Max and Ruby: A Rant

If you are a TV-friendly parent to a toddler, with cable or satellite TV, you have probably seen, at one time or another, the awfully-cute show about a pair of sibling bunnies, Max and Ruby.  Ruby, 7, is older sister to brother Max, 3, and the show revolves around the ongoing sibling rivalry between the two.  The show is awfully tame and often very very sweet, and my Little One loves to watch it.  In his eyes, he probably relates to Max, the 3 year old who loves to play in the mud and with his particularly loud wind-up toys, much to Ruby’s chagrin.  The show happens in two and three segment bits, each problem being lovingly resolved within the course of each segment.

When we first started watching Max and Ruby as a family, it struck me as a little odd that Max and Ruby’s parents were nowhere to be seen.  Oh well, I shrugged it off, knowing that the show was based on a series of books that I’d never read, and assumed that there was sufficient explanation within the books as to their lack of presence in the show.  Then we Tivo’d the show, and the Little One began to watch it more regularly.

We watched the Thanksgiving episode.  Surely mom and dad had to be around for that?  Nope.  Just grandma and the kids.  Max and Ruby go shopping?  No parents.  Max and Ruby go to the fair?  No parents.  Have a yard sale?  No parents.  Ruby has pajama parties for her friends.  No parents.  Sure, grandma is a regular character, but she clearly has her own digs down the street.

Now curiosity is getting the best of me.  I Google the explanation from Rosemary Wells, the author: “As in most other classic stories, we don’t see Max and Ruby’s parents, because I believe that kids resolve their issues and conflicts differently when they are on their own. The television series gives kids a sense about how these two siblings resolve their conflicts in a humorous and entertaining way”.  Okay………I can dig it.  As a rationale for a series of books, but translated into a TV show, it still is creepy for me to note the continued lack of parental involvement.

I’m all for kids having the opportunity to problem solve on their own.  But when we enter into the territory of everyday family life, as the TV show has, and there is forever no sign of parents having an involvement in their kids’s activities, well, it disturbes me.  Particularly considering that Max and Ruby has been reprised for a new season, with new sets of everyday adventures, and still the parents are nowhere to be seen.

Or are they?  Once in a while, when Max and Ruby are playing upstairs in the house, we are treated to the sight of a closed bedroom door between Max’s room and Ruby’s room.  It is tantalizing, that closed door.  I get the almost palpable sense that Max and Ruby’s parents are behind it, and I have to wonder, at this point………………meth lab?