3-2-1 Contact

Watching this show was an after school ritual for me. I still remember the episode where the kids were stranded in the middle of Death Valley and spelled out HELP in rocks, hoping for a plane to fly past them. Do you remember the bizzare episodes of the Bloodhound Gang? The science they taught everyone who watched it still haunts me to this day. Do you remember the pinhole camera in the back of the van when they got kidnapped by the art thieves, or the ladder the fat lady broke going up to the attic to get her mothball infested dress?? Am I the only one who remembers this stuff??

In one very memorable episode of the 1980 season, one of the girls (I think it was Trini) went to a KISS concert to get a little behind the scenes introduction in how all the sound equipment was put together. They then played part of the concert. I was watching this episode with my friend and just as they were playing the concert, his dad walked in and got all upset that we were watching junk on TV. He didn't listen when we tried to explain that it was an educational program on PBS, and he forced us to turn it off!!!

The main difference between the first season and later seasons is that the original 321 Contact gang was composed of 2 girls and 1 guy, while later seasons saw the inclusion of a wise-crack prone kid. Thus, while the first season had a Three's Company vibe to it, later episodes had more of a Scrappy Doo vibe that got a little annoying.

I don't know that they ever made new Bloodhound Gang episodes. I kind of remember seeing the same ones over and over again even during the newer episodes.

I saw probably the entire first season and I agree the show gradually became a little stale in following years.

Of course there was the bouncy theme song with a disco vibe, that included lines like "Contact/ it's the reason/ it's the moment/ when everything happens./ Contact.../ Let's make contact." Sounds vaguely like a proposition. Making science sexy, maybe. Someone should record a club remix.

Part of the footage that played along with this (aside from a Saturn V lift-off, an arc lamp, and I think an earth-mover) was of a frog wiping spittle off its eye in slow motion. This made me gag, especially since it came right before a slobbering infant. Of all the stock footage available, they chose two cuts with saliva to illustrate the wonders of the natural world.

All in all, it was a pretty good show. I didn't care for the fictional segment ("The Bloodhound Gang"), and I was embarrassed by its theme song.

It is probably difficult to make a show like this, since the children with an interest in science probably know a lot of the basics already, yet the ones with only a passing interest are the real target audience, since the makers wanted more to instill curiosity than to inform. There is no way this show could be considered to teach with any degree of rigor. It was essentially a succession of appealing or curious images that could be easily explained, with a sort of Encyclopedia Brown show tacked on.

Back in 1980, when I was in 3rd grade, I remember a brand new show premiering on PBS called 3-2-1 Contact. At that time, I had just started getting interested in science. Since I didn't have cable, and Mr. Wizard I had never heard of at the time, I found this show to be very interesting. It became an after school routine for me to watch, looking forward to what they had planned to teach that week. For those of you who've never watched it, they would to devote an entire week on a particular subject, which really kept you watching if it was something that interested you (or kept you changing the channel if you were bored by it, something that never happened to me on this show).

3-2-1 Contact really inspired me to maintain an interest in science ever since then. It was 3-2-1 Contact that got my interest in computers back then, which turned out to be a lucrative career for me. I also used to subscribe to the magazine they had by the same name (also published by Children's Television Workshop who created Sesame Street and The Electric Company).

All in all, I'd have to say that this was a very wonderful series to learn from, and now that it's on Noggin a new generation of kids can learn from it. My young son and I watch it together now, and he's learning a lot from it.

I remember watching this show hundreds of times as a kid! Mind you, I loved the 1980 season with Trini, Mark, and that other gal (can't remember her name). A friend of a friend who's an actor in LA actually met Mark, and he's doin' okay. I didn't care for the other seasons, but I'd do anything to see the old 1980 episodes again.