A look at the awful children’s programming you’re forced to endure before you can finally kick the kids out of the TV room to watch sports for eight hours. Illustration by Jim Cooke.
The Show
Wow Wow Wubbzy
The Theme Song
Wubbzy lives in a tree
He likes to PLAY PLAY
He’s got a bendy tail
And he LIKES IT THAT WAY!
WOW WOW WUBBZY WUBBZY WUBBZY WOW WOW
(at this point in the song, a tiny man actually comes out of your television set and stabs you in the face)
Please note that the guy who sings every song on Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! sounds exactly like that one guy from Blink-182. It’s horrifying.
The Mythology/Episode Format
Wubbzy is an annoying yellow blob who lives in a world where everything is shaped like an Apple product. There are no sharp corners in Wuzzleberg, probably because the characters would accidentally gouge out their own eyes if there were.
Drew Magary writes for Deadspin and Gawker. He’s also a correspondent for GQ. Follow him on Twitter @drewmagary and email him at drew@deadspin.com.
Anyway, the average Wubbzy episode features Wubbzy getting crack-addict-level excited about a cool new invention, a chance to be on television, or some other goddamn thing. But then Wubbzy gets so cracky that he inevitably fucks up and then has to spend the end of the episode fixing the Wuzzlenator that he broke in a fit of deranged mania.
Frankly, the plot of Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! is beside the point. What you really need to know is that it’s the loudest goddamn show on television. It’s like someone took a bag of sound effects and bludgeoned you to death with it. Every episode of Wubbzy ends with a song (again, sung by the Blink-182 guy’s vocal doppelganger), and these songs are always edited in the choppiest way possible, with characters frantically leaping in and out of the screen every half-second, and the background colors constantly shifting, in the standard “seizure-inducing anime” style. I’ve seen Michael Bay films that are more subtle and placid. Watching Wubbzy for more than two seconds will make you seasick.
Secondary Characters
Widget: Pink rabbit-like creature who wears overalls and talks in the most grating Southern accent allowable under federal obscenity laws. Take the Mater character from Cars and make him twice as stupid. That’s Widget. Widget sucks.
Walden: Nerdy math nerd who talks in an English accent and invents shit that Wubbzy usually ends up breaking.
WALDEN: This Wuzzlesaucer will help the Wuzzletrees grow faster!
WUBBZY: Wow, wow, Walden! What happens when I act like a moron and press this HYPERWUZZLE button?
WALDEN: Oh, no! Now the Wuzzletrees are getting too big and eating all the Wuzzlepuppies! Perhaps I shouldn’t have included a massive design flaw for my idiot friends to carelessly exploit!
(FLASHING COLORS AND SHITLOADS OF LOUD NOISES)
WIDGET: DURRRRR don’t worry, little buddy! I’ll dadgum cotton-pickin’ horn-swagglin’ fix it!
(fixes Wuzzlesaucer, cut to awful song)
Daizy: Third Wubbzy friend. I don’t really know what she does, frankly. She has a hard time getting a word in edgewise what with the redneck yammering on and on.
The Wubb Girlz: All-blob female group led by Beyoncé. BEYONCÉ. For you ladies out there who think Bey is the be-all, end-all of good taste, I would like to point out that Beyoncé could have chosen to guest star on ANY children’s television show she pleased, and she chose this one. Wubbzy. Not Sesame Street. Not Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness. Fucking Wubbzy. Blue Ivy is screwed.
The Wubb Girlz have a song of their own, by the way. It goes like this:
SING A SONG
SING SING SING
SING ALONG
SING SING
Now repeat that 80 times. I don’t care if it’s a reincarnated John Lennon singing it; it’s puke. The Wubb Girlz song will stick in your head all day and you will eventually take a straight razor to your dome to remove your scalp so that you can burrow into your skull and remove the melody manually.
Setting
Most every episode of Wubbzy takes place in Wuzzleberg. For the Wubb Girlz episodes, the action usually shifts to Wuzzlewood. Everything on this show starts with either “wubb” or “wuzz,” making the show feel like an entire collection of Urban Dictionary terms for hermaphroditic grooming techniques.
Best Episode
None.
Worst Episode
The one where Wubbzy goes to Wuzzlewood and “sells out,” buying a bunch of bling and walking around like he’s Wubbstin Wieber before Beyoncé is like, “Wubbzy, you should just be yourself!” I strongly disagree, Bey Bey. I would prefer Wubbzy be anyone else but Wubbzy.
Pros
The disclaimer before the show says Wubbzy helps promote “social and emotional development.” O RLY, Nick Jr.? Because whenever my 7-year-old watches this pile of shit, I see emotional REGRESSION. Half an hour ago, this girl was reading quietly on the couch. Now she’s painting the walls with diarrhea and licking it off. You did this to her.
Cons
Everything. Wubbzy is fucking terrible. It’s not merely bad, it’s actively HARMFUL. It’s everything a children’s program should never be: shrill, inane, and overly stimulating. It’s like mainlining soda directly into your child’s eyeballs. The fact that Nick Jr. airs it is proof enough for me that the network doesn’t give a flying shit about your kids. TURNS OUT THEY’RE JUST IN IT TO MAKE MONEY! I feel so used.
The fact that my kids love this show is enough to let me know they shouldn’t be watching it. I’d give a finger for these kids to like Sesame Street, but noooooooo. No, they demand this. Every goddamn day. There are few things worse than turning on the TV at 6:30 in the morning and being bombarded with this show. It ATTACKS you. I feel like a dirty bomb has been set off in the house. I delete this program off the DVR every five minutes, and yet my children are able to find another eight episodes to record 15 minutes later. DirecTV desperately needs a FUCK THIS SHOW option that blocks every episode and wipes it clean from the viewing guide.
This show will ruin your children for the day. I’ve seen it transform them from normal kids into Stripe from Gremlins. (Note: I just realized that Gremlins is an allegory about child-rearing. Only took me four decades to realize it.) The after effects are no different from what would happen if you let a child eat a birthday cake smothered in liquefied Jolly Ranchers. They become frantic little demons, running into walls and scratching off each other’s faces. All because of stupid Wubbzy and his loser friends. I hate this show. I give it no stars.
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