Nostalgia Nook: Adventures in Wonderland

Most kid shows in the late 80s and throughout the 90s have one thing in common: they usually tried to teach us a moral. With the exception of “Animaniacs,” who averted it with the Wheel of Morality. Shows like Captain Planet tried to teach environmental morals. Most though tried to teach us the same morals, just in different ways. And it’s amazing in hindsight that we watched the same moral get taught to us over and over.

So why did we watch all these shows? I think it was the characters and the premise. Power Rangers taught us these morals and kicked Japanese stunt people butts along the way. And in Adventures in Wonderland, the characters of Lewis Carroll’s fantasy teach them to us.

So, through the looking glass and watching out for SPOILERS!

Alice (Elizabeth Harnois) is now a preteen girl in the modern world. She goes to school and has the same issues the viewers have. But she has her looking glass, which takes her to Wonderland. There, she usually encounters the denizens having the same problem she had earlier. There is the White Rabbit, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat and, of course, the Red Queen.

She isn’t the homicidal Queen of Hearts, but the Red Queen (Armelia McQueen) has her own flaws. Namely, she can be extremely selfish at times. But she always learns her lesson (until next time) and does indeed care for the people of Wonderland. She is close to the White Rabbit (Patrick Richwood) who does whatever she asks him to do. He even wears roller skates to keep up with everything. The White Rabbit though is close to the other denizens of Wonderland.

Tweedle Dee (Harry Water, Jr) and Tweedle Dum (Robert Barry Fleming) embody the popular hip hop genre of the time period. They also help Alice if she’s having problems with her siblings. The resident inventor is the Mad Hatter (John Robert Hoffman). Naturally, shenanigans ensue. He is usually assisted by the March Hare (Reece Holland), who is usually the conscience of the group. And if the citizens of Wonderland need any advice, they go to the Caterpillar (Wesley Mann). He usually provides it in the form of fables.

In Wonderland, Alice is often the voice of reason. Which fits from the earlier Carroll stories. But there is another reason for her to be so. As she’s trying to sort out the Wonderland problems, she sorts out her own. She always returns to her world with a solution.

What was so good about it? I think it was that it played on our fantasies as a child. Who didn’t wish they could go to a magical wonderland? I know I did. I used to think my dad’s closet could take me to Care-a-lot or Rainbowland. So we lived through Alice as she went through the looking glass. And then there were the people she met! Who wouldn’t want to meet such eccentric yet lovable folks?
And the lessons were ones we needed to learn. How to settle fights with friends, with our siblings. To be honest. To obey parents, teachers, and other authority figures. To not tease other children. That we are all different and those differences should be celebrated. If you were a kid and watched a show like this, you can fill in the other storylines.

Adventures in Wonderland hit what Disney always strived for: educating while entertaining. That was Walt’s belief: never to be preachy. Never to talk down to children. And this series achieved it. Unfortunately, it isn’t as memorable as the others from my childhood. Perhaps because it is because, in the end, it’s just a dime-a-dozen “teaching an Aesop” story.

Next month: Sabrina the Teenage Witch