I know I'm supposed to be writing about "Arthur," and I know I'm not supposed to make up truths. But many of my efforts to begin writing this reflection on the program were halted because I can't honestly remember the first episode of "Arthur." It’s a perfectly poetic (albeit aggressively mediocre) introduction to a paean for this anthropomorphic aardvark, but the past two decades have left me an unreliable narrator, as far as remembering where I was during its premiere on Oct. 7, 1996.
But for a show that features a protagonist with whom I so thoroughly identify, it is precisely the fact that I can't remember watching the pilot ("Arthur's Eyes") that reveals its true impact, in my life at least. Arthur, in some form or another, has always been.
"I think 'Arthur' has had such a great run because there is an endless stream of ideas around us every day," creator Marc Brown told me in an interview.
"Arthur" isn't dead, but it is undergoing a transformation of sorts. After more than 250 episodes, it's leaving conventional television, and taking its place in a digital ecosystem where it will engage with formats like web video or podcasts. Its days as appointment viewing — and mind you, for a kid like me, it was appointment viewing — have come to an end. That’s growth, but it’s also a finish to one of the few remaining things that has tethered me to an increasingly fragmented memory of boyhood.
"Arthur" never infantilized its demographic. Brown told me that one of the things the program had been so good at was "remembering the dignity of childhood." The show treats children as agentic beings, which means they have their own valid opinions, ideas and personal experiences. And maintaining that dignity, sometimes, means having tough conversations.
To be fair, "Arthur" is not the only show to tackle "hard subjects." The tough lives led by the cast of characters in "Hey Arnold!" comes to mind: Arnold's parents are dead; Helga’s parents are alive but alcoholic and emotionally abusive; Gerald is Black. But "Arthur" took these same themes — loss, loneliness, race — and addressed them directly, which is all the more important given a trend to avoid them altogether, as far as children are concerned.
But Marc Brown and “Arthur” aren’t foisting any conversation upon kids that they aren’t already aware of.
"All of these ideas [for episodes] come from things that happened in our families, or when we were kids," said Brown. “Parenting is a lot like being a trapeze artist. You need courage, trust in large quantities, but most importantly, you’ve got to know when to let go. Good parenting begins with humility and an open mind.”
Our current timeline is one in which some parents argue over what's "appropriate" for their children. The American Library Association reported 330 book challenges during autumn 2021. As Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire argued in The Washington Post, the interests of parents and children diverge when the parent denies their child exposure to ideas and values other than their own. Marc Brown knows this. Arthur himself knows this.
When the lunch lady was diagnosed with cancer, did the children not know fear, or sadness? When the school was engulfed in flames, did the children not know trauma? When a wealthy classmate went to live with her friend in the projects, did the latter not feel embarrassment? These are all plot points of "Arthur," but they're also lived experiences of the children to which the show speaks. Kids are living in the world that the previous generation made, and if the elder is too ashamed to have an honest conversation about that with the younger, that’s on them.
This isn't to say "Arthur" was an exclusive run of very special episodes. Like any 8-year-old (or 80-year old, for that matter), Arthur is an imperfect being. Brown told me that the show is, fundamentally, about “an 8-year-old aardvark who is navigating the mud puddles of life." This is important, considering that so many children's shows feature a protagonist who is an improbable paragon of integrity (as is Thomas the Tank Engine), or they may be so self-involved that every final act is the realization that society is not the exclusive domain of one soul (Caillou).
But Arthur has his mud puddles. He and his friends are fundamentally good kids that routinely crack under pressure, make stupid mistakes and express their negative emotions in suboptimal ways (as kids and adults reguarly do). Arthur punched his sister. Francine ditched her cousin's bar mitzvah. Buster stole a toy. The hyper-intelligent Brain frequently condescends to his peers. Muffy is regularly oblivious to her own privileged station. But they learn their lessons and move on. They're human, and behave as such. Sometimes we find ourselves in the gray, and it's profound that this is a children's show that lets its demographic know that these transgressions and confusions are inherent to the human experience.
"It was so important that this be an ensemble cast; that kids get to know everyone in Arthur's world just as well as they know Arthur, and that we deal with stories that are about problems or issues that [they have]," said Brown. The world he and his crew have created is full of multifaceted characters. Any one character's depths can be plumbed to see how they respond in a given situation. There might not be infinite permutations, but there were at least 250.
I'm struggling to think of another show that was able to so effortlessly broaden cultural horizons at this scale (“Sesame Street” comes to mind, but it takes a very different route). Episodes are stuffed with references that the youngest viewers would not possibly be able to recognize: Monty Python, Friedrich Dotzauer, Alfred Hitchcock, "South Park," "Citizen Kane," "The Godfather" and "Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist." But these go beyond giving the parent a chuckle as they watch alongside their youthful children, wards and charges. It's meant to facilitate meaningful engagement. Brown cheekily referred to it as a "secret agenda" where "adults have this wonderful opportunity to share their values and thoughts about whatever you see or read with your child."
Brown would say that "Arthur" is for every kid, but a small part of me wants to desperately believe Brown a clairvoyant who knew what kind of adult young fans would grow into: souls that are at turns reckless and rambunctious and melancholy, but often enough observant and omnivorous, whose idea of a good time involves meditations among grocery store aisles, chased by a shot of public media. But then I just might be describing myself, because "Arthur" made me. Or, more specifically, the guests of "Arthur" made me.
So often, they went beyond lending vocal talent and would lean into discussion of their own real world discipline. There was Jack Prelutsky, Julia Wolfe and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I don't know if "Arthur" introduced me to Yo-Yo Ma, but it damn sure introduced me to Joshua Redman (after I got my first saxophone, I desperately tried to replicate his casual interpretation of Petzold's popular minuet in G). And while it's easy to take the guests at face value — as with Frank Gehry ruminating on treehouse architecture or Michelle Kwan arbitrating figure skating-diplomacy — the most striking appearances spoke truth to the youth where adults might have obscured it. Case in point: the late Rep. John Lewis, in which he encourages the young aardvark to protest unfair working conditions in the cafeteria.
That episode, "Arthur Takes a Stand," first aired on Feb. 12, 2018. The last episode I remember watching as a regular viewer, "April 9th" (a 9/11 allegory) aired in November 2002. Over those 16 years, the show — it's characters, the world the writers and producers and animators built, the musical cues — remained remarkably consistent. "Arthur" subsists on engagement with the real world but exists in its own contained universe.
For those of us who found ourselves bound to "Arthur," we learned to stay curious and to boldly face the world to which we've been fated. It equipped us to resist those instances when adulthood asks us to abandon “childlike wonder” — the quest for explanation, delight in the natural world or observations of mundanity, a surrender to the raw ecstasies of literature and music and art and design.
For a quarter century, "Arthur" seemed ageless, an eight-year old third-grader for perpetuity. But the bell — that sound of inevitability — now tolls for the show.
The years came for Arthur, as they'll continue to come for us. But, to channel some old collegiate proverb, that’s no excuse to abandon that spirit of youth. Let the years to come do what they may.
