I Made My Millennial Watch the Kids' TV I Grew up With & Here's What Happened
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Growing up, there was NOTHING I looked forward to more than watching my stories™ on Saturday mornings. A bowl of sugary cereal and a place on the sofa all curled up in my 'jammies — but with no remote control because that's how we rocked it back in the day, changing channels by hand like we were in prison or something. Now our kids have access to 24/7 programming and channels dedicated to cartoons, and I'm pretty sure they don't get as excited about Saturday mornings as we did. And I can't think of the last time that I had a kid young enough to get stoked about Saturday morning cartoons, so I made my millennial watch the ones I grew up with. Here's what he had to say.
Editor's note: My millennial wants it noted that he doesn't like what I've titled this series because "labels make me uncomfortable."
1. Captain Caveman & The Teen Angels
"OK, so you caught me at a bad time because the season finale of Orange Is The New Black is a real downer so let's see if we can get this going on. It's like they had a lot of shows back in the day that were just Scooby Doo. Somebody has to write a thesis on why Scooby Doo was the show passed through time and not Captain Caveman. Captain Caveman is Speed Buggy. Is this first episode of Captain Caveman just him being in a total culture shock and having a breakdown and dealing with the repercussions of this new reality? Also, he seems like an asshole, but I can understand that. I'm a teenager... I can see where me and my friends wouldn't wanna include him in anything we do. He probably smells really bad. We can solve mysteries on our own, thank you. He probably can't provide any helpful input that any goddamn person from the future couldn't do. I can just Google this shit — you don't even know what that means Caveman."
Read more: I Made My Millennial Watch Music Videos From 1988 & Here's What Happened
2. H.R. Pufnstuf
"What's up with the boat? I don't wanna ride in anything that looks at me before I ride it. I don't know if I would count on H.R. Pufnstuf to save anybody. He doesn't seem the stalwart type. Oh man, fuck the police. The police are keeping them down. They need to do a gritty remake of H.R. Pufnstuf. Like The Wire. The lyrics to this song are about marijuana. This is just about marijuana. 'Who's your friend when things get rough. Can't do a little cause you can't do enough.' I know it's not like super insightful to point out that H.R. Pufnstuf might be related to drug use but it's so much more in your face than I ever thought. I'm saving this clip for me and my friends to watch later."
3. Jabberjaw
"Aww, Jabberjaw is the shit. This is basically Scooby Doo, too. Jabberjaw is basically Adult Swim before Adult Swim. This also needs a gritty reboot but where he just devours all the teenagers. Oh man, I feel weird about him kissing that girl and maybe I have some weird old-fashioned values but the whole interspecies thing is weird to me."
4. Sigmund The Sea Monster
"TV theme songs were so much more lyrically dense and baroque than they are now. I guess our modern day audiences just don't have the attention span for the type of attention Sigmund The Sea Monster demands. Oh no, he's having a bad time man. I'm glad you guys don't tell me I need to go scare someone or I'm through. All you guys demand is that I hold down a job at a restaurant. Oh, Sigmund The Sea Monster is so cute he looks like he's ready to be the star of his own iPhone game. He's a huge failure. He can't scare anybody. He can't even catch a ball. Dumb Sigmund."
5. Land Of The Lost
"Wait, wait, wait. A 'routine expedition?' What kind of expeditions are routine? Oh yeah, I'm just going out on my daily expedition, ain't no thing. These special effects are great — it looks like a science fair project. Another quality Sid & Marty Krofft production. At the end they escape and the dinosaur is all 'Oh well.'"
6. Hong Kong Phooey
"Oh. Oh, this is definitely racist. It's kinda too bad because what's troubling about Hong Kong Phooey is that oh they are so racist. Even his car is racist. Did you know this was racist growing up?"
Editor's Note: No.
7. The Krofft Supershow
"A trip. Wink, wink. I'm glad you played me all the other Kroff productions before the Supershow because I probably couldn't have handled this without being exposed to everything else first. This looks like a low-cost production of Rocky Horror. It looks like they went to Walmart to get costumes to put on a community theater adaptation of Rocky Horror. They sectioned off a whole part of the highway just for the Krofft people? Where did they get the permits for that? I already knew that your name was Captain Cool guy, you didn't even need to say it. Why would your parents let you watch this? Didn't this give you dangerous ideas about your clothing and life choices?
I feel like I would make a lot of friends next semester if you got me a Jabberjaw and Sigmund The Sea Monster T-shirt. I felt like everything you just showed me was a euphemism. I don't know... for some reason after seeing all that I feel a little bit more morally loose than I was before. Like I wanna go out and do questionable things. Thanks, Mom!"