Reading this Post Will Be a Waste of Your Time, I Promise.

Seriously, I'm warning you.  The only benefit I gained from writing it was that it may have been a bit cathartic.  You will gain no benefit from reading it.  A father should never spend so much time thinking about his kids' TV shows...

Once your kids start watching TV, you soon realize that their standards of a good show aren’t like yours or mine.  I look for an engaging plot with either humorous or suspenseful surprises.  I want believable characters, realistic dialogue, consistent narrative flow.

My daughter wants to watch Donald and the Beanstalk 10 times a day.

If not that, she wants to watch the episode where Goofy gets turned into a baby.

My son just wants to get up and do his adorable baby dance when the "Hot Dog Dance" music begins.

I’m speaking, of course, about Mickey Mouse Clubhouse- an educational, entertaining, computer-animated cartoon aimed at kids my daughter’s age.  In each episode, Mickey and friends must solve a problem using various “tools” supplied by the freakishly prescient “Mousekedooer” and brought to them by the subservient, ill-used, and (we later learn) emotionally-stunted machine named “Toodles.” 

The problem is, being more deprived of grown-up conversation than before I had kids, my mind starts to pay too much attention to the cartoons.  Way too much attention.  And I start to apply some of the skills I picked up studying philosophy to evaluate what’s going on in the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Universe.  There are about 100 episodes, I’ve seen about 80 of them (not counting repeat viewings of the same episode).  I've seen so much of this show that I tried to correct an error on its Wikipedia article (someone went back an undid my correction, but they're wrong.  So very wrong).  Suffice to say, I have thought way too much about this show.

For example, I find myself concerned at how the character Pete the Cat is portrayed.  In early episodes Pete is often made out to be that “slightly bad guy” (more on that concept later).  He is greedy- often charging admission into various locations that Mickey and friends find themselves.  It is interesting to note that no one questions Pete’s right to charge admission to the public park, the lake, the Ferris wheel, etc.  It seems that his authority is legitimate, or else his size answers for him (he’s the biggest anthropomorphic character, and aside from Willie the Giant, the biggest character on the show).  Though it is never stated explicitly, one gets the sense that Pete is ‘trouble’- he’s in the way, he’s “that sneaky Pete.”  But in reality, Pete is one of the only characters in the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse universe who actually works for a living!  He’s industrial, entrepreneurial.  Without Pete, there’s no way to buy stamps, ride a boat, buy a hat and tie, etc.  No one else on the show ever seems to work for a living (aside from Clarabelle cow, the special events emcee and the proprietress of the “Moo Mart”- which, I assume, uses her own milk- gross!).  For Mickey and friends, the world is a playground, life is a frolic, and anyone who tries to make a buck is just getting in your way.  That seems to be the message we get.  While Mickey and friends are having “friendship day,” “do your favorite thing day,” or “art day,” Pete is hard at work, keeping society running smoothly.

Yet for all his hard work, Pete is the closest thing the show has to an antagonist.  If the plot requires someone to cause problems, Pete’s your guy.  But what I’ve noticed is that Pete seldom (if ever) is portrayed as intentionally malicious.  Even when he’s at his worst (trying to steal a recipe, dog-napping Clarabelle’s dog, etc.), in the end we see that he’s just craving some attention, he’s going about things the wrong way, or he just got carried away.  When caught causing trouble in the episode “Minnie Red Riding Hood,” Pete explains before dashing off, “Sorry, I can’t help it.”  Pete is the victim of his own misbehavior!  In most cases, you are supposed to feel sympathy towards Pete.  The same could be said for Willie the Giant, who in earlier episodes is sometimes an antagonist (until Mickey gets to know him, then they become friends).  In the episode “Donald and the Beanstalk” (which supports a disturbing view of right and wrong that I shall address at another time), it turns out that the big scary giant really just wants (spoiler alert!) something to hug.  The overall message seems to be that there really aren’t bad people.  If you think someone is bad, they’re probably just misunderstood.  In most cases, the only real antagonist is our circumstances, which we overcome through teamwork and creative use of resources.

 Well, that's a few initial observations.  Some possible topics for future entries:

Magic, Technology, and Professor Ludwig von Drake

Minnie, Daisy, and Clarabelle as Female Archetypes (or Why Minnie is Good for Me but I’m Hopelessly Drawn to Daisy)
The Theft of Boo-boo Chicken and Other Acts of Questionable Morality
The Suspension of Physics within the Clubhouse Universe

Character Size and Intelligence- Inversely Proportional?

The Portrayal of Non-Anthropomorphic Animals as a Servant Class

Toodles- The Emotionally Needy Machine

Boy Characters Don't Touch Girl Characters (or "We Plan to Market this in a Very Different, Very Conservative Nation, Which Also Explain Why You Never See Any Words or Letters on the Show")