Arthur

Don't let the PBS Kids label fool you--"Arthur" is really a show for grownups that children can enjoy as well. The writers constantly throw in witty cultural and pop cultural references that the kids (and many adults) don't catch. Here's an incomplete list of references/spoofs from the latest season (7) alone:

"Alan Greenspaniel" extolling the virtues of the "sock market" The famous artist "Andy Warthog" Dr. Phil MacGraw "Waiting for Godot" (Binky and Brain wait a long, long, long time to be picked up, while subsisting on carrots and turnips) A combined "Back to the Future"/"Bill and Ted" spoof N'SYNC Muffy the Vampire Slayer And everybody's favorite, Harry Potter.

Not to mention appearances by Larry King, the Backstreet Boys, and those guys from Car Talk. Seriously, it's becoming the "Simpsons" of public TV.

Some notable moments from previous seasons (again, incomplete):

A Teletubbies spoof that has them reciting Shakespeare. The poet William Carlos Williams shouting, "Free verse! Free verse!" "I am educational...I am educational..." "Is there someone inside your head watching everything you do on TV?" "The Contest"...a tour de force featuring spoofs of South Park, Dexter's Lab, and WWF. Bionic Bunny vs. Elias Howe. Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Redman in the same episode. The Spinach Heads. "Nancy Drew gets criminals to confess by wearing attractive pastels." Jekyll Jekyll Hyde Jekyll Hyde Hyde Jekyll... "It's like being dead, only there's homework." Hound. James Hound. "Initials? That's it? Didn't you give the kid a full name?" Buster's "Planet of the Apes" reverie. An introductory narration directly lifted from Boris Karloff's "Frankenstein" ("This story will thrill you and shock you...").

This show is great fun for everyone. I hope the high level of quality continues, and that the writers continue to come up with great ideas.

Arthur is a great show for kids that is not only charming, relate- able and fun and taught great morals to watch but also had great characters. Like the ever reliable best friend Buster who had a running gag of eating questionable food, the tom boy Francine who is hinted to be a love interest for Arthur, Binky the on and off again bully, Fern the adorable shy girl and many more. But for every good character on this show there is a bad trait put in to 1 of the worst characters of any show ever DW! DW is annoying, bratty, mean, selfish, loud, snot nosed, whiny, rude, greed and just plain a shot in the foot to the show for having so many episodes with her put in the lead role. For a show called Arthur their sure is a lot of his sister and some episodes really could have been better if they just swapped her out for someone else. Their are good episodes with her in the lead role like the fire drill episode or Bleep. But there are the bad ones like the one where she gets an allowance but is jealous that her friends get more and does some pompous bull crap to trick her parents into giving her more or one of the episodes I hate the most, "Never, Never, Never" where she has to donate toys she doesn't play with anymore but obviously she doesn't want to get rid of them, so you know what she dose, she gives legit all her toys to the tibble twins and like the brats they are don't give them back and she acts like a brat for the rest of the episode and doesn't really learn anything at the end of episode. Or The episode DW flips she could have been replaced with Sue Ellen or any other girl character. Overall I was just ranting about DW a bad character in a show full of great ones.....but really there should have been less of her.

Arthur is a very good animated show. Based on Marc Brown's wildly popular series of books for children, Arthur - a third-grader in an aardvark suit - and his anthromorphic family and friends attempt to make sense of one another and the world in general. Arthur has a pre-school sister, D.W., who just for fun annoys him. Very believable, and very good if your child is 4 to 8 years old. Grade A

Arthur is such a great show because, it has everything for kids like learning, playing, and kids sticking up with each other. It's much like watching "Flying Rhino Junior High" and "Recess", too. I had first seen this show back in 1996 (right before 1997). Let me tell you a few funny parts: Arthur imagines that he was Oliver Twist; Buster shrieks after he daydreams about the substitute teacher (which was Mr. Ratburn's sister); Francine sings loud while beating her drums and interupted everywhere in Elwood City; and D.W. pretends to be Arthur and pretends to be the audiences sleeping. Oh, yeah. D.W. makes fun of Arthur's Crunch cereal commercial song that's with the line, "my brother stinks like a piece of cheese." Man. I wuv this show and it rocks!

A recent article in (I believe) USA Today named a critic's picks for top shows of the 1990s. As someone who despises mainstream movies and television, I laughed at every show picked. With the notable exception of one. "Arthur." Now there was a show the critic and I could agree on. Arthur features more intelligence, wit, humour and maturity than just about anything else out there and that includes prime time shows. Arthur is a rare children's series that can be enjoyed by both children and adults and truer words were never spoken. Arthur is not "dumbed down" in any way. It refuses to treat it's young audience with anything but respect for their intelligence and feelings. Problems are dealt with in a realistic manner and each of the characters has a distinct personality and come from diverse backgrounds. This is shown in several stories that do not focus on Arthur and his sister, DW (she steals the show by the way) but the supporting cast like Buster, Muffy and my favorite character, the tomboy Francine. Muffy is a rich priss, Francine and her family come from a working class background, the gluttonous Buster's parents are divorced, Sue Ellen and her family have travelled the world and the perceived bully, Binky Barnes, is anything but. The producers need to be commended in their effort to make every character a seperate individual and to give them stories in which they can shine.

I'm 28 and cannot miss an episode of this series. Arthur proves that children's shows can (and should) "grow up." TV wouldn't be such a vast wasteland if more shows (for children and grown ups) would take a lesson from Arthur. It really is "that good."