I have decided that kiddie shows don't think much of parents.

OK, I get it, they're from a more or less kiddie point of view and so grown-ups are supposed to fade into the background a bit. That's fine. You want to do that? Do it "Peanuts" style and have all these disembodied voices around the kids going "Wah wah wah wah wah" then disappearing. (Much funnier in retrospect, actually.)

But no, that's not what these shows do -- and I'm thinking of "Wonder Pets," but "Dora" and "Diego" have been guilty of it too. How does the plot go in these shows? Save the baby whatever-it-is animal of the week and bring it back home to its flaky parents who were neglectful enough to let the kiddie animal wander off through the rainforest or the ocean or onto the Statue of Liberty's nose (actual episode of "Wonder Pets"!) in the first place. So these random stranger kiddie heroes are supposed to spend all their time picking up after the lousy parents of the animal world? Couldn't they just start handing out Supernanny's business card and save themselves some trouble in the future?

The parents, of course, are never the slightest bit embarrassed that some pint-size strangers went out of their way to bring their missing animal kiddie home. They say "Thank you, [name of show's hero here]! Let's have some celery or dance or something!" And they all lived happily ever after until the kid wandered off again two days later and the kiddie heroes had already moved on to the next abandoned elephant/lemur/ Tasmanian devil.

I know I'm reading too much into harmless kids' entertainment and if I'm so irked about this I should just drag kiddo away from TV and read him "Harold and the Purple Crayon" again. But still. If I have to occasionally sit through this stuff I shouldn't have to suppress the urge to roll my eyes at the screen.

And seriously, what's with the celery anyway?