The Best Kids' Show From When I Was A Kid

"I gotta be honest with you," The Boy said. "Those are the worst special effects ever." We were watching "Land of the Lost Clips" on Youtube:

I didn't even try to claim that they were good for their time, or good considering it was a kids' show, or good-when-you-take-into-account-this-or-that. They were -- are-- the worst special effects ever. I'm not one of those people who goes on and on about how much better things were when I was a kid, and in this case, they weren't. Spongebob has better production quality than "The Land of the Lost." The special effects were terrible.

And yet, the show was awesome.

People about my age can probably hum part or all of the theme and are doing so right now, and the theme-- like all TV show themes did back then -- tells you exactly what to expect in the show. TV show themes no longer do that. The last one I can recall that told you even vaguely what the show was about was "Friends," which had a theme song that was kind of about being friends. The start of the end was probably "Seinfeld." That theme, while pretty neat, gave you no idea what to expect. And now they don't even try anymore. Except for "Monk," which almost harkens back to the old days by giving you not only a pretty good theme, but also an idea of what the show is about.

Still, that's not like the old days. Gilligan's Island, Three's Company -- those shows told you exactly what the show was about. Even Cheers and All In The Family gave you an idea about the show. But nothing compared to the set-up that "Land of the Lost" provided you:

Marshall, Will and Holly

On a routine expedition

Met the greatest earthquake ever known

High on the rapids

It struck their tiny raft (insert screams here)

And plunged them down a thousand feet below

To the Land of the Lost

To the Land of the Lost

To the Land of the Lost

(Note: if you right-click those lyrics, you can download the song!)

The show doesn't hold up to inspection -- like dissecting a butterfly, if you pick apart something wondrous and mysterious, it dies. The special effects were cheesy, and I'm not sure exactly what the relationship was between Marshall, Will & Holly. I think Will and Holly were brother and sister. And I'm not exactly sure who "Marshall" was because he's described in the series' summary as "Rick, a/k/a Marshall," but everyone's last name was Marshall, too, so he was Rick "Marshall" Marshall?

Still, I didn't watch "Land of the Lost" for the nicknames. I watched it for the dinosaurs, and the people fighting dinosaurs with that giant sharp log they kept in their cave,

and the Sleestaks.

Ah, the Sleestaks! Perhaps the greatest TV bad guy/monster ever -- the mysterious Sleestaks who had their pylons with the jewels that if you waved your hand just right you could get back to your own time, or your own world -- it wasn't exactly clear whether the Marshalls (?) had gone back in time or just were in some kind of underground world where the sun shown anyway.

At least I think the pylons belonged to the Sleestaks. It's not like I've done some sort of grad-student paper on it, like the "people" over at Wikipedia have. I think you can judge exactly what the unemployment rate is by looking at the length of Wikipedia articles on 80's minutiae. (Don't count me in that -- I don't contribute to Wikipedia ever since they struck the article I did about me. And ever since they reported that Sinbad was dead.)(And TBOE is nothing like Wikipedia. Nothing. Plus, although you wouldn't guess it by how often I blog, I'm employed.)

Wait a minute-- something just struck me: Marshall, Will & Holly plunged down 1,000 feet after an earthquake opened up a crevice. But they woke up lying on dry ground in their raft -- no sign of the waterfall or the crevice or the river at all. They're not in a cave, because there's sunshine, and there are dinosaurs, and kind-of-neanderthal people:

So did they go back in time? Were they on another planet? Were they in some sort of Lost World?

Yes.

But don't take my word for it. Let's go to the "source:" Land of the Lost Dot Com!

Speaking of which, does it ever bug you when companies refer to themselves as "dot com?" Like when people call Amazon "Amazon dot com?" Do they understand that "dot com" is an address? And that you don't usually say the address after the name of the company? (Aside from saying "Saks 5th Avenue.") Nobody says "Sears Hoffman Estates Illinois."

Okay, so "Land of the Lost.com" explains that the Marshalls fell into a "land that time forgot." Unless they did travel in time because Enik, one of the Sleestaks only he's a good guy who's from the past but thinks he's from the future (and you thought Lost was hard to understand!) traveled in time to get there.

That Wikipedia entry, by the way, gets way more in depth than it should about a Sid & Marty Kroft show. Those people need lives. I bet there's 400 words on "Sigmund The Sea Monster."

I just checked, and I was close-- there's 345.

Falling into the "Land of the Lost" happened all the time, by the way: When Rick/Marshall left the show, "Uncle Jack" joined -- by going looking for the Marshalls and falling into the Land of the Lost!

It's hard to explain the appeal, to me, of "Land of the Lost." I didn't mind the cheesy special effects:

But they didn't lure me in.

I didn't mind the halfway-thought out stories or the weird science of the pylons-- I was going to explain the pylons, wasn't I? The pylons were, according to the Land of the Lost experts, used to control the weather, which makes no sense, I know, but none of it did, and I recall the Marshalls were always looking for the pylons to try to use them to get back home, but the Sleestaks were always trying to stop them. The pylons could control more than just weather; they could travel in time and stop the moons and nobody ever learned how they got there or what their real purpose was, that I recall.

I didn't even that the entire series made less sense, when considered from afar, than the HR Pufnstuf legends.

I just liked it. It had dinosaurs and Will was cool in that teenager-y way that I liked as a kid, and it had monsters and the kind of science that makes sense to little kids -- wave your hands over things and other things happen. Kids shows don't have to make sense (how can Spongebob light a fire underwater), they just have to be fun. That was enough for me then, and it's enough for me now, and that's why The Land of the Lost was the The Best Kids' Show From When I Was A Kid.

And, in closing, I'd just like to add that "Land of the Lost" is another proof that "velociraptors" never existed and scientists who say they did are liars. If "velociraptors" existed all along, why weren't they in "Land of the Lost?" Why would Sid & Marty Krofft-- who were obviously scientifically accurate in all of their shows...

... not include "velociraptors?" Unless "velociraptors" were made up? Huh?

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