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David is an occasional blogger, software engineer, Nintendo fanboy, liberal, news magazine addict, voracious TiVo user, and bibliophile. He was born in St. Louis, grew up in southern Indiana, and returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He hasn't managed to escape yet. He's a fan of free wine tastings, too many tv shows to name, and eating out. David makes his living developing web applications used internally by his employer. He doesn't blog about work because he's heard too many stories about that causing workplace troubles. There's more on the about page. |
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19 November 2002 - 4:38 pm
Much like everyone else, I saw Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets this weekend. But rather than write a review of it*, I'd prefer to spend my time discussing a different children's show. More specifically, I'd like to discuss "Discovery Kids," NBC's Saturday morning programming block.
The basic idea behind "Discovery Kids" is that NBC took shows intended for adult audiences, reworked them with prepubescent participants, and interspersed shows more in keeping with the tNBC programming of the past. But the retooled adult shows are the best. There's a pre-teen version of Survivor called "Endurance" where kids compete in events, and the winning team gets to send two other teams (a team is one boy and one girl) to the "temple," where the two teams play Paper, Rock, Scissors to determine who will leave the island.
Another awesome show is the "Discovery Kids" version of Junkyard Wars, called "Operation Junkyard." "Operation Junkyard" is slightly different than the Junkyard Wars we're all familiar with. In OpJk, the teams are assembled in repainted school buses filled with junk (as opposed to the junkyard in Junkyard Wars), and are then asked to build simple devices to accomplish things like keeping a sinking boat afloat. I've yet to see any of the kids tinker with a motor, which is a much appreciated change from Junkyard Wars, where all the shows seem to be quite similar. The kids in OpJk also seem to have more trouble working well in teams, which makes the show much more interesting.
Anyway, if you have the opportunity to watch some TV on Saturday morning, give "Discovery Kids" a chance; just stay away from "Scout's Safari."
* The Harry Potter movie was good, but Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) upstaged Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) in all of their scenes together. Whether this was because Grint has mastered the high-pitched squeal in order to show about 18 different emotions, or just because Radcliffe was as wooden as a cigar store Indian, I don't know.
Posted by on 19 November 2002 at 4:38 PM
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