Saturday mornings on Retro TV

Time yet again to indulge in one of my favorite pastime: Looking in on the doings at RTV, which just added an (apparently) nationwide Saturday morning kids' block to its lineup.

I already mentioned that while I like the idea, the execution left a little to be desired for me, as 1980s Filmation efforts like "He-Man" aren't at the top of my "need to see" list. However, I do appreciate the nice touch RTV adds by throwing in some oddball old-school 'toon shorts in between shows.

So far, I've noticed vintage "Gumby," which is always welcome, as well as 1960s "Dick Tracy," which is pretty goofy but still quite enjoyable, especially in short blasts. When I get a chance to see a cartoon cop with Andy Devine's voice (no, not Tracy), I'm gonna take that chance.

Even cooler is the stranger-than-strange, more random than random "Wizard of Oz" cartoons from the 1960s that are sprinkled into the lineup. I had no idea what these things were when I first saw them. The animation style is distinctive--well, another appropriate word might be "cheap"--but also sort of fools you into thinking, at first glance, it could be a Jay Ward production. Hey, if you're just getting up on Saturday morning and still a little bleary-eyed, you might get confused if you have these on while you're downing your Quisp.

Turns out, "Tales of the Wizard of Oz" was a 1961 production by the company that later became Rankin-Bass. Somehow that makes these shorts even more compelling. I don't know if seeing one of these 5-minute nonessential 'toons is worth sitting through a whole episode of "She-Ra," but I might DVR a few more of RTV's Saturday morning efforts and hope to catch some of them.

That's the good news, that some rarities are making their way into the lineup. The TERRIBLE news is that in order to make way for those shorts, RTV is not sacrificing commercial time or extending the time slot (yeah, right), but it is getting rid of the best part of those Filmation shows: the moral!

How are we supposed to live our lives as upright citizens without the moral guidance Filmation provided at the end of each installment of, say, "BraveStarr"? Are we supposed to just guess at the lessons the episode just taught us? Surely not. We the viewers can't just soak up this sort of thing. We need a character from the show to come back and, through direct address, tell us how the apprehension of a bunch of space rustlers illustrated the value of cooperation.

I never would have realized on my own that the spontaneous regeneration of the Statue of Liberty to its full size after Prime Evil shrunk it to a miniature was proof that the values of liberty and freedom reside in our hearts. Good thing the Ghostbusters popped back at the end of the episode to tell me.

Really the best way to watch most of the 1980s Filmation output is to skip the actual episode and go straight to the life lesson. By depriving us of this essential aspect of the shows, RTV is not only killing our nostalgia buzz, but it is quite possibly endangering the moral fabric of our impressionable children.