Oh So Special

Meet Special Agent Oso. The. Unique. Stuffed. Bear. He's on a special assignment to help a kid somewhere. With help from you, there's nothing he can't do. He's Oh So Special.

I've watched Oso so many times that I feel the compelling need to let you into the world of mind-numbing kid's television. We DVR a few shows that we put on for Hendrik when he's whiny (5% of the time), tired (2% of the time), or his parents don't feel like parenting (93% of the time). The shows we watch are as follows, in order of Hendrik's favorite to least favorite:

1. Sesame Street
2. Special Agent Oso
3. Chuggington
4. Jack's Big Music Show
5. Curious George
6. Super Why
7. Handy Manny
8. Yo Gabba Gabba (we stopped recording this for reasons of our sanity)

I've taken these shows and ordered them from most tolerable to driving-me-absolutely-bonkers:

1. Curious George - No annoying songs, not formulaic, I only despise that stupid wiener dog. I envy the Man in the Yellow Hat's wardrobe (and property! A condo in the city? A house in the country? All on a semi-competent biologist's salary, too!), and I like the black kid who calls George "city kid".
2. Jack's Big Music Show - Lots of songs, but very low on the annoying factor. I also prefer muppets to cartoons.
3. Super Why - Formulaic, but low-key and not that annoying. Except Super Red is kind of a skank.
4. Sesame Street - If Sesame Street had more old-school stuff and not these incredibly-long sketches that are super boring, then I'd rank it #1. I despise Abby's Flying Fairy School and just hate anything involving the super whiny monster Telly. Grover is still pretty cool, and Cookie Monster is awesome. Elmo gets a ton of air-time and I've gotten used to the fact that he speaks like Ricky Henderson (always in the 3rd person), plus it's hard to totally hate something your child absolutely adores.
5. Chuggington - The kid trains just piss me off in general, and the song gets stuck in my head for centuries (Chuuuuuuuuuuggington. Chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chuggington). The kid trains always blatantly disobey the rules, get in trouble, and then don't even get in trouble for it! Where's the stern lecture? Where's the grounding? Where's the back of the hand or belt on the backside!?!?!
6. Special Agent Oso - See this entire blog post, but not as annoying as…
7. Handy Manny - Handy Manny is not so annoying as it is INCREDIBLY BORING. 15 minutes to change a light fixture? And when is Manny gonna hook up with Kelly? There's not much to like with Handy Manny. The tools are either incredibly stupid ("I'm a hammer!") or huge wusses (see: Rusty, Monkey Wrench). The next store over features Mr. Lopart, your prototypical Chester Molester, who scores 11 out of 10 on the Creepy Factor. He owns a candy shop (red flag, anyone?), has a cat as a best friend, and is just the most unlikeable character ever. It baffles me how this show ever got on the air. We never watch it anymore.
8. Yo Gabba Gabba - I like this show, aside from the fact that I feel like I'm on drugs when I'm watching it. You have to be in the mood to watch this, and I've never been in that mood. When my buddy (who had kids at the time) was visiting us a couple years ago, he convinced me to turn on "Yo Gabba" to see how awesome it was. There were no kids in the room, and I had no idea what Yo Gabba was at the time. We turned it on and watched it for like 5 minutes and my brain turned to mush and I collapsed to the floor.

So there you have it. Now let's get back to Oso.

This show is about a yellow bear that works for a stupendously inefficient global spy network with a seemingly bottomless budget. He gets called by his boss "Mr. Dos" to help kids with everyday tasks in 3 Special Steps. The show is very formulaic, and always starts with Oso trying to complete some ridiculously easy training exercise, like covering his spy car with a car cover. Oso always screws up the exercise, sometimes causing major damage to his spy plane/car/submarine/spaceship while almost killing everybody within 10 miles. He always screws up because he can't listen to more than one instruction at once. The animals in charge of him are Wolfy (a wolf), and Dotty (a dot--J/K LOL!--she's a cat).

