Burn Baby, Burn!!!

I kinda hate Max and Ruby (the Nick Jr show, not the books). It is loud, repetitive and extremely annoying-- especially before 7 AM.

For those who aren't familiar, the show is based on the books by Rosemary Wells and follows two little bunnies (Max, the 3 year old brother and his 7 year old sister Ruby) who have no parental supervision (in fact, parents are never seen, though there is a grandmother who pops in from time to time). Ruby is a prissy self-important princess and Max is the stereotypically annoying little brother who is either a genius or a manipulative sociopath. Not surprisingly, each episode is about the ways in which they clash as Ruby tries to do something that she thinks is important while Max constantly interferes. Throughout the episode she talks a blue streak and Max interjects with mostly repetitious single-word utterances- for example, in one episode, the only word he says might be "candy." In each case, this one word generally starts out as something Max wants (or is interested in) and, in the end, is the lynchpin to solving some sort of problem that Ruby is having (so in the candy example, Ruby is helping the owner of a candy store take inventory so that she can earn a "Bunny Scout" badge, and Max keeps pointing to things and asking for "Candy!" Ruby keeps telling him no and giving him fruit, while stuffing herself silly with candy, claiming that she has to try everything. In the end, she is sick and the owner of the candy store asks her what's wrong. "I think I had too much," Ruby begins and Max interjects, "CANDY!".) Similar scenarios play out in every episode. Once in awhile the word changes, but it's rare. As teachers we started out suspecting that Max might be somewhere on the autism/aspergers spectrum, but the only thing that really supported that was his repetitive speech and his seemingly ingenious way of knowing so early on in the episode what the seceret will be to solving the overarching problem. After watching a ridiculous number of these, I'm now firmly in the psychopath camp. I mean, look at those eyes...

There's an even creepier look he gets when he's angry with Ruby... If I was her, I'd start looking into where our parents had gone.

So, along these lines we're watching an episode right now where it is still too early tell how it's going to end, but Max's word-of-the-episode is "Fire Truck!". Ruby is trying to practice playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the piano for a recital and Max keeps interrupting by yelling "FIRE TRUCK!" Ruby's getting annoyed. Max is getting frustrated.

I'm kinda hoping that he's gonna just torch the place.