Lost, For Kids!
Okay, usually noon saturdays is a dead zone for TV. So rather than watch the lame stuff I usually do, I decided to do some channel surfing, and found this show, Flight 29 Down. I guess it's some sort of NBC/Discovery for Kids co-production.
It's basically a Lost ripoff for kids (without the flashbacks to pre-island life... at least in this episode they have an annoying tendency to do random mini-flashbacks to previous episodes or even earlier in the same episode). Some group of teens on a school trip or something crash on a deserted island and have to survive. Maybe it's old news, but I hadn't even heard about it before.
It's pretty lame. I don't know if there are Polar Bears, Others or mysterious island magic, but I doubt it. Also considering it's a kids show, I sadly doubt that there'll be any Lord of the Flies style degeneration or killing sprees, which is a shame because most of the kids are really annoying. (Then again, to follow the story, the annoying kids would be the ones doing the killing). I mean hell, one of the subplots of the episode was about some of them trying to catch a piglet for food. And how does it end? When they finally do, one of them gives a speech about survival ending with "But in the end, we have to be able to live with ourselves." Yep, you guessed it right. THEY LET IT GO.
Still, it's kind of amusing in a WTF sense, and kind of makes me wish for a non-lame version. I mean not all shows starring or targetted to kids need to be lame. Just treat it seriously or don't do it at all. Have them kill the pig, or suffer for not doing so. In general, everything, take it seriously. Kids need to learn about death too, and if one real kid dies because they saw a show like this and got in a real survival situation and couldn't hack it, it's on THEIR HEADS.
Of minor interest to Buffy fans, one of the girls on it was a Potential Slayer (the asian one who couldn't speak English). Well I guess technically she's now an Actual Slayer, assuming she survived, which I can't remember.
According to the commercials, next up on the same channel is a show that looks like it's basically Survivor for kids, which I already knew about and thought was pretty sad, but it makes me wonder, is NBC's entire kids schedule made up of ripoffs of successful adult TV shows? Is there 'Desperate Cheerleaders"? "CSI: The Cafeteria"? My Name Is Jimbo, about a bully who learns the value of karma and tries to make up for all his bad deeds? A classroom comedy in the style of The Office?
It's basically a Lost ripoff for kids (without the flashbacks to pre-island life... at least in this episode they have an annoying tendency to do random mini-flashbacks to previous episodes or even earlier in the same episode). Some group of teens on a school trip or something crash on a deserted island and have to survive. Maybe it's old news, but I hadn't even heard about it before.
It's pretty lame. I don't know if there are Polar Bears, Others or mysterious island magic, but I doubt it. Also considering it's a kids show, I sadly doubt that there'll be any Lord of the Flies style degeneration or killing sprees, which is a shame because most of the kids are really annoying. (Then again, to follow the story, the annoying kids would be the ones doing the killing). I mean hell, one of the subplots of the episode was about some of them trying to catch a piglet for food. And how does it end? When they finally do, one of them gives a speech about survival ending with "But in the end, we have to be able to live with ourselves." Yep, you guessed it right. THEY LET IT GO.
Still, it's kind of amusing in a WTF sense, and kind of makes me wish for a non-lame version. I mean not all shows starring or targetted to kids need to be lame. Just treat it seriously or don't do it at all. Have them kill the pig, or suffer for not doing so. In general, everything, take it seriously. Kids need to learn about death too, and if one real kid dies because they saw a show like this and got in a real survival situation and couldn't hack it, it's on THEIR HEADS.
Of minor interest to Buffy fans, one of the girls on it was a Potential Slayer (the asian one who couldn't speak English). Well I guess technically she's now an Actual Slayer, assuming she survived, which I can't remember.
According to the commercials, next up on the same channel is a show that looks like it's basically Survivor for kids, which I already knew about and thought was pretty sad, but it makes me wonder, is NBC's entire kids schedule made up of ripoffs of successful adult TV shows? Is there 'Desperate Cheerleaders"? "CSI: The Cafeteria"? My Name Is Jimbo, about a bully who learns the value of karma and tries to make up for all his bad deeds? A classroom comedy in the style of The Office?