I am writing in defense of the best animated show on TV-Nickelodeon's "The Wild Thornberrys"-which was mercilessly slammed in two recent User Comments, one of which deemed the show "unappealing and ignorant."
I couldn't disagree more.
I discovered "Thornberrys" in May, 2001, and am now totally, hopelessly hooked! If the show has one main theme it is the proper relationship between humans and nature, a theme explored in each episode through the bespectacled, 12-year-old eyes of Eliza Thornberry, the only human, out of six billion, who can talk to animals (including her best friend, a chimpanzee) just as easily as she can to her own parents or sister. As for the animals, I think that the show's producers go out of their way to present as realistic a portrayal as possible of the many different species featured on the show. For example, one episode featured a pair of Tasmanian devils who did not-repeat, did NOT-speak in gibberish or travel in a cyclonic motion, slicing through everything in their path. Th-th-th-that's right, folks; Looney Tunes got it wrong.
Apart from the animals, what I like most about "The Wild Thornberrys" is the family-comedy aspect of the show. The Thornberrys are, after all, a quirky but close-knit family, with two loving-though occasionally frazzled-parents, two perpetually squabbling siblings (I swear that Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo, while developing the show, must have secretly researched my own sisters, who drove each other crazy until my older sister went away to college!), and a "wild boy" foster child. As family shows go, "Thornberrys" is light-years better than the show it used to precede on Nick's prime-time schedule, "The Brady Bunch." In conclusion, to make a long story short, "The Wild Thornberrys" rocks!
