With only two weeks left of Skeleton Crew, you may be wondering what other great kid-friendly shows won’t bore you out of your mind while you watch with the core audience. I thought I’d weigh in with a few family shows that you will actually enjoy watching.
Young Jedi Adventures (Disney+)
If you’ve been enjoying Skeleton Crew and you’re looking for more Star Wars to watch, Young Jedi Adventures would be a good first stop. Set 300 years before the original trilogy, this adorable cartoon centers on three Jedi younglings who are sent to a Jedi Temple on an outer rim planet called Tenoo (finally, it’s not about a familiar desert planet or a facsimile thereof, though Tatooine does make an appearance at one point) for training and gaining a deeper understanding of the galaxy. While it’s no Hilda on the storytelling level, one of the big things I look for in a kids’ show is whether it’s just mindless entertainment and bright colors or if it actually surreptitiously teaches kids lessons about the world. And we’ve come a long way from the PSAs at the end of GI Joe and Inspector Gadget. The show follows the headstrong and heroically named Kai Brightstar, animal lover Lys Solay, and a small blue teddy bear creature called Nubs, who is almost too cute and loves plants, as they go on low stakes missions throughout the galaxy.
One of the most notable things about it is how much it stresses compassion, not only for others, but for yourself as well. The younglings are praised for asking for help when they need it, they go out of their way to help anyone in need, even antagonists, and they approach every problem with an openness that adult-focused media often doesn’t have. Yes, there’s swashbuckling adventure, but unlike Clone Wars and even Rebels, which toned down the violence considerably, it’s a completely bloodless affair, even when the lightsabers come out. And the villains aren’t so evil most of the time, with the kids choosing to try to reason with them (with mixed results) before other options are considered. One of the main antagonists of the show is a helmeted child pirate called Taborr (who is revealed to have a complicated backstory himself) and there have been many times where he and Kai not only go head to head, but have to cooperate in order to make it through shared adversity. I know, in a world of pirates and warrior monks with mystical powers, a focus on children may seem off, but if we can suspend the disbelief enough to let Pokemon inhabit a world where 10 year olds wandering the wilderness on their own with magic animals are best suited to be heroes, then I think we can give Young Jedi Adventures a pass for putting its protagonists in peril. I mean, if you’ve been paying attention, you already knew the Jedi had no problem using child soldiers. But unlike much of Star Wars media, this takes place during a time of peace, where pirates and profiteers are the biggest nuisances, allowing these kids to be kids first—going out on adventures with their friends, exploring the galaxy the way kids on the boring planet we live on would explore their backyards or neighborhoods.
One other thing that’s really remarkable about the show is how effortlessly diverse it is. Their friend and local pilot (also a kid, named Nash Durango), has two moms, one of the younglings uses they/them pronouns, and the cast is full of different races and genders (as well as species), and it’s never a point of contention nor is it ever pointed out. It’s just the way things are and it’s accepted and normal, which, frankly, is how it should be. It’s a very sweet show that has some genuinely interesting storylines and some good things to say about the world. This is one you can feel good about letting your kids watch and enjoy watching it with them as well.
Dragons: Race to the Edge (Netflix)
If you’re already familiar with the How to Train Your Dragon series, this one should be an easy sell. Picking up the story between the first and second movies, Hiccup finds a device that is full of information about different dragon species, using specific triggers to allow him to see it. It’s a very Uncharted style device that Hiccup calls the Dragon’s Eye. This kickstarts a new quest to discover dragons, leading him and the other riders of Berk to find a suitable island to establish a forward operating base they call Dragon’s Edge. This sets off a series of adventures and misadventures, with the dragon riders muddling their way through complicated issues without having the immediate safety net of Stoick and Gobber. It also expands the lore and the world of the series in delightful and compelling ways.
They come across new breeds, new allies, villains new and old, and Hiccup and company have to deal with them pretty much on their own. It’s almost like the kids are off to college and have to be adults for the first time, only coming home on break to do some laundry and get a little advice now and then. Much like the movies, which were a hit with children and adults alike, the show maintains the same level of depth of writing that will allow adults to properly enjoy the show with plenty of sight gags and goofs for the kids to be kept more than happy. All the familiar characters are there with some substitute voice actors (Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse return, Kristen Wiig does not, sadly TJ Miller does, and Zack Pearlman seamlessly steps in as Snotlout), however none of the new voices are ever distracting. The series ran for six seasons and much like Avatar: The Last Airbender, the show grows in depth and seriousness as it progresses, allowing its younger viewers to grow up with it and adult viewers to appreciate it even more.
