Writer’s Note: You get a previous part! And you get a previous part! Everyone check under your chairs. You all get a previous part!
“Creative Galaxy.” There are few children’s shows my wife and I enjoy watching more than this one. And by the fourth part of a multi-column series you’re wondering if the reason why is something completely unironic, then you really haven’t been paying attention.
If you haven’t seen it, the premise is fairly simple. Arty is the green-skinned eldest son of an architect mother and a…dad. Together with his reality-changing friend Epiphany, he explores the Creative Galaxy and solves every problem life could possibly throw at him with nothing more than a can-do attitude and art.
Okay. Quick poll. When did that get weird for everyone? Third sentence? Yeah. That’s about what I thought.
I think what struck me first about this show was how little it took to get Arty rushing off into space. Last-minute school project? “I’m going into space.” Eye-catching letter to a pen pal? “Off to space!” Hang nail? “Space!”
When they’re aware of his whereabouts at all, his parents are always just sort of smiling as they say, “Be safe in the cold, unfeeling vacuum of the void!” If they’ve ever expressed hesitation at letting their eight-year-old child traipse about in the infinite blackness of space, I must’ve missed that episode. And it wasn’t even halfway through the first season before they started suggesting it. Some small problem would arise and the dad would just say, “Oops. My guitar string broke. Why don’t you go hang out in that place where gamma ray bursts are?”
I’ve been quick to note the absence of parents in other series. In this case, though, I’m not sure Arty wouldn’t be better off without their advice.
But Arty’s just fine, of course, because he’s got Epiphany. Epiphany is a soft, huggable pink…well, I don’t really know what Epiphany is. Or what gender. Or really, anything about Epiphany at all, except that they’re capable of changing shape at will, creating objects out of nothing and otherwise just generally raising a giant middle finger to physics as a whole.
Oh. And did I mention that this whimsical reality-changing being is prone to temper tantrums? So…you know, maybe stay on Epiphany’s good side?
Even if Epiphany doesn’t stub his or her toe and then turn Arty into a collection of argon gas in a fit of rage, Epiphany doesn’t really have to. Because without them, Arty would have no way to move from one planet to another in the Creative Galaxy. So if Epiphany decides to cut and run, he’s stuck on whatever arts and crafts-themed world he happens to be on at the time. Hopefully, it’s Cooktopia, because I’ve never seen food on any other planet.
And no, he can’t just hitch a ride on another ship. Because that’s the horrible little secret about the Creative Galaxy. There are no other spaceships.
Not surprisingly for an entire Galaxy so focused on art that each planet has a theme, no one in the Creative Galaxy bothered developing space travel. The only ship we ever see in the entire series is the one drawn by Arty and willed into existence by Epiphany. The entirety of spacial commerce is just one kid flitting from one planet to another trying to finish his art homework and needs to borrow some glitter.
Which makes it all the stranger that the random denizens of these planets – who, remember, have no concept of interstellar travel – never seem all that surprised to see a random kid show up out of the blue.
Now, it’s hard to be too negative about a show like this. Because like all children’s show protagonists, Arty is a good kid. He’s so earnest and helpful it’s impossible not to find him kind of endearing, even for someone as cynical as me. And that’s why it’s especially hard to have to admit that he has zero chance of turning out as a well-adjusted adult.
Assuming he lives that long, I mean.
His problems here are twofold and, like the Creative Galaxy itself, heavily art-related. The first of these is that, well, not all problems can be solved with art. Most problems, in fact, are so far based in science or math that unless you happen to have a friend who can bypass the hardwired laws of reality…oh. I guess we’ll give him a pass there, then.
But it doesn’t do much to help with the issue of his parents. Aside from being so uncaring that they regularly suggest their son leave the planet to give them a break, it doesn’t take long for them to start putting a lot of pressure on their child to solve things like fixing his mother’s poorly designed library or getting his crying infant sister to calm down. You may recognize these problems as belonging 100% to his parents to address.
Okay. So they’re becoming a bit dependent on him to solve the family’s problems. In addition to bumming rides around on his one-of-a-kind spaceship like it’s not a big deal, any issue that arises is up to him to put right. But surely that was just something that happened as the show progressed, right? Nope. Those were the first two episodes.
His mother builds a children’s library, but she’s so bad at her job that she forgot to make it look visually interesting. So she sends her grade school son into space for ideas on how to paint something on the wall…or something? I don’t know. I’m not exactly sure how it ended up that he had to leave the planet to paint a wall there.
Later, when the baby has been crying all night and won’t stop, the parents don’t know what to do. Naturally, they call up the doctor and ask if anything might be amiss when…no, I’m just kidding. They send Arty into space again.
Now, I’ll make it clear that Arty isn’t in the wrong here. He’s being a good bigger brother and that’s admirable. But his parents are so incapable of functioning either as parents or members of the workforce that they regularly rely on an eight-year-old to fix their sloppy mistakes for them. They’re nice enough, sure. They’re kind and seem to…want to care for their children. With these two at the helm of the S.S. Parenthood, though, I think it’s safe to say there’s no happy ending in sight for poor Arty.
Their dependence on him to solve everything probably ends one of two ways.
One, Arty’s parents send him off to single-handedly combat an invading race of interstellar insects that move from world to world devouring their resources. (Not surprisingly, a Galaxy that never stopped painting to learn science doesn’t have much in terms of practical defenses.) This ends predictably when their hard, chitinous outer shells prove resistant to acrylic paint.
Or two, the Season 5 finale has Arty blasting off into space on another adventure. “I need to fix my parents’ failing marriage…with art!” And Epiphany just pats him on the shoulder, shaking its head.
And says, “You’re a good kid, Arty. I just wanted you to know that.”
nerdinedgewise 