.

And what show will I watch after this is all over with? Maybe The Walk­ing Dead.

When the new Bat­tlestar Galac­tica came on the air sev­eral years ago one of the fun fan­boy things to say was “frak”, which was the Colonial’s way of say­ing The F Word. You could say it and it was like an in-joke and also it didn’t really mean any­thing, so you could say it in front of your kids (like I did) or other in-the-know nerds.

And now that show is over. Com­pletely over. And I can’t stop say­ing “frak”.

I’ll say it in front of Kim¹ my par­ents, peo­ple I don’t even know, and I can’t stop say­ing it. I am a junkie for “frak”.

Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer, and, for frak’s sake, help me stop say­ing “frak”. Pretty please?

1. I’ll say it in the car when the kids are around and she rolls her eyes every time and then chas­tises me. [↩]