I've been reliving my youth watching Jem and the Holograms on Netflix over the last couple of days with my 6 year old (who now sings the theme song on a loop), and I've made a couple of observations about what was once my favourite show as a child:
1. Jem/Jerrica pretty much pushes her boyfriend Reo to cheat with herself at the beginning. He resists at first and then goes ahead anyway, because why the hell not? For some reason that I can't fathom, this isn't a problem for Jem, and she actually feels bad for not telling him who she is. This is confusing and stupid.
2. It seems like almost every episode has Jem in at least one, if not multiple, life threatening situations. Bombings, car accidents, fires in the recording studio, gargoyles falling off of buildings onto your photo ops, kidnapping, catastrophic property destruction......who knew being a Battle of the Bands contender was such a daily struggle for your life and well being. I had no idea.
3. The Misfits should have been arrested approximately 62 times within the first 5 episodes. They are destructive, and on more than one occasion very nearly commit manslaughter. If any group or individual pulled as many dick moves of sabotage as they did, they would be in jail.
4. It occurs to no one to call the police about the Misfits and their management company's very definite criminal behaviour. Wouldn't this pretty much solve all the problems? The scheming is almost painful to watch, and blatantly stupid, however no one seems to think that consequences beyond losing the above mentioned Battle of the Bands are necessary.
5. The music is just bad. I can still sing along to it, but whereas that used to be something I was proud of (like the ability to lip sync convincingly to Ice Ice Baby), now it's just sad.
As a connoisseur of children's programming (which I've apparently become since having kids) I have to say that I would give Jem at best a 3 out of 10, most of which is given due to nostalgia, and not due in any part to quality.
But it's still better than Caillou or Max and Ruby. Those shows were shit out by a parent-hating sadist who wanted to watch the world burn.
To summarize: Go read a book.
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