Sep.05.2008 The 9 most eerily cultlike kids shows
These days, children’s TV doesn’t take many chances. Shows are so concerned with being boycotted or sued that you get stuff like Dora the Explorer hanging out with a talking map cleverly named “Map”. But it hasn’t always been that way. Check out these shows and some of the creepy cultlike premises they were based on.
Fraggle Rock
Aired: HBO, 1983-87
Cult interests: Elaborate musical performances, living like Al Qaeda
The Fraggles were an odd group, held together by a dreamy, guitar-playing leader named Gobo. He was usually pretty even-tempered, presumably excluding the times he played Wonderwall for Fragglegals Red and Mokey in an effort to coerce them into “dream sharing” together (you see, Fraggles could share a common dream by laying together with heads touching as they go to sleep). And they were a cohesive unit, other than Wembley, the “out there” Fraggle. In this clip, he’s daring to fly.
Look at the way the Fraggles seem disgusted by how Wembley dares to be different or unconventional. So dismissive they are. Then again, when your cultish cohesion leads to beautifully performed numbers like the Fraggle Rock theme, I guess that’s a sacrifice you can afford to make.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Aired: Syndicated/CBS, 1987-1996
Cult interests: Weapons training, cross-promotional ventures on everything from bath bubbles to pies with green goo in them
A group of immature, driftless mutant turtles are held together by two things: the rigid structure of martial arts and Splinter, their mutant rat father figure (who was basically just a random dude with no real relevance to their lives). Even their theme has an odd brainwashed type of repetition to it.
Donatello could have been a great scientist. Leonardo could have been the first Turtle-American nominee for President. Raphael could have been a famous personality. Michaelangelo…was kind of a retard, but he’d have figured it out. They all could have done great things, but instead they were living in a sewer, eating pizza with weird crap like peanut butter and polar bear entrails on it, being forced basically into slave heroism, and hoping that April O’Neil would through them a pity boning.
On the plus side, Uncle Phil from the Fresh Prince was the voice of Shredder in the original cartoon. Man, you learn all kinds of crazy things on the Internet.
Power Rangers
Aired: FOX, ABC, Disney, ABC Family, Disney again…1993-wow this thing is still going
Cult interests: Robots saying “ay yay yay”, bad voice dubbing
This is an odd one because, of all these shows on the list, the kids who made up the original Power Rangers were the most normal. They were good looking, athletic, charismatic, intelligent. But the siren song of controlling giant robots and listening to a talking floating head and his robot domestic partner was too much of a lure to keep these kids on the straight and narrow. I mean look at Zordon, the floating talking head in question, in his glory in this oddly enrapturing clip below.
Look at him, all floaty. Dreamlike. Who wouldn’t be sucked into that? Plus I’d get to learn kickass martial arts and drive around a badass robot (or a frog if you’re the black dude). Huh, you know, other than the always being on call and constantly having to explain to your parents why you smell like sparks and oversized monster, seems like a sweet deal. You have to wonder though what the Rangers’ Angel Grove was like before all this. Were the monsters just integrated in society? What was Zordon up to? I’m going to guess a lot of daytime TV.
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Sep.02.2008 Mister Rogers is off your TV
You know how Fred “Mister” Rogers died seven years ago? Well, his show was still on the air…until this upcoming week.
But news that, starting Monday, “Mister Rogers” will disappear from the schedules of many PBS stations—including WTTW-Ch. 11 in Chicago, as well as stations in Los Angeles and apparently New York—has legions of parents and other fans lamenting what they see as a timeless show’s end.
They are wondering, as Mr. Rogers himself might say: What do you do with the mad that you feel?
“It sucks, man,” said Brian Linder, a South Carolina writer who grew up watching the show on a wood-paneled television and now watches it on a flat-screen TV with his twin daughters. “That’s not a Mr. Rogers thing to say. But maybe in this case he’d even say it.”
“You’ve never seen Mr. Rogers’ face on a diaper,” Linder said. But that also means that only a handful of episodes are available on DVD, and just a few clips—like an episode where Mr. Rogers learns about break dancing—are on YouTube.
Yes, that’s Mister Rogers breakdancing above. I uh, don’t exactly know what to make of it. I think property values in his Neighborhood must be taking a nosedive. Call it a hunch.
I don’t know that I’d agree about Mister Rogers saying it sucks. If you reached him for comment, he’d probably say “——”…because he’s not alive. Anyway there’s more in the article about how people want to save the show and how in response PBS is going to ramp up Mister Rogers’ Web site. I say they should just recast a generic pedophile in the role and see what happens. Ideally he can tie his shoes and, so long as you keep a Lecter mask on him in between takes, not diddle the children too profusely. TV is easy.
