How Does That Even Make Sense?

I promise April will not be purely about kid’s shows but I feel it is appropriate to write about kid’s shows today since the inspiration for this month’s blogs comes from a kid’s show and I am over at Tina’s house and I have maximum exposure to them right now.

I need to state up front that I am all about creativity and use of imagination. I have a great ability to suspend reality. I spent many years playing a game in which I played either a character that shot fireballs from her hands or another character that shifted into various animal forms or into a tree. I love sci-fi and fantasy. There are just somethings that ask me a little too much from me.

My first big thing is about shows with anthropomorphic animals. (Okay I felt way too pretentious writing that so from now on I will say humanoid animal. It is clumsier and not really accurate but I will hate myself less.) I think it is absolutely cool to have shows that have animals as humanoid roles. There is a show called Olivia that is pigs instead of people. Everyone is a pig. I can dig that. Shows that have mixtures of humans and various other humanoid animals don’t bug me either. What bugs me is when these animal humanoids have pets.

Let me clarify. Olivia has a cat. I can dig Olivia having a cat because there are no humanoid cats in the show. It bugs the snot out of me when a show has humanoid animals with the same animals as pets. A humanoid cat should not have a pet cat. It just pushes my suspension of disbelief too far. Cats are either cats or they are people. Okay, Okay, so I know maybe some cats were super experiment and turned into humanoid cats. I can accept that. I also know that evolution can make two species look similar but I do not believe that evolution can create so different of creatures that look the same. I am probably wrong though. The Narnia books and movies are an exception to this because it is explained why some animals are humanoids and some are just animals.

(Yes, I do know I am insane and, yes, Tina has explained to me that I make no sense.)

Another example of my strange logic is “Ni Hao Kai Lan.” Kai Lan is a Chinese American girl that has adventures with her imaginary stuffed animal friends in California. The show has a tiger, a monkey, a rhino, a koala, and some bugs. Well, I did not know at first that the show was set in California, I thought it was set in China. I also did not know that the animals were imaginary friends based off of stuffed animals. I thought they were humanoid animals that just hung out with her.

With these misconceptions of the show, I had several issues. I could buy that this little girl has friends that are animals. Most of the animals were animals native to China. I could dig it, except for the koala bear. For some reason, I could not accept the idea of the koala immigrating to China. Seriously, China is a communist country with strict immigration policy. How the hell would a koala get there from Australia? Then Tina explained to me that Kai Lan lives in California and, for some reason, that made much more sense. I could deal with a koala immigrating to California. (Yes, I know this in itself is completely freaking nuts.)

When I explained my problem with this to Tina she gave me a strange look then said in a slow voice, much like when you talk to a scared animal, “You do realize that all of those animals are just in Kai Lan’s mind, right?” I didn’t and when she realized that that changed everything for me, she gave me another really strange look. I understand that at this point I am certifiable. Anyway, I could accept the rhino that comes to visit by floating with a balloon tied to her horn. I could not accept that a koala had immigrate to China but would immigrate to California. I could accept that all of these things were real. Somehow this is okay in my mind. Whenever Tina pointed out to me that it was all in her head, well, it made so much more sense.