Easy Satire

Bad news for various PBS cartoon characters. Or maybe call it least-loved PBS cartoon episodes.

In the last episode of Postcards from Buster, Buster’s airplane – well, I think it’s his dad’s plane – vanishes in bad weather on a flight to Barrow, Alaska. Back in Elwood City, Buster’s friends dejectedly wait for news. One of the kid’s grandparents tells them about the time he met great aviator Wiley Post and humorist Will Rogers, and then the kids imagine themselves great aviators. (Every show has to have an educational component, plus the kids demonstrating a lively imagination.) Sadly, only bits and pieces of the wreckage are found, but not the black box, and the kids learn that not everything has closure.

Not only that, the lost episode of Postcards, in which he visits kids with “two moms” in Vermont to learn about the art of making maple syrup, is now lost for good. Eagle-eyed visitors to the show’s web site will notice that the list of Buster’s destinations doesn’t include Vermont.

Bob the Builder has his troubles too, legal troubles. OSHA cited him for various unsafe practices after a workman was injured, and the fines are pretty stiff, though the case is on appeal. Then there was the raid by the INS. Bob lost about half of his crew that day, though he himself got off with a warning. And finally there’s Wendy, that ungrateful… word they don’t use on PBS, who was fired a while ago but now has filed a sexual harassment suit against Bob. In the show’s most recent episode, the lesson was that life is one damn thing after another, especially for shady contractors.

In Jakers, an animated Irish pig, Piggley Winks, tells his American grandsons colorful tales of the bucolic Ireland of his youth. In one episode, his old pal Ferny (an animated bull) comes for a visit from Ireland, where he’s a retired tool-and-die man. Piggley and Ferny start hitting the bottle, singing bawdy old songs, and scaring Piggley’s grandsons with made-up tales from their days with the IRA. But they burst into real tears at the thought of poor old Dannan O’Mallard, their other pal from the old days, blown up while still only a lad of 22 in an accident in his basement, where he was making bombs for the cause.