Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego Part One

While I love the cartoon show Mighty Max, I hit a good temporary stopping point.  They wrapped up their first major plot point, we saw Max grow as a hero, and I think that actually was the final episode of season one.  

So, where to go from here? 

Honestly, I made a list, numbered it, and then had a random number generator pick.  It could just as easily have been another season of My Little Pony, another look at Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills, a peek into history with Liberty Kids, or even digging into something a bit more Japanese.

Heck, I had Totally Spies on that list, because I'm willing to cut any show with Jennifer Hale playing a secret agent some slack.

What it did land on was my DVD containing four episodes of Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego, and I'm pretty excited by this.  I've already said before that Carmen Sandiego is, in my eyes, the most interesting woman in video game history simply because we knew nothing about her.  She was the world's greatest thief, she had a love of red trenchcoats and awesome red hats, and she could steal anything that wasn't nailed down and pretty much anything that was.  Heck, she stole entire rivers and the entire city of Casablanca.

She doesn't mess around.  The Hope Diamond is for rookies.

So let's look back at the program, starting with a brief introductory reminder of the fact that there used to be two programs based around the world's greatest thief.

Now, I realize some people are sticklers, so I'll confirm right away that the original program was in fact called Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego.

Sure you remember it.  Here's the theme song:

...wait, no.  That was Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego?  I- man, even I don't remember that one.  Okay, let's try again.

 

There we go.  I can recite that entire song by heart.  It's just brilliant in so many ways.  The fact they went fully acapella (with Rockapella, arguably one of the best groups to do it and one I've seen perform live) allowed them to focus on the performance instead of trying to come up with some cheap flashy opening using an elaborate set like...

Well, like the first video.

The original show was a PBS exclusive, a game show where kids would test their knowledge of artifacts, traditions, and important figures from around the world in order to win a trip to anywhere in the continental US (later on anywhere in North America), which let's face it, is awesome.

The game is also notorious for its final round, in which the last remaining kid would have to place poles on one of the continents around the world (except Antarctica or Australia).  The one for North America usually involved putting state flags on states or on important landmarks and parks, but personally I always felt bad who whichever kid had Africa.  I don't remember a single person winning the Africa bonus round.

I couldn't win the Africa round, and I loved looking at maps and figuring out where places were.  There were so many tiny little countries I could never remember, and I'm pretty sure at least one country changed names during the show's run.

However, there was a show on later on that used the same idea of people trying to capture a brilliant thief, but instead of a live action game show they went with a Saturday morning cartoon, which was also okay to me.  This one, with an animation budget instead of a live action PBS budget, was actually able to show Carmen Sandiego steal everything and even reveal how she stole everything.  The opening was also equally awesome.

For those of you who aren't classical music buffs, that's Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail redone with pop instruments, new lyrics, and a back beat.  Go on, go find it and listen to it.  I'll wait.

If I had to pick between the two theme songs...man, I don't think I could.  They're both great for such different reasons, with the original having some of the same campy fun as the original computer games, but the cartoon version really plays up how huge the battle against this crime syndicate is.

The cartoon featured siblings Zack and Ivy (last name unknown as well as whatever happened to their parents) and their work against Carmen and her henchmen.  They were assisted by the "player," giving the entire show a feeling like it was happening in something akin to Reboot where everybody is in a virtual reality world, or it's the real world and some kid managed to access the Matrix through his old machine.

The show did a lot for Carmen Sandiego's character depth, explaining who she was before she founded the greatest crime organization in the world, and even worked on making her less of a "villain" by having her team up with Ivy and Zack a few times in later seasons to fight bad guys trying to either take over her organization (better the devil you know, I guess), or cause massive problems around the world or both.

I'm looking forward to this, because I remember really enjoying the show, but I'm curious how well the CG work holds up, how well the animation holds up, and whether it really was, as I felt at the time, a show that would be good for all ages and still educational without being patronizing.

So join me next week as we take a look at the first episode as Carmen Sandiego steals her way through the world of art.