Wolfy, Dotty, and Oso get plastered

Both Wolfy and Dotty are extremely patient, considering Oso almost kills them every day. After he ruins his exercise, he gets a call from Mr. Dos to help a kid who is in dire need, for example:

a. A kid can't tie his own shoes
b. A kid can't figure out how to throw a Frisbee
c. A kid needs to perform CPR on his dying father (haha-just kidding! Oso's only teaching essential life skills here)

So Oso takes his talking helicopter halfway across the world in a matter of seconds (from what I can tell, their headquarters is in Norway). This heli is called "Whirlybird" who also is the worst character of ALL TIME (worse than Lopart), and who also hates Oso so much that he's always trying to kill Oso by twisting his words ("What's that, Oso? You said you wanted to die today?" "No, I said I'd like some pie today! Whirrrrleeeee!!!") and dropping him 1000 feet to a certain death, which Oso usually avoids by luckily falling into a pillow-soft pine tree and into the family's kitchen, ruining everything, which could be the title of the show: "Oso Ruins Everything".

Once Oso meets the kid, who of course recognizes this bear whose company has been stalking him this entire time, and they commence solving the perplexing dilemma using the 3 Special Steps. It goes without saying that every single problem can be solved with exactly 3 steps, no more, no less. Sometimes, if it's something easy, like throwing a Frisbee, they really have to stretch out the steps:

1. Pick up the Frisbee
2. Inspect it for asbestos
3. Throw the Frisbee

Sometimes, it's a harder task, like baking a cake, so they squeeze everything in one step:

1. Find the cake mix
2. Preheat the oven
3. Ask your mom to do everything else while you watch the tube

Even though the steps are spelled out for Oso, he usually struggles with even the simplest of concepts. In fact, usually the kid has to show Oso how to figure something out, which makes me wonder about Oso's qualifications as a task mentor. Paw Pilot, this annoying talking-head character that lives in Oso's PED, usually has to give Oso some special tip. I'm always hoping she'll say this: "Here's a tip, Oso: Use your #$*& brain!"

Oso is usually on a pretty tight deadline. Paw Pilot will give him an exact amount of time to complete the task, usually in seconds: "Hurry up, Oso, Ashley's dad will come in the door to inspect her cake in 8 seconds! Also, he has a gun! And a short temper!"

This is when Oso gets frantic (potential show name: "Oso Gets Frantic") and starts ruining everything again and they have to start over. However, Paw Pilot is an extremely slow counter, and the 8 seconds usually translate to what feels like 37 hours. They succeed in the end, the dad puts his gun away (although he's slightly tempted to go bear hunting), and everybody's happy. The family usually invites Oso to stay ("Yes, we'd love to have a smelly, stupid bear who never listens stay at our house indefinitely!"), but he declines (family breathes huge sigh of relief) so he can finish his training exercise, which he never should've screwed up in the first place.

Once Oso successfully completes his training exercise, Wolfy howls, "Outstanding, Oso! Owwwwwstanding!" with much zeal. Sometimes, Wolfy or Dotty will even give him a present for completing the task. One episode, Oso put together a puzzle for his training exercise and they gave him a TRAIN. Not a toy train, an actual train with a French accent whose name is Rapid (pronounced "Ra-PEED"). I'm always a little curious about what Oso's compensation package includes, and how much insurance his spy agency needs to cover all the damage he causes.

The most irritating thing about the whole show is the title of each episode, which is always a play off of a James Bond movie title. They even make a mind-numbing song out of it which Paw Pilot sings in the middle of each episode. If you recall, the James Bond titles don't make much sense as it is, so you can imagine how horrible these songs are. Some examples of titles are:

A View to a Frisbee
Hopscotch is Forever
Octo-puzzle
Hide Another Day
Live and Let Dry
For Show and Tell Only

All in all, Special Agent Oso is a brilliant show with complex plots, stunning cinematography, deep character development, and should be a force to reckon with at this year's Academy Awards. I give it 5 out of 5 stars. A must-see! 2 thumbs up! The feel-good story of the year! If you only watch one show this year, make it "Special Agent Oso"!