u/1990sforever

Most articles about his death don't even mention The Wild Thornberrys when talking about his work, it really surprised me. RIP.

The show was live action and had a brunette woman in a treehouse, she had some kind of animal sidekick/companion, probably a puppet, she'd talk to along with a group of (all human) kids. There was a hello song and a goodbye song every episode.

I specifically remember this one direct-to-vhs special it had, that was styled as though it took place after a typical episode. The lead woman and her companion had a conversation like "let's sing the goodbye song!" "but we already sang the goodbye song!" right in the beginning of the special, like this was a deviation from what it normally did. It then had a segment where the woman's lips appeared on a solid color background with short, simple words she was sounding out. It was just the disembodied lips, not the rest of her face, in a style that was a tad unsettling.

There was also distinctly a song I remember in which kids practiced saying "I want ___" (this is largely where I run into problems finding it since "I want song" is the name of a whole unrelated genre). The song quite literally went "I want, I want, I want!" with kids saying what they wanted cut in (i.e. shouting "I want my toy car!" "I want ice cream!" which are two specific examples I remember).

Previous attempts have led me to Kidsongs, but I've gone through and I don't think that that's it.

People think he's dumb and treat him as such, just because he has trouble picking up on things, but as he shows in later seasons, he's not dumb. He puts together Alex's secret all on his own, at one point even recognizing she's in danger of getting found out and coming up with a cover story to save her (throwing himself under the bus in front of Ms Atron in the process because he cares more about keeping Alex safe). He's even the one that figures out a way to alert the FDA in the finale, which saves Alex's life. And he's got a strong moral code, too - he spends well over a year trying to catch "the GC-161 kid", and when he does, he realizes he doesn't actually want to turn her in because she's just a child and terrible things would inevitably happen to her. He's directly handed the opportunity to turn her in for a monetary reward in one episode, and he struggles a bit, but even though he desperately needs the money as we see in the beginning of the episode, he still refuses in the end because by that point he knows Ms Atron is up to shady shit.

All of which proving he's not actually all that dumb. Gullible, absolutely, but not dumb. As someone with autism, I actually see myself in him a lot, when you combine people assuming he's unintelligent with the fact that he's shown to struggle socially too (Ray befriending him and Annie supporting the friendship despite the fact that he works for the plant because he doesn't have any other friends).

idk that's just been sitting in my mind for a while, thank you for coming to my ted talk