September 29, 2005
My youngest son and I were eating breakfast this morning when Sean, who is 7, said out of the blue, "Drakken's name is Drew."

"Who?" I asked, not catching Drakken's name.

"Dr. Drakken."

Ah. The main bad guy in the Kim Possible cartoon. Kim Possible is great. We get a regular fix every morning. Kim Possible is a teenager, cheerleader, popular great student who also happens to be a super hero. Her sidekick is the bumbling goofball Ron Stoppable and his pet, a naked mole rat named Rufus. Kim's mom is a brain surgeon and her dad is a rocket scientist. She has long red hair and usually wears baggy pants and a cropped T-shirt. Dr. Drakken's sidekick is Shego, a super hot babe with some sort of magical powers who is a lot smarter than Drakken. But you knew this already, right?

Anyway, I said, "His name is Drew? That's my middle name. How do you know that?" There was a Kim Possible movie on last night so that's probably what prompted this thought. Sean's at an age where things are running in his head and periodically they pop out of his mouth. I'm used to it from my older son, who's been doing it for years. I sometimes think we live at Non-Sequiters-R-Us.

"Kim's dad told her."

"Does he know Drakken?"

"He knew him from college."

"Oh. Is Dr. Drakken a rocket scientist, too?"

Scornful. "No, he's an evil genius! He's always trying to take over the world."

I was thinking that Kim has a pretty interesting backstory for a cartoon character. (Jeff Cohen, if you're reading this, shut up. Jeff once told me that lusting after cartoon characters was a sign that you were losing your mind). Is this all lost on its target audience? My wife and I are pretty amused at Kim's parents careers, but do my kids get the joke? I suspect my oldest son does, but I doubt Sean does. Still, extra characterization never hurts, does it? And Kim and Ron and Rufus are memorable, which is probably one of the reasons for the show's success.

We've even had Drakken's "mommy" on the show, as well as Kim's grandmother (who was the first woman to go through the U.S. Navy SEALS underwater demolition training, as well as studying Kung Fu with Shaolin monks. Is this a family of overachievers, or what?). Maybe it's just refreshing to watch a kids' show that doesn't:

A. Have dead parents
B. Have parents stupider than the kids
C. That works on multiple levels
D. Has some real wit and buries its "message" in the story without hammering you over the head with it

Ah well. And you read that title and thought I was talking about Karl Rove, didn't you?

Best,
Mark Terry