TV - The Electric Company

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(four smiley faces out of five)

Hey you guuuuys!

The Electric Company has recently returned to television courtesy of the Sesame Workshop, and I’m happy to say that like the original, the new version is pretty freakin’ cool.

The Electric Company is a show that emphasizes language development, is aimed at kids from the ages of three to seven or so, and airs on PBS.

The Electric Company has changed from the original in that there are now six central characters in the show, each with a different sort of “literary superpower” that helps them to read and understand language. Now, I’m not going to detail those superpowers here, as that’s the one aspect of the show I find a little silly. I didn’t even notice as I was watching that the extraordinary gifts the characters displayed were … extraordinary; I just thought that some of the cool graphics and rearranging of scrambled letters to make words was part of the Electric Company being the Electric Company.

The episode we most recently watched at my house focused on the letter “C,” and the concepts of hard C and soft C. The show discussed various words that start with the letter C and their meanings. But a second focus was the concept of humanity: what makes humans, well, human.

Sounds like it could be pretty boring, right? Oh, you would be so wrong. The Electric Company is hip, urban, diverse and highly watchable. The writing is exemplary and the acting is excellent. The show incorporates rapping, hip-hop and beatboxing to help illustrate various language concepts and it’s done in such a fun, non-geeky way that I think you’ll find you and your child drawn in to the rhythms and rhymes.

Overall, I found the new Electric Company to be highly entertaining and educational, and I would gladly sit down with my kid to watch the Electric Company anytime.

TV – The Doodle Bops

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(one smiley face out of five)

The Doodlebops is a sort of live-action, acid-induced, cartoon-like, Broadway-musical-gone-awry airing on the Disney networks and produced by our Canadian friends (or possibly enemies) to the north. The show is aimed at kids aged three to five or six, but really, no one should be watching it.

The Doodlebops are a three person band consisting of two guys and one gal who are inexplicably covered in pastel paint, impossibly bright clothing and clown wigs. The point of this show, I guess, is to get kids up and dancing rather than sitting on their butts watching television. But I would recommend that instead of turning on this show, you turn on some Kidz Bop or ‘80s music and let them have at it.

The formula of this show is that there’s usually some lame “problem” the Doodlebops have to overcome in order to make it to their “gig,” but there’s no real lesson or educational value that kids can take away from the Doodlebops.

Frankly, this show stinks. The (over)acting is hideous, the music is bad and the plots are so saccharine-ly simple as to be almost be non-existent.

Don’t waste a second of you or your child’s precious, precious brain time on this show. Unless, of course, your child loves it, and then, well, you’re pretty much screwed.

TV – Caillou

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(two smiley faces out of five)

Caillou is an animated show airing on PBS aimed at preschool-aged kids. It’s about a little boy, Caillou (pronounced Kai-you), who is four years old and his family: his little sister Rosie, his mom and dad and his grandparents. What’s with the weird name? Well, the show is produced in Canada, and apparently Caillou is French for “bald” or “stone” and Caillou has no hair. Why? I don’t know. The kid isn’t a cancer patient or anything.

This will be one time when I’ll bow to public opinion. I don’t think I have ever, ever, ever spoken to a single parent who likes Caillou. I hear the same complaint over and over and over again: CAILLOU WHINES. In fact, many parents think that Caillou encourages whining in their own children, so they’ve banned the show completely. Others try to leave the room while their child is watching, because their kid is in love with it, but they can’t stand to watch it themselves.

Now here’s the weird thing: Caillou actually doesn’t bother me that much.

I know. I can’t believe it either.

Unfortunately for parents, Caillou is extremely appealing to small children. And the reason he appeals to small kids is because he is one. He whines. He’s demanding. He’s selfish. He’s a pain in the butt.

I think it’s Caillou’s realism that actually kind of appealed to me when my child used to watch it. Frankly, the character is extremely realistic.

The adults on the show, however, do annoy me because they’re too patient, too kind, too sweet-syrupy-drippy goodness and light, and they always seem to say the right thing. Ugh.

I felt compelled to give this show two smiley faces rather than just one because of the realism of the central character. But there’s nothing about this show that is so stellar that your child is going to be harmed if he or she misses it, so by all means, don’t feel guilty about keeping your kid(s) away from Caillou.

TV - The Fresh Beat Band

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(two smiley faces out of five)

The Fresh Beat Band is a new show aimed at kids aged about 2 to 6 that airs on the Nickelodeon networks. The Fresh Beat Band is a live action show that stars the four members of the Fresh Beat band: Kiki, Marina, Twist and Shout. The show is bright and colorful and there’s lots of singing and dancing and everyone is very clean-cut and kind to one another, but there’s absolutely nothing that makes this show stand out as … well … good.

The Fresh Beat kids appear to be in a music school of some sort, but it’s kinda hard to figure out exactly what age they’re supposed to be since the actors are in their early twenties but the show is aimed at young children. Obviously the Fresh Beat kids are not supposed to be in college, but they’re way too old to be in grade school … so, where are they, anyway?

