With so much pop culture in the world, it’s hard to know what’s best. Fortunately, Media Magpies has you covered, as one of our writers will occasionally share what they have determined to be The All-Time Top Five.
Ever since Howdy Doody escaped from Hell and began capering through the living rooms of the U.S., children have been captivated by TV. A device of endless programming that sits in the home if not the very rooms kids live in, capable of being turned on at the slightest parental absence — as a babysitter it is great, as a deliverer of morals it is suspect, as a rotter of brains it is undeniable, as an annoyer of those parents who happen to have wandered back in the room it is unparalleled. What to do? What to watch, because not watching is obviously not an option? What will provide the entertainment and education that will engage and enlighten? Demonic puppets need not apply, here are The All-Time Top Five Children’s Television Programs (although you may suggest your own in the comments):
Wheel Of Fortune / Jeopardy!
A big colorful wheel spins and letters are turned over, these are the visual signifiers of preschool but delivered in the evening, when bedtime threatens but perhaps is delayed. And what young person would not want a trip to Disney World, or the unimaginable figure of $25,000? Wheel Of Fortune teaches probabilities alphabetical and numerical, along with the crucial importance of vowels and the even more meaningful lesson that a greedy trust in fate can lead to catastrophe. But these are lessons easily grasped if not mastered, an appetizer before the full meal of Jeopardy! and its reliance on trivia and game theory. The latter will only be understood with study, but a bookish child can run the table on Greek Myths and perhaps snag a Final Jeopardy! on Supreme Court Justices while the on-screen adults flail helplessly. To see a grown person lose all their winnings because they, unlike you, did not know who William Howard Taft was, is to grasp your capabilities while learning the truth about adults (they are often dumb), what better lesson is there for a youth? NOTE: Programming that runs in the order of Jeopardy! and then Wheel Of Fortune is vile and perverse, do not expose children to this grotesquerie.
NYPD Blue
Any minutes a kid can stay up past 10 p.m. is bonus time, it doesn’t matter what is on so much that it is on and you are around to watch it. But there are obviously some shows with more to offer the curious small person. And these shows are found in many flavors and formats, but NYPD Blue is the pioneer of prurience for all — while cable and premium channels offered profanity and nudity (a scrambled version of the latter if you weren’t actually paying per view), Steven Bochco and David Milch’s cop procedural brought it to network television. And it proudly advertised this, in the guise of a warning: “This police drama contains adult language and partial nudity. Viewer discretion is advised.” Any child with a television could now see, albeit on the sly and maybe from around the corner in another room, those “adult situations” that adults tried to keep from them. Educational TV at its most enticing.
The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour
There are adult situations no child wants to see, however. And yet, seeing them is a necessity. While children often demand unencumbered freedom, they secretly want boundaries and no show draws a harder, harsher line on the concept of the television as a fount of endless entertainment than the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Dead-eyed dull-voiced dun-colored men describing things like the stock market or Congress that no sane child wants any part of. And worst of all, this vast wasteland of grown-up tedium aired on PBS and thus without the respite of a commercial break offering images of toys or hamburgers or even a deodorant, for pete’s sake. The NewsHour is where a child learns the brutal and necessary truth that TV, while full of wonders, is not your friend. What friend would offer you this?
The Price Is Right
Television may not offer amity but can still deliver felicity to the child viewer. The Price Is Right is populated entirely by adults but its easy-to-master math and its consumerist spirit are quickly grasped by children and the games themselves are colorful and physical and above all brief, spinning into the next aspect of the show at a pace that holds a young viewer’s attention while whetting their appetite for more. And another giant spinning wheel makes an appearance! The show is a garden of delights that is even more wonderful for being essentially forbidden to kids under regular circumstances — airing in the late morning or early afternoon, when children are usually at school. But usually is not always! To watch The Price Is Right as a child is to be on break somehow, to have escaped the routine that denies the show and an entire realm of television from one’s viewing. The show’s contestants may win A NEW CAR, but the child viewer has already won liberation from school and learned the luxury of squandering that freedom on the couch.
