Kid's Show
Doby's Day was not only the most popular kid's program on television, but it was also the most popular program of any kind on the air. This was no doubt because nearly everyone between the ages of four and fourteen watched the show faithfully. By the end of its first season on PBS, Doby's Day had more viewers than Sesame Street, Barney and Teletubbies combined, and each season the ranks of its followers grew.
Nikki Lange, a staff writer for Today's Parent magazine, was one of the few people in the civilized world who had never watched the program, which had become a cultural phenomenon. She was therefore surprised when her editor gave her the assignment of writing an article on the show's continuing success.
"Why me?" she asked. "I've never even seen Doby's Day."
"You don't drink baby formula either, yet you wrote an excellent article comparing it to breast milk," joked Grady Wheeler, her editor.
Nikki grudgingly smiled.
"Besides," he continued, "I'm looking for a fresh viewpoint in this article. I've had enough of child psychologists, teachers and grateful parents telling us why the show is so popular with kids. What we need is tabula rasa here. I want you, a single woman with no children and no preconceived ideas toward the program, to approach the article with the attitude of 'What the hell is so interesting about this stupid show?' Personally, I've seen it, and, quite frankly, I think it's horrible, but I've got two young teenage sons at home who used to like nothing more than watching South Park, listening to rap music and surfing adult entertainment sites on the Internet when no one was looking, and now they're both addicted to Doby's Day."
"Don't complain, Grady. PBS is better than porn," Nikki said.
"Believe me, I'm not complaining. I just don't get what everyone sees in that show."
"Okay. I'll go home at lunch and program my VCR to record this afternoon's episode."
Later that evening, after completing her initial research on the program's development, its production staff, the awards it earned and its meteoric rise in ratings, Nikki returned to her apartment and while she ate her Chinese take-out, watched the episode of Doby's Day she had recorded earlier. She had seen the character of Doby Dee—a lavender colored magical creature that resembled a sloth—many times. (Who in America hadn't?) His image had been mass-produced on merchandise such as tee shirts, action figures, stuffed toys and backpacks and vied with Sesame Street's Elmo as the most marketed television character.
Nikki was critical of the show, feeling that the plot left much to be desired. It had no obvious educational value, unlike the majority of PBS's children's programs. What made Doby's Day so appealing, in her opinion, was the magnetism of its main character. Nikki had assumed Doby Dee was portrayed by a live actor in a costume like Barney, Big Bird and the Teletubbies, but having watched the show, she could plainly see that Doby Dee was only about two feet tall, a fact that ruled out the possibility of his being a human in disguise.
Furthermore, as best as Nikki could tell, Doby Dee was neither a puppet nor a marionette. Then what was it? An animatronic figure? Or maybe a computer-generated creature like Woody and Buzz Lightyear in Pixar's Toy Story or the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park? Whatever Doby was, it moved with the fluid, graceful motion of a human being, not with the stiff, jerking movements of a mechanical doll.
There's the new angle for my article, she thought. I'll find out exactly what Doby Dee is and how he works.
* * *
Nikki made several unsuccessful attempts to schedule an appointment with Jefferson Howe, the producer of Doby's Day. No one from his office would even return her calls, but the journalist was not to be put off so easily. With strong determination, she boarded a plane for Los Angeles and showed up at Galaxy Studios, where Doby's Day was filmed.
"May I help you?" asked an unsmiling, slightly robotic receptionist.
"Yes. I'm Nicole Lange from Today's Parent magazine. I'd like to speak to Mr. Howe."
"I'm sorry; Mr. Howe isn't in today."
"Then I'd like to schedule an appointment to see him when he is in."
"I don't know exactly when that will be. Why don't you leave your number, and I'll have him get back to you."
"I've been phoning for a week, and no one returns my calls. I flew here from Boston to see him because I have to write an article on Doby's Day for my magazine. Now, if Mr. Howe refuses to see me, I'll have no choice but to put that little nugget of information into my article. If I do, the readers of Today's Parent just might wonder if he has something to hide."
"One moment please," the woman said.
She got up from her desk and disappeared into an office down the hall. When she came back several minutes later, her attitude had changed.
"Mr. Howe can see you now."
Nikki smiled to herself as she was led down the hall and into the producer's office.
"Please have a seat, Miss Lange," Jefferson said courteously. "Would you care for some coffee?"
"No, thank you. I know you're a busy man, Mr. Howe, and I won't keep you long. I just have a few questions for you."
