The Logic of Captain Planet

There aren’t that many iconic cartoons from the early 90s. For most, the 80s were the heyday of kids cartoons and by the time Ted Turner had created Captain Planet, most of those series had long since gone the way of the dodo.

However, there is little doubt that Captain Planet was an icon unto himself. In addition to teaching kids about how classy one could look with a green mullet, it had a higher purpose, to teach the youth of the world about the environment and where to put their recyclables.

Today, it is hard to think of a series more routinely lampooned than Captain Planet and the reasons go far beyond the camp and cheese that came with it. No, despite our fond memories of the Captain, this series was pretty inane, even for a 30-minute PSA on the environment.

The Premise

photo credit: thingermejig

The “big idea” of Captain Planet it conveniently laid out in the intro to every show and it goes something like this.

Gaia, who happens to be both Mother Nature and an incredibly hot woman with a great accent, is upset at the way humans are treating her planet. So she does the most logical thing she can think of and creates a super hero to take on this threat.

Sure, she could have just brought the wrath of nature down on these jerks and wiped them out with a couple of tornadoes or tsunamis, but one can’t exactly hammer out six seasons of natural disasters taking out teeny tiny people – unless you put the show on Fox.

However, Gaia wasn’t satisfied taking the least efficient route to dealing with the problem, she compounded the issue by making it so that this new superhero could only be summoned when the powers of five magic rings combined and then gave those rings to five ethnically diverse teenagers from all over the world.

This ensured three things:

1. Her new superhero could be defeated by kidnapping any one of the kids she entrusted. (Good thing kids can’t be easily overpowered by supervillains)
2. Each of those hormonally challenged, pubescent teenagers had a ring with great superpowers that could be used at their discretion, unchecked by any authority figures (Mom: Do your homework. Linka: Blow off bitch! WIND!)
3. Each of these young people were permanently placed in harms way, constantly being sought for kidnappings and murderings by evildoers the world over.

So we have a problem that could have been solved by a re-enactment of Noah’s Ark and instead have a convoluted solution that involves magic rings, five kids, a superhero with a mullet and a Mother Earth content on sitting on her rear while her carefully placed dominoes fall week after week.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, thanks to the villains in the show, the answer was “Not a lot.”

The Bad Guys

Fortunately for Gaia and the Eco Gang, the only thing more convoluted and asinine than their plan for protecting the world is the ones the bad guys come up with for destroying it.

You could most easily summarize the evil plots in every episode something like this:

1. Do something that’s really bad for the environment.
2. Hope Captain Planet doesn’t screw it up.
3. ???
4. ???
5. ???

In short, they are destroying the environment for the sake of destroying the environment. No real means of global domination, rarely any real profit motive, just doing what they can to screw up the planet they live on, drink the water of and eat the food from.

That makes perfect sense.

This ensured that the only thing less believable than a green-haired superhero powered by five magic rings was the bad guys he was fighting. Simply put, Captain Planet was a stretch of the imagination, even for Saturday morning cartoons.

Lasting Appeal

What we have at this point is a story about a convoluted and unnecessary superhero taking on an even more convoluted group of villains. If any of the writers of the series had stopped, at any point, to seriously consider the motivations of all of those involved, they would have realized their characters either belonged in an insane asylum or remedial classes.

But even though the target audience of children could easily see through the plot holes and inconsistencies, it has managed to worm its way into our hears, providing proof that the “heart” ring may be real after all.

The secret to Captain Plant wasn’t that it was great television or even great environmentalism, it was that it was entertaining. Though watching it requires turning your brain down to dangerously low power levels, if you can shut down every drop of intellect it is a strangely enjoyable show.

In that regard, I suppose it is the perfect Saturday morning cartoon. Groggy kids wake up late in the morning, scarf down dangerously high levels of sugar and milk to sit down and watch a show that requires even they turn off all ability to question what is going on.

Perhaps the secret of Captain Planet was not the show itself, but the sheer genius of truly understanding your target audience.