You may have heard of this show.
My son has, in the last few months, become entirely obsessed with… whatever the fuck these things are. They come in types, apparently, Water and Fighting and Nonsense and Flatulent and Clown and probably a few others I’m unaware of. And they live in little plastic balls, except for the little yellow one, who won’t go in the ball. And they only come out of the ball when it’s time to fight each other, which they are willing to do at any time and for any reason.
Except, see, they don’t know how to fight. They have no fucking idea how to fight even though fighting is literally the only thing they’re for, or at least it’s the only thing they’re for once they go in the ball. The ones out of the balls seem to live perfectly normal wildlifey sort of lives. So they need people to tell them how to fight. All of their moves have names and they have “trainers” who tell them, step-by-step, how to fight each other. Picture somebody outside a boxing ring hollering at a boxer to “Use Jab!” and “Duck!” and “Use Roundhouse!” or “Use Spousal Abuse!” and you have the basic idea.
The main character is a homeless orphan named Ash. His last name is Ketchum, because his job is to catch all of the Pokémon– to catch ’em— and this show is nothing if not fucking subtle. He only has one set of clothes and his electric rat lives on his shoulder. He literally wanders around in the woods with his friends and looks for other electro-rats and fire-bears and flatulence-sloths and such and he finds them and he makes them fight his electro-rat or whatever and then if he beats them he gets to stuff them into a ball and keep them.
I think. It’s hard to pay attention to if you’re grown.
Then there’s these assholes:
These are… the bad guys, I think? They seem to really want the electro-rat. So maybe they want to steal him, or something, or maybe they just want a different electro-rat to go with their weird horn-cat thing they have, I don’t know. But here’s the thing: there are eleventy fifteen thousand different versions of Pokémon. There’s Pokemon XY and Pokemon Black and Pokemon Silver and a bunch of movies named after individual Pokébeasts and all sorts of shit. And I’m pretty sure these three are in every one?
And every time they show up on screen they introduce themselves with the same rhyme.
I’m pretty sure that this is actually supposed to be happening in the real world. Not, like, in their heads or some shit like that.
Try and imagine knowing these people, and every time you see them they have to introduce themselves with this stupid fucking rhyme. Each and every single time.
These may be the most annoying people in the history of television, and we live in a world with Super Why.
Let’s not bury the lede here: if you haven’t already inhaled the 8 episodes of Stranger Things that Netflix made available a month or so ago, you owe it to yourself to do it right now. I’ve watched enough Netflix original series to confidently state it’s the best thing they’ve ever done. It’s worth paying for Netflix all by itself. Sign yourself up for a month and consider the $8 or whatever they charge a rental fee for this one show. It’s well worth it. This goes double if you are just past or nearing 40 years of age and you associate the 1980s with your childhood in any way.
Anyway, Sarah has adventures, and they’re whimsical and British– did I mention this show was British?– and fun, and occasionally slightly entertaining, and the way she has to sound out long words can be really cute at times, and the show’s harmless and sweet and actually not very annoying at all.
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