The Local News Snow Day Announcements
And the liberation will be televised. In the darkness before dawn, perhaps on a small screen in the kitchen, as the morning news meteorologist describes what could be a day-altering amount of snow and, instead of unfathomably irrelevant information of MacNeil and Lehrer, the broadcast contains news a child can use: the list of school district cancelations. The radio carries this information at certain points but it does not have it in recurring visual form, the scrolling chyron running through delays and closures, delivering rapture or disappointment if the alphabetical order bypasses your town. But perhaps by the next time through, it will have been added? Television offers no greater anticipation, no more joyous release, than this. And what to do with the new free time TV has given you? Watch TV, of course. You’re already there.
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Department of
Conversation
I love the when I was reading the Wheel of Fortune/Jeopardy section, I was nodding along but also thinking I’d have to comment on the widespread Price Is Right fixation I remember from elementary school, and then bam, there it was. What an obviously well-curated list. (Seriously, I feel like The Price Is Right serves its kid audiences well by showing off the prizes as physical objects: large amounts of money are an abstraction, but that’s a cool thing! Right there! It’s like the consumer version of the visual dictionaries that were popular at the time.)
The snow day announcements were how I learned as a child that there was an organization in my area called Heaven’s Express Daycare. Even as a kid, I thought this was perhaps a poor choice of name, but I guess it depends on the owners’ plans.
Thank you! And your Price Is Right comments on the physicality of objects has blown a hole in my brain – is this an ancestor of the loathsome unboxing video and its highly performative excitement over merchandise? At least TPIR does this in the context of a live “community” but these are too close for comfort.
I’m guessing like HGTV today, it set a standard for what products you were “supposed” to strive for in the home.
Well, you ignore all the fine programming produced by PBS over the decades, but at least you do remember PBS. Which is in dire need of your support. Contact your congressman or senator and make your voice heard to preserve the NewsHour (gotta capitalize that H) for future generations of kids to be bored. Or more likely terrified.
Thinking on it, PBS airing Lawrence Welk reruns may be even more damning/damaging to the young child – ML was a news show at a news time, Welk aired on Saturday nights and even as a kid you know that is one of the capital F Fun Timed, this wimpy nonsense is an insult.
Usually after Welk it was Are You Being Served?, though.
What did we watch?
It’s apparently been movie week here at the Captain’s Lodge, as without much new TV, that’s what my wife’s wanted to do (also since this is her weekend time at her new job). All of these are rewatches for her, while the first was new to me:
Paul – I was surprised how little I knew about this given the strength of the pedigree here. Directed by Greg Mottola (Superbad) and written by Simon Pegg & Nick Frost, it stars Pegg and Frost as Graeme and Clive, two British sci-fi geeks in America for San Diego Comic-Con and to visit Area 51, and along their travels they encounter an alien named Paul, played by Seth Rogen, and pretty much with the personality you’d expect coming from that. What happens next is a buddy-comedy road-trip movie cum thriller, as the trio have to escape the detection of the federal agent (Jason Bateman) and less-competent local cops (Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio) on Paul’s tail, as well as the Bible-thumping father (John Carroll Lynch) of Kristen Wiig’s Ruth, who decides to come along after encountering the alien. Also features Jeffrey Tambor and Jane Lynch in smaller roles, Blythe Danner unexpectedly near the end, David Koechner and Jesse Plemons as two rednecks who keep running into and harassing Graeme and Clive (and then Ruth), Steven Spielberg apparently voices himself, and I won’t spoil for you who plays The Big Guy.
I had fun; it’s not likely to become one of my favorite comedies, but I enjoyed it well enough that I didn’t feel like I wasted my time. There are some quite funny parts, some fun thrills in the attempts to avoid getting caught when the agents are close, and the character comedy (particularly once Wiig joins up for the adventure, but it’s also worth highlighting Hader and Lo Truglio here) is pretty good. Roger Ebert’s review was more tepid and suggested that if you’re gonna have the alien voiced by Seth Rogen and with Seth Rogen’s personality, it would have been better to have Seth Rogen’s physical comedy in the film as well. Probably true, but all in all I still had a pretty good time.
