salt and pepper shakers
I did not watch many of the typical television shows for kids and teenagers when I was growing up. SportsCenter never received my viewing attention and my enjoyment of shows like Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was short-lived. When I was a kid, I watched Nick at Nite (their 1990s shows were the “classics”, as they are now known, like I Love Lucy, The Odd Couple, or Happy Days) and Nick Jr. (the day-time Nickelodeon shows, aimed at pre & elementary schoolers, namely Blue’s Clues, Eureka’s Castle, and Rugrats, to name a few). Far from the average kid, I enjoyed television programming targeted to audiences to which I didn’t belong.
It’s no wonder why I liked the classics - anyone who doesn’t enjoy the frenetic scenarios of Lucy Ricardo is messed up in the head; anyone who doesn’t wish they had the suavity of The Fonz should try to remember the uncertainty and embarrassment of high school. However, my continual viewing of the Nick Jr. shows baffled me then and only recently have I begun to decode my fascination. It wasn’t the contextual complexity of the shows that kept me locked - because, certainly, those shows are designed to have minimal layers - but, as I’ve realized, it was the simplicity itself that held my attention.
I’m reading The Tipping Point, a book about causality and how small things can have enormous effects. One of the examples is Blue’s Clues, a show targeted at 3/4/5-year-olds that was launched when I was 11 years old; it had such tremendous success despite being a show that most adults could not stand watching with their kids. It was too simple for most people outside of the demographic - the host’s, Steve’s, pauses and audience-directed questions would drive most adolescent or adult viewers insane.
During the Blue’s Clues case study in The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell shows the amazing stickiness (his term) that the program’s uncomfortable and continual repetition creates. The viewing audience of small children are rapt by the detective-like narrative and the increasingly-difficult puzzles that are solved along the way. The network’s decision in one area of the show set Blue’s Clues apart from other children’s programming: only one episode is shown per week, but that same episode is shown every day. Should any other television programming choose this method to create a stickiness with its audience, they would certainly lose viewership in a heartbeat. But, the detective-esque routines and the audience questioning allows Blue’s Clues an unparalleled connection with the audience that seems (and seemed to me when I was watching years ago) fresh every time around.
This type of repetition worked so well for me because I am the type of media viewer who always tries to associate myself with what I’m watching. I struggle to watch horror movies because I do my best to become the hopeless protagonist who is likely going to suffer; even knowing that I sympathize so deeply with the characters is not enough of a realization to refrain from doing it a second time. To this day, whenever I watch The Empire Strikes Back I still hope that Luke would have given up shooting the Imperial walkers sooner and had gone from the legs at the get-go so as to actually halt the offensive (oh, what a deplorable job of leading you did there, Skywalker). In addition, I absolutely, absolutely cannot watch any show or movie with close-up shots of gore - I seriously bury my face into Becky’s shoulder when, watching an episode of House, they show some operation or computer-animated version of flying through human organs. When watching something, I really enter into the environment of the show, so as to assist the characters along in their struggle (albeit, to no avail).
This is precisely why Blue’s Clues appealed to me and why the 5-day marathons couldn’t phase my adamance. I wanted Steve to wise-up and solve the puzzles at a greater pace and the 2nd and 3rd days of the original show were just another chance for him to catch onto Blue’s clues faster. But, since Steve wasn’t going to solve puzzles faster and since I was becoming totally immersed into the clue-finding and clue-deciphering action, I would become furious that he was unable to learn from mistakes and I, ashamedly, would be poised on the edge of my seat ready to throttle Steve for having no adaptability.
Somehow, maybe through the peaceful contemplation of the episode-ending Thinking Chair or the enjoyable appearances of that animated dog named Blue, I never gave up my viewing. Only once I spent my summers doing more outdoors stuff, especially when I got into casual mountain biking in middle school, did I forget about television and lose all appeal in the programming. Still, today, I cannot escape the sympathies that I have for thematic characters; it’s as if they were friends that I could only wish the best for. And that’s really the appeal that producers and writers have in designing television shows, so I’m forever at their mercy. Fortunately, I know to avoid the horror & medical genres, whenever possible.