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A Family Is A Family Is A Family: A Rosie O’Donnell Celebration

Safety Rating: Safe, but tap dancing on the edge

Friendly Rating: All ages

Quality Rating: Good, but I wish it could have been better.

HBO, premieres Sunday, Jan. 31, 7 p.m., with additional airings.

This 40-minute film is literally a celebration of the nuclear family and all the many forms it takes in our multi-cultural society, with the most important message of all – a family is about loving each other. It mostly features small children talking, sometimes profoundly, about what being a family is and means.

Along the way, the film  manages to tackle some pretty tough issues including divorce, China’s one-child policy and the devastating effects that has on girls in that country and even how babies are made. Yes, much is made about the egg and the sperm getting together (in an animated bit put to a Frank Sinatra song) but how they get into mommy’s tummy is appropriately avoided.

O’Donnell, herself, does a segment talking to her daughter Vivienne about how Mommy Kelli don’t live in the same house anymore, but that they still love their children and they’re still a family. It’s a beautiful, bittersweet moment.

As is young Maya, a girl born in China and adopted by American parents, explaining how her birth parents didn’t want her because she was a girl. It’s heart-breaking watching this kid trying to get her mind around that awful concept. But talk about some spectacular modeling how to tell your kid the truth about a tough subject. Her parents obviously did a marvelous job explaining the one child policy and how that resulted in her being available for adoption.

The film is really about gay marriage, a subject I concede I have avoided, partly out of fear. I know some of you out there believe that it’s wrong, and I want to respect that. Just like I want to respect that some folks out there believe that inter-racial marriage is wrong.

The problem is, I can’t find any evidence, empirical or anecdotal, that either gay or inter-racial marriage is harmful to the kids or to the participants. And just as inter-racial marriage was way different and pretty frightening to some folks in the 1950s and 60s, gay marriage is way different and pretty frightening to some folks now. So, like the film, I have to ask, what’s all the fuss about? We can grow as a society and as our president suggested earlier this week in the State of the Union address, our country is strongest when we embrace our differences and find unity in them.

My only problem is that the film, itself, gets a little boring here and there – mostly when the kids are just talking. But there are so darned many good moments, it’s hard to fuss about it. And the bottom line is, love is the real family value. Hate will never be.

Anne Louise Bannon

Your Family Viewer

Live for the Moment

Safety Rating: Very safe

Friendly Rating: All but the smallest members of your family should find something to enjoy

Quality Rating: Good, not great.

On CBS at 8 p.m.

From Mark Burnett, king of reality TV, and his protege Jeff Probst (of Survivor fame), comes this “feel good” special that actually feels more like it was intended as a series. In fact, the screener is labeled “Pilot Episode,” but the CBS press site shows it as a special.

The show first looks at Roger Childs, a nice guy with a wife and two boys, who has been diagnosed with ALS – a deadly disease that progressively atrophies your muscles. Since his diagnosis, Childs has been living his life to the fullest, with passion and enjoying everything he can.

So Probst pops up and sends Roger and his family on a series of adventures based on Childs’ passions, including watching a space shuttle launch in the company of Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, heli-skiing with an old college buddy and riding in a jet plane. In fact, that segment was shot in my old neck of Southern California, and the local mountains were snow-capped in the show, which they weren’t in real time until a few weeks ago – so I’m really wondering how long ago they shot this thing.

The whole thing is aimed playing tug-o-war with your heart strings, but Probst is about as subtle as a certain show for pre-schoolers I reviewed the other day. There are some lovely life lessons and touching moments, and some serious meat for conversations with your kids.

But there’s also this awkward sense of excess – along the lines of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which left me feeling just a bit off. Like the heli-skiing adventure and then going on a flight in a Navy helicopter.

I think the good far outweighs the bad. Childs is honored for his resilience and courage facing his limited prognosis, but as he points out, it’s the making pancakes with your kids that really counts. Nor is he given a lot of “stuff.” The boys come out of the experience with college scholarships and other friends have put together a foundation to help with ALS research. But that’s about it on the financial side.

Methinks this was probably a pilot that didn’t get picked up and if it gets enough viewers, it’ll end up being made into a series or possibly a series of specials. Probst, in the press release, suggests that future episodes are a possibility. It might be okay, but right now, it’s iffy.