Super Troopers – Tuesday we went to a bar that just opened a couple of weeks ago and has an excellent whiskey collection. What better to watch after coming home drunk than a classic favorite comedy with a bunch of memorable one-liners? This one’s always worked for me because it’s the right amount of weird and specific. The cast chemistry is great, which really adds to the sense of these troopers as longtime friends who invent silly games to pass the time and have their own language. There’s also details of goofy shit like the fake phonetic alphabet (“White Caprice, Vermont plates, Tijuana Gringo Oner Fiver Zero”) that really show they tried not to miss a single opportunity for a joke. There’s also weird character details like Thorny and his girlfriend being swingers, or Mac’s preferred form of self-stimulation (which apparently the other troopers all know about). Brian Cox makes a great chief, and I love the performance of the mayor. Timing is everything; I love in the opening syrup fight, when the troopers start throwing empty bottles at the cops, the cop Rando (that’s his name, yes, lol) stands up like he’s ready to start something after one hits him, Mac fires a “Sit down, Rando!”, and he doesn’t even finish sitting down before another one hits him. Still compulsively rewatchable, at least for me.
The Princess Bride – Wednesday afternoon choice. I hadn’t seen it in a long time, myself, and I may not love it as much as other people do (I have a friend who considers this her favorite movie ever), but it’s still got a lot of good things going for it and is a good time. Vizzini is overconfident, but I still have to believe he was generally right about “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line,” if only because I am one.
I was just thinking yesterday that I was long overdue for a rewatch of Super Troopers. (I said “shenanigans,” which would obviously set off this particular musing.)
“Oooooh!”
“Put those away!”
“If I was your dad, I’d have smothered you years ago.” Bless Brian Cox’s drunk grumpy boss in this.
“OH HELL! JUST GIVE ME THE GOD DAMN SOAP!”
[c h o m p] [h o c k]
That and “Never start a land war in Asia!” Advice to live by.
I’ve always loved the way that empty syrup bottle flies in from out of frame and hits him right in the middle of his celebratory laugh
Kojak, “Caper on a Quiet Street” – A crook dies without telling his fellow crooks where he hid the money from a job they pulled a year ago. Desperate to find the cash, the rest of the gang plots to search for it in the apartment building the dead crook worked in. Kojak’s only hope of beating the crooks to the money: the sex worker girlfriend of the gang leader, who owes him for a previous favor. The idea here is a good one but the pacing is languid and the storytelling is sloppy. Each of the gang members has the beginnings of an interesting personality (and I am not sure but I think one of them is gay if an abusive boyfriend). But it all just gets to be a mess. Plus the episode title, and a line about being in Queens at 80th Street and 25th Avenue by the Church of the Lady of Fatima (a real place) suggests that the plan was to film in Queens before the budget cuts left us in a somewhat less than quiet LA street.
Frasier, “Three Dates and a Break-Up,” second half – Despite his own dislike for Sherry – who accidentally helps ruins the second date, this time with Frasier less at fault – Frasier realizes his dad’s happiness is on the line and he gets Martin and Sherry back together. (The third date is not instantly ruined, but who know what happened next?) This one works because it eschews the obvious laughs (or at least the intended laughs since Frasier’s loveless love life is a drag sometimes) in favor of human kindness and the bond Frasier feels with his dad even if he cannot stand his dad’s girlfriend. Really good low key performances by everyone involved.
That is a really cool Kojak plot, very Richard Stark.
Or Donald Goines, appropriate ruthlessness going on there.
The Righteous Gemstones, “Prelude” and “You Hurled Me Into the Very Heart of the Seas”
Damn, “Prelude” is one of the best episodes the show has ever done, a Civil War standalone that’s essentially a funny, moving, and deeply felt short film. (Also the hottest Bradley Cooper, a famously handsome man, has ever been to me? Apparently I like scruff and muttonchops?)
Cooper is fantastic here, and I love how thoroughly Gemstone-ish he is: obviously he’s helped by the expertly penned dialogue, but he just nails a Jesse-like delivery of particular comedic lines–my favorite is where he say that he was praying silently in his head during the conversation, where all the pauses and clarifications in his lie are precisely timed for maximum effect. And his character growth is terrific. He has 39 minutes to go from casually shooting a minister in the head during a robbery to having a genuine religious awakening that he’ll pursue with awkward sincerity, and he completely sells it. I love that while leading the final prayer for the condemned men is the moment he really tips over the line of his transformation–his little stumbling hesitation as he talks himself into recognizing the moral weight he’s carrying (“But it’s better than … doing it for money. Or out of meanness”) is perfect–we also see his empathy develop in the other scenes with the dying soldiers. There’s a real impact to those two death scenes where he’s sitting vigil, and it’s great that you can see the evolution between them, from him stalling on offering prayer to at least being able to offer joking comfort and commiseration–but facing the sheer suddenness of death in both cases all the same. Really incredible episode.
