Tag: Hi-5

TV Nirvana

On By LynnIn TurtleHead6 Comments

Confession time! I have been watching American Idol.

I know, it is just about as low as you can go in terms of crap television. And it’s all the more surprising, given that I was able to completely resist it for seven full seasons before this.

Actually, almost seven full seasons.

I became a junkie late last season when I heard they were going to have a Neil Diamond night. I loooooove me some Neil Diamond — so kitchy yet so sincere, and plus, he reminds me of my mom. So, I watched that episode, and loved it, and then since I knew who the competitors were now, I actually read all the articles in EW on the subject, and then WHAM, I was hooked.

Then this season started, and nothing else had started back up yet, and I thought, “Oh, it can’t hurt to check out just a couple of episodes.”

And then WHAM, I was a goner.

My point here is that I was watching last night, which was the final selection night for the people who are actually going to make it to the voting round, when out of nowhere, they showed some blond girl who they had never featured before.

As you might imagine, the fact that we had not seen her before did not bode well for her getting advanced to the voting round. So I was all prepared to just ignore this particular segment.

Until I realized…IT WAS JENN.

Jenn, of Hi-5 fame!!!

I almost passed out. Hi-5 and American Idol, together! It was better than Peanut Butter Cups.

So as I predicted, she got cut. Simon Cowell, for the record, said it was, “absolutely the wrong choice.” He was behind Jenn all the way. Granted, it was because she was cute and stylish, not because he thought she could sing, but WHATEVER. He got overruled by the other three judges, but they were SO WRONG.

I don’t think they realized the built-in soccer mom audience that Jenn could have commanded. Seriously, her Idol-winning CD would have sold millions. She could have been the female Jack Johnson, people!

(Don’t worry, LuckySevens, I recorded Jenn on the PVR because I know you are DYING to see her. Although, it’ll probably be on YouTube later today).

Speaking of Simon Cowell, I have the wee-ish of crushes on him. I know he’s not very nice and he has questionable hair, but he’s snarky and is so damned right all the time. Apparently, I find that sort of thing attractive in a man (exhibit A: Sir Monkeypants).

And speaking of kids’ programming, we are now totally addicted to the new version of The Electric Company around here. I don’t remember watching it much as a kid, and when we first checked it out a few weeks ago I wasn’t sure about it — it’s a very busy show, with lots of quick cuts and a ton of information flying at you all at once, and I thought it was a little much. But since the new episodes are only on once a week, we have a chance to watch each episode four or five times over, and after that many viewings the kids are actually starting to learn some cool stuff.

So far, we’ve discovered from Lin-Manuel Miranda that Silent E Is A Ninja (an instant classic, the kids and I are already performing this one regularly around the house):

And that Jimmy Fallon has a pocket full of H’s and he’s not afraid to use them:

And Sean Kingston explained that there are Two Ways To Say C (did you know that the soft C sound is used before an E, I, or Y? It’s totally true!):

SO AWESOME.

Down Under

On By LynnIn TurtleHead5 Comments

A few years ago, Captain Jelly Belly and Gal Smiley were really into this children’s show called Hi-5. It features five ethnically-diverse, fresh-faced young Americans, singing and dancing and performing little skits. We watched this show every day, usually more than once. We had the CD. We had their Christmas CD, too. We played them both every day, all year long.

And I admit it, I was just as much of a fan-girl as the kids. Oh yes, I had a favourite Hi-5 member. I knew all the words AND the actions to every song. I blogged about the outfits the girls wore a little too often for a grown woman (summary: season 1, cute; season 2, shield your eyes). I often found myself humming the Hi-5 tunes around the house. Or at the grocery store. Or during girls’ poker night.

Little Miss Sunshine has never been much into television, but I’ve been showing her Hi-5 for a couple of months now, hoping to hook her. It probably seems like bad parenting to try to get your kid to watch more TV, but the Little Miss is at a very busy age and sometimes it would be nice to make dinner without someone hanging off my leg, or you know, spend three or four minutes with the other kids.

And you know, it worked! Suddenly, about four weeks ago, she noticed that Hi-5 was cool. It was interesting. It was groovy. I made dinner in freedom.

And then, about three weeks ago, TLC stopped showing it. BARBARIANS! They moved it over to their Discovery Kids channel in the States, but for some reason, the Canadian version of DiscKids didn’t pick it up. And now we are having a Hi-5 CRISIS.

TV Ontario used to show Hi-5 too, but at the same time that TLC dumped it, TVO stopped showing it too. Now TVO shows something else in its place…Australian Hi-5.

Hi-5 was originally an Australian show, but for some reason TLC felt that it wasn’t appropriate for American audiences as-is (maybe they feared a whole generation of American children growing up with unusually long vowel sounds?). So they re-filmed every single episode, word for word, with an American cast.

The first time we saw the original Australian cast on TVO, my older two kids had some minor distress. Who are those people pretending to be Hi-5? Where are the real Hi-5? Why do they talk funny? Who is that guy? Who is that girl?

They did NOT like it. And I agreed. I don’t like change. And I missed my favourites.

But I’m warming to it…because Little Miss Sunshine loves them. We watch it every day now. And it is interesting seeing that the Australian version is literally, no different than the American one — why they bothered to refilm it, I do not know.

Plus, there were only two seasons of the American version — meaning, I saw every single episode like, 100 times each — but there are a whopping ten seasons of the Australian version, meaning I could be looking at new content every day for a year, at least. Which seems kind of nice.

And that Nathan — he’s a real find. He has the snap, I tell you. In fact, I propose a Hi-5 dream team of Nathan and Kelli from Australia, Karla and Curtis from America, and…well, take your pick between Sun and Kimee. Actually, I’ll go with Sun. Whoo hoo, dream team!

So I just learned that the entire first season of the American version is coming out on DVD on December 2nd, and Little Miss Sunshine is getting that set for Christmas this year. By then she’ll probably be telling me to throw another shrimp on the barby, and wondering who the heck these Hi-5 impostors are with the odd American accents. G’day!