Nikki's inquiries were routine. Where had the idea for Doby's Day come from? To what did he attribute the show's phenomenal success? Mr. Howe's answers were equally routine, yet Nikki felt that the producer was not being completely honest with her. It was as though his responses to her questions had been well rehearsed.
"One final thing, Mr. Howe," Nikki announced as she shut her notebook and brought the interview to a close. "I'd like to photograph Doby Dee, if I may. Perhaps even sit in while one of the episodes is being taped."
"I'm sorry, Miss Lange, but that's out of the question."
"Can I at least see the puppet? I'd like to learn how he moves so smoothly on film."
"Again, I'm sorry. But the workings of Doby Dee are a jealously guarded trade secret. In fact, according to the terms of the nondisclosure agreement I signed, I'm forbidden to even discuss the special effects techniques we use on the show."
"Well, then," she said with disappointment, "I want to thank you for the interview."
"You're more than welcome," the Emmy-winning producer replied, quickly rising from his desk to show her out the door.
When Nikki got back to her hotel room, she immediately phoned Grady Wheeler.
"I just spoke with Jefferson Howe but didn't get much out of him."
"Didn't he cooperate with you?" Grady asked.
"At first I was told he wasn't in. When I threw the weight of the magazine around, all of a sudden I was shown into his office. But he seemed cagey when I talked to him. He refused to let me see an episode being filmed or to even get a glimpse of Doby Dee, claiming it violated some kind of a nondisclosure agreement. Howe reminds me of someone pretending to be the great and powerful Wizard of Oz, while all the while he's just an ordinary man hiding behind a curtain."
Grady laughed at her analogy.
"You know how careful those Hollywood people must be, especially where children's programming is involved. The characters, the actors and everyone else connected with a show must appear inviolable. Even the slightest hint of impropriety and the show might be canceled. Remember the scandals surrounding Pee Wee Herman and the rumors about Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubby?"
"I suppose you could be right," the journalist conceded, although she still had a gut feeling that the great and powerful wizard was nothing more than a conman from Kansas.
* * *
Back at home on the East Coast, Nikki sat at her laptop computer in her home office, listening to an oldies radio station as she typed the first draft of her article. Suddenly, Gordon Lightfoot's ballad about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald was interrupted by the station's newscaster.
"This just in. There has been another tragic school shooting," the announcer began.
Nikki hurried to the television, turned on CNN and watched in horror while the drama unfolded. Local and state police had surrounded an intermediate school in Clover, Ohio. Panicked students were running from the building, and distraught parents were rushing to the school to collect their children. According to a correspondent at the scene, a twelve-year-old boy had smuggled a semiautomatic pistol into the school inside his science project. During lunch, he calmly walked into the teachers' lounge and opened fire. Eleven people were hit before a gym teacher was able to subdue the young gunman. When the police entered the school, the student broke free and turned the weapon on himself. Eight of the eleven teachers hit were killed, and the other three were in critical condition. Understandably, the boy's parents were not available for comment, but the youngster's surviving teachers described him as having been "a good student, a well-liked young man who had never gotten into trouble before."
"I always thought he was a nerdy kid," one fellow student said honestly, if not respectfully. "The kind who always did his homework and got A's on his tests."
"Do you think he might have been involved with drugs?" the television correspondent asked.
"Nah! Not him. He was more interested in Doby Dee than anything else."
Nikki's ears picked up at the boy's comment.
"So, he was a big fan of Doby's Day?"
"Yeah. He wore Doby Dee tee shirts and carried a Doby Dee backpack. I heard he even had all the episodes on DVD and could recite them word for word."
Nikki turned off the television and returned to her article. She concluded Grady was right about Jefferson Howe, the show's uptight producer. The program was so vulnerable to scandal. Even this dreadful incident, in which a clearly disturbed adolescent was involved, could lead to bad news coverage for the show. Thankfully, there were enough child psychologists who praised the effect Doby Dee had on the world's young audience.
The following morning at breakfast Nikki read an account of the school shooting in The Boston Globe. She was stunned to read the interview with the gym teacher who had restrained the boy.
"Did he say anything first or did he just start shooting?" the reporter had asked.
"He opened the door and just stood there for a moment," the gym teacher explained. "I saw tears come to his eyes. I thought perhaps some of the other students had been picking on him. You know how kids can be. Then, after a few seconds, he reached into his backpack and said, 'I'm sorry, but Doby Dee told me I have to do this.' Before anyone knew what was going on, the boy started shooting."