We return to the main timeline with a very good and incredibly funny second episode:
* I know the best Baby Billy line should technically be “Fuck my handsome white ass!”, but I think the one that actually made me laugh the most was his exasperated, incredulous reaction to the kids saying Eli was having a midlife crisis: “He’s older than I am. He ain’t halfway through nothing.” Also, A+ and very disco Baby Billy costuming. And a nice prosthetic, too.
* The siblings bullying Eli into returning for the give-a-thon by bombarding him with the word “pussy” cracks me up. I’m also deeply amused by Kelvin’s “yucky ducks!”
* Kelvin does technically have a point with his Siegfried and Roy comparison, but on the other hand, that’s no way to live, Kelvin, and it’s obviously not what Keefe wants. Obviously this will come back, but in the meantime, I’m delighted to see their relationship in full swing, complete with bizarrely cute kissy monster games.
* I was really prepared for Jesse’s jetpack rise at the end to somehow get him in line with a skylight or very high window that would show him Eli and Lori kissing, so him just rising triumphantly–but, given the music, a little ominously–up to the disco ball kept the tension intact in an interesting way.
* … those Prayer Pods are going to become famous as hookup spots, right?
* I have to think it’s intentional that retired Florida Keys Eli has definite Dude vibes in terms of style and costuming.
Loved reading the paragraph about Original Elijah and his slow change over the course of the episode– nailed it, reflects my own feelings but better and more precisely than I’ve tried to put it.
I’m already laughing picturing your comment about the Prayer Pods and what you will learn soon enough.
Now I’m even more intrigued/excited/horrified about what might happen with the Prayer Pods!
*fistbump of shared Original Elijah appreciation* <3
“I’m not sure it works that way, buddy” is also such a Jesse/Eli line to me. Cooper’s so appropriately scummy in this and clearly having a ball.
Is the tyler perry line in this one? Anyway, the Elijah episode was great.
Yep! “You’re more like Luke Perry: dead.”
M*A*S*H, Season Two, Episode Five, “5 O’Clock Charlie”
Another iconic early episode, mainly for the brilliant premise (presumably taken right from real life). Nothing quite sells the “Telling jokes is the only way to open my mouth without screaming” morality of the characters quite like enthusiastically betting on an incompetent enemy bomber. I also enjoy that their problem is both urgent and plausible; Charlie is coming around because of an ammo dump, and Frank decides to bully Henry into ordering an anti-aircraft gun that will only draw more enemy fire; Hawkeye and Trapper decide the solution is to get rid of the ammo dump, and initially they try to help Charlie destroy it before switching at the last second to tricking Frank into using the gun to destroy it. It’s clever and it’s funny.
A really great acting moment from Gary Burghoff: he’s in the background trying to block the door to slow down Frank when he inevitably realises Hawkeye and Trapper have tricked him into being too late for Charlie, and he’s trying way too hard to look nonchalant. Frank simply barrels right through him and he looks very pained. This really does have one of the best and hardest-working casts on television (I also appreciate Loretta Swit (RIP) playing lovey-dovey with the general).
Biggest Laugh: Henry has won the pool on Charlie for the day and has the money on his desk. Trapper invites him to the poker game that night. Hawkeye: “If you can’t make it, just send the money.”
I rewatched this one a couple months ago, and as soon as you mentioned Radar trying to be as nonchalant as possible after he realizes Hawkeye and Trapper’s scheme, I could instantly see his face during that scene all over again. Delight of an episode.
Doctor Who s1e1, or maybe s27?e1. “Rose.” This is a basically perfect episode of TV. The pacing zips along. We meet the doctor and seconds later he pulls a bomb out of his jacket to blow up a department store. The effects are cheesy and a nice mix of practical and cgi. The production values are lower, yet, somehow, shooting on locations and real sets with digital cameras gives the camera work and the actors themselves (lots of running here) a lot more dynamism than they’ve been getting on green screens. There’s little easter eggs, like Eccleston looking in a mirror and saying “oh god. these ears,” and it only years later becomes apparent that he has literally come straight from the destruction of galifrey to Rose’s shop. Eccleston is gleefully irascible, he immediately hates Rose’s boyfriend, he’s just a weird guy. We get a fan stand-in character who obsesses about tracking the doctor online and immediately gets capped by a mannequin. (I am glad that Davies had enough restraint not to make his kid, who watches his dad get capped by mannequins, grow up to be conrad clark).
