On PlayHouse Disney and the Space-Time Continuum

As a parent, I love channels that show simple-to-follow children's shows filled with themes of cooperation, friendship, and acceptance.

Thus, as a geek, I cringe fully inside over one of my son's favorite shows: Handy Manny.

In the odd event you've never heard of Handy Manny, let me sum it up for you. In an extremely inter-cultural small town, a man sets up a repair shop with his animated and intelligent tools and begin performing acts of random kindness with no apparent transfer of payment.

1) Handy Manny apparently has some method to speed up time. In almost every episode, he has to paint something and nothing requires drying time. It's instantly ready to be used as a skate board ramp, sat on as a park bench, or knocked on as someone's front door... all within mere seconds of the final paint stroke being lifted.

2) And what's with the intelligent tools? In Dungeon's and Dragons, there are intelligent items and animated items. Occasionally there are intelligent-animated items. Either way, they are classified as "magical" items and the crafting of such items takes a lot of time, gold, and XP. (Oddly enough, Dwarves are considered one of the better races to be craftsmen. You can see where this is going, right?) So, apparently Snow White's little dwarf friends spent a bunch of time learning to craft magical tools so we could have Handy Manny the TV show.

3) Manny can fix ANY thing with his seven tools, which are a phillips-head screwdriver, a flat-head screwdriver, a hammer, a saw, a pair of pliers, a tape measure, and a wrench. I certainly hope he never has to put together anything from Ikea... without an allen wrench and a level, he'll be hard pressed.

And now, as my kids have glued their eyes to the screen, I have to conceed, there IS something magical about the show: it has kept my kids from picking on each other for the last half hour which is a rare thing indeed.

With Love,
Meg