In every group of friends there is always a troublemaker. This friend may be bossy, or think the world revolves around him/her. Maybe this friend has low self esteem and makes up for it by knocking down everything you are proud of. No matter what the flaw this is clearly a toxic friend.

I bring this up because of TV. Thing 1 was watching some TV and Hubby pointed some things out to me in the shows. The first show is Franklin the Turtle. I have a feeling this show is only in Canada but I could be wrong. Anyway, Franklin and Fox built a robot. It wasn’t anything fancy but they were incredibly proud of themselves… as they should have been. They took apart a night light and gave the robot a funky eye. If you passed your hand over his nose his eye would light up. A bunch of their friends came over to play and saw the robot. The one friend Beaver appears to be the toxic friend of this group. She says “Is that ALL it does? It’s not very good if it can’t clean your room“.

The next show that gets to me is Max & Ruby. This show gets to me regardless though. What the show is about is two apparently parent less bunnies. Max is a curious little boy and Ruby is his bossy big sister. She barely lets Max sneeze! I just want to choke her. Oddly enough it reminds me of my relationship with my sister as she knows everything too.

I’m not exactly sure why kids shows need to have characters in it like this. Perhaps the writers just want to prepare the kids for the real world of friendships but I still think kids should be kids and let them have their utopic world.

Edited (09/13/2006) to add: Now EVERY episode of Franklin is driving me nuts. Thanks Hubby. That beaver is just pissing me off!