Debuting on PBS stations this month, “The Magic School Bus” is based on Scholastic Inc.’s best-selling book series of the same name. Like the books, it’s about a frizzy-haired science teacher who takes her students on wondrous field trips in a magically powered bus. Unlike the cheapo network stuff, this cartoon has star wattage: Lily Tomlin speaks for Ms. Frizzle; Carol Channing, Tyne Daly, Dom DeLuise and Malcolm Jamal-Warner do guest-voice gigs, and Little Richard sings the theme song.
“The Magic School Bus” wants to demystify science, especially for elementary-grade girls and minorities (who in this series ride front and center). “Because classroom science teaching tends to be formal and abstract,” says Scholastic Productions executive vice president Deborah Forte, “kids start to tune out. We’re trying to make science a hands-on, you-are-there experience.” Since Ms. Frizzle’s bus can fly, shrink, submerge and turn itself into a time machine, her class gets to explore the solar system, the inside of a volcano, sound waves, weather fronts, anthills and a classmate’s entire digestive system. Sailing across his stomach goo, one girl squeals: “That’s no rock. That’s Arnold’s gum!” OK, that’s messy, but at least it’s supervised mess. Commands Ms. Frizzle as they enter the large intestine: “Two by two, class.”
Indeed, it’s Tomlin’s “the Friz,” as she’s known in the hallways, who makes this little science primer percolate. Incurably eccentric (her pet is a telepathic lizard) and preternaturally chipper (imagine Ernestine on Prozac), she exudes – and propagates – a spirit of inquiry. “Ask questions!” she constantly exhorts her charges. “Take chances!” There’s a Ms. Frizzle enshrined in almost every ex-kid’s memory, including Lily Tomlin’s. “Mine read dialect poems to us on Fridays,” she fondly recalls. “I just lived for those times.”
For all their deft mix of fun and learning, the show’s creators should have hung out at a playground or two. Their idea of a cool kiddism is “I’m outta here,” and too many of those kids seem too lovable to be fully believable. Nor does the animation rise above Saturday-morning standards: it’s more “Gummi Bears” than “Lion King.” But check out the knockout epilogue to each episode, craftily designed to help children develop a critical eye: the show’s cartoon “producer” takes a call from a perceptive “viewer,” who gleefully points out the factual liberties the episode took for the sake of entertainment. This device is much too good to be wasted on the young. Let’s sic it on grown-up TV, beginning with the commercials . . . then to “Geraldo” . . . “The McLaughlin Group” . . .
