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Letters from Proxima Thule

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Calliou’s Anatomy

I have two television thoughts to share.

I’ve been watching Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix, which is a not-as-terrible-as-I-thought Knitting Show. Knitting Shows are ones I am not a fan of per se, but are mild and pleasant enough to knit to. Mostly procedurals, which I cannot watch without something to do with my hands. My attention wanders. Anyway. I’m in season 2 and it’s not half bad.

But the title sequence makes me crazy.

The difference between Grey’s Anatomy and ER is pretty much that there are a handful more women on the show. It’s the same medical drama format that has been used since St Elsewhere and probably before. Slightly more protagonist-centered, but it’s Scrubs without jokes, the same interns-in-crisis thing that’s been making money on TV for years.

But the title sequence is basically: show medical thing, show girly thing. Lather, rinse repeat. Show clamps/forceps, show eyelash curler. Show a WOMAN’S red shoes among all the REAL DOCTOR SHOES! Show an IV dripping into a cosmo. WHAT.

This is not what the show is about. No one on the show drinks froofy drinks or obsesses over shoes or is really all that traditionally feminine. Yes, they are attractive, but this is television. Meredith is actually kind of plain. It’s a show that easily passes Bechdel, but doesn’t really tackle head on the issues of being a woman in a male-dominated field. To this point, everyone in a position of power is a dude. (Bailey is a resident, and though she has some authority over our protagonists, she is not part of the power structure of the hospital.) Yet the titles make it look like Sex in the City: Hospital Edition. There was plenty of romance in ER and it never got this treatment. (Also, the title, which I thought a cute pun at first, is actually kind of icky.)

All I can think is that this is the thing where if there are women onscreen, they must be frivolous and OMG SHOEZ AND BOYZ! The show undermines itself with this weird title sequence, because it clearly wants to be at least most of the time a serious show, but in a world of amazing titles–there really must be some kind of contest over at HBO–Grey’s Anatomy is selling itself as something it’s not, and it leaves me with a gross taste in my mouth. More than two men onscreen, that’s normal. More than two ladies onscreen, it’s a chick show about chicks and boning, and they must be talking ab out shoes, amirite? (Sorry, the red shoes really get to me. NO ONE ON THE SHOW WEARS THOSE SHOES.)


Second thing. I was over at a friend’s house the other night. This friend is possessed of young children. These children like to watch a show called Caillou. The baby asked for it by name and thus I sat through an episode of it. Holy crap.

Ok, first off, Caillou is this (weirdly totally bald?) little boy who learns lessons about things, I guess. Par for the edutainment course. But I cannot express how different this show is than anything I watched as a kid.

No one is ever mean to Calliou. No one ever tells him no. His life is awesome all the time. When he toddles up to some bigger kids (middle schoolers it looks like–Caillou seems like a kindergartner) on the skating pond and asks to play hockey with them, they’re like: Sure kid! We’d love to play with you! Then Caillou’s dad takes him to buy a bunch of expensive hockey equipment and they go back to the pond, whereupon the big kids play with him.


Allow me to tell how how this would have gone down if it were a 70s/80s era kid’s show.

The big kids maybe would have said they’d play with him. Maybe. Depends on the genre. They might have laughed at him and called him names right there. But when Caillou got back with all that equipment? They would definitely have beaten the shit out of him and stolen it, leaving Caillou to learn a hard lesson about how people are the worst. Or enter a fantasy world of magic and enchantment where he would make friends with a lion-bear or something and come back to get revenge on the bullies. Revenge was a big theme back then. If you had a bike, a bigger kid would magically manifest out of the air to beat you up and steal it. If you were in a movie for kids, you were an underdog, and anyone in a higher grade than you was pure evil. Sweep the leg, Caillou!

The conflict in this episode came from Caillou not being super awesome at hockey right away, and learning that maybe he’d have to practice or something, which bums Caillou right the fuck out. Also earlier, it didn’t snow when he wanted it to. I…have no words.

Listen, Charlie Brown not only never got to play football, but Lucy stole his ball, abused him verbally and caused him to hurt himself repeatedly, and then charged him for therapy. And the Peanuts are SUPER wholesome entertainment for children of all ages! I was waiting for this to be a bullying episode, where Caillou would learn something about something, but no, everything was awesome in the beginning and slightly more awesome in the end.

I don’t want to be all KIDS THESE DAYS but I can’t see how, exactly, you function on planet earth if this is what sets up your expectations of human interaction. If your idea of a bad day is when everyone accepts you and is extra nice to you only you weren’t better than them at their own hobbies. I don’t even want to meet adult Caillou, who has got to be some kind of monster of entitlement and douchery. He might have straight up murdered the first person who didn’t want to go out with him.

I know childrens’ innocence must be protected, but eventually they do have to learn that people are the worst, and they are a people, and therefore they have the capacity to be the worst, too. At which point other people will react to that, and the world will keep going round. Caillou is distraught that it didn’t snow on his schedule and that his cat wasn’t that into learning a trick. I mean, it is a baby show (though everyone is very articulate and talking in long dialogues, so not that much of a baby show? They aren’t teaching simple words or anything. There’s a plot.) but I just couldn’t get over how not-my-childhood’s-television this was. It made the Muppets look like the fucking Wire.

Of course, what I learned as a kid was that a luck dragon was a good tool for conflict management, so who am I to judge?

