And maybe a Time Lord.
So why do we love her? Hop on the Magic School Bus and avoid the SPOILERS!
Mrs. Frizzle teaches third grade and only seems to focus on science. Hopefully there are other teachers helping them with the other subjects. Anyway, here’s how the episodes generally played out:
Something science related baffles the kids
Ms. Frizzle announces a field trip
Arnold says he should’ve stayed home
They board the bus
Along the way, the bus does something magical—shrink, grow, transform, etc.
Phoebe says this never happened at her old school
Carlos makes a pun and/or bad joke
Wanda does something impulsive
Someone panics
Ms. Frizzle says “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy.”
Science saves the day!
The class was pretty diverse, though small. After all, Wanda was Asian-American, Keisha and Jamal were African-American, and Carlos was Latino. The others were Caucasian, though that probably went without saying. Most had a distinct personality. Carlos was the class clown. Arnold was the scaredy-cat. Dorothy-Ann was the smart one. Wanda was the brave one. And so on…
Ms. Frizzle was the teacher we all wanted. She was fun, exciting and encouraging. The kids were excited to learn, though once again all she seemed to teach was science. Who knows how good their reading, math and writing skills were like once they were promoted to fourth grade. But they will have amazing stories to tell their children.
What kinds of stories? Like how they were swallowed by their classmate in order to explore the digestive system. Or when they went into outer space and visited all nine planets—back when there were nine planets! And the time they visited an active volcano. Or studied marine life in the ocean. They would have many more stories like that.
All would star a magical bus that could become anything they needed: rocket ship, submarine, etc. It could grow, it could shrink, and it had a face. It gave Chitty Chitty Bang Bang a run for its money, that’s for sure. This magical vehicle that might’ve been a TARDIS helped them—and the audience—learn so much.
The shows generally ended with animated characters that were supposed to be the creatives of the show. There were two main ones: a man and a woman. During each segment, the creative would take a call or two from “parents” who called out the show’s more fantastical elements. These creatives would acknowledge that certain parts of the show were improbable but it was a cartoon. They would then point out the scientific concepts behind the episodes were all sound.
I can’t wait for the show to come back. There’s a whole new audience who deserves to know how amazing Ms. Frizzle and her bus are. And there’s a lot of science to learn.
Next month: Murder, She Wrote
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