Attempting to explain the idiosyncratic appeal of a show like LazyTown to someone who hasn't seen it is, I've recently discovered, next to impossible. You tend to get a lot of blank stares (which quickly turn into expressions of contemptuous mirth as soon as you admit to your audience that the show is basically for preschoolers and airs regularly on Nick Jr.). Nevertheless, I feel compelled to comment on it; in my book shows this quirkily unique deserve recognition, no matter who they're intended for. (Besides, Ant and I have become fairly obsessed with this ridiculous show recently, thanks in no small part to the amazingly catchy techno-ish dance songs it often features).





The brainchild of Icelandic aerobics champion Magnus Scheving (who also plays the show's resident goofball superhero Sportacus), LazyTown's preoccupation is with teaching kids healthy life lessons; for example, the importance of staying physically fit and eating healthy foods. The show is essentially a U.S./Icelandic co-production: it is filmed in Iceland, and features a mixed Icelandic and American cast (some accents are easily detectable).

The main character is Stephanie (Julianna Rose Mauriello), a pink-haired girl who is, according to the opening theme, "new in town"; in the first episode she is dismayed to learn that the other kids in town (Pixel, Stingy, Trixie, and Ziggy, all puppets) are incredibly lazy and never play outside. Her uncle, the mayor, attuned to her distress, sends a message to Sportacus -- a blue-clad jumping bean of a superhero with a pointy mustache who lives in a blimp -- in the hope that he might be able to get the kids up and moving. Sportacus arrives, sets the whole town to playing games and being active, and occasionally uses his remarkable fitness skills to save people in jeopardy...to the horror of Robbie Rotten (Stefan Karl Stefansson), a villain who lives somewhere under the town and longs for a return to the days when everyone was lazy and fat and ate junk food all the time. His evil schemes to get the kids to stop playing and get Sportacus kicked out of town are inherent to most of the show's plots.

Looked at from an objective standpoint, the show is, like most kids shows, totally bonkers. Sportacus, Stephanie, and Robbie Rotten are the only non-puppets in the show, and the costumes of all three are nothing short of strange: Scheving looks vaguely like a cross between a woodsman, a soccer player, and an early aviator; Mauriello inexplicably wears a pink wig; and Stefansson's face is weirdly accentuated with plasticky makeup (including a giant prosthetic chin). Scripts are filled with random bits of lunacy: in one episode Sportacus looks at a clock and says with gumption "It's 8:08! Time for bed!" Why does Sportacus have such an absurdly specific bedtime? Who knows?





Moreover, every once in a while someone (usually Stephanie) will break into song -- these moments are the highlights of the show, since the vast majority of the songs (upbeat, high-tempo dance music intended to get kids up on their feet) are unbelievably smart and catchy (though admittedly juvenile in the subject matter).

This particular episode, titled "Cry Dinosaur", begins with a short scene featuring Sportacus in his blimp -- every episode begins this way, with Sportacus jumping around like a maniac and turning mundane tasks (making a sandwich, for example) into an acrobatic tour de force. After this, and the opening, we see that Stephanie, Ziggy (a puppet obsessed with candy), and Stingy (a materialistic puppet who thinks everything belongs to him) are having a campout, and that Ziggy is a little apprehensive: he's worried about monsters and phantoms attacking during the night. Sportacus appears and attempts to reassure him: "Everybody's afraid of something," he says. "Even you?" Ziggy asks. Sportacus admits that he is not afraid of anything, but humors Ziggy and concedes, after some prompting, that if dinosaurs were still around, he'd be afraid of them. Robbie Rotten hears this exchange, and is delighted: "So Sportacus is afraid of dinosaurs," he says evilly. He devises a plan to dress up like a dinosaur and scare the crap out of Sportacus, which will (assuredly!) cause him to leave town forever.

So Robbie puts on a dinosaur costume and begins wandering around LazyTown looking for his adversary. Trouble is, the dinosaur's head is gigantic, and he can't see out of it, so he winds up stumbling into things all over the place. After a musical number back in the tent about how our imaginations can run away with us in the dark sometimes, the trio are freaked out by the mayor's shadow and decide to spend the rest of the evening indoors (Sportacus is alerted to their predicament by the crystal on his chest, which beeps and glows whenever anyone is in trouble. His two most oft-used phrases, in fact, are almost certainly "Someone's in trouble!" and "There's trouble in LazyTown!").





Robbie, meanwhile, is still searching for Sportacus. "Sportachicken, where are you?" he calls. He stumbles into a wall outside, and eventually ends up making his way into Stephanie's room, terrifying Ziggy and everyone else in the process (Ziggy had seen him before and had tried to warn his friends, but they figured he was just making it up). A chase ensues, Ziggy conquers his fears, Robbie says something disarming about his antisocial behavior to avoid presumable punishment, and Sportacus saves the day in the end. The episode ends, as all the episodes do, with a muscial number called "Bing Bang":

Bing bang, diggiriggidong
Funny words I sing when I am dancing
Bing bang, diggiriggidong
Silly words that can mean anything...

The show's silly enthusiasm is potently infectious; seeing a pink-haired girl and a weird woodsman-looking guy dance cheerfully around to this nonsense, it's practically impossible not to smile. LazyTown is a brightly energetic, charmingly clever, refreshingly original series, and, for those folks who are not put off by the Krofft-like, sugary whimsy of it all, or by the fact that it's plainly a children's show (you'll probably get a lot of guff from family and friends on this one, trust me), a definitely enjoyable one.

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