An Unnecessarily Detailed Opinion on Two Kids' Shows

There are two shows on the FORMED app for children that involve live music, puppets, and "life lessons". The Slugs and Bugs Show, and The Wonderful World of Benjamin Cello. The first is produced by a Protestant Christian and children's music artist out of Nashville, and the other seems to be put together by a group of classically inclined musicians who all either went to Christendom College, Franciscan University of Steubenville or Thomas Aquinas College (despite doing some digging, I can't find out much about the cast. They just give me that vibe). 

((UPDATE: I've since found out the creators are a family/band of musicians who converted to Catholicism))

I vastly prefer the Protestant show out of Nashville. 

First, the good stuff they have in common. Both shows seem to have genuine effort behind them, and the sets on both shows are gorgeous and detailed. The acting on both shows by the adult characters is about on par as well-- they're obviously trying their best, but it comes off a bit forced occasionally. Both shows also have obvious trained musical talent behind them. 

Where Slugs and Bugs begins to pull ahead for me is the puppetry. The puppet designs and the work of the puppeteers is just way, WAY better than the stuff on Benjamin Cello. They obviously actually hired trained puppeteers and puppet designers, and they put real effort into making them actively interesting to look at on screen. They're also integrated well into the stories and set -- you buy them as characters in their own right and they obviously belong in the world of the show. 

Benjamin Cello...not so much. A recent episode from their second season that featured a cast of "bookworm" puppets had a song that was nearly unwatchable for me. Several minutes with these nearly lifeless stuffed things sitting nearly motionless on a black background. They didn't move their bodies or heads at all-- only their mouths, and not particularly expressively at that. They don't seem to be integrated into the show so much as tacked on because "it's a kid's show; there should be puppets". Quite frankly, if they weren't going to bother to do it right, they shouldn't have done it at all.

(What makes this particularly frustrating is that this show has used puppetry beautifully and creatively, with their Holy Week special. The whole story of Holy Week was told via shadow puppets on a screen, and the level of artistry involved in that was breath taking. But it just doesn't extend to their stuffed puppet characters at all). 

The second area where Slugs and Bugs pulls ahead is the writing. Now, to be fair, I think the shows are going for two different writing styles. Benjamin Cello has advertised itself as "Mr. Rogers mixed with Mary Poppins", while Slugs and Bugs has a more conventional story driven approach in their episodes. 

Unfortunately, while Benjamin Cello tries to be another Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, it just...isn't. Neither is it Mary Poppins. 

 There are aspects in common. They have a general theme for each episode rather than a central story driven by conflict like Fred Rogers did with his show, and they try to do a "land of imagination" like he did. In both shows, the emphasis is more on interacting with environments and talking about concepts than about focusing on a story line. 

The difference is that the characters in the show are putting on a mask, while Fred Rodgers never did. All of the adult characters in Benjamin Cello act out characters that are supposed to be adults, but they either talk childishly or with a forced, almost aggressive eccentricity and cheerfulness. They're aiming as hard as they can for whimsical, but what they don't understand is Mr. Rodger's adult characters in the Land of Make Believe, whether they were puppets or adults in costume, were rarely supposed to be "adults", whimsical or otherwise.  

The characters in The Land of Make Believe acted like children most of the time, but they acted like children emotionally. They were scared, or angry, or excited, and they were reacting the way a child would react in whatever situation was being presented. The times they did act as adults, it was to help other "child" characters express what they were feeling and act as a foil for their emotions. And when they weren't in the Land of Make-believe, the actors acted like themselves-- like normal adults. They talked simply so that children could understand, but they didn't talk down to children or with an affectation of any sort. This drew the audience in, because either it felt relatable or else it felt real. 

