With a 4 year old in the house and having to stay home a few days recently, I have become somewhat of an expert on kids TV shows. In my opinion, this is the most disturbing of the lot. For those of you not familiar, meet (and fear) “The Doodlebops” (God, I hate them):


Try to imagine “The Monkees” plus “The Banana Splits” all in an acid trip of paisley. I’m not really sure why I find this show so frightening, maybe it’s the colorful characters designed to appeal to kids and sell merchandise. Maybe it’s the bubblegum pop music that seems just a bit too old for my daughter, yet the rest of the schtick is too young for the music’s audience.

It could be that the blue dude (Rooney) is so freakin’ gay that I imagine it insults gay people, not to mention making my skin crawl (Seinfeld:"not that there's anything wrong with that").

My best guess is that of the dozen or so shows I have seen with my daughter, I have yet to see one that is different in anything but the songs they play. Let me walk you through the show. DeeDee and Rooney pop into the set and introduce themselves clearly expecting the third (Moe) to be right behind them. What follows is what I call the “where’s Moe collage”, a rapid cut series of kids and other characters asking “Where’s Moe?” while Moe shows himself to the camera. Eventually DeeDee asks the camera and finds him.

Following "where's Moe" is “The Doodlebop Pledge” oh God the horror! I can’t even think about it. Let me just say that it involves “kazoos”.. [shutter].. Then some scat-singing buxom babe slides in from a closet (maybe its Rooney’s) to teach some innocuous lesson and send the 3 on their way to “the concert”, but first Moe has to “Pull the Rope”, only after another collage of kids and characters saying “Don’t pull the rope”. He gets drenched and shakes it off and they are off to the bus scene. This bus is a crossing of the Partridge Family bus and Scooby’s Mystery Machine on acid (effin hippies). A dance number ensues on the bus, after which they arrive at “the concert” where they play the same stock concert footage, over and over again.

Pretty good scam, they get 13, half hour shows out of maybe 60 minutes of content.

Let's go over the checklist:

Colorful, marketable characters: .. CHECK!
Multicultural cast: .. CHECK!
Gawdawful music: .. CHECK!
Talking Moose: .. CHECK! (wait, actually kind of cool)
Repetitive Footage: .. CHECK! (makes the The Flintstones look fresh!)
Highly annoying character: .. DOUBLE CHECK!

Needless to say, this is my daughter’s favorite show. Dam you Disney!