The Magic School Bus

Were you talking about the Halloween special that was just the sound episode and the bat episode edited together with live-action segments of two kids being led around by Lily Tomlin or whatever? I think there was a similar special for like Thanksgiving that I missed.

I don't recall sound and bats being part of the same episode, and I don't remember a live-action bridge like that. I also don't think I remember a Thanksgiving episode, though I do remember the Christmas special about recycling, with a live-action BTS segment to fill time after.

Yeah, I like to recount how I only recorded a few minutes of that by accident once by setting the VCR timer generously for a regular episode! Recently I also found this segment because it features the people uploading it.

Anyway, I only mentioned what I knew of the Halloween special because I never knew that "In The Haunted House" was ever skipped, but I did know from compulsively recording PBS back then that it had two slightly different versions. I think the "jungle, ocean, city, and alpine wonderland" comments were missing from the first version, and the time difference from adding them in was made up by changing Ralphie's "ripples in a pond" bit to the brief thought balloon of the rock falling in. Originally it was a full notebook-report scene with the usual music, and Ralphie actually jumped into the pond.

edited 27th Aug '17 9:32:00 PM by BagofMagicFood

The sound episode was a "lost" episode? I remember I had a VHS release of it as a kid.

edited 27th Aug '17 10:45:04 PM by KnownUnknown

It could be something as simple as PBS having misplaced their broadcast tape while TVO (the Canadian equivalent and co-producer of the show) still had theirs.

And I'm thinking, You mean they lost both versions of it?!

I'm not big on recasts that say "here's a slightly different version of the same character who has the same name, it's totally fine!"

Kind of like how Shining Time Station had at least four Mister Conductors (if you count the movie) who had the same name because they're family who look nothing alike.

At least when the Doctor regenerates, it's supposed to be the same person with a bit of a shuffle in the personality.

I like the idea of Passing the Torch to the new Ms. Frizzle since this is a reboot and that Lily Tomlin, who returns to the role here, is a bit old. But here's also the big problem I have with it: ..... will kids care who Lily Tomlin IS?? They make the sisters so SIMILAR to each other, it's barely worth the effort of this premise! Why not just keep the same, singular Ms. Frizzle and have her get a new voice!? Hell, does this show even know if it's a reboot or a continuation? If it's the later, how come all the students are the same as before?

edited 5th Sep '17 12:35:58 PM by kyun

If it's the same students at the same ages, then is this stuck in the 1990s, or was the first animated series set twenty years into the future?!

I don't see Sis Frizzle as exceptionally similar to Miss Frizzle, actually.

I'm all for giving the old cast a hurrah appearance, but you can give Tomlin the kind of cameo they often gave their celebrity guests back in the old series (oh no, this series is going to generate so many Pheobe "in my old series..." memes) as an old friend of Miss Frizzle who never came up before now and happens to be an expert on the lesson of the week. I just watched In The Haunted Mansion the other day, and how many grade school kids in the 90s cared who Carol Channing was? That's an easter egg for the adults.

As for the time frame, I'd imagine the original series was "last year" for the kids, and they were expecting Miss Frizzle to be their teacher again next year because their school has teachers stay with a class for multiple years. (I had a teacher loop a class myself.) Which puts it in Comic-Book Time.

edited 5th Sep '17 4:32:23 PM by TParadox

If I remember correctly, didn't the last episode mention Mrs. Frizzle wanting to retire? Its not just an excuse to retire the actress who probably has reasons for not wanting to do the role again for a full series (it has been 20 years after all) but also for the torch to be passed on without disrupting the the images associated with the series.

Plus, rediculously similar relatives was established in the original series.

I guess I just don't care for the art and think its not particuarly well animated over all. Everything feels stiff and the perspective seems off in a lot of shots.

So I just checked the episodes available on Netflix against the list on Wikipedia, and the order is a mess (season three is particularly scrambled), but it looks like there's exactly one episode missing, and it's the very last one.

I see what you mean about the order being a little different, but I'm still seeing all 52 episodes on U.S. Netflix.

I couldn't find Takes a Dive in the fourth season.

And there it is, 11 of 13.

edited 10th Sep '17 11:41:13 AM by TParadox

It is hard to know the titles on Netflix without actually opening the episodes, because they insist on beginning all the titles with "The Magic School Bus," and then the titles get cut off with an ellipsis after just one more character!

Most episode titles are meant to be read as the predicate of a sentence that starts "The Magic School Bus", but not all of them. I think someone took a list of the basic titles and ran a script to add "The Magic School Bus" to all of them. Or just pasted it on all of them without reading. "Down, home, ctrl-v, down, home, ctrl-v, down, home, ctrl-v..."

It's up. I can't watch it right now, but there it is.

Anyone seen any of it yet?

I can't tell if Tim and Keshia have been s significantly reworked or if they were just so underutilized I never got much of a read on them. Wanda seems to have had her rough edges sanded off, and there's not much recognizable left there either. And Phoebe went back to her old school to make room for Jyoti.

Basically, Arnold, Dorothy Ann, Carlos, and Ralphie are the most recognizable (in that order), because their characterization was the most archetypal. Phoebe would be on that list, but she was sacrificed for a more diverse mix of cast members, which I can't fault them for.

I've seen a few episodes. I'm not a fan of the animation style - it screams "eh, just get it done," but I guess it could be worse. It just looks like a bunch of paper dolls moving awkwardly.

As for the characters... Tim and Keisha are definitely underused, and yeah, Wanda is way different (though also underused; maybe that'll be fixed). And Jyoti is just kinda.... there. It's not the best start to the new series.

The first Wanda-led episode felt familiar. Wanda gets fixated on helping where help isn't needed, gets herself in trouble. That's Wanda.

I haven't gotten to the first Jyoti episode yet. Looks like it's pretty late in the order. Maybe they should've put a focus episode for their original character earlier so we got a better sense of her than just Arnold seeing her display her aptitude for engineering and say, "I guess that's what your niche in our ecosystem is."

I binged all episodes. While the new animation-style doesn't stand out that much compared to other edutainment shows, the writing and presentation of the subjects was on-par with the old series I would say. The only episode I disliked was the one where they talked about the "life"-cycle of rocks and framed it in a super hero setting.

My favorites where the episode where they talked about the zones of the ocean and the one where they talked about stable architecture.

The superhero story wasn't the best choice to illustrate it because it's basically just "everybody pile onto Captain Rockman", since rocks don't really do anything to defend themselves from the elements but keep being rocks. Also making the episode a frame for a story Tim was writing means the Bus's involvement is relatively mundane, just jumping to places they can look at rocks. And the "call-in" segment admitted they imposed a linear cycle on what goes on that's an extreme simplification for the purposes of telling the story.

But I liked the device of getting the whole class involved personifying the different forces involved, and the girls telling Tim "your story's not done until we get a turn in it!"

I was just amused by the whole attitude of "We still have not wasted enough child labor on the verisimilitude of The Three Little Pigs yet, darn it!"

Not just the Three Little Pigs, an identical sequel to the Three Little Pigs.

Now I'm wondering if there's a kind of meta joke in there. There's certainly one in the first episode where they see the classroom 20 years in the future...and the kids (who are apparently the children of the class) look exactly the same, just in different clothing.