Children's television shows are weird

Let's face it: children's television shows are flat-out strange today.I'm glad my boys are now of the age where we watch Avengers cartoons, Star Wars Rebels, and Doctor Who together.But when they were younger, I watched shows with them so I knew what they were being exposed to, and to decide if I was OK with what was going on. For the most part, I was OK with it, I just didn't get it. There were strange goings-on.Let's start in the early years with Thomas the Tank Engine. It seemed like in every single show, the trains were careering off tracks, crashing into one another, and causing other assorted mayhem. Of course, Thomas sometimes managed to save the day, but more often than not, he'd find himself crashed through the side of a building or something similar.I'm not asking for realism from my TV shows - obviously, given what I watch with my boys now - but the continuous accidents suffered by Thomas and his friends, and the blasé reaction of Sir Topham Hatt and others on the Island of Sodor to those accidents defied belief. In real life, train accidents often kill dozens and injure hundreds. And they don't happen nearly as often as they did on Sodor. Someone's gotta get the Transportation Safety Association on the case, because something's up.Sure, New York City is destroyed very often in Avengers cartoons, but they don't pretend like it's not being destroyed. Hell, in the movies and Netflix series, they sure reference that a lot.I digress.There also was Yo Gabba Gabba!, which was inexplicable. I have no idea what the main characters were, but DJ Steve had a great hat. There was a lot of dancing, and for two active children, getting the wiggles out was a good activity. Made it much easier to get them to take naps, I'll tell you. I also completely understood why weed-smoking college-aged students would be attracted to the show.After we finally moved out of the Thomas & YGG years, the Disney Channel came along with Dog with a Blog. This show would send my boys into paroxysms of laughter. Stan the talking dog was the funniest thing they'd ever seen or heard. It was cute, and no one pretended that it was normal that a dog could talk. Half the plotlines revolved around keeping Stan's secret safe. Look, it wasn't Shakespeare, but it was a step up.The day we watched the last episode of Dog with a Blog, my younger son cried and cried and cried when he realized there would be no new episodes. It was a dark day in our home.We graduated to The Amazing World of Gumball, which I still don't understand. It had its moments, but I honestly don't really know what was happening. Characters were all sorts of animals and household objects, including a balloon, a piece of toast and a fish with feet. Gumball's family is mixed, as his mom's a cat and dad is a rabbit. I think. To be honest, I'm not really sure, because they don't really look like cats or rabbits. The show grows on you, though.Suddenly, Uncle Grandpa arrived on the scene. Besides the odd name of the titular character, we had a green dinosaur, a talking fanny pack, a flying tiger that shoots rainbows out of its butt, and a really obnoxious slice of pizza. It's described as a "surreal action-adventure comedy," and I suppose that Dali might have liked it, if he were alive today. I'll be honest - I understood the point of this show even less. But one might suppose that the point of a surreal action-adventure comedy is not to make a lot of sense. Still, it had its moments.Then, Steven Universe. We didn't get through the first season because something in one episode scared my younger son and I jumped on the opportunity to say, "Well, we won't watch it anymore!" Imagine my surprise when I discovered a huge adult population that adores Steven and the Crystal Gems. I know that children's shows have often become popular with adults (as I noted with Yo Gabba Gabba above, and with Teletubbies back in the 1990s), but this came as a complete shock to me.I guess kids' shows were weird when I was a child. I mean, Marvin the Martian, Bugs Bunny, and Wile E. Coyote? Sure, I'll grant you that weirdness. But today's shows have taken it to new levels of surrealism. At least they keep me on my toes.Photo by Frank Okay via Unsplash.