The Adult’s Guide to Preschool TV: Disney Channel

I picked apart Nick Jr. in my earlier post, so just to be fair we’ll take aim at Nick Jr’s biggest rival for the preschool set – Disney. I did the whole intro-spiel in that earlier post, so I won’t get into it here.

One of the things that was mentioned to me was that I didn’t touch on a lot of other shows that these channels show. While I could talk all day about how great Phineas and Ferb is or how the longevity of a show like SpongeBob SquarePants amazes me, I wanted to focus on shows that were catered to preschoolers. Cartoons that are meant for grade school age and older usually keep to the same formula that cartoons as far back as the Warner Brothers and MGM cartoons of the 40s and 50s did – humor for the whole audience, with different groups laughing for different reasons. Adults usually don’t have trouble tolerating shows like that – it’s the preschool “learn/sing/repeat” shows that make adults want to hang themselves.

On that note, lets dive into Disney:

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

IN A SENTENCE: The old-school Disney all-stars have fun and practice a little voodoo along the way.

Feeling the need to put something “Disney” into their preschool lineup so that they’ll recognize who the hell the duck with no pants is when their parents bring them to Orlando, all the main characters are put together in this one (Mickey/Minnie/Goofy/Donald/Daisy/Pluto) and have simple adventures, running across other lesser Disney characters (including frequent nemesis Pete, who can barely be qualified as a “bad guy” here). Mickey encourages the kids to chant some gibberish to get the playhouse to magically appear. When it does, it looks like what Mickey would look like if shot out of a cannon straight into the ground. From five feet away. Hard.

THE GOOD: It’s harmless. No one’s really “mean” – Pete’s biggest flaw is that he wants to get paid at places like the boat rental, and anyone who has seen Donald outside of this show can see he’s obviously highly medicated and sedated on MMC.

THE BAD: Believability. OK, I know it’s a kids show and a cartoon no less, but each episode finds you getting four “Mouse-ka-tools” which are seemingly completely random, with the fourth being a “mystery tool.” Yet somehow those four tools fix the problem PERFECTLY, including the mystery tool. The mystery tool is always perfect for the situation. I eagerly await the episode where the mystery tool screws them over. “Goofy’s in a pit and can’t get out? Well, let’s see what our mystery tool is. A feather? Well, here you go Goof – tickle yourself while you wait to die.”

FOR THE ADULTS: See the more obscure characters and remember just how old you are. Maybe Donald’s nephews show up one time. Remember Ducktales? Whoo-oo! That-show-was-on-twenty-two-years-ago. Duck-tales. Whoo-oo!

BE PREPARED FOR: Someone to think they’re incredibly witty or profound when they make the observation that Goofy and Pluto are both dogs yet Goofy gets treated like a person.Yeah, because a mouse having a dog for a pet was realistic to begin with. I hear people drive on parkways and park in driveways too.

Handy Manny

IN A SENTENCE: Latino handyman does nothing but gets all the credit while his English-speaking tools do all the work for no pay. Yeah – no ulterior motive there.

Manny is basically Disney’s answer to Dora & Diego, except instead of rescuing baby animals or dealing with grumpy trolls and primates in raingear, Manny lives in the normal, realistic community of Sheetrock Hills where he works as a handyman, doing everday things and interacting with the Mayor, his friends, and his community… and a talking box of tools.

THE GOOD: Getting past the broken-thing-now-lets-fix-it thing, the show does touch on more personal issues without getting too “very special episode.” Episodes have touched upon subjects like a new child entering the family, fear of being an outcast, and discovering hidden talents.

THE BAD: It’s a nitpick, but while I’m all for introducing children to a foreign language, I can’t stand the way Manny does it. Granted, it’s easier for shows like Dora and Diego to teach a foreign language since they break the fourth wall, but the fact that Manny repeats damn near anything he says in Spanish immediately in English – “let’s go fix el teléfono the phone” – makes it seem like he has a psychological problem. Outside of the whole “hablando con las herramientas talking to tools” thing. Great, now I’m doing it.

