Reviews of a few children's shows on the Sprout channel

I'm not even calling this post "totally legit product reviews" because there is nothing legit about these reviews.

My favorite channel to watch with Audrey is Sprout, especially on weekdays. We get our Disney Channel in on the weekends, but Monday through Friday we are an all Sprout household.

Sprout has shows from all over the former British Empire (MAY THE SUN NEVER SET!), and they are ... ummm ... great?

Here are my thoughts on some of the ones we watch most frequently:

Zou 
(pronounced "zoo")



This is a show about a family of zebras with giant heads that wear human clothes and live in suburbia. It's fine I guess, and Audrey seems to like it ... but in the intro music, the singer refers to "a fine young zebra by the name of Zou" and he pronounces "zebra" like it rhymes with the name "Debra" and that is just unacceptable. The zebras all talk in American accents, and none of them pronounce zebra like this, so I'm confused as to where this bizarre pronunciation even came from? Do British people pronounce the word this way? If so, KNOCK IT OFF!

So, I don't really like this show because every time I hear the intro, it bothers me like nails on a chalkboard. Just thinking about it now is getting me all riled up again.

Zee-bra. Zee-bra. Zeh-bra. Zeh-bra.

Goddammit. F***ING ZEEEEEEEE-BRA. ZEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEBRA.

Okay that kind of fixed it.


Sarah and Duck



This show is most definitely British, and it is WTF incarnate. It's a show about a young girl named Sarah and her ... pet? ... duck. They live in a house with no adults (as far as I can tell), and there's this mysterious narrator who always encourages them to do weird things.

Let me put it this way: I have never been a fan of marijuana or the way it makes me feel, so I don't partake in it and haven't in a very long time. But watching Sarah and Duck makes me feel high in a way that helps me understand why stoners would want to smoke as much as they do. I f***ing love this show.

It makes no sense. No. Sense. Just to give you a feel for the weirdness ... in one episode, Sarah and Duck find one of those machines that you put coins into and it dispenses bouncy balls: 

She buys one for Duck, and then buys one for herself, but unfortunately her ball doesn't bounce when she tosses it at the ground -- it just plops like a little sandbag. So she writes a customer complaint letter saying that she's upset that her ball doesn't bounce ... and then shit gets seriously sideways.

She somehow puts the note back up into the ball machine, and then a door opens in the side of the machine to allow her and Duck to enter. 

Wat.

Inside, they find a weird little elf who explains that she can trade her defective ball for another one. They are in a huge cathedral-like room filled with balls bouncing from floor to ceiling. Sarah is about to trade, but then she decides she feels bad for her poor ball that can't bounce, and doesn't want to trade it for another one.

Then the narrator suggests that she "teach" her ball how to bounce. And she's like "yeah, let's do that!"

Among other strategies to teach the ball to bounce, Sarah and Duck ask the sentient shallots growing in the front garden of her house to show the ball how to bounce. Because the sentient shallots are excellent bouncers.

WAT.

At this point in the episode, I was lying prostrate on the ground absolutely covered in Flaming Hot Cheeto dust while Audrey and I called each other "man" and "dude" and wondered about things like "what if shallots really could teach a ball how to bounce, but we didn't know it because we didn't speak their language?"

And every f***ing episode is this weird. All of them.

Go watch some Sarah and Duck. Then share your thoughts with me. And eat some Cheetos. It's the right thing to do.


Caillou



Caillou is a show about the most insufferable four-year-old boy that has ever walked the earth. How much do I hate Caillou? If there were an episode where a piece of space garbage fell onto Caillou's house and put him in a coma for six years, that would be my favorite episode. If there were an episode where Caillou left the gas on in the kitchen despite his parents telling him it was dangerous (because Caillou is an idiot who doesn't listen to anyone) and it blew up his house, that would be my second favorite episode.

Caillou is awful, and the theme song for this show gets stuck in your head forever, and also his name is really stupid, which isn't his fault but I still hold it against him. The episode where he became school Safety Helper for a day made me suicidal.

Go f*** yourself, Caillou.


Anyway, we also watch Astroblast (love it), Pajanimals (Audrey is all about it), and Stella and Sam (though by the time this show comes on, Audrey just wants me to read her books instead of actually watching the show). But I don't really have anything to say about those, except to wonder why Stella spends so much time with her brother who is clearly significantly younger than her. Why doesn't she have any friends of her own? Anyone her own age to hang out with? And where are their parents?

I'm just saying, Stella, that it's a little weird. A liiiiittle weird.


Oh, and Chica the chicken that only "speaks" in hideous squeaks and squeals? You'd better pray you never run into me on the street. Because let me tell you what I like to do with chickens that annoy me:



I'm not threatening you, though. I'm just ... making conversation.

Yeah.