Mr. Motivator had a massive impact on my childhood. Mostly because I'd spend my Saturday mornings wishing he'd disappear off the screen because he was regularly followed by the Power Rangers or the lesser known Super-Human-Samurai Cyber Squad (a tv show which my memory of is not shared by many of my friends). Biker Mice from Mars, Gigantor, Sweet Valley High, Sister-Sister, California Dreams, Rugrats, Sailor Moon, Pokémon, Rainbow Bright, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Saved By The Bell, Tucker, Hey Arnold!, Doug, Pepper Anne, Recess, Two of a Kind, Raising Dad (a personal favourite, cancelled far too early), Sonic The Hedgehog, Dinobabies, Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, Are You Afraid of the Dark? (didn't have the guts to watch it), Goosebumps (yet another tv show I was too timid to sit through), Clarissa Explains It All, Sabrina the Teenage Witch... the list of shows I grew to love is endless. Yet something about them strikes me - they were, for the majority, clever. Their humor was witty and dry. They challenged kids to think and to form opinions, they threw concepts out there and didn't try and shield kids from what was happening, from life itself. This honesty, wit and insight is something which, in my opinion anyway, modern children's television fails to offer.
Kids tv today really grinds my gears to be perfectly honest, especially the productions of one man; Dan Schneider. I'm probably going to hang myself out to dry here, but what he attempts to sell as 'comedy', is downright insulting to the intellectual capabilities of kids in my opinion. I failed to be enchanted by Kenan and Kel, The Amanda Show lead to my regular avoidance of Nickelodeon at certain times of the evening, and then came Drake and Josh. The name Dan Schneider became synonymous with my discontent. Zoey 101, iCarly and the latest abomination Victorious! have done little to raise Schneider's credibility in my eyes. Schneider's Bakery (as he has dubbed his production company) produced every single one of these shows, along with so-called comedy sketch show All That.
The scripts are poor and the humor is idiotic - screaming the word 'ointment' or having a 'nasty rash' seem to be entertaining all of a sudden. Inanimate objects have apparently become a source of great humor. Now don't get me wrong, I love lamp as much as Bric does, but there's a way to do that kind of comedy, and Schneider's production fall short of the mark. Ron Burgundy's leather bound books and scent of rich mahogany made me laugh as much as the next person, but Kenan and Kel's 'tuna' failed to reel me in. Drake and Josh initially seemed to have potential - two very different brothers with a scheming sister, a plot line that could easily have been used to create a pretty decent comedy. Sadly, no, it also went down the 'ointment, rash, foot fungus' route. I'm not even going to comment on Zoey 101, it shames me to have even watched enough of it to have been able to formulate an opinion in the first place. Schneider's Baker's dozen is infested with mould.
What annoys me most about these shows is their presumptions about the things kids can comprehend. Suddenly the world is only about boys, girls, ointment, foot fungus and delusional parents. Entertainment seems to have been replaced with the need to create the next big thing, the next Hannah Montana or High School Musical (Disney's just as bad as Nickelodeon). Back in the day, kids weren't treated like idiots. TV networks seemed to value their intelligence, their imagination and their ability to process things.
If we're not careful we're going to start breeding a generation of overprotected, unimaginative morons.
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