My favorite was Square One TV.

Squeeee!!! Bloodhound Gang! Mathnet! Blackstone!

And it's the reason nine is my favorite number.

Does anyone else remember a show called The New Zoo Revue?

Yep. It came on very early in the mornings. I wasn't crazy about it, because the theme song earwormed me, but would sometimes watch it when I woke up early and there was no other kiddie TV.

When I was at NYU, I remember seeing Morgan Freeman on the street, in an army jacket, and immediately pinging Easy Reader. It was pre-Driving Miss Daisy, et al, if I remember right.

New Zoo Revue was weird. Those oversized puppets, and the ... can this be right? ... gazebo? Out in the town square or something?

No idea what Square One TV is/was.

There was an Elmo version of There's a Monster...? That's just wrong. I read the Grover version to Jake and Ben. And Jake's favorite stuffed animal when he was little was a Super Grover complete with cape and helmet.

Oh, and we bought the Math and Grammar videos of Schoolhouse Rock for the kids. Stephen and I, of course, are the ones who watch them.

Freeman was also Mel Mounds of the Round Sound and Vincent the Vegetable Vampire. IJS.

My kids would get all hyper over Sesame Street, and then calm down for Mr. Rogers.

An odd note: my grandmother scolded me harshly for letting my impressionable little boys watch that horrible Sesame Street with all that dashing around and those ugly, horrid puppet monsters. Watching that trash was going to warp their little psyches.

I was nonplussed until I realized that she was firmly in the "pretty is as pretty does" generation, where beautiful was equated with good, and ugly with bad, and the generalized versions of both beautiful and pretty were accepted. It made me a little sad.

But not sad enough to keep from telling her sharply she wasn't allowed to malign their beloved shows to my kids.

it is my goal today to make a single post on this board that I don't have to go back and rescue in one way or another in edit. Humph.

No idea what Square One TV is/was.

It was a math show, for elementary school kids, in the mid to late eighties, and maybe early nineties. They'd have music segments, and some other little things, and an ongoing Dragnet parody called Mathnet (with Sergeant Monday) where the detectives would have to use different math skills to solve the crimes. (And it was usually something interesting, like breaking a code, not just arithmetic.)

Dragnet parody called Mathnet (with Sergeant Monday) where the detectives would have to use different math skills to solve the crimes. (And it was usually something interesting, like breaking a code, not just arithmetic.)

And Kate Friday! I think that's where I learned about the Fibonacci sequence. And that's definitely where I learned that all area codes (until they ran out) had a 0 or 1 in the middle.

I love Square One! And Sesame Street! But P-C, the Bloodhound Gang was on 3-2-1-CONTACT! (which I also loved).

Ehm.

The Electric Company caused me childhood trauma. Seriously. Some rocket surgeon writer over there decided it would be a great idea to retell the famous fairytale...I think it's "Bluebeard's Wife"? The one where the guy gives his wife keys to the house and says to go into any room except one, and when she finally succumbs to curiousity, she discovers the mangled dead bodies of all his former wives who looked in that room? Yeah. That one.

Well to their credit, they didn't have the mangled dead wives. However, they did have something--which my three-year-old brain registered as a hideous crazy monster beast head thing--pop through the door and chase the wife out of the house.

I kid you not. I saw this when I was three, and I still get the heebie jeebies thinking about it. If I saw it now, I would probably realize it wasn't all that bad, but it was very intense for a toddler.

However, I am totally with Deb et al in the hatred of most of the new kids' tv shows:

Where in sweet fuck are they coming up with the ideas for these things?!?

is the best possible way of describing my feelings about them, too. Has anyone else made the mistake of poking their heads into what's on in the afternoon for cartoons for older kids? Dear god. Twisted.And.Fucking.Scary.

In older thread news, I'm glad my drabble made you smile! Also, Deb? You are right on in your characterization of the narrator.

I love Square One! And Sesame Street! But P-C, the Bloodhound Gang was on 3-2-1-CONTACT! (which I also loved).

Oh duh. Cause it was also in the magazine, until they replaced it with something far inferior, whatever it was.

Mathnet also appeals to grownups. Though I was too busy looking for the UST between the two detectives. I'm a sick, sick woman. Fibonacci sequence, yeah. Which I never did see the point of. How sad is that, that a grade school TV show had math toughter than I could grok.

Cause it was also in the magazine, until they replaced it with something far inferior, whatever it was.

They replaced it with that time travel thing. I don't remember what it was called. The main characters were named Jenny and Sean, and their time-travel thing was never described as anything other than "the tachyon device." Time Team? Something like that? They met Da Vinci once.

You know, I could really use the brain space storing that information for much more useful purposes.