Arthur - Where is the Show Going?

[Drtooth]

That sounds quite refreshing. There was a period earlier in this decade where EVERY kid's show on PBS had to have a wheel chair kid. The character wasn't a character with a disability, but JUST the disability who smiles, nods, waves, and agrees with what someone else says. Basically a character who's just there and nothing else to say "Hey! It's not bad being different." but saying, "we're TOO afraid of doing anything with the character since any actual personality trait will come off as some sort of negative factor that will get angry letters." I've been saying this for years, but when it comes to anyone who isn't an able bodied white male, there's so little room for character flaws out of fears they'd be misconstrued as stereotypes. And it annoys me, because you can't tell a story with Marty and Mary Sues that's interesting. Plus, it really has a note of "we don't really care to add diversity, but we're doing it because we have to." and that's even worse than completely ignoring them.

But this won't air here until Monday, and I wanna see if I can get the angle on it.

 

[Nick22]

i didn't know arthur was still on! i thought it was over with. wow where have i been. i LOVED that show when i was little. it kinda scared me a little, but i liked it. hahaha.

i haven't seen any recent epsidoes, so i dunno.

 

[Gelfling Girl]

i didn't know arthur was still on! i thought it was over with. wow where have i been. i LOVED that show when i was little. it kinda scared me a little, but i liked it. hahaha.

i haven't seen any recent epsidoes, so i dunno.

Yeah, I recently watched an older episode while channel flipping a while ago, but other than that, it's been a while since I've seen it.

 

[The Shoe Fairy]

I've seen 16/20 episodes now, and I can say that this season contains a lot more "real life" live action footage than all the others. The season overall has a very strong multicultural feel and a great grasp on issues that are definately present within society but not obviously out there; and adresses these well. A few "celebrity" cameos are present also

 

[Drtooth]

After seeing 2 of these, I have to say one thing first of all.

The juxtaposition of an episode where girls are borderline useless secondary characters in movies and an episode where DW watches a show about how weddings and gets obsessed is just too brilliant to pass up mentioning. I don't know if they were intentionally trying to say little girls need the princessy unicorny world of "girly" stuff when they're younger, but once they're older, they learn to reject that and think outside of that paradigm... well... all except for Muffy that is. But anyway, that's almost how it came off as, and I think that needed to be addressed. Somehow, I do think the one where they made their own cartoon needed a better pay off though.

As for Lydia.. well, I see they really made her tough in spite of her situation. And while there are a few characters like that, it's a very rare bread of "we don't want to offend anyone so here's a bland character for you to not relate to." And the fact that they made her an equal, if not superior to Brain and gave them a sort of 8 year old crush (not quite love, but something that would clearly grow overtime... I can read the fanfics now) really gave it an edge. Much better than the "wheelchair" characters from Clifford, Dragon Tales (which made no sense to me... Magic dragons can't heal themselves?), and all the other court ordered bus ins from PBS kid's shows in the past. People can actually relate to that.

But I will say, the best episode out of the two so far was the one DW was trying to get married, even though she has the loosest idea of what weddings are, even though she been to one before (they even referenced it). Like how she thought of the groom LAST! I tell ya, I agree with Arthur's logic in this episode... imitating kid's shows is one thing... but adult shows are far more damaging. Especially to adults.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

is there anywhere I can watch these new episodes online? Unfortuantly I have class when it is on

 

[Drtooth]

I've seen 16/20 episodes now, and I can say that this season contains a lot more "real life" live action footage than all the others. The season overall has a very strong multicultural feel and a great grasp on issues that are definately present within society but not obviously out there; and adresses these well. A few "celebrity" cameos are present also

You Aussies have it so lucky. Not only do we have to wait until spring to see the second half of the season, but we have to wait 2 weeks before they even show the rest of the first 5.

I'm getting mighty sick of PBS's schedules of repeats.

 

[The Shoe Fairy]

You Aussies have it so lucky. Not only do we have to wait until spring to see the second half of the season, but we have to wait 2 weeks before they even show the rest of the first 5.

I'm getting mighty sick of PBS's schedules of repeats.

It's actually not luck, tv station staff put the online viewing ones up in a different order to the way they appear on TV; so by the end of next week I'll have seen the entire season in full.

 

[Redsonga]

It's not on where I live and hasn't been for almost seven years. I would like to watch more early episodes, most of all the more story driven ones and ones with Fern besides the Harry Potter like episode but I can't seem to find them online or off :\

 

[The Shoe Fairy]

Really? The majority of episodes are up in parts on youtube; or (no-one crucify me here, I dont encourage it) on torrent websites in decent quality as torrent files, which you need a client to download.