{"id":3756,"date":"2017-08-08T21:28:07","date_gmt":"2017-08-08T20:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3756"},"modified":"2017-08-08T21:28:07","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T20:28:07","slug":"watch-with-father-pj-masks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3756","title":{"rendered":"Watch With Father: PJ Masks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not all of Disney&#8217;s superheroes are in the Marvel Universe. \u00a0Meet the PJ Masks, six-year-old\u00a0protectors of the Disney Junior channel. \u00a0When night falls,\u00a0Connor, Amaya and Greg\u00a0become Catboy, Owlette and Gecko, and\u00a0they fight villains. \u00a0Specifically, night-time villains.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/syGeHKMlz98\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Let&#8217;s be clear: this is not\u00a0<em>Power Pack<\/em>, Marvel&#8217;s\u00a01980s series about a pre-pubescent sibling superhero team. \u00a0\u00a0<em>Power Pack<\/em>&#8216;s target\u00a0audience was older than the characters, especially Katie. \u00a0But\u00a0<em>PJ Masks<\/em> is on Disney Junior, so if anything,\u00a0its six-year-old\u00a0heroes are slightly\u00a0older than the intended\u00a0audience.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, this is an entry-level superhero show, played out with primary school\u00a0kids. \u00a0The tropes are present and correct &#8211; the dual identities, the costumes, the powers, the villains. \u00a0The villains are aged six too, but they&#8217;re still villains. \u00a0There&#8217;s a comedy streak to the whole thing, and\u00a0occasionally it even tips over into Looney Tunes territory &#8211; and the dramatic soundtrack has its tongue firmly in its cheek. \u00a0But\u00a0at heart,\u00a0this is still\u00a0a superhero show,\u00a0rather than a parody.<\/p>\n<p>How did they get their powers? \u00a0Why do they only work at night? \u00a0Where did that bloody great HQ tower in the park come from? \u00a0Why does it look like a giant totem pole? \u00a0How did they get all the cool equipment inside? \u00a0Who looks after it all? \u00a0<em>PJ Masks<\/em> is supremely unconcerned\u00a0by\u00a0any\u00a0of these questions (aside from a vague hint that their powers are something to do with their pyjamas and\/or a bracelet). \u00a0This is a common device in kids TV, the Implied Back Story. \u00a0Anything that you wouldn&#8217;t need to explain in episode 27, because viewers would just assume it must have been covered somewhere else, really doesn&#8217;t need explaining at all. \u00a0So don&#8217;t explain it. \u00a0Who knows, maybe one day you&#8217;ll have to write a movie, and then you&#8217;ll be glad you never touched any of this stuff.<\/p>\n<p>As usual, there&#8217;s a clear formula at work. \u00a0After the opening credits (see above), there&#8217;s an intro sequence where the kids discover something that&#8217;s clearly the work of a night-time villain, to be investigated that night. \u00a0It tends to involve\u00a0something going missing or getting broken or whatever;\u00a0often it&#8217;s absurdly trivial. \u00a0Then we get what amounts to an entire second credits sequence, in which everyone transforms at nightfall and\u00a0is somehow or other transported to\u00a0HQ.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CxxIbj_J_R8\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As a rule &#8211; and it gets a bit more flexible from this point &#8211; they then pick one of their three vehicles (available at a debatably reasonable price from a toy store near you) and set out\u00a0to find the baddie. \u00a0One of them (or sometimes two) will screw up or otherwise be preoccupied with something that was\u00a0also set up in the framing sequence, and the villain will get the upper hand. \u00a0But then, at the turning point, the episode&#8217;s designated bozo will realise their mistake, learn their lesson, declare that &#8220;it&#8217;s time to be a hero&#8221;, and the team will\u00a0get their act together for the win. \u00a0The villains invariably escape, and in fact\u00a0the PJ Masks seem to have no interest in actually capturing them,\u00a0as opposed to thwarting their plan &#8211; perhaps because with a rotating cast of only three villains, you can&#8217;t actually put them away, and if the heroes aren&#8217;t trying, they aren&#8217;t failing. \u00a0The PJ Masks shout their catchphrase &#8211; &#8220;PJ Masks all shout hooray \/ Cos in the night, we saved the day!&#8221; &#8211; and a daytime coda rounds off the episode.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s better than this makes it sound. \u00a0The\u00a0characters\u00a0have well defined roles, with\u00a0Gecko as the deferential\u00a0junior member who wants to prove himself, Catboy as the proto alpha male with show-off tendencies, and Owlette as the level-headed one who doesn&#8217;t like looking silly. \u00a0All three\u00a0are\u00a0obsessed with grown-up heroes (fictional ones) with utterly different powers,\u00a0who they sometimes\u00a0try to imitate in battle, with inevitably disastrous results. \u00a0And since the formula requires them all to take turns being the bozo &#8211;\u00a0often making them defensive about something or other &#8211; they wind up being fairly well rounded after you&#8217;ve seen a few episodes.<\/p>\n<p>For modern kids&#8217; TV, it&#8217;s an unusually moralistic show. \u00a0By that, I don&#8217;t mean that it&#8217;s especially preachy &#8211; rather, that the show places the lesson-learning front and centre. \u00a0The actual lessons tend towards things like &#8220;Owlette needs to admit that she\u00a0doesn&#8217;t understand the\u00a0new move that the boys have come up with, instead of trying to bluff her way through&#8221;, or &#8220;Catboy\u00a0and Gecko need to stop playing\u00a0<em>Master Fang<\/em>\u00a0when they&#8217;re supposed to be fighting villains&#8221;. \u00a0Or &#8220;for god&#8217;s sake, Catboy, shut up and listen to the other two&#8221;. \u00a0Variations on &#8220;don&#8217;t try to do everything yourself to prove some sort of point when you&#8217;ve got two perfectly serviceable teammates standing right there&#8221; crop up quite frequently. \u00a0The superhero genre lends itself to the traditional moral lesson, since it&#8217;s all about characters rising to the occasion.