The joys and faults of children’s TV

The influences on children during their formative years can have lasting impacts on their personalities for the rest of their lives; this is why the media you watch when you’re young becomes such an important part of many people’s identities.
There are plenty of really good kids’ shows out there that teach important lessons and are also fun for adults to watch with their kids, and others that can make parents want to rip their hair out after their kid has asked to watch it for the eightieth time.
I wanted to revisit some of these kids’ shows to see which ones still hold up and which ones are maybe best to just look back on with nostalgia. Obviously, I can’t cover all of them for lack of time and space, but I did my best to pick the ones that helped to define me as the person I am, and hopefully many of these did the same for you.
The first show I’d like to talk about is the classic Blue’s Clues. To be honest, I continued watching Blue’s Clues a little older than I think most kids did, but can you really blame me? It’s such a fun and cozy show, and I always loved feeling like a detective trying to help Steve solve the mystery of what Blue wants to do today.
I was a little nervous coming back to watch this show again as I wasn’t completely sure how I’d feel about it, and honestly, it’s still a banger, which was a huge relief. If I ever have kids, you can bet your whole box of doughnuts that I’m going to have them watch Blue’s Clues.
Steve absolutely carries the show. If he were even slightly less committed and enthusiastic about what he was doing it would have easily been cringe and unpleasant. But this man put everything he has into this performance, and it gives me so much joy.
I would simply be lying if I said I didn’t find myself answering every question Steve asked the audience out loud… in my room… by myself… okay, it sounds a little bit pathetic, but I was having the time of my life. I didn’t continue watching it any further than the first episode, but I was thoroughly entertained. Blue’s Clues is a 10/10 show, and no one can convince me otherwise.
Next, I’d like to talk about Wild Kratts and Zoboomafoo. I never watched Kratts’ Creatures, but Chris and Martin Kratt still found their way into my childhood with these two fun animal-themed shows. The amount of curiosity for animals that the Kratt brothers built into me is something I am very grateful for.
After giving them both a rewatch, I think Zoboomafoo was cuter and was very silly in the best ways. It picks a general topic about animals to explore for the episode, like different kinds of noses, then shows a few animals that demonstrate the topic well, like an elephant and a hound, and talks about these animals in a very general sense.
Wild Kratts is a more exploratory way to learn about animals. It’s more adventurous and spends time talking about specific animals and what makes them unique through whatever the plot of the episode is. I love the creature power suits; that was the sickest concept ever to eight-year-old Jay, and now eighteen-year-old Jay is sitting here feeling the same way. What a creative way to show kids the cool abilities animals have.
Between the two, Zoboomafoo is the one I reference the most with its silly jingles and quippy nature, but I think Wild Kratts does a better job at being engaging to kids and also explores the sides of animals that older people might not even know. The facts shared in Zoboomafoo are pretty basic for the most part, and you see a lot less of how the animals actually operate, even though it’s the one in live action while Wild Kratts is animated. Overall, two great shows by a great pair of brothers, 8/10 each.
The third show we’ll talk about is Caillou, which was my absolute favorite thing to watch at the age of six. I think it just felt very relatable to me at that age, which is also why I grew out of it quicker than most other things I watched as a kid; it stopped being relatable pretty quickly.
This one was a struggle to rewatch. The stories and dialogue are rather uninteresting when you’re not a young child, and Caillou’s personality is a little bit grating sometimes; he really likes to whine, which, to be fair, is pretty realistic, but it isn’t particularly enjoyable to watch.
I do remember there were episodes of Caillou that genuinely taught me valuable lessons, though, like why washing your hands is important, and there was an episode that taught me what diabetes was in a way that was easily digestible for kids. I just wish they had put in the effort to make the show not so grueling to sit through for anyone who isn’t still young enough to be able to say “you look ugly” and have it be endearing. I’ll have to give it a 4/10 for the lessons it taught me, but it’s definitely a show best to leave as a nostalgic memory.
I’ll talk about one last show in this article that probably had the largest overall impact on me as a person, that being Word Girl. This show turned me into one of the most pretentious little eight-year-olds who ever existed. It made me enjoy growing my vocabulary, and I eventually started being that kid who would correct his friends’ grammar and incorrect usage of words. Luckily, I grew out of that eventually. Well, for the most part, anyway.
It was shows like this one that really formed my sense of humor into what it’s become today. It’s, of course, very witty, but also often completely ridiculous. I loved when Becky and the Narrator would get into arguments, and it was like baby’s first meta-humor.
Watching Word Girl again was so much fun for me. I was full-on giddy when the theme song started, like I squealed and everything. This is my show. It wasn’t as funny to me on rewatch as it was when I was a kid, and I remembered the words it taught to be a bit more sophisticated than just “eerie” or “memorize,” but I still had a great time revisiting it.
Some of the jokes definitely went over my head as a kid, particularly the fact that Word Girl’s home planet is called Lexicon; that made me giggle. I also found myself loving the villains a lot, in contrast to when I was a kid and hated them because they were mean. Toby especially made me laugh a couple of times. A super fun series that I would definitely show to my theoretical kids, 9/10.
Coming back to shows that had such an impact on me during my formative years was a great experience overall, although I wouldn’t sit down to watch any of these again just for the sake of it. Even if you didn’t watch these shows specifically, I’m sure you also had shows that had a lasting impact on you in similar ways to how these ones affected me, and I think that’s wonderful. Television can be a great way to get kids interested in learning about the world, and any show that successfully does that is a win in my book.