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.)


Whiny, passive-aggressive cartoon 4-year-olds aside, a puzzling trend has emerged during the spring and early summer on two major networks geared toward youngsters. I've seen at several shows pimped with more than a few ads that feel more like something you'd see on a major network for a prime-time show.

Please don't ask which is Shimmer and which is Shine.
All I know is the boy really enjoys the jaunty musical tunes.

 "ALL NEW EPISODES of Shimmer and Shine -- coming in June!" "A very special episode of Nina's World! Will she be able to get through a camping weekend?" "Summer of Sprout!"

All new episodes? Teases to cartoon cliffhangers? Sure, adults are often caught in the crossfire, having to watch (or at least beat back the skull-numbing dialogue and fake laughter) these shows, but we're talking about young grade-schoolers all the way down to toddlers here. 

These are the same type of kids who happily laugh repeatedly at people fake-sneezing for weeks on end and are riveted to almost anything that makes happy flashing movements and noises on the screen. They'd be just as happy watching the same episode of something dozens of times over.

Adults aren't the ones eagerly tuning in to see if -- ooh boy, can Nina make it?!? --  or what kind of twists and turns simplistic cartoons might take.

The repeated ads for all the new magical learning tools that will turn your little one into the next global mastermind are already bad enough. 

I need my remaining functional brain cells to figure out where all the money is coming from for the Paw Patrol to fund all that fancy technology to save the incredibly dim-witted people in their hometown.