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s normally a single villain, though some team-up episodes exist. \u00a0The first season relies entirely on three villains:\u00a0Romeo is a miniature mad scientist with fairly conventional villain goals; Luna Girl is a\u00a0kleptomaniac with a flock of loyal moths; and Night Ninja is a ninja in a starfield costume who throws &#8220;sticky splat&#8221; instead of shuriken, because this is Disney Junior. \u00a0He&#8217;s accompanied everywhere by a group of miniature Night Ninjas called Ninjalinos who do all the work for him, and his plans are inevitably about self-glorification. \u00a0Basically, Romeo wants to take over the world, Luna Girl wants to steal shiny things, and Night Ninja wants everyone to tell him how awesome he is. \u00a0Night Ninja is plainly the best. \u00a0Even by the standards of the show, his schemes are majestically pointless. \u00a0In one episode he steals\u00a0Gecko&#8217;s birthday cake in order to use it at his own party, and then forces the PJ Masks and the Ninjalinos to play pass the parcel to get it back.<\/p>\n<p>Plot logic is usually focussed on the lesson of the day; <em>PJ Masks<\/em> is not much concerned about wider logic points. \u00a0A lot of stories hinge on the villain stealing some fairly mundane item from the heroes&#8217; primary school, and the heroes foiling the villain by getting it back &#8211; even when it&#8217;s something like a whistle or some sport equipment or a storybook. \u00a0The fact that the heroes only get powers at night time\u00a0<em>could<\/em> be used as a plot point, in theory, but it never is &#8211; no matter what the problem, it will always wait for nightfall.<\/p>\n<p>This limited cast &#8211; most episodes rely on four characters from a pool of six &#8211; is striking. \u00a0A handful of other characters show up in the\u00a0daytime framing sequences, but those bits aren&#8217;t very long, so they don&#8217;t get much screen time. \u00a0The one time a daytime character\u00a0<em>does<\/em> show up in the main body of an episode, he remains asleep throughout. \u00a0Nobody else is ever around at night. \u00a0Nobody is ever woken up. \u00a0There is no police force. \u00a0There are no bystanders. \u00a0There&#8217;s a limited number of settings, all in the same town &#8211; a museum turns\u00a0up rather frequently. \u00a0Of course, this is excellent news for the animation budget, but in this case it also feels like a deliberate choice, not to let the outside world intrude.<\/p>\n<p><em>PJ Masks<\/em> is night time as envisaged by a four year old. \u00a0Everyone is asleep, therefore nobody is around. \u00a0The city is a playground. \u00a0You get to drive cars. \u00a0The repeated use of macguffins which could easily be bought from a shop, but which are treated as rare items only obtainable by robbing a single primary school, feels less like sloppy writing, and more like a conscious reflection of the world view of a small child, where their school is the centre of the universe. \u00a0There is method in the madness, a dream logic to the whole thing.<\/p>\n<p>While the scripts treat the setting as a generic town, it doesn&#8217;t look like one. \u00a0It&#8217;s more European than American &#8211; it&#8217;s\u00a0low-rise; the buildings are old and at weird random angles; there&#8217;s a prominent canal. \u00a0And in fact,\u00a0<em>PJ Masks<\/em> is an adaptation of a series of French picture books,\u00a0<em>Les Pyjamasques<\/em>. \u00a0That pun, you&#8217;ll notice, works a lot better in French than <em>PJ Masks\u00a0<\/em>does in English. \u00a0It could have been called\u00a0<em>Pyjamasks<\/em>, but Disney are paying for this, and they&#8217;re American, so <em>PJ Masks\u00a0<\/em>it is. \u00a0It&#8217;s still a French co-production, and it looks it.\u00a0 (Oddly, the books don&#8217;t seem to be available in English, despite the success of the show.) \u00a0This style of city lends itself much better to serving as a backdrop for the PJ Masks. \u00a0Something more modern would feel weirdly deserted, but this place feels appropriately empty. \u00a0It&#8217;s a dreamworld more than a real location, where things can play out unnoticed by the daytime folk, even the ones who logically ought to be living in all those houses.<\/p>\n<p><em>PJ Masks<\/em> is not always subtle &#8211; even the production team felt compelled to include one episode where the camera pans away from the explaining-the-moral bit to show Luna Girl rolling her eyes. \u00a0And some of the plots are slight even allowing for the format &#8211; did season one really need two different stories in which villains try to be pop stars?\u00a0 But it&#8217;s got a clear sense of place, and after a few episodes its minimal closed world starts to make sense. \u00a0It&#8217;s a curious little gateway to the superhero genre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not all of Disney&#8217;s superheroes are in the Marvel Universe. \u00a0Meet the PJ Masks, six-year-old\u00a0protectors of the Disney Junior channel. \u00a0When night falls,\u00a0Connor, Amaya and Greg\u00a0become Catboy, Owlette and Gecko, and\u00a0they fight villains. \u00a0Specifically, night-time villains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-watch-with-father"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3756"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3848,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3756\/revisions\/3848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}