Curious George

(This one is for the parents)

I love the Curious George books, I never mind reading them to the boys. The originals still stand up, and even the TV show is good. But let’s face it, Curious George is one stupid stupid monkey. He’s a disobedient stubborn idiot with obvious psychological disorders.

This is the generic plot of every book and TV show (although less so for the original books). The Man in the Yellow Hat tells George not be curious. But yet he is curious. He disobeys the man. He does something dumb. He compounds his problems with more idiocy. This continues until near the end, when things magicaly work out.

For example, here is the distilled plot of Curious George Gets a Medal:

• A letter comes for The Man With the Yellow hat. Curious George decides to write a note.
• He can’t figure out the ink pen and spills ink all over.
• He decides to clean up by filling the room with soap powder and water from a hose, presumablycausing tens of thousands of dollars of damages.
• Trying to clean it up, he decides to steals a pump.
• Along the way he lets a pen full of pigs escape.
• He steals a cow to haul the pump away.
• When he is chased, he abandons the pumps, stows away in a passing truck and rides off to parts unknown. He lands at the Museum of Science.
• Despite having correctly identified a life-size whale and dinosaur as fakes, he still can’t tell the plastic prehistoric nuts in the dinosaur exhibit from the real thing. Even when he touches them, he still can’t tell the difference.
• Trying to pull them down, he wrecks the entire dinosaur exhibit.
• Security takes him to the Museum Director, who is rightly cheesed off. He orders Curious George to be sent to the zoo.
• But wait! In comes The Man with the Yellow Hat! By the most startling of coincidences, the letter he had received that morning was from the same Museum Director, asking that Curious George be hired as an astronaut. An lo and behold, here he is, o everything is working out just great.
• Seriously, that happened.
• Curious George gets a medal.

One episode of the TV show was particularly egregious. In this one, George trespassed onto a construction site to get a ribbon. Good thinking, chimp. One things leads to another, until the girdered skeleton of a massive skyscraper crashes to the ground. Easily hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage. Engineers rush onto the scene. And what do they say? “George, we just found out the plans for this building were wrong! You’ve saved us from building wrong! Hurrah!” Good god.

They should shoot him up with Ritalin. Or just shoot him.