I understand that we live in a culture in which television raises our children. We are a society of dual incomes, families scraping by paycheck to paycheck, and so it happens that sometimes the kids just get plopped in front of Nickelodeon while mommy works late and daddy weeps softly into his ketchup and gin. This is hardly a new phenomenon…perhaps I myself can only name a handful of presidents (Lincoln, Washington, Grover ‘Steamer’ Cleveland, Harriet Tubman, Bruce Springsteen, Col. Mustard, etc.), but I can name every Thundercat, Fraggle, and Care Bear, and that’s including the Cousins. As such, I can afford our friend television a certain amount of variance in degrees of quality in children's programming. For each quality show like Yo Gabba Gabba and Spongebob, there’s going to be a Caillou and an Oobi. However, there is one show that I feel falls outside of these dispensations. Dora the Motherfucking Explorer.

This bitch.

If you are one of the few lucky, lucky people unfamiliar with Dora, let me explain. Dora is a young girl of ambiguous Latin descent that hangs out with a monkey wearing boots. Each episode she goes on an exciting* adventure to help some bird or find some berries or some other dumb shit. She is aided on her quest by a creepy talking backpack and a semi-retarded anthropomorphic map.

Along the way, she teaches your child Spanish. Now, before we go any further, let’s get this out of the way. The fact that this show has an ulterior motive of teaching Spanish isn’t an issue. Granted, Spanish isn’t my first choice for a second language for my children, as I can’t imagine it will help them much once I have successfully sold them to the Triads. But, remedial Spanish isn’t the problem here.

Let’s begin with Dora herself. She is a digusting blob of hideousness. Sure, perhaps they made her chubby to make the 8 bajillion fat kids across the US feel a little better about themselves, but that doesn’t explain why she has hair that looks like what a blind person would draw if you tried to explain a mullet to them. Also, for some reason, she is unable to hold a conversation at a normal speaking level. I imagine she is supposed to appear lively and excited, but ultimately she just screams every line of dialogue. Perhaps she has some interesting backstory in which she survived an artillery strike which damaged her hearing, and now she's overcompensating. I would be interested in seeing that particular flashback episode.

 A man can dream, can't he?

She is accompanied by a monkey named Boots, so named because he, you know, wears boots. He is supposed to be Dora’s friend and confidant, making it that much more unfortunate that she doesn’t bother giving him a suitable name. So therefore, using Dora as an example, I will now refer to my friends only by the things I most associate them with. This weekend I will be going out for beers with ‘Toyota’, ‘Pants’, and ‘Chlamydia’.

D-bag and Shitflinger are dogged at every step of their adventure by Swiper the Fox, who aims to steal…money? The magical map? Those sweet ass boots? Who cares. Either way, he’s the bad guy. He stalks Dora from the bushes, leaping out when her guard is down. Now we have reached the point of the first awful lesson Dora will teach your children. As the fox is there, bearing down on the pair, hunger and obsession in his eyes, Dora calls on the help of the viewing audience to save her. You see, if you say ‘Swiper, no swiping’ enough times, the sly fox will slink away, defeated. What in the sweet holy hell is this supposed to teach our children? I’m fairly sure most deviants won’t be dissuaded by enthusiastic rounds of ‘raper, no raping!’, unless of course the assailant is allergic to repetition.

Which leads me to yet another annoyance with this show…an annoyance unfortunately common amongst children’s shows. Several times throughout this thirty minutes of pain, Dora will face the ‘camera’, so to speak, and ask a question. Silence follows, in which your child is supposed to yell the answer at the screen, and is thereafter praised by the animated characters. My daughter, however, has learned that she no longer needs to scream the correct response, and now just stares blankly at the screen, praised shortly after nonetheless. Which means that even my three year old daughter knows this show is bullshit. Either that, or this show has led her to believe she is a telepath.

Artist's rendering of Roninhobbit's daughter.

The map. Oh, the map. This fucking map. You see, it has it’s own theme song, sung by said map every time it comes out. Here are the amazing and inspired lyrics:

I’m the map, I’m the map, I’m the map, I’m the map, I’m the map, I’m the map, I’m the map, I’m the map, I’m the map!

Motherfucker.

The map will point out where Dora and Patient Zero need to go for whatever bullshit they are looking for. It will name three locations, for instance ‘Bridge, Meadow, Abattoir!’ It will then repeat these locations sixty-five god damn times. Dora really goes for that ‘quantity over quality’ approach to education. You don’t need to learn the intricacies and interrelationships of concepts, just say them over and over. I understand that shit will work super great on a Schnauzer, but for actual human beings you might want to, you know, try.

I would express concern that Dora’s parents are never seen, but I think there is fairly obvious subtext present in the show suggesting that the monkey killed and ate them.

Also, that backpack can go fuck itself.

*not even remotely exciting