CraBlogged

So Holden was sick, pretty sick, and extra sick for stupid reasons beyond our control, which aren't worth mentioning here. But the important part of my rant/story to follow, stems from the fact that Holden was sick.

When there's a poor boy, throwing up and feeling terrible, and he's too sick to eat and drink, and can barely manage ginger ale and crackers, all he wants to do is lay on the cold floor. But that's just sad, to see a sad little sick boy just sitting on the floor. Ah, but this is where TV comes into play, and harks a vital hark of a young sick boy's harkiness. In general, we're an anti-tv household. There's no cable, but there's movies often enough - one every other day or so. We've tried a multitude of movies, and he loves most disney's of course, especially lilo and stitch, and his favorite is Milo and Otis. Which happens to be my favorite too, even though it's terrible what they did to those poor animals. Poor, poor animals, drowning off waterfalls and getting eaten in bear fights. Tangent.

Oh and by the way, Monster House is rated PG, not G. Definitely not G. ... Tangent again.

Anyway, for a special sick little boy who needs extra care, and has little concentration for an actual movie, we decided to grace him with a few choice picks from Blockbuster which included Bob the Builder. It's perfect - Holden absolutely loves every single thing about tools, and construction machines, and especially worker men. Every other sentence out of the boy is how much he wants to be a worker man when he grows up and that he has so much work to do on his construction machines.

So I sat down and watched a few episodes of this filth, and filth it is. It is simply brainrot candy. It's not even neutral, it is in fact harmful. I almost liked their motto that they yell out every episode - "Can we fix it??? YES WE CAN!!" except, always right after that, one of the self-conscious machines always chimes in, ".. well.. I guess... I think we can..." - I mean seriously, what are we teaching here, that it's ok to second guess everything you do and worry that you're going to fail before even trying? That same stupid machine has a fear of heights which plays in almost every episode. Wah, wah, it's too high, I can't do it - and instead of turning this into a positive thing, about overcoming your fears, all the other machines instead make fun of him. Scaredy-cat, Lofty's afraid of heights, ha, ha. And then the machine gets sad and runs away crying. Another one of them is afraid of the dark, so much that she gets paralyzed on the job and can't do anything except cry about how dark it is, and they all get frustrated about how they can't finish the job and don't know what to do, and the way they get out of it is by sending the cat in which scares her SO MUCH that she freaks out and runs full steam out of there. Then they all have a good laugh about it. And in the end she boasts about how she wasn't really that scared at all.

Nothing good come from any of the episodes. It's just eye candy for a poor boy who loves construction machines. And really, the same is true with Thomas the Train Engine - which he loves to death as well. I finally sat down with him for an episode, and it really freaked me out. Some of the trains have really, really, nasty mean expressions when they're upset. I don't want to look at it.

I saw an episode about one of them being really angry that he was reduced to one wash-down a day, and the episode was about him having to do all these jobs that made him extra dirty, and the other carts pulled practical jokes on him to make him even dirtier and sadder/angrier. But in the end the controller guy was really proud of the train and ordered him to finally have his daily wash-down, as if it was some extra perk or something. Afterwards I asked Holden what he learned from it, and he had nothing, and I said, "Holden, is it good or bad to make fun of your friends?" And he said, "It's a good thing. It's a good thing to make fun of your friends."

Can anyone suggest a worthwhile show for a budding, impressionable three year old, that doesn't include people being complete asshats towards each other - and maybe, just maybe teaching a little something? Counting, reading, friendship, being nice, taking care of things and being happy... anything.