Lego Ninjago

Are your kids as into this as mine are? Oh, the love. They can't wait until Wednesday night, when the next episode airs. Even Lula is hooked, rooting for the little sister who kicks ass and is promised that with patience, she will also be rewarded.

We watched some of the videos on the Lego website, and things took a turn for the unfortunate. There's a clip of the girl character, right properly kicking butt while one of the boys waits outside, trying to muster the courage to ask her out. When he hears a sign of trouble and swoops in to help, she's already taken out the bad guys (and has a pretty new bracelet too). The bad guys are mortified that they have been "beaten by a girl," but they're bad guys and not very bright, so it's possible to spin that into a not horrible moment. But why is this clip on the website, and not in the show itself? Scared of alienating the boy audience, are we Lego? ("I'm a white male, aged 18 to 49, everybody listens to me. Ah, nuts and gum, together at last.")

I'm willing to let it go, time constraints, maximizing the target audience and all, but in the next clip the girl character calls her brother "Stupid," and well, let's just say my children reacted as though she had just called him a Fucking Fuckwad. No, wait, it would have actually been better if she had called him a Fucking Fuckwad. Because in my house, stupid is a very powerful word that we might, in very dire circumstances, use to describe things; but not ever, ever use to describe people. And Nya, the only character Lego has given my daughter to identify with, drops the S-bomb on her brother. Bravo.

You know, the last time I used the word stupid in my house was to describe the new "Girl Legos," come to think of it. I told a friend that "making some of the bricks pink and making the minifigures look stupid is not the key to grabbing a girl audience." Lumpyhead was in the room and looked at me very gravely and whispered "You said stupid," and I retorted "and that's what I meant" and he trumpeted "I think they're stupid too" and we had to talk about things grown ups can do but kids can't. Like drink beer. So thanks for that.

So, what's my point? I don't have a point. I've been sick for three days and the nyquill has only half kicked-in and I can't get that damn theme song out of my head. Oh, and Nathan Jr is using everything he can get his hands on to spinjitsu his brother and sister, so we've got gold stars for brilliance all over this damn joint. Bring me some tea.