Thursday, November 15, 2007

Why hasn't something bad happened yet?

Okay, as sad as it is, Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego, Go! are the only shows that will keep my nephew occupied. I try to ignore it, but it's harder when certain parts come up. Every episode, something happens where decisions have to be made fast. Some sort of emergency comes up where they ask for the veiwer's help. Now, Dora and her Cousin Diego both have magical objects that help them along the way. These magical objects (a backpack, a map, and for diego, a "rescue pack") are avid singers. They each have a song they sing, and each "theme song" takes up about 2 minutes, and helping the viewers make decisions about how to help takes about 3. That's five minutes of screen time for each magical singing object.

Now, I don't know about any of you, but I personally have a problem with life-saving help that takes 5 minutes to take effect.

Ex.- Diego, whilst falling to his doom toward some sharp pointy rocks, calls upon his viewers (in this case, my nephew and some other kid we watch on a daily basis) to call for help from his magical "Rescue Pack" This pack can change into anything while still singing, and it changes into several helpful things while it goes about it's song. Now, considering how steep the slope is, and how gravity is, poor Diego would've been dead long before it finished, but I guess gravity is a little lazy today, so Diego can last a few minutes while the Pack sings. But then, instead of immediately helping his comrade, the pack turns to the audience (again, my nephew and his little buddy) for help chosing what to turn into. It goes through several options that it knows are ridiculous ("can we use a bike to help Diego? haha, no, that's silly, how about a bucket?") and finally comes up, after 3 minutes, with a giant pillow for Diego to land on. That makes me mad. How can he be mere seconds from his doom before and after the 5 minute innanimate object solo? It's really kind of ridiculous. I mean, yeah, it's just a show, and they're just trying to help kids learn, but honestly, can't they just cut the solo act? I guess I'm just lucky that my singing, talking, dancing, magic backpack isn't such a diva.

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