Anne Louise Bannon

Your Family Viewer

State of the Union Address

Safety Rating: Depends on your politics

Friendly Rating: Depends on your stomach for politics

Quality Rating: Whatever else, President Obama is one good public speaker.

ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, for sure at 9 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. PT

I’m really trying to keep value judgments out of here. Your political leanings are your own and I have no right to insist you share mine. I understand that’s not the common understanding, but I remain of the opinion that people can choose to be civilized, agree to disagree and gain strength from where we are different at the same time we build unity with what we have in common.

That being said, good odds someone in your household is going to be complaining that their favorite show has been pre-empted because of this important annual speech. And, truth be told, I’d be happy with the highlight reel, myself. I have no stomach for politics of either side. The problem with that is that someone else gets to decide what’s important and that’s not such a good thing.

Which may be something you’ll want to explain to said complainer. Even if he/she is way too young to vote, that won’t always be the case and we, as parents, need to set a good example by following what’s going on in our government. It’s how we form an opinion about for whom to vote and how to interact with said person once in office. We need to hear what our president says so that we can decide for ourselves whether he’s a genius or a total idiot or somewhere in between.

However, thanks to my DVR, I won’t have to eat dinner in front of the tube because I’m on Pacific time. I can eat dinner, then relax in front of the recorded version. Sigh. Got to model good behavior. Got to model good behavior. Got to model…..

Anne Louise Bannon

Your Family Viewer

Team Umizoomi

Safety Rating: Utterly safe.

Friendly Rating: Seriously high gag factor for anyone over 5 years.

Quality Rating: All the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

On Nickelodeon, 11:30 a.m.

It’s bright. It’s colorful. It’s a show only an uncritical pre-schooler could love.

A team of three tiny “superheroes” help kids solve problems using “mighty math powers,” such as counting and shape recognition. Milli can change the shape of her dress to match any pattern. Geo can build anything using his magic shape belt. He’s also the more active one – climbing down the billboard to find some missing shapes, while Milli stands above and oohs and aahs. And the robot Bot also features a male voice. So, yeah, I’m smelling gender-role issues.

On the plus side, the math curriculum is sound and the show features an interesting mix of live action and animation. But the show is trying to do for early math skills what Blue’s Clues and Dora the Explorer did for early reading and problem-solving skills – with the same faux interactive nonsense both of those shows featured.

Let’s be clear – I’m not dissing this show because I’m not the target market. I’m dissing it because I think  it’s bad. Just because your two-year-old likes the show doesn’t mean it’s good. If you think it’s grating and obnoxious, it probably is. Two-year-olds don’t have the life experience to know better.

Yes, I get that repetition is an important part of learning. But this show goes beyond repetition to the point of beating concepts into the ground and then sitting on them until the proverbial cows come home. Bot has his “Belly Belly” screen, which is presented every time by saying it twice while Mille and Geo point it out. And it was presented at least five times in the premiere episode. Everything is “umi-this” and “umi-that,” particularly the viewers who are addressed as Umi-Friend. The characters are even more cheery and sweet than a certain purple dinosaur I have long disdained.

And let’s not even talk about the inane tunes – the sort that will set an adult’s teeth on edge in record time. Worse yet, none of the cast members can sing worth a lick. Whatever issues you may have with grating voices, even Elmo and Grover can sing on key. Alas, no one in this show appears to be able to.

Frankly, if your pre-schooler latches onto this one, it may end up one of those shows you record and save for that half-hour you’re trying to get dinner ready. You’ll want to find other ways to reinforce the math concepts than watching along. Nobody deserves that much damage to their blood sugar levels.

Anne Louise Bannon

Your Family Viewer

The Electric Company

Safety Rating: Utterly safe

Friendly Rating: Older kids might turn up their noses, overall pretty friendly.

Quality Rating: Excellent.

The Electric Company on PBS, check your local listings for times.

One of the few re-makes that works, The Electric Company is starting its new second season today. And it’s still good and still teaching phonics and other basic reading and thinking skills in a fun way.

There are no commercials, too, except for the support messages at the beginning and end of the program. But compared to what you find on Nick or some of the other kid channels, it’s acceptable.

Other than that, it’s a quiet day. After the show is over, put those new skills to work reading a book together.

Anne Louise Bannon

Your Family Viewer