Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Amazon Prime has become a great place to find high-quality entertainment for kids. Series we’ve loved have included Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street, Annedroids, and The Kicks. Their latest batch of pilots—Skyward, Will vs. The Future, and A Kid Called Mayonnaise—is totally tween-centric, ranging from science fiction to quirky dramedy to… well, science fiction. As usual, we’ll be using our juice-box rating system for easy reference. You can find all three pilots and let Amazon know which show you’d like to see more of at amazon.com/pilotseason.
'A Kid Called Mayonnaise'
Mayo Davis is called Mayo because his adoptive mother found him in a cardboard carton that had once contained mayonnaise. This baby had been abandoned on her doorstep, maybe, because she had a reputation for taking in stray animals. This could be the premise for a harrowing memoir of eccentricity and neglect or, you know, for a sweet and lovely show for kids who aren’t quite big kids. I am pleased to report that it’s the latter.
Since today’s theme will be This Reminds Me of That, let’s just get this out of the way. A Kid Called Mayonnaise reminds me of Malcolm in the Middle, My Name Is Earl, and Wes Anderson’s entire oeuvre. I’m too old to have a relationship with The Adventures of Pete & Pete, and my daughter is too young, but I suspect that mention of this series will resonate with some readers. I mention this because Will McRobb is the creator behind this odd, gentle pilot.
When his mom inherits a motel, Mayo moves from the small town he’s always know to Los Angeles, where he knows nothing an no one. Then he sees a girl riding down the street atop a float… And he knows that he has to find her… What follows is classic picaresque, with guitar-driven indie music in the background. I really like Mayo, and I love how this his story encompasses a variety of inter-generational relationships—and even that weirdo Calomine Jones.
Probably my review of this pilot shakes down to one thing: You either want to watch a parade float of beautiful African-American girls playing guitar and drums to accompany a chase scene involving the theft of a rubber-ducky piñata or you don’t. If you don’t, I feel sorry for you.
Epilogue: The music for this pilot was so good that I watched the credits, looking for the bands. This is how I learned that Mayo is played by kid named Elliott Smith.
I burst into tears.
'Will vs. The Future'
What if I said that Will vs. The Future is Terminator 2, but the role of the T-1000 is played by a twelve-year-old girl, while Biff Tannen is the T-800—or is it the other way around? Would your response be, “Hard pass”? Or, “I’m intrigued and I’d like to know more”? I’ll answer for you: You should want to know more.
Will Jin is our John Connor—except maybe the opposite. This math-and-science prodigy either grows up to be the man who damns humanity to killer robots, or the only one who can stop a deadly rebellion. Who should he believe? A tween warrior named Athena, who’s journeyed through a time portal to neutralize him, or his middle-school principal, who turns out to be a cyborg from the future—a cyborg Will created?
Look, I’ve been around. I am aware of my culture’s love for a kick-ass girl (on the screen, anyway). I am familiar with the Buffy universe and the work of John Hughes, which means that I know to never trust a principal. And I know how sci-fi franchises feel about rebellions. But Will vs. The Future sets up quite a dilemma for its young hero: He has to convince Athena to help him alter the timeline in which he turns evil, even as he convinces himself that he’s not a bad guy, and as he deals with conflicting information coming from an authority figure who is also, you know, a robot from the future. If we accept the premise that fantastic genres create a space in which we can work through real-world problems—and I do, at least—then this series seems to me to have as much promise as the aforementioned Buffy the Vampire Slayer, if for a slightly younger audience. It’s also a lot of fun—or, at least, the pilot is. The action scenes made me laugh out loud. I, for one, would like to know what comes next.
'Skyward'
One of the more disappointing aspects of growing older is the dispiriting discovery that just about everything’s a reboot, really. So, I’ve said pretty much what I have to say about Skyward if I describe it as The X-Files but with even less sense of humor and worse special effects and with an unpleasantly intense preteen girl named Piper instead of the weirdly hot Fox Mulder. But I’m not getting paid (solely) for my world-weary wisdom and throwaway pop-culture references. So, onward.
As little kids, Piper and her best pal Curtis see a strange orb glowing in the night sky. Flash forward five years, and the two of them are producing a podcast devoted to discovering the truth about extraterrestrial life. Curtis is a skeptic—he’s just helping his friend—but Piper is obsessed. A rash of fresh sightings sets her on a dangerous course; she starts lying to her dad about what she’s doing even as she runs the risk of crossing paths with him as he investigates these same mysteries for the sheriff’s office.
The character development in the pilot is not terribly convincing. It’s not just that I don’t much like Piper—and I don’t—but, rather, that I don’t quite believe in her. Curtis, seems like a solid friend and an all-around good guy, would come across as a real kid if not for the sometimes-painful dialogue. And then there’s Ira… Oh, Ira. He’s an insufferable twerp, but he’s got cool gadgets, so… Here he is.
I realize that I am hardly the target audience for this, and I can see how Skyward has some of the same attractions—although none of the absurdist stupidity—of the Spy Kids franchise. But there’s some real danger and mild violence that might be too much for some young viewers. And, is it just me, or is there something really creepy—and not in a fun way—about a tween girl who spends her free time listening to a police scanner?
Jessica Jernigan is a writer, editor, and mom-about-town in a mid-sized Midwestern city. You can find her professional website here, but Instagram is where the cat photos are.