The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (Disney+)
I don’t know if this show flew under the radar back when it came out in 2010, but I didn’t discover it until a few years later when it briefly streamed on Netflix, and with Marvel Rivals dominating my Twitch feed and game time, I’ve revisited this series myself. Debuting as 20 micro-episodes on Disney XD, it was flying high on the popularity of 2008’s Iron Man and was way before MCU fatigue made everyone tired of Marvel movies. Though the show takes inspiration from a lot of the original Stan Lee and Jack Kirby comics, it also integrates some later stories and even some MCU plot points and character designs. What originally starts off with a very The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo premise, with a mass breakout from SHIELD’s supervillain prisons leading to the formation of the Avengers to catch them, it doesn’t adhere strictly to this formula and instead weaves in and out of more varied storylines. But the writing is snappy, with some fun lines I quote to this day (to no one who recognizes them, because I’ve never met a single person who has seen the show), with good comedy and some serious stories as well. The friction between Tony Stark and Hank Pym’s Ant-Man is palpable, with Pym being a staunch pacifist focused on villain rehabilitation and diplomatically ending conflict and Stark being an arrogant billionaire war profiteer turned arrogant superhero whose number one solution to every problem is to blast it with his repulsor beams.
The heroes you know and love are here, but not always in the way you’d expect to see them if your main experience with Marvel characters is the MCU. Hawkeye is on the run after Black Widow frames him as a Hydra agent. Bruce Banner is hunted by General Ross and the Hulkbuster unit and haunted by The Hulk, wanting desperately to show himself not as a monster, but as a hero. Captain America is struggling with the big thaw and doesn’t know whether he should trust SHIELD or not (as per usual, the answer with shadowy militarized government agencies is a resounding no). It’s got a great deal of action as well, though the violence never gets turned up too high unless they’re going against robot enemies—at that point, all bets are off, and they hack, slash, smash, and blast with reckless abandon. And since the licensing works out differently in this cartoon world than in the MCU films, characters like Spider-Man and Wolverine get to make an appearance as well and join in on the fun occasionally, which is nice. I won’t go so far as to say Avengers: EMH is as good as Batman: The Animated Series, but it doesn’t lag too far behind, with an 8.3 IMDB rating compared to the (still underrated) 9.0 of Batman: TAS. One area where it does fall behind though, is the opening sequence; the theme song is an ear worm, but after all these years, I’m still not sure if it’s in a good way or not, whereas the TAS opening is one of the best of all time. Sadly, the show was cancelled after just two seasons, leaving some storylines unfinished, but what is there is well worth your time.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous/Chaos Theory (Netflix)
A few years ago, I wrote about how disappointing it was that one of the best blockbusters and indeed one of the best action/adventure movies of all time, Jurassic Park, never had a sequel that even came close to living up to its lofty standards. In that post, I spoke briefly about Camp Cretaceous, the unlikely story of six young teens who were left behind in the events of Jurassic World, but since then, that story has concluded, in a way, and continued on in the form of Chaos Theory, a side story in the run up to Jurassic World: Dominion. When Camp Cretaceous came out, the kinetic storytelling and cliffhanger endings of every episode kept you wanting more and Chaos Theory is no different. Time jumping a few years ahead, the kids are older, now about college-aged, with the complications that come with that, as well as living in a world where they’re semi-famous for surviving the island (they’re known as the “Nublar Six”; and again, these are shows with great representation in media, which is always wonderful to see), oh, and also, there are dinosaurs roaming the Earth in the aftermath of Fallen Kingdom. In addition to all that, it seems like someone is hunting them down one by one, which sucks, honestly. I had a hard enough time making it to morning classes when I was in undergrad; add an assassination conspiracy to the mix and there’s no way in hell I’d have been sitting in Accounting 100 at 8AM three times a week.
Now, unlike Young Jedi Adventures, this is not a strictly bloodless affair, as the shows rack up a considerable body count. However, there is little to no onscreen gore—the camera always cuts away at the last moment, but it often takes the time to show the faces of the kids, traumatized and terrified, as they watch a nature documentary run amok right in front of them. For the level of violence here—and the lack of separation from our own reality (I understand dinosaurs are extinct, but the shows and the movies take place in our world, not a different galaxy), I would recommend it more for older kids than Young Jedi Adventures and perhaps even older than viewers of EMH. I certainly wouldn’t want to be responsible for explaining what that snapping sound is when the dinosaur has its sharp teeth around a protagonist’s father’s head and why his son looks so horrified. Despite the TV-Y7 rating, this might be better suited for kids that are slightly older than that, maybe closer to 10. But then again, I saw Jurassic Park in the theaters when I was 7 and that had a man being eaten while on the toilet. I turned out okay, right? But, despite that caveat, these two series manage to be more compelling, more interesting, and more fun to watch than the Jurassic World films, as they prepare to disappoint Jurassic Park fans for the fourth time with Rebirth (I want to be wrong about this one, but I’m not hopeful I will be).