So about them PJ Masks?
I admit that this is not my usual topic, but – real
life sucks more than it regularly does, (obligatory disclaimer), so let us talk
about something else. PJ Masks will do.
What to say about it? PJ Masks is one weird cartoon;
it talks about three children – Amaya/Owlette, Connor/Cat Boy and Greg/Gecko –
who are kindergarteners by day and superheroes by night, ‘fighting fiendish
villains’ without any regard to sleep or other body functions, (such as eating
or – the other end). Fair enough, you do not expect a children’s show to be
realistic, but still…
What is the crunch of the show? Either both the PJ
Masks and their archrivals – Romeo, Night Ninja and Luna Girl among others -
are all real and all of their mutual brouhaha is just a typical playground
roughhousing, disguised as superhero/villain face-off and nothing more, or the
only ones real are the PJ Masks, who have invented everything and everyone,
because no one else wants to play with them, and so they invented some
frenemies to play with. Namely, the bookish Amaya has invented Romeo, who is
smart like her, but ruthless and mean unlike her, the shy Greg has invented the
over confident Luna Girl, while Connor has invented the Night Ninja, who is a
dark reflection of Cat Boy, a bad leader, period. What is left?
The fact that while the titular heroes are on the
first-name basis with their enemies/frenemies, their classmates have no names;
the only one who interacts with them, is a boy named Cameron, and his
interactions with the trio are more ambiguous than friendly, so there’s that. For
a while, it was even a possibility that he is one of the nighttime villains,
but as a Halloween special episode showed, he is not – he is just a civilian.
Even the authority figures do not make much impact in
the PJ Masks’ world – their classroom teacher is ‘just a teacher’ and the rest are
not even episodic characters – they just walk on and off screen with minimal
impact, not even a proper exposition dump. That may not be necessarily bad, but
it is empty… and the PJ Masks’ parents are flat-out absent. You would think that
they had at least some presence on screen, but no, not even shadows on the
floors/walls.
A typical PJ Masks’ episode goes as follows: the PJ
Masks are playing during the daytime; they find something unusual, (for them),
and there’s immediately a montage of them being in their bedrooms, changing
into their superhero personas, going to their HQ – a totem pole in the middle
of a park – in three flashes of color, and then they get up to speed in their
HQ, and off they go. Ok.
The thing is that a typical PJ Masks episode is
slightly over 10 minutes long, and this montage takes a good amount of time of
the episode. Put otherwise, a typical PJ Masks’ episode does not know itself
how long it will take and how to make itself last; often, the scriptwriters
just take a single scenario and re-design it time after time, trying to make it
more complex and sophisticated than the last time.
Take the scenario where Romeo teamed-up with Luna Girl
and Night Ninja, and the PJ Masks’ had to team-up with the twins Carly and Cartyka
to save the day/night. It actually takes them 20+ minutes to do that, and this sounds
impressive…until you realize that something like this has happened in an
earlier episode, where a character named Armadylan had to save the PJ Masks in
question, and it took him a single episode – 11+ minutes total. So why haven’t
the PJ Masks asked Armadylan to rescue them this time? Because they already got
5 seasons under their belts, and got to look good to justify their upcoming 6th
season by now. Next?
Ah yes, consistency. One episode, Luna Girl is a
diehard enemy of the PJ Masks; the next, she cooperates with them easily
enough; either the show has sneaked-in a multiverse, where two different Luna
Girls have two different interactions with two different PJ Mask teams, or else
the consistency is all over the floor. Often, the show introduces new
characters, and does not exactly know what to do with them, as it had with
Newton Star.
The latter is something of an exception, as he seems
to exist during the daytime, alongside the main characters. Only… he is a loner
– his mother is an astronaut far out in space, his father is never mentioned,
and his friends aside from the Masks’ are some asteroids, aka space rocks. That
is… somewhat sad, really. Newton Star is an outsider slash outcast in the ‘regular’
world, and so are the PJ Masks, it looks like: they have no social life outside
of their heroics!..
And their villains have no families, it appears. Luna
Girl, for example, spends her days… where? Sleeping in someone else’s attic or
something? Yes, eventually she gets a moon fortress of her own…and is kicked
out of it by Mothsuki, who treats her something like a yo-yo, which is seriously
creepy. That said, Luna Girl is always ‘dressed to the nines’, so someone is
obviously taking care of her, and she isn’t a hobo. It would be interesting to
learn just who, though, exactly. Anything else?
No, not really. PJ Masks is the reverse side of a show
such as ‘Agent Carer’, (AC). AC was a small-cast show that ran a tight ship and
was very cohesive and fun to watch. PJ Masks are also fun to watch… once or
twice, and then you start falling into the plotholes and begin to get bored
seeing them defeat Romeo yet again via some same stunt just dressed in a
different clothing. The show might be for preteens, but still, such disrespect?
Oh well, that’s Disney for you – as MCU and co. showed, they and their
franchises treat their older audiences hardly any better!
….Well, for now, this is it. I didn’t expect my first
2023 blog entry to be about such a subject, but still, what is – is, what will
be – will be. See you all soon, I hope!
No comments:
Post a Comment