YMMV / Between the Lions

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • "What's Cooking with Theo and Cleo" features a lot of rhyming titles like "Slammed and Rammed Ham", "Squished Fish in a Dish", "Beef in a Sheet", and "Tackled and Paddled Hamburger". Considering the two openly flirt on the show and sometimes seem to be close to killing the Y-rating, it could be intentional.
  • Arty Smartypants: Puts stuff into his pants, does a dance that comes across as... twerking.
• Accidental Aesop
  • "A Good Sad Book" has one: when reading a story to someone, maybe check it ahead of time to make sure it doesn't upset them. If Lionel had checked the story's ending, he could have chosen another one.
  • In some of the Dr. Ruth sketches, a sentient word with a negative meaning gives up its first letter and replaces it with a new first letter, giving it a positive meaning. This can be seen as a message that changing your appearance (or at least your perspective) will solve all your problems.
• Angst? What Angst?: In "Pebble Trouble", Leona spends the entire episode hiding beneath a covered table in the library's cafe area, and refuses to come out or to even speak to anybody outside, leaving the entire library wondering as to what is bothering her. After reading a story to her in the hopes of somehow coaxing her out, she eventually does come out.... but chooses not to explain what was bothering her until "later". Lionel is justifiably aghast when they get no answers as to what was going the whole day.
• Awesome Music:
  • Martha Reader and the Vowelles segments and songs. Of course being the segment that is prominently used and being based on Motown singers.
  • “Dance in Smarty Pants”, which is the song everyone seems to remember when thinking of the show.
  • Fonix, their all girl group, songs are amazing and who may or may not are the singing voices for Martha Reader and the Vowelles.
  • "Pygmalion's Song" in the episode "Hug, Hug, Hug!"^note Fan name of said song: "In Other Words"., if you're into Power Ballad love songs.
  • Click's song from "Little Big Mouse". It will make you feel for a computer mouse.
  • "The Mighty Star Lion", the closing song from "Shooting Stars", is gorgeous. Poetic lyrics and lush percussion make this one of the most beautiful songs in Edutainment history.
  • All three of Sloppy Pop's songs: "Read the Signs", "Sometimes Y", and the titular "Sloppy Pop".
  • Anything by the Monkey Pop-Up Theater. Also an ear worm.
  • "Grubby Pup". If you love plush toys and still have your plush dog from your childhood, this song will make you go all warm and fuzzy.
  • "Ten Small Words", which features Heath singing to a fun-jazzy tune about prepositions and pronouns.
  • How about the theme song itself, which sounds like something out of The Lion King (in particular, "I Just Can't Wait to Be King", to the point where it seems like a Suspiciously Similar Song).
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The "We Choose to Cha-Cha-Cha" song Theo and Cleo sing in the episode "The Chap with Caps." They are simply enjoying their job as librarians, and then randomly break out into the song for no reason, and once finished, they resume what they were doing as if nothing happened.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Flying past someone hanging from a cliff without saving him? Unforgivable. Singing a song about his name instead? Hilarious.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One episode has the library patrons argue over whether Leona's hat is green or red because some of them only see the green side and some only see the red side. Fast-forward a few years to the black-and-blue versus white-and-gold dress...
  • The Cliff Hanger episode "Cliff Hanger and the Bed" has the letters b-e-d transforming into a bed, which predates another PBS Kids show about literacy where the characters build stuff into existence by combining letters by seven years.
  • Similar to the point above, the whole "Little Wendy Tales" concept (a young person transforming themselves into a superhero to change the story inside a book) predates that of Super Why!.
• Magnificent Bastard: Silent E is a notorious criminal who delights in changing the meaning of words by adding a silent "e" to the end. Having kidnapped a group of vowels to force them to say their names, Silent E spreads chaos throughout the town, transforming a twin boy into twine, and inconveniencing another by changing his canned drink into a cane. Upon being apprehended by the police officer, Silent E deceives the man into handing him an object of interest and making it into a tool for escape.
• Memetic Mutation: Cliff Hanger's "Can't.... hold... on... much... longer!" line is quoted quite a bit.
• Narm: In-universe — The story "The Old Man" turns out to be this, when it's meant to be scary. So the author tries to make it scarier, but each attempt seems funnier than the last.
• Moment of Awesome: Most programs that teach reading just assume that the letters 'EA' always make the "long E" sound. This show followed suit with its first two 'EA' episodes, but the third show had Dr. Nitwhite appear on an in-universe talk show hosted by Jon Stewart and tell him about his "discovery" that 'EA' always made the "long E" sound. Jon's response? "That's really great."
• Retroactive Recognition: Look up Peter Linz, the performer of Theo. You'll find that he's Tutter from Bear in the Big Blue House, Snook from It's a Big Big World and The Muppets's Walter! Recently, he also became the performers of Ernie, Herry Monster, Robin, Statler, Lips and Link Hogthrob.
• The Scrappy:
  • The singers from Cliff Hanger, who instead of aiding Cliff with their helicopter simply show up to sing his theme song before tuning out and leaving every time he tries to beg for help. Also in-universe: in the episode where he finally does get off the cliff (Temporarily), they proceed to annoy the entire library with their singing as they are now out of a job. Amusingly, these same singers appear in the only Justin Time sketch to appear in the series, and when they are done singing his theme song, he promptly tells them to go away.
  • Cliff Hanger himself, post-flanderization.
  • Scot and Dot deserve special mention. Not only do they not notice any danger (not even when both Chicken Jane and the audience see nothing but danger) until Jane points it out, they are more concerned with saving themselves than Jane. They also get off scot-free, unlike poor Jane. Then there's their stilted speech pattern, which quickly gets old and makes you wish they would speak like normal human beings.^note That last bit, however, is likely intentional, as the skits are supposed to be a riff on the Dick and Jane books.
• Seasonal Rot: Seasons 5-10 were radically different from the earlier seasons, focusing on consonants rather than vowels and showing two fifteen-minute episodes at a time instead of one thirty-minute episode. The theme of literacy even eventually became The Artifact. Worse, old sketches were replaced with new ones and other fan favorites such as Heath, Walter, Clay and Busterfield were retired for no good reason.
• Spiritual Successor: To The Electric Company; both shows use Sketch Comedy to teach phonics and grammar. Oddly enough, the 2009 reboot of The Electric Company started the year before Between the Lions ended.

• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The entirety of "The Last Cliffhanger" revolves around Lionel feeling disappointed after the Cliff Hanger series ends and trying to get it brought back. It could’ve been a good chance to teach kids that nothing lasts forever and it’s okay to move on, but nope! Status Quo Is God.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Arty Smartypants. That one messed-up swirly eye and that the other one (which he sometimes pulls out) is cold, dead, unblinking and fixed on the viewer is already a bit unnerving, but his overall strange anatomy and his human hands can make his appearance downright harrowing to some viewers.
• The Woobie: Chicken Jane. Also, Cliff Hanger, at least pre-flanderization.

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