Hey, Arthur!

I like watching children's shows that aren't meant for me. I then like to poke holes in them. I know that this is probably a bit unfair - after all, these shows were designed for people seven years younger than me, but I think of it along the lines of gaining a second opinion. After all, if you had no idea about cars, then a guy fixed the engine of your car, would it be bad if another mechanic had a look at it and pointed out that it was fixed with glue and plasters? No, it wouldn't be. So that's the analogy that I'm using. I think. I don't know. But yes, I have seen a lot of kids' shows in my time. Many have been brilliant. Many have had funny drug references that only I get. But many have been utter undiluted shit. And now I'm writing a post about the crappiest, just because I've finished Resident Evil 4 and I need to write something before I go away today. So here we go:

This post is in honour of Arthur, officially The Lamest Show On TV. Arthur is about the adventures of a young lad called Arthur and all his friends in the perfect american locality of Elwood City. There are no terrorists in Elwood. There is no crime. There are no drugs. In fact, there are no blacks, indians, or foreigners. The worst criminal in town is the school bully, and even she's a bit shit (we know that the bully is bad because she had long hair and wears a denim coat with no sleeves and frayed edges). But this show isn't about the perfect town of Elwood (god bless you, eugenics). This show is about ARTHUR. For those of you who don't know, this is Arthur, with his friend Buster:



Arthur is the gay yellow one. In case you were wondering, Arthur is meant to be an aardvark. Yes, and aardvark. This is what an aardvark actually looks like:



And here's the list of differences between Arthur and a real aardvark:

Arthur is yellow.
Arthur wears clothes.
Arthur has been voiced by four different people. The aardvark has only been voiced by two.
Arthur has fully formed human hands. Thumbs too.
Arthur stands up on two feet.
Arthur doesn't have a massive nose.
Arthur goes to school.
Arthur eats normal people food, as opposed to ants.
Arthur speaks in a squeaky girlish voice as opposed to the manly germaic roars that issue forth from most aardvarks.
Arthur does not sleep in a recently excavated nest. Rather, he sleeps in a bed.
Arthur is best friends with a rabbit.
To all extents and purposes, Arthur does not have a penis.

Arthur is like the most unaardvarky aardvark ever. I mean, he lives in a house. In an american suburb. Basically, Arthur is a human boy, they've just decided to make him and all his friends multicoloured and give them funny ears. That's IT. And he's best friends with a rabbit. Why a rabbit? I don't know. But he has plenty of other friends too, including Binky, who seems to be a potato. Yeack. But, I'm not pedantic. I can forgive a tv show this amount of willfull raping of the laws of biology; after all, everybody in the Simpsons is yellow.

What I can't forgive, however, is the sheer amount of lameness that this show manages to cram into every episode.

Seriously, if you could distill Lame into a liquid, this show would be a LAKE. A lake of lame. Vicars with guitars and beards telling kids that 'God is Groovy' watch this show and proclaim it to be lame, man. This show is lamer than Teletubbies, which manage to win some cool points just through the sheer power of the drug-induced brain that originally thought it up. But Arthur? There's no drug inducement anywhere. Well, I bet there's a reference somewhere, but it's quickly quashed with a valuable life lesson.

Life lessons. I hate life lessons. The only life lesson you really need to learn is that Nobody Cares. Once you've got that off pat, you're set for life. But this show... ARGH. EVERY EPISODE HAS A MORAL. I mean, I don't mind morals in SOME TV shows (well actually I do); like that episode of the Simpsons where Sideshow Bob was about to marry Selma and the moral was 'never stop distrusting people', or that episode of Family Guy was 'don't kill the kids from Dawson's creek'. But I can't forgive a show where every SCENE is either devoted to setting up the moral, or teaching the moral. Seriously, if you were writing a synopsis of every episode of Arthur (and god willing, I'll never have to), you could just copy the words 'and Arthur and the Gang learn a valuable life lesson', and paste them onto the end. It's like the mission of Arthur to cover every hot topic in American culture today so we can be one big PC family.

For example, in one episode, Arthur's friend Buster is sad because his parents are divorced (issue number 1) and his father lives far away, (issue number 2), and Arthur is worried that Buster is going to be sad at the father-son picnic (issue number 3). So Arthur and his friends decide to get Binky a NEW DAD! A HA HA! DOESN'T THAT SOUND A HILARIOUS WAY TO SPEND HALF AN HOUR? IT DOES. AND BOY WAS IT FUNNY.
And, my personal favourite, the episode where potato boy learns that he's allergic to penuts. Now instead of eating lots of nuts and having his head explode in a cool/hilarious way, he prances about for the entire episode whingeing about being allergic, until he realises that there's a way to get around his allergy, by being careful about what he eats, going to the library to look up information about allergies, and not being around people with penuts. Yes, that's it. That's the resolution to this particular episode. Deep, man.

I hate this show much. Watching it is like watching one of those BBC propaganda videos aimed at children, telling you not to play with matches or smoke or talk to strangers.

'This is Johnny. Johnny smokes. NOW JOHNNY HAS LUNG CANCER AND IS GOING TO DIE A THOUSAND DEATHS! MWHWAHHAHA!'

Oddly, I usually enjoy those videos. They make me laugh. Arthur does not. They should remove the shiny 'fun' tag, and just make it an educational show that they force kids in school to watch with a Clockwork Orange style setup. I mean, this show breaks one of the funadmental rules of lameness. It tries to be funny. Mistake. You can't be funny when your main character is dressed in a shirt/sweater combo, massive shoes, and glasses. What sort of kid wears a shirt/sweater combo? And glasses? Not that I have anything against kids with glasses, but they are SO ANNOYING. On the french trip there was this little german kid with glasses and he kept glaring at me. So I had a staring competion with him. AND I WON. Take that, you little cunt. Then I looked round, and Curry was having a staring competition with a baby. And wielding a rock threateningly. Ah, memories.

Oh yeah. Arthur is the kind of show where the main character spends hours singing songs about why reading is really fun, and dancing around the library. So you like reading, do you, Arthur? Well why don't you read a DECENT book, as opposed to the liquid shit you usually read. Read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That will blow your little mind. RINSED.

So, in conclusion, Arthur sucks. The sad thing is, he'll probably get laid before me.

"Hi, I'm Arthur and I'm a big gay loser aardvark who actually acts like a person because the writers are lazy cunts" - actual quote from the series