FOR THE ADULTS: That’s Wilmer Valderrama as Manny. Fez is teaching your children. And while Manny is pretty boring, look for the tools to throw in a few references that aren’t meant for the primary target audience.

BE PREPARED FOR: Blatent merchandising. Disney is big on the lack of commercials on the channel, but they made a huge deal out of a Handy Manny “prime time event” featuring a 45 minute episode (most Manny half-hours have two “episodes” within) where Manny goes for a road trip on his motorcycle to a family reunion. In a completely unrelated note, Manny’s Fit-It Motorcycle is now available at your local online retailer! I haven’t seen anything that blatent since the good ol’ G.I. Joe/Transformers days.

Special Agent Oso

IN A SENTENCE: Special agent bear doesn’t know how to fold paper or use a stool, showing how “special” he really is.

Oso is in its first season, and it really is amusing to see how little he knows for a “special agent.” We understand that this is a method of teaching children, but what message is this sending? “When you grow up and find your mediocre job striving to be mid-management, someone will get to get to walk in space, visit far off and distant lands, and have adventures you will only dream of, but he will still need to ask a five-year-old how to use a zipper.”

THE GOOD: Teaches kids how to take their time. Each “mission” has three steps that must be completed in order to accomplish the task. Usually Oso fails because he didn’t follow the directions, reenforcing the “think before you act” lesson that my kids still have trouble with.

THE BAD: Oso’s a cute bear and all, but he’s got a hideous color scheme – green and yellow. What’s he made out of, Lymon?

FOR THE ADULTS: That’s Sean Astin as Oso. Yes – Rudy the special agent. I keep expecting Roc to show up when Oso fails and say “You’re 5 foot nothin’, 100 and nothin’, and you have barely a speck of special agent ability…”

BE PREPARED FOR: Every episode is a play on a James Bond movie title. There have been 23 James Bond movies. The puns are bound to get really bad.

Imagination Movers

IN A SENTENCE: Four guys live together and seem oblivious to the cute girl who is always coming to visit because they’re too busy being wacky. See: Brothers, Jonas.

Once upon a time, Disney saw potential in music for preschoolers, and the potential of spinning that off into other projects. When they realized that They Might Be Giants are kind of geeky and don’t move a whole lot, they went with door #2 – the Imagination Movers.

THE GOOD: Lots of music, lots of activity, and it doesn’t look forced – these look like guys who would be dragging you out to the bar to have fun if you were sulking in a corner after a breakup. They’ll force you to have fun, dammit, and you wouldn’t really mind.

THE BAD: Only two types of people walk around all day in clean jumpsuits – cult members and prisoners. I’m not too sure if I want my kids left alone with either one of those groups.

FOR THE ADULTS: The band formed in New Orleans and three of the four members lost their houses in Katrina.

BE PREPARED FOR: Pinball kids. The music is up tempo and the end song instructs everyone to move and jump around and spin, so it’s not exactly something for right before bedtime.

Jungle Junction

IN A SENTENCE: Someone thought an elephant looked like a bus and took it WAY too literally.

You know how when you go to a drive-thru safari and they tell you to keep your windows up because the animals can jump on the cars? Well, picture that happening over the course of 500 or so years, and evolution kicking in. Then you’d have Jungle Junction.

THE GOOD: It’s not annoying, it doesn’t have any shouting or jingles to get stuck in your head, and it’s not interesting enough to hold your kid’s attention so much that he blocks out the outside world.

THE BAD: It’s just not very good. It’s not funny or interesting (outside of the sheer bizarreness of it), and it really doesn’t stand out as a show as a whole. My kids were excited when they heard about it (since it was new), saw it once, and could not care less about it.

FOR THE ADULTS: From the Disney PR: “Jungle Junction” is designed to encourage preschoolers to think about their impact on the natural world. Storylines promote positive environmental messages with characters that have an understanding of the fragile nature of their surroundings and the need to respect that. A show that replaces animals with cars and puts paved roads all through a jungle location is pro-environment. FAIL.

BE PREPARED FOR: Something new in this timeslot next season.