The characters don't draw you in with Benjamin Cello, they just act goofy and "whimsical" in front of you. They try to make some of the characters both silly and wise, and it really doesn't work. You can't relate to them, and you can tell that they aren't being real either. There's no "real" world-- the whole thing is in "the Land of Make-Believe" (only here it's called "The Land of the Baptized Imagination"), and they aren't trying to explore emotions like the child-like characters in Mr. Rodgers, they're just trying to be Innocent Smith from Manalive. 

I think perhaps this attempted whimsical quality is where they're trying to emulate Mary Poppins, but even that doesn't work, because Mary Poppins had adults with flaws that were clearly visible. The ethereal quality of Bert and Mary had the deeply flawed and dismally adult Mr. and Mrs. Banks, cook, and council of bankers to balance them out. Not everyone in the film is whimsical and delightful; it has its antagonists (the same is true, by the way, of Manalive. Innocent Smith barges into a world of normal adults acting in the constrained way normal adults act, and that's what makes him so startling). 

That balance just isn't there in Benjamin Cello. Everyone is whimsical and delightful all the time. There's no foil or antagonist to balance it, just unremitting whimsy and "childlike wonder" broken up by songs performed by obviously trained vocalists.   

Slugs and Bugs handles this balance of childlike whimsy and solid adult much more competently. There's plenty of goofiness and silliness in the show, but it's balanced by a consistent framework with adults who act like a normal, kind, competent adult would act. The puppet characters are very childlike, which draws the intended audience in, but they have a foil in the character of Randall and the other adult guests who come on the show. There's grounded touchstones in among all the whimsy, and the whimsy has the goal of helping to explore an emotion or conflict. It moves towards something. 

The final element that I don't like about Benjamin Cello, I freely admit is a purely subjective preference on my part. 

I find the classical, "good, true and beautiful", cottage-core type aesthetic pretentious and off-putting. To be clear, this isn't necessarily something I think is objectively true about people who like that aesthetic. I'm sure many lovely, authentic and warm people embrace it, and I've even joined social media groups that have an affinity for it. 

But many people I've known in person who embrace it turned out to be very flawed people in real life. It particularly reminds me of a couple professors I had in college who, without getting into details, turned out to be pretentious snobs interested primarily in the "right" students, culture, and (very specific, narrow, exclusionary of anything post Casti Connubi, scrupulous) theology. They seemed to see those preferences as key to sanctity and themselves as the "real" Catholics. Everyone else was somehow inferior and not really practicing the faith- they with their devotion to "true" Catholic culture were the ones who had it figured out. 

As a result of being around those people, and nearly getting sucked into that mindset myself, I get very uneasy when I'm around too much of that sort of thing. I know there's much of value there, but it's something I'm gun-shy about having my children around. Partially because as a public-school attending, Halloween celebrating, 90's grunge rock listening, blue-collar associating type family, I know that my children would likely be rejected by many people who embrace that approach in real life, and partially because I've seen the horrible ugliness and snobbery that can result if you're sucked into that life and I don't want to lose one of my kids to that. 

I'm fine with my children liking Tolkien, Anne of Green Gables, Chesterton, Gregorian chant, or classical music. I have an appreciation for a lot of those things myself (though I think most of Chesterton's fictional writing is vastly overrated...yeah, I said it. Come at me). I just don't want my children thinking that they get "holiness points" by liking those things, and having them watch something religious that relies heavily on that set of preferences seems a dicey thing to do if I don't actively balance it out with other things. 

Slugs and Bugs doesn't carry any of those associations for me, because it lies so far outside that realm. It also helps that they occasionally invite artists on who are very different from the show's primary host and that don't fit the show's "normal". The world of this show seems far less closed off or concerned about some sort of cultural purity- the only litmus seems to be that you be a Christian who genuinely wants to bring others to Jesus and that you be legitimately interested in the artistry and quality of what you're doing for its own sake. 

Would that more Christian and Catholic media were like that. 

*****

So that's one mother's opinion on two very niche TV shows on a fairly obscure streaming app meant to evangelize and instruct families in the Catholic faith. 

I REALLY need to get out more.