That ought to make Jefferson Howe's day, Nikki thought.
Nikki decided to watch a video mini-marathon of Doby's Day episodes before completing her article. She had programmed her VCR to tape each episode while she had been in California. As the tape played, Nikki came upon the episode that aired the day before the Clover, Ohio, shooting. There was something different about the episode, but Nikki could not quite pinpoint it. When she rewound the tape and replayed it, it seemed as though static briefly appeared on the lower part of the screen. She pressed the rewind button again and then used her index finger to move the jockey switch forward so she could view the episode in slow motion.
At first, Nikki nearly missed the words that briefly flashed near the bottom of the screen. Even with the use of a jockey switch, the subliminal messages planted in the episode were nearly undetectable. But once she had discovered they were there, Nikki rewound the tape a third time and specifically looked for the words. There were three of them, and on her twenty-five-inch television screen, they measured approximately four inches high. No one watching the episode while it was being broadcast would be conscious of the words appearing beneath the lovable purple character. However, the message might register in the subconscious brain.
Nikki quickly disconnected her VCR and took it to Grady Wheeler's house. When her boss answered the door, he was surprised to see her standing on his doorstep.
"What are you doing here on a Saturday afternoon?" he asked as Nikki lugged the heavy VCR into his family room, where her editor had been watching the continuing coverage of the school shooting. "And what are you doing with that antique? Didn't you ever hear of a DVD player?"
"I've got to show you something," she said excitedly, as she quickly connected the VCR to his television. "This was the show that boy in Clover, Ohio, watched the day before he went into school and gunned down his teachers. Pay attention to the lower part of the screen while I advance the tape."
The three words flashed before the editor's amazed eyes: KILL ... ALL ... ADULTS. Grady was horrified, especially since his own two children watched the show religiously.
"What a story this is going to make!" Nikki exclaimed.
"Not for us. Our magazine gives advice to parents on nutrition, education, entertainment and children's health issues. We're not going to announce to them that this seemingly innocuous kid's program is attempting to turn their sons and daughters into genocidal killers. I'm not willing to step into the role of an iconoclast."
"Those people in Ohio might be dead because of this hidden message. We can't just ignore it."
"Did I say we were going to ignore it? We're going to take that tape to the police, and if they don't do something about it, then we'll send it to the FBI or to a reputable newspaper."
"I wonder if there are any other hidden messages in the Doby's Day shows."
"I'm sure when the police see this one they'll have someone closely go over the other episodes. But what I don't get is who put those messages on the tapes. Was it the producer, Jefferson Howe? And if so, why?"
"I have an idea," Nikki said shyly. "But you'll probably think I'm crazy."
"Try me."
"I think Howe wouldn't let me see Doby Dee because he's not a puppet, a robot or any other inanimate object. I think the reason Doby Dee seems so lifelike is that he actually is alive."
"Alive?"
"Yeah. I think he's an intelligent creature—perhaps an alien from another planet—and that these messages are part of a plan to destroy life on Earth."
Grady laughingly said, "I think you've seen too many X-Files reruns."
But he didn't completely discount her theory.
"Once this news comes out we'll probably all learn what Doby Dee really is," the editor declared.
As he and Nikki were discussing possible theories, Grady's two sons burst into the family room.
"Can we watch the TV now, Dad?" the younger one asked eagerly. "The Red Sox are going to play the Yankees."
"Sure. Miss Lange was just leaving." Then he turned to his staff writer and, leaning over to disconnect the AV jacks from the back of his television set, said, "Here, let me take this VCR out to your car for you."
Neither Grady nor Nikki saw the attack coming. Grady Wheeler's teenage sons quietly snuck up behind them and savagely struck the two adults over their heads with their Manny Ramirez-autographed baseball bats. Journalist Nikki Lange died instantly, but their father, dazed by the first blow, fell to his knees, dropping the VCR on the floor. Blood trickled down his face from the wound above his temple.
"Boys? What are you doing?"
The older son wiped the back of his hand across his face—whether to remove his tears or Nikki's blood, Grady wasn't sure.
"We're sorry, Dad," the boy sobbed. "We really are. But Doby Dee told us to do it."
Then Grady's younger son raised his bat again and brought it down on his father's head.
I dread to think what subliminal messages Salem is receiving from Animal Planet!
