The Golden Globe

Asked for his reaction to the end of his record-breaking streak in Kidvid ratings, Peppy said, "We'll get 'em coming or going now. As for not being in first place, you know how much that affects my ad revenue? Not one Neptune nickel, that's how much. You know how many kids load the Peppy Show every week, week in and week out? Millions, that's how many. So a couple a thousand more kids are watching Skunk Cabbage. So what? It ain't scrapin' the shine off my shoes."

More likely to fuck up his Florsheims is the result of a tracking study done by the research firm of Thickey Gitte. According to their figures the Peppy Show would have registered in third place but for two guest shots by characters from the Sparky show, Crispin Crunchy and H. Ralston Riddlerah. AAS was up a full ten points for those two episodes. Given the persistent stories about creative tension on the Sparky team, Peppy has to feel at least ambivalent about those numbers. The departure of John Valentine for the Outer Planets, bruited as a palliative measure for the continuing tensions in the boardroom and the story conference, seems to have helped only a little. Rumor has it that Gideon Peppy has lost creative control of his new baby. So who's in charge, Gideon?

from Elementary Educator's Bulletin

issue #390

"Kids at Risk"

by Humphrey Murgatroyd

It is a distinct pleasure to report that, of the three new television series to become hits in the past year, two of them are good to excellent.

Much has already been written in this journal and many others of the deplorable Skunk Cabbage, and I will not further belabor it here.

Scoop the Poop is, as some critics have suggested, simply What the Fuck? in new clothes. One may regret the lack of originality, but considering the great bulk of children's programming, we should count ourselves lucky that an offering from the Children's Educational Workshop is still available, still getting excellent downloadings.

But the real surprise, and the real quality, is Sparky and His Gang.

Sparky began with high hopes, quickly faded into a yawn with both children and educators, then resurrected itself with an astonishing array of new characters. It began so badly, in fact, that this reviewer stopped watching it after the third outing. Then a few weeks ago, alerted by its quick rise and by favorable comments from my students, I loaded every episode and have now watched each one three times.

It is easy to hypnotize children with sound and fury, signifying nothing. If you watch children watching a show like Skunk Cabbage you will notice a certain glassiness of the eyes, a slackness of the jaw. At such times children are no more sentient than a reptile, and no more emotionally swayed. The violence is meaningless. It is animated wallpaper. If it succeeds in moving them to any degree at all, it is to desensitize them to real violence and its tragic effects. Children rise from such a show unable to tell you much about what happened, other than that things exploded, guns went off, swords were wielded, limbs and heads lopped off. Their play after such an experience has no more depth than the show. After watching cardboard heroes chopping up cardboard enemies for no discernible reason, they become more than a little cardboard themselves. They have been viscerally involved, but their emotions have not been touched. Nothing was ever at stake. No lessons were learned.

This is where Sparky and His Gang succeeds, and that it does is little short of a miracle. Load the early episodes, if you dare. You will find Sparky and his friend, Polly, appealing. Everyone else is a reject from a hundred other similar shows. They do uninteresting things for baffling reasons. The show has no center, and no direction.

The changes in the Sparky show can be traced to the debut of the first interesting member of his gang: Inky Tagger. He is a ridiculous character at first glance. His fingers are a spectrum of magic markers. He has a big aerosol valve growing out of the top of his head. And he is completely covered, head to toe, with constantly shifting graffiti.

Inky is a si

Wrong. Inky has been known to backslide. He is at his best when close to Sparky, enfolded in the love of the Gang. But when alone, his restless urges are apt to overcome him. He feels terrible about it, but is helpless as any alcoholic. Sparky gets exasperated with Inky, but never stops liking him, and Inky is learning to control his urges.

Think about it. How much money has been spent in "Public Service A

All Sparky's new gang are a little comical, and a little frightening. An excellent example is Arson E. Blazeworthy. The comical side is his appearance, like a mad scientist whose most recent experiment has blown up. His face is blackened. Sometimes the tip of his nose and the tips of his earlobes burst into flame. His eyes are always comically wide. His charred clothes smolder and smoke. Arson is, of course, the pyromaniac, the compulsive fire-setter. The arsonist was a figure of fear even back on Old Earth. Here in the confines of the Lunar warrens he strikes terror into all our hearts. And it is a common enough condition in the young, one not often talked about. Sparky's Gang faces Arson head-on, reforms him, turns his fire-setting powers toward good. Usually. Like Inky, Arson can find the temptation too great. But he is trying.

All of Sparky's motley crew are trying to do better. Sparky does not demand perfection. He knows no heart is totally pure, not even his own. Sparky himself is sometimes prone to overconfidence, and there is a sprightly, practical-joking side to him.

Each of the children in the Gang personifies some failing, fear, obsession, or stumbling block encountered in the process of growing up. In the last few months they've been given a name, these outsiders brought into the bosom of Sparky's Gang: Kids at Risk. Here, meet a few of them:

Lionel Alibi. As usual, the name says it. Whatever happened, Lionel didn't do it. And if he did do it, it wasn't his fault, because somebody made him do it. And it wasn't him, anyway, it was A

Acne Rose. The disfiguring skin disease known as acne rosacea is, thankfully, merely a memory now. Except for poor Acne Rose. She has an incurable case, her face a mass of eruptions and cankers. Naturally enough, she hates everyone who looks at her. But, this being a television fantasy, she is armed with the Zits of Death. When she pops a pimple it's like a toxic spill.