Since these kids are a band, this of course means that there’s lots of singing and playing of instruments, but the songs are these happy, sappy, uninspired tunes that you’ll (thankfully) forget a few minutes after you’ve turned off the television.

The very non-offensive, cookie-cutter squeaky-clean kids of the Fresh Beat Band say things like "cool beans," "ready, steady, play" and "kickin"! Are you falling into a sugar coma yet? Shudder.

I honestly can’t figure out what the point of this show is. It’s not particularly entertaining. There are no real lessons to be learned here and no great songs to take away. Just a bunch of kids who are too old to be toddlers and too young to be parents trying to connect with small children. In a word, the Fresh Beat Band is fresh, yes. It’s also bright, and youthful, and kinda loud, but completely lacking in any sort of substance.

DVDs – Pink Panther I & II

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(four smiley faces out of five)

If you’re tired of all the movies that play in your home in the daytime being animated and your child is aged 6 or older (or the age at which your child can follow the plot of a movie), you just might give the new Pink Panther movies, starring Steve Martin, a try.

Our family rented Pink Panther II on a whim a couple of months ago. The three of us, aged 6, 37 and 41, laughed ourselves silly. And to my husband and me, it was like a miracle had occurred: here was a movie that the three of us could genuinely enjoy together.

So this weekend, we sought out to rent Pink Panther I. But Hastings didn’t have Pink Panther I available to rent. What they did have was a used version for sale, and since the movies were buy-one-get-one free, we ended up purchasing both Pink Panther I and II.

After watching Pink Panther I last night and laughing a few times until we were almost on the floor, I’m thrilled that we own them both.

These movies are rated PG for suggestive humor, brief mild language and action. I personally couldn’t recall any “bad language” from either of these films, so I looked them up on a Christian movie review site and apparently the word “hell” is used twice in Pink Panther I. I couldn't find any bad language detailed for Pink Panther II. And the “suggestive humor” is so brief and so over a small kid’s head that it’s really pretty negligible. (If your kid DOES understand the “suggestive” humor, then you may have more than these movies to worry about.)

I won’t bother to summarize plots here. I mean, they’re Pink Panther movies. There’s a murder (that's not shown, of course), France’s big pink diamond is in play, it’s all a big mystery, Inspector Clouseau is a complete bumbling idiot with a hilariously ridiculous French accent, yadda, yadda, yadda. The humor is downright slapstick and goofball, but not so crude as to be inappropriate for children. There is a fart joke in Pink Panther I, but … well … it made me laugh.

Before you go out and purchase one or both of these movies, you should of course give them a test run by renting them or checking them out from your library, but I would definitely recommend them for a night of popcorn munching, jammy wearing, family fun.

TV - Imagination Movers

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(four smiley faces out of five)

Imagination Movers is a television show that airs on the Disney Channel and is aimed at kids from the ages of three to seven or eight. The show stars the Imagination Movers, four guys who “work” together in a warehouse. Their job is to solve people’s problems imaginatively, problems that they refer to as “Idea emergencies”. The Movers consist of four cool guys named Rich, Scott, Dave and Smitty who are far less dorky than the four guys on the Wiggles, though the Wiggles is certainly not without merit.

The Movers’ website touts the show this way: What would happen if the Beastie Boys collaborated with Mr. Rogers? But I think that’s taking it a bit far on the “street cred” scale. Imagination Movers is more like a mix of the Bare Naked Ladies and Mr. Rogers.

The Imagination Movers are often joined by their grumpy neighbor Knit Knots who is very boring and always wears beige, and his niece, Nina. Knit Knots is actually one of my favorite characters on the show, as the depth of his boringness is seemingly unending and for some reason his straight guy act just cracks me up immensely. For you hetero dads and lesbian moms out there, Nina is apparently extremely hot.

The movers also play instruments and sing songs, so there’s lots of music on the show. Thankfully, it’s modern, catchy music that’s usually quite good. You might even find yourself tapping your foot and singing along, and maybe, just maybe, you’d find you could stand purchasing the CD and listening to it over and over again in the car with your kid(s).

Overall, Imagination Movers is fun to watch for adults and kids. The plots are inventive and original (in one episode, the Movers have to help a lady figure out how she can carry around her gigantic phone book), the writing is good, and the actors are excellent. I often find myself laughing along with my daughter.

So why did I only give the show four smiley faces? Well, the show’s main educational focus is teaching kids that there are always several ways to attack a problem, even if only one solution will ultimately work. It also teaches tenacity and stick-to-it-iveness, which is certainly not a bad thing, but it’s not really educational, per se. I dunno. I kinda figure that either a person has tenacity or they don’t. I’m not sure if it’s something that can really be taught; it’s more like a decision that each person much reach on his or her own.

Ultimately, Imagination Movers is a good, clean, half-hour of eye and ear candy for you and your kid.