The main thing that makes it work is all the running. The plot zips along to the next stage of Rose learning about the doctor and the doctor trying to stop the vestene. By contrast, last season’s UNIT set had basically no room for running, and like half of UNIT is fan stand-ins who are recurring characters who have not been shot by mannequins.
“Hello, Rose, I’m the Doctor! Now run for your life!”
“Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!”
Admittedly, I only watched Eccleston through Smith (and trailed off before Smith’s last season, even), so it’s not like I ever gave him that much competition, but Eccleston is still “my” Doctor, and this review instantly resurrected all my love for this season. Just great bounce and energy, and Eccleston and Piper have terrific chemistry. And I love how Eccleston can switch so easily from intensity to affability to fury.
Also: “Lots of planets have a north!”
Curse you, you got the line right! 🙂
It’s a real shame Eccleston’s experience was so awful that he still won’t come back, but in some ways it makes his run more perfect. One season, one arc, many great moments, and then he leaves us and becomes almost a legend.
the one simple rule for making your cinematography dynamic and not boring? Make the actors run. Hollywood doesn’t want you to know this. This is why Lola Rennt is so popular. The climax of the third man? Running. Tom Cruise? Well-known for his distinctive run.
In other news, I’m planning on releasing my amateur short film “bob and the hungry rabid dog,” coming soon to youtube near you.
Sure is a great list of regularly scheduled children’s programming. But what about special presentations, such as the 1984 presidential debates or the Iran-Contra hearings?
The Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.
I have a vague memory of my mom watching the Watergate hearings, which I of course was watching too.
My earliest Serious News watch I can remember is footage of the U.S. Army countering scud missiles with patriots in the Gulf War. Or that’s what I was told I was seeing, it was a few flashing lights in the night sky as far as I could tell.
Mine too, but watching the LAPD shootout with the Symbionese Liberation Army when I was in fourth grade with only the babysitter for adult (well, teenage) supervision was certainly an experience.
I mentioned this in my BLOOD’S A ROVER article back on the most-recent-old-site, but on the evening of June 6, 1968 my 5 year old self was startled by a gunshot (or maybe a firecracker) go off as I was going to bed. The next morning my parents were glued to the news of the RFK assassination. I convinced myself that I “ear-witnessed” the event even though I lived about 30 miles from the crime scene. As memorials went up that week at the court house and bail bonds establishment on the way to church I got chills, which must have stemmed from thinking that I had some connection to the crime.
Thinking on it, “Walter Mondale” definitely sounds like the name of one of those grouchy background adult Muppets.
A great list, at least for people who are the proper age (mine). Do kids have the experience of boring TV anymore? Now that they have unlimited access to whatever nonsense they want 24/7 ? I’m not necessarily disparaging the nonsense – the He-Man cartoon I was waiting for as a child was not a superior cultural experience.
Thank you! And yes, it occurred to me how much this revolves around time and scarcity that are not in effect today. On the plus side, when the nephews are acting up we can threaten them with immediate YouTube broadcasts of old NewsHours, aka The Boring Show.
I feel like this is something you have absolutely actually done.
It 100 percent is! The best part is I backed into this via Old Man Ramblings at the boys about how BACK IN MY DAY you couldn’t pull shit up on youtube and just had to watch whatever was on TV, including The Boring Show — the minute the words were out of my mouth I realized I was thinking of MacNeil/Lehrer, and when I mentioned the non-specific concept of The Boring Show to the boys’ mom she immediately thought of them too. Everyone talks about the damage done by horrible 80s commercial TV but PBS clearly scarred plenty of kids too.
Such cruelty!
At least give them The McLaughlin Group!
Hahah, I was also thinking of The McLaughlin Group when NewsHour was mentioned. At least give the kids the entertainment of a bunch of adults screaming over each other like children! And the valuable lesson that adults can be very childish.
As the Captain says, yelling is funny! The NewsHour’s harsh lesson is zero entertainment value.