The Monkees meet the Beatles meet the Fraggles meet your craziest acid trip.

What can you say about The Doodlebops ? This kid's show features a multi-colored cast of three. Starting out as rough cuts in the first season in costumes described as "malfunctioning" and rightly so. Frumpy ill-fitting clothes paired with badly made "ear hoods" clearly denotating where the actor's face ended and the hood began, the show has improved greately since its conception in 2005. Season two saw an array of changes, including better fitting costumes and a complete throwout of the embarassing ear accessories. The characters finally became real.

Deedee, played by Lisa Lennox, is the slightly bossy older sister. She's pink. I mean, yes, she wears pink but she IS pink. She is an experienced musician (as are they all) specializing in the keyboard and keytar (the proof that crossbreeding instruments should really be more restricted, though Deedee's keytar adornments like pink pom poms and pink paint do add a certain charm to an instrument otherwise only worthy to bald men in hawaiian shirts playing in 80's tribute bands) I approximate Deedee's character age to be somewhere around 9 or 10. The actor is 24/25. Her style falls somewhere in the 70's, sporting hip gogo boots and a flip up pink hairstyle with headband. Her dress is fringed in a pianoesque keyboard print. Though Deedee's tendancy tends to be bossy, her heart is always in the right place.

Rooney is the brainy middle child who is blue. He is played by actor Chad McNamara who's dancing would put any broadway performer to shame. Previously Chad had been in a role in the HBO (or was it Showtime?) show "Queer as Folk," whose central characters are a few gay men going about trails and tribulations that only gay men can go through. This does not, by default, imply that Chad himself is gay. Besides, it doesn't matter either way but I thought I'd address the issue as some of the Doodlebop naysayers are quick to point out that Rooney is certainly the gay doodle akin to how the purple Tinky Winky with the upside down triangle on his head was also gay. Rooney plays a guitar that would impress Jimi Hendrix. (Though none of the actors play the instruments in concert because of certain costume restrictions, mainly their bulbous finger gloves and the fact that they also have to dance and sing) He invents things and so it is only right that his guitar is pimped out in knobs and gauges. His dress is one of a hippy rastafarian beatnik. His wig is the perfect representation of dredlocks. Precariously balanced in the heap of dreds is a red barret with a blue musical note on it. His outfit is a blue pair of overalls with a guitar wrapped across diagonally from right shoulder to left knee. I guestimate Rooney is supposed to be around 7, 8, or 9. The actor is 23/24.

Then there is the hearthrob of five year olds everywhere. Moe is played by Jon Wexler. And Jon is, for all intents and purposes, hot. I, personally, don't find any of the doodles particularly hot even "unmasked" via www.dontpulltherope.com. Let me rephrase that. They're very attractive but I have no illusions of dating them at any point. But Moe is the eyecandy. He is the AJ and the Nick Carter. 5-39 year olds (no judgement here) have dreams about this little doodle everyday. Of what I've heard, Jon is a pretty shy guy. And so, if I had any drooling to do about his tight butt or his enigmatic smile I'd hold it back. Besides, I'm a Deedee/Rooney girl, myself.

Moe is yellow and has a mop of red/orange hair. He plays the drums and breaks. No, he doesn't randomly crash into things. He dances, he breaks. He's a bboy. Jon is a bboy and so is Moe. He sends 5-8 year olds spinning round and round on their carpets every weekday and weekend morning. He's probably caused the majority of carpet burn injuries. Moe is the youngest of the group, attributing to slightly less mature actions such as yelling and getting in people's spaces and expounding stories beyond their actuality. He hides at the beginning of each show as Rooney and Deedee try and locate him. He also has an infamous fetish for a rope in which he pulls each episode to result in a drenching of water. Luckily, I think this particular water scene is prefilmed and used again and again otherwise Jon would probably be sporting a continuous case of pnemonia. Moe would probably be around 6 or 7. He's that kid who used to interrupt everyone else to share his opinion, a bit off, a bit rambunctious. Jon is 22 years old, fittingly the youngest of the actual ages as well. And, as a said before, Jon is ironically shy compared to his character--shyness being a thing I can more than relate to.

Now you may be reading this (or you may not be reading this) and be thinking--what is all this? Why is E.M.Green suddenly enamoured with this kid's show? Why, furthermore, is she writing about this kids show when more important things are going on in the world like mass killings and floods? And I will answer you this: The Doodlebops is probably one of the best shows on tv now. It's certainly better than American Idol and So you Think you Can Dance?

It's about fun. Even if you are laughing because it is the most ridiculous thing you have ever seen you can't help but smile while watching the rambunctious siblings rush around and perform concerts. The songs aren't oversimplified and are, for the most part, without cheese. These are talented people in this series, intelligent people.

So, when you find yourself getting bogged down or sacrificing your better half for a good dousing of self-pity or even in the face of unbelievable tragedy for a moment allow yourself a temporary escape. Surrender yourself to when you were 5. Watch a rapping hippy throwback from the Sergeant Pepper video busdriver and a bee-bopping soulful black woman and an array of puppeteered characters and relent your body to dance foolishly and freely beyond the bounds of mournful workdays. Don't worry, start with Season 2 if the funny ears and bad costumes bother you too much. You can almost see Lisa's goreous figure in the new costume. Naysayers will call them gay (as if such a term is an insult) and claim themselves superior over such tomfoolery, but I am proud in knowing that I take myself with the seriousness of a preschooler of the universe. And, in a less introspective light, it certainly saves me the money I would otherwise have to spend on hallucinigenic drugs to get the same effect.

currently: fluffy

current piece of writing:
"I like to describe the show as a live-action cartoon. We obviously are drawing references from a number of live action shows. And we crossed it with elements from Pee Wee's Playhouse and The Banana Splits and all sorts of wonderful things from our childhood. My background is in animation. I used to work for The Walt Disney Company and came up through the ranks in Saturday morning cartoons and I bring that to it." --Jamie Waese, creator of the Doodlebops talking with "interactive DAD" in this article.