Coming soon: ALL NEW very special episodes of Shimmer and Shine, Nina's World and -- just end it all now

As idllyic as keeping TV away from your small kid seems, let's get real here. Life happens.  Sometimes you need a break from the wee one to pay bills, make food or just space out for a few minutes and maybe reset your toddler's brain that has been set on "psycho" for a couple of hours.

The number of entries on Google for
"Did Caillou die in the last episode?"
alone is staggering -- and understandable.

I'm no veteran of modern children's TV, and obviously, I'm not expecting to be enthralled by any of it, and understand some of it's going to be mildly annoying and will require my advanced level "Dad hearing." ("Why, no, I had no idea he's been saying nothing but "meeemeeemeeemee" for 20 minutes.")

But I've seen enough to know that Caillou is the equivalent of a TV ebola virus and easily the worst thing to come out of Canada since Bieber. (Although an occasional Canadian "oat" instead of "out" comes out fairly regularly from Ryder, a main character in Paw Patrol.)