How About That Thing?

This is Carmen San Diego. The name probably doesn’t mean much nowadays, but throughout the 90s, Carmen San Diego was a name that commanded respect. CSD was an institution in edutainment, From game shows, to PC games, to books… She was all over the place, and perfecting the subtle art of teaching you geography without making it feel like you were being taught anything.

Some people favored the video games. Others favored the popular game show hosted by Greg Lee, and featuring that badass acapella number by Rockapella. A handful might even favor the OTHER game show where Carmen San Diego traveled through time instead of around the world, and featured an equally catchy, though not as well remembered acapella number as it’s theme song.

All of these are fine choices. However, for me personally, the best Carmen San Diego related thing that ever came out was the FOX Kids cartoon, Where on Earth is Carmen San Diego.

The premise is simple. Every week, CSD would steal something absurd. IE, the entirety of Stonehenge. Then, we would get this.

This individual is known simply as “The Player”. No less than one episode in, and I already found myself confused. Is this a video game? A virtual world of some sort? Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape… Um, sorry about that. Whew boy, that’s wired in good! But yeah, I’ve never really been sure if this is supposed to be happening in real life, or in a video game, or on some internet server, or what, exactly.

Regardless, these exchanges simply boil down to Carmen going “NEENER NEENER NEENER!”, and the player being all “Fuck you, Carmen, Ima catch you good!”. And then, the real show begins.

This is Ivy. She’s the protagonist, and the best damn detective The ACME Detective Agency has for the job. Suddenly, I find myself REALLY hoping to god that it isn’t the same ACME that keeps selling all those dud gadgets to that coyote… Though that would also probably explain WHY no one ever caught Carmen San Diego. Just saying.

SIDE NOTE: this might be kind of embarrassing to admit, but I actually kind of had a thing for Ivy way back. What can I say? Everybody from the 90s had a cartoon crush. Just be glad mine wasn’t some dominatrix rabbit who farted on hedgehogs or something.

This is Zack: Ivy’s partner in fighting crime. Also, I admit that upon rewatching episode one, I was convinced I was going to hate this guy. All I can say is smartass punks on skateboards were never cool, and this guy didn’t exactly stick the landing when it comes to first impressions. As episodes went by, though, I grew to tolerate him.

This is the chief. He’s… Kind of annoying. Not necessarily insufferable, mind you, but you can definitely tell the casting director was looking for a knockoff version of Robin Williams’s portrayal of the jini from Aladdin. And Dan Castlianetta wasn’t available, so they went with… Roger Bumpass?

FUN FACT: most people will most definitely know Roger Bumpass as the voice of Squidword from Spongebob Squarepants: a show I took one look at in 2000, and said with the straightest face imaginable: “Wow, this sucks. This is never going to last.” True story.

In his own sing song, fifty impersonations in three seconds kind of way, The Chief gives Zack and Ivy hot tips about Carmen’s movements, narrates over slide shows full of interesting facts about where they’re going next, and basically trying his hardest to be the funniest guy in the room. And on occasion, he even managed to get a chuckle out of me.

Zack and Ivy chase Carmen, deal with all of her terribly named henchmen, give you trivia questions you’d already know the answers to if you were actually paying attention, and while they never seem to catch her, they always manage to save the day, and bring all the stuff she stole back. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It’s definitely a show with a formula… But compared to most shows under the banner of edutainment, it was actually really good. Like, better than it has any real right to be. You see this show, and then realize it was from the same decade that gave us Barney the god damn Dinosaur, and you realize just how much of a riot the 90s really were.

True, a generous amount of the information presented in this show is probably not all that advanced. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of it was out of date by today’s standards. I’m still going through episodes as I write this particular article, but I’m pretty sure your friend and mine, The Twin Towers, shows up at least once in this entire show’s run.

Even the theme song is a thing of beauty. I mean yeah, it’s no Rockapella, but what they ended up going with was just as good. It was very… Operatic. Way more bombastic and dramatic than it needed to be… And yet, that was probably why I still remembered the song about thirty years later.

They did try to reboot this cartoon in the 2010s… But I wouldn’t recommend watching it. After all, it came from the 2010s: a decade I have frequently referred to on here as “the biggest mistake in history.” Seriously, bruh, don’t waste your time on that one. It’s geographical information might be more up to date, but if you’re like me, and sick of villainous women being made into misandrous good guys who wear pantsuits and don’t need no man for nothing… Well, admittedly, the reboot isn’t quite as bad as some other examples I can name, but it’s definitely got that energy going on about it. Also, Zack and Ivy sound like they’re doing the worst Bill Burr impression ever in an attempt to remind you they’re from Boston. Honestly, it’d be funny if it wasn’t so cringeworthy.

By comparison, the 90s show is much better. Again, it might not be the most accurate anymore, what with thirty whole years passing in the interim, but you’ll barely even notice.