One Less Privileged Brat

Caillou

Earlier this month, PBS Kids announced that the animated, educational children television series, Caillou, will no longer be broadcasted. Originally airing in the fall of 1997, the show followed the everyday life of a four year old boy and his younger sister, mother, father and paternal grandparents. The first thing everyone notices about Caillou is that he's bald. Although many over the years have suggested that he has the big C, the show’s animators indicated that when they drew hair on Caillou as he aged, he became less recognizable so they opted to keep him hairless. His sister, Rosie, is the only redhead in the family which should make Boris, the father, suspicious of Doris, the mother, but this issue never surfaced in any of the five seasons of Caillou.

Created by Hélène Desputeaux, a Canadian educator and illustrator, the story chronicles the arrested development of a boy whose features some believe are blended together to make him appear as though he's not from any particular ethnic background. Additionally, the show employs "an authentic voice" driven in part by expert child psychologists and psychiatrists to capture "a rich and fully developed content." The second thing everyone notes about Caillou is that the sound of his authentic voice is like a corkscrew drilling through your head. His go-to whine and subsequent Pavlovian balling, coupled with incessantly calling out for his mother, makes Munchausen by proxy a more understandable syndrome. To say Caillou cries a lot is like wondering aloud if bees shit in the hive.

In one episode, Caillou falls from a seesaw. The narrator, who sounds like an old blue blood that probably uses terms like "you people" a lot, states that he was uninjured from his tumble. This doesn't stop Caillou from calling to his mother who swoops in to comfort her little sobbing bundle of need. Caillou is quick to rat out anyone who doesn't live up to his high expectations. In one show he complained to his mother that a deaf boy wasn't listening to him. Another time he ejected his little sister from his room only to acquiesce after becoming bored by himself. He also once whined that he didn't want his father to go to work. When his sister was a newborn, Caillou pinched her face causing her to cry out in pain.

Rosie learns how to be ass hat just like her big brother. She balls uncontrollably when things don't go her way. In one episode, she tosses a cookie onto the floor while saying, "Cookie good." Her mother dutifully picks it up. Caillou once expressed his preference for cookies over vegetables and got up from the dinner table to retrieve the cookie jar. Caillou scuffled on the playground with an equally snot filled boy, named Jimmy, who wanted Caillou to push him on the swing. This caused Caillou to throw himself into his grandfather's lap as the narrator states,

"Caillou didn't like Jim because he always had to get his own way."

Caillou wished to go to the circus after he learned that two of his friends were planning a trip. Caillou invited himself instructing his friends to swing by and pick him up. After he got himself dressed and brushed his teeth, his father tells him that he wasn't going with his friends to the circus today but would be going with his family tomorrow. Caillou wanted to go now so he breaks a toy then tosses himself onto the bathroom floor while kicking his feet and hands in a full blown meltdown. In yet another episode, Caillou fantasizes that he is a king.

All of this rich and fully developed outpouring of emotion wouldn't be so bad if Boris and Doris got on the same page and occasionally punish Caillou for being such a bone deep ass pain. Admittedly, I didn't watch all the episodes because our oldest son, Aidan, lost interest in the show after one season. Good thing that he did in lieu of embracing Caillou's modicum of coping skills otherwise Aidan would be an only child. The best I can tell Caillou's parents, being Canadians, were high which is why they were so mellow all the time. Sure, I know cannabis wasn't legalized in Canada until 2018, long after the five seasons of Caillou aired, but I'm certain that the level of tolerance depicted in the show for such crap ass behavior, even from your own genetic offspring, requires lots of powerful mood alternating drugs.

The Canadian Supreme Court once ruled that Ms. Desputeaux as well as the network jointly shared the copyrights to Caillou even though both parties claimed exclusive ownership. Shortly afterwards the Court legalized pot making Canada the second country to do so nationally, right behind Uruguay. This added weed to the list of chief exports from Canada which prior to the landmark decision included only Canadian money and Justin Bieber.

So I've read online that this month we're getting rid of the pale, petulant, privileged, hair-challenged, whining, egocentric, unruly, holy terror. They mean Caillou, right?