1023: Late-Night PBS

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Late-Night PBS

Title text: Then it switched to these old black-and-white tapes of Bob Ross slumped against the wall of an empty room, painting the least happy trees you've ever seen. Either PBS needs to beef up studio security or I need to stop using Ambien to sleep.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: check for grammar and spelling If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This comic examines the way the world seems different for adults today compared with how we remember it as a child, due to complex subtext or naïvety, to a humorous extreme, and with a specific reference to television programs for children.

PBS is a US television station known for high brow and educational programming, and shows a high proportion of BBC programming. The show "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego" was a light-hearted educational game show that ran from 1991 to 1995. In the show players followed geography-based clues to find out where a master criminal, Carmen Sandiego, was going, and catch her. After catching (or failing to catch) Carmen Sandiego, a character called The Chief would congratulate or encourage the players. Rockapella was a cappella band featured on the show that gave clues, punctuated the show with humor, and closed the show.

Megan recounts her surprise as to the nature of programming on late night PBS to Cueball. She claims to have fallen asleep after watching Downton Abbey and woken up to see that Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego is still making new episodes, but is significantly darker than she remembers it. The host Greg Lee has grown older (he was 50 when the comic was produced) and developed a drinking problem; the locations the child contestants visit are traumatizing; and the children are clearly freaked out. In the end they find Carmen Sandiego hiding behind a Dutch bookcase, an allusion to "The Diary of Anne Frank", thus implying that the kids have been working as investigators trying to find the locations of Jews for the Nazis. The Chief admonishes the children for their actions and Rockapella glares at the children disapprovingly until the children break down in tears.

After Megan concludes her story, Cueball remarks that he did not remember the show being that dark. In response Megan replies that as kids, they may not have been able to understand the darker subtext of the show. It is true that some programs intended for children often have subtle themes for adults who may be watching the show with their children that the children do not usually remember or pick up on. The joke is that although young viewers may not be able to pick up on everything, they would certainly have noticed if the show was as dark as Megan described.

The title text describes the next program, an episode of The Joy of Painting, in which a depressingly weary painter paints unhappy trees. This contrasts with the usual mood of the show where Bob Ross was upbeat and the components of his paintings were described as "happy little objects". Megan then postulates that either people are breaking into the television station to produce horrible programming, or she is experiencing hallucinations due to her sleep aid Ambien. This gives hallucination as an alternate explanation for the main comic.

Locations visited

Mogadishu is a battle-torn city in Somalia, where the "Battle of Mogadishu" took place in 1993, which would coincide with the air dates of "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego".

The Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War (1970-1975).

The reference to "A Bookshelf in a Dutch Apartment" is a reference to Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis in a secret annex hidden behind a bookshelf in an apartment in Amsterdam. She wrote the famous Diary of Anne Frank. The question "Are you proud of what you've become?" suggests that, instead of aiding legitimate law enforcement in finding thieves, as the contestants roleplayed in the real show, they have been aiding the Nazis in their search for Jews (and others) to murder.

Carmen Sandiego

"Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego" was originally an educational Video game released in 1985. Carmen Sandiego was a mysterious character that the player tracked around the globe, attempting to find clues as to where she was heading to next. The game helped players learn geography and facts about the world while having fun. The video game inspired the TV show Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?.

The show was split into three rounds. In the first round, there were three child contestants, called “gumshoes” on the show, who scored points for every question they answered correctly. The top two scoring gumshoes moved onto the next round, where they had to play a game based on the card game Concentration, in which they had to find the thief, warrant, and loot in the correct order. Whichever gumshoe did so captured the thief, saved the loot, and moved onto the next round, where they had a chance to catch Carmen Sandiego herself. Success was not always guaranteed in this round, as contestants had to plant flags correct on seven different countries in a continent within a very short time. If successful, they captured Carmen and won the grand prize (a trip to a place of their choosing in the continental US). If not, Carmen would escape and the contestant would win a lesser prize (such as a computer).

The role of The Chief was played by Lynne Thigpen. She explained the mission to the contestants, and gave some clues to the thief's last whereabouts. When the mission was over The Chief would appear and congratulate them if successful or console them if Carmen got away.

The host of the TV show was an actor named Greg Lee. His role was to ask the contestants questions, provide clues, and tell them which flags to plant on the map in the final round, as well as engage with The Chief and Rockapella to keep the show moving.

Rockapella was an a cappella group (a group that sings without any instruments), which sang the theme song to "Where in The World Is Carmen Sandiego." Rockapella also acted as a "house band", singing songs while the contestants transitioned between events, providing clues, and playing pranks on the host along with other gags. At the end of each show, the host and the episode's winning contestant would shout "Do it, Rockapella!" at which point the band would sing the show's theme song.

Continuity Issues

The locations the contestants visit in the episode depicted in this comic seem to require traveling to different periods in time (1993 for the Battle of Mogadishu, 1975-1979 for the Cambodian killing fields, and 1944 for the arrest of Anne Frank). Episodes of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego did not deal with this, but its successor, Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?, did.

Transcript

[Megan is rubbing sleep out of her eyes and talking to Cueball.]

Megan: Have you ever watched PBS late at night?

Megan: I fell asleep after Downton and woke up at like 3 AM.

[The upper portion of the panel continues dialogue, while the lower shows a drunk gameshow host and several contestants. The monitor shows a field of crosses, presumably graves.]

Megan: Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego was back on, except the host hadn't aged well and he'd clearly been drinking.

Megan: Every question took them to some horrible place like Mogadishu or the Cambodian killing fields.

[Now it shows a bookshelf revealing a hidden room.]

Megan: The kids were freaked out, but they kept playing. Eventually they were told they'd found Carmen Sandiego hiding behind a bookshelf in a Dutch apartment.

Megan: The Chief appeared and asked "Are you proud of what you've become?"

Megan: Then Rockapella walked out and just glared at the kids until they started crying.

Cueball: I, uh, don't remember the old show being that dark.

Megan: Maybe we were too young to pick up on it.

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Discussion

I still remember playing the Carmen San Diego educatonal games. Oh, good, good days. Davidy²²[talk] 13:17, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Now I know why my copy was glitchy... Anonymous 17:20, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

The show is Downton Abbey, not Downtown Abbey. I feel like if I actually edit it the strip Randall made about that very annoyance will win. 199.27.128.190 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

So, it has come to this. 108.162.216.33 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I've just gone through the whole explanation, correcting spelling and grammar. As I went I fixed other issues, so it's not JUST spelling and grammar - I've updated links, reworded sections, and revised sentence order. I think we can remove the Incomplete tag now, but in light of the heavy editing and the low activity this explanations receives, I'll leave it a week or so for comments before I do so. Cosmogoblin (talk) 14:36, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for cleaning up my mess. 108.162.216.32 19:36, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

I would like to suggest for someone to edit the explanation for this comic. The killing fields were created in the time period mentioned, however they still exist to this day, so Carmen Sandiego could *easily* have gone there. However, not stepping on a landmine might have proved to be a problem. I am not editing it personally because it's a really big explanation and I'm fairly busy at the moment. Znayx (talk) 19:45, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Are we going to mention the excellent cartoon Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

Yeah, let's mention it! I used to watch it all the time. RadiantRainwing (talk) 18:16, 31 July 2024 (UTC)