Giant Robot Invasion!

I didn’t go on a lot of field trips during my time in school. Sure, I’ve gone to some neat places, like the National Naval Air Museum. But field trips are expensive-most of the time I went to local attractions. (My eighth grade field trip was to the bowling alley next door. Personally, I think the school should’ve just bought my math teacher an accent I could understand.)

However, I’d rather take the bowling alley over the batshit insane field trips that Ms. Frizzle subjects her students to in the Magic School Bus animated series. Oh, sure, it sounds like a great idea at first. Why read about the water cycle when you can experience it firsthand? After all, it’s much better to learn hands-on than through school work. You’ll never see a brain surgeon who goes, “You’ll be fine, sir. I was absent when we did the cerebellum, but I found out where to cut by looking it up on Wikipedia.”

But that’s the problem-in Ms. Frizzle’s class, firsthand experience really is firsthand. Learning about weather? The bus sails into the clouds and produces dials that let you create a thunderstorm. Learning about the human body? The bus shrinks down and allows you to get eaten. Learning about how eggs are made? I’ll let you create that mental image.

Here we find Cluckers about to undergo a particularly traumatic prostate exam.

Now you might be thinking, “Well, some field trips aren’t as dangerous as others, right?.” Incorrectamundo! Danger doesn’t matter. If you’re not desensitized to the wackiness of a Ms. Frizzle field trip, you run the risk of a mental breakdown. Take the field trip into space, for example. In this episode, a student named Arnold invites his cousin Janet to attend Frizzle’s class for the day. She doesn’t believe that Frizzle’s field trips are as unusual as Arnold says they are, but her tune quickly changes when the bus suddenly transforms into a spaceship and blasts off into space!

Be honest. If you were a third grader and you were suddenly hurtled out of the Earth’s atmosphere by a magic bus, you’d probably freak. That’s great for scientists-they’re always trying to figure out what makes children ruin their good underwear. Not Janet, though. She realizes that she needs evidence to prove to her friends that she’s been in space, so she starts collecting junk from every planet they visit. It gets to be too much when the bus is struck by an asteroid while Janet attempts to grab a space rock for herself. Look, proving that you’ve been into space is hardly worth killing yourself over, especially after the Alien movies came up with so many reasons why we should stay put.

But Janet won’t listen to reason-even as Ms. Frizzle floats out to fix the damage on the bus, Janet forgets about helping out when she spots another asteroid flying by. As she tries to snag it, she accidentally sends another asteroid hurtling right at Frizzle, but her faithful chameleon Liz hits Frizzle’s jetpack and rockets her to safety.

Hope you all remembered to turn in last night’s homewooooooooooork~

The problem is that Frizzle flies out of the asteroid belt, and now the kids have to use Frizzle’s hints to find out where she’s headed. Naturally, everyone’s pissed off at Janet. And why shouldn’t they be? Gollum over here could’ve killed them all. You just had to collect asteroids, didn’t you? Why not something more safe, like pornography?

Eventually, the kids find their way to Pluto using Frizzle’s clues, all the while holding Janet down so she can stop picking up more intergalactic crap. (I’ve always wanted to say “intergalactic crap”.) They land on Pluto and find Frizzle and Liz observing the stars. They share a heartfelt reunion, but unfortunately, Janet spoils the mood by driving up in the bus filled with Pluto rocks. The bus gets so sick of this that it spits her and her crap out into a neat little pile. Well, you know what they say in the Bible-crap begets crap. I don’t know which passage, but it’s always the one that makes children snicker.

Get this-Janet just sits there, arms folded, proclaiming that she’s not going home without all of her evidence. Now we’ve lost her, ladies and gentlemen. The field trip has offically snapped her chain if she wants to jeopardize the whole adventure for her selfish needs. And she doesn’t even need all of her crap. She picked up storm gas from JUPITER, for crying out loud. Is that not enough? Does she think scientists are gonna look at her and go, “This is nice, but we think you can try a bit harder next time”?

But you thought Janet was crazy? That’s nothing compared to cousin Arnold. He doesn’t want her to stay on Pluto and freeze to death. Do you want to know how he gets Janet to reconsider her priorities?

HE TAKES HIS HELMET OFF ON PLUTO.

What the HELL is wrong with you?! What the hell would convince someone to take their helmet off on PLUTO? What was going through your mind at the time? Did you think you could outdo Pluto or something? “The one who holds their breath the longest gets to be the new ninth planet, understand? Lemme go, Jessie Sue, I gotta do this!”

We can only assume the inherent stress of a field trip in space was enough to drive Arnold over the edge. But fortunately, it’s enough to jolt Janet back to reality. She freaks and drags Arnold back on the bus, demanding they return back to Earth immediately. As for Arnold? Well, somehow he SURVIVES taking his helmet off on Pluto and only ends up with a COLD. You know, Arnold may be a weird name for a planet, but I think he deserves the title anyway.

But exposing yourself to Pluto’s freezing tempratures is a normal day for these kids. They see things up close that we can never hope to experience, like the inside of someone’s bloodstream or the middle of a birthday cake as it’s being baked. At one point they even travel inside a bad science fiction movie and help the army capture a giant praying mantis. (Shouldn’t Mike and the robots be making fun of this or something?)

But the main reason these field trips are so messed up is due to Ms. Frizzle’s fascination with transforming her students into different creatures. Sure, turning into a lizard offers an insight on how reptiles regulate their body heat, but it’s a pretty demented way to learn. It’s not just animals, either. In one episode, a girl named Phoebe needs to grow a vine for her school’s production of Jack in the Beanstalk. How does Ms. Frizzle solve this problem? Easy! She just uses the bus to turn Phoebe into a vine.

Doesn’t this just smack of “Ironic Twilight Zone Ending”?

But Phoebe needs to be really tall to work as a credible beanstalk. To do that, the class travels INSIDE her roots to learn about photosynthesis and how plants grow. And I swear to God, once they find out plants make sugar water for food, a student decides that the best way to verify this is to TASTE it.

“I guess not everyone can taste like carpet, huh?”

But easily the most screwed up of field trips occurs when the bus turns into a salmon and migrates upstream. As we all know, salmon migrate upstream to reproduce. And HOW does Ms. Frizzle’s class learn about this first-hand?

The bus LAYS THE CHILDREN AS EGGS.

A male SHOOTS HIS LOAD ON THEM.

The bus BURIES THEM UNDER RUBBLE.

And then the kids HATCH.

EEEEEEEEEEEWWWWW. What in the BLUE PERFECT HELL is wrong with you, Ms. Frizzle? I know I advocate hands-on experience over textbook learning, but this is just SICK! Although in Japan, I’m pretty sure some of their computer games call this a bonus stage.

What’s really messed up is that the kids are strangely enthusiastic about this. In fact, as they go through the process, they start to lose any doubts they may have, reveling in their new lives as salmon.

WHY DO YOU LOOK SO CHIPPER. YOU’VE BEING TURNED INTO BABY SALMON. I’M PRETTY SURE “THE OUTER LIMITS” IS LOOKING TO FILM YOU.

Okay, I’ll be fair. None of the episodes are as weird as the salmon one. Most of them are actually pretty tame. The Magic School Bus is a kid’s show, after all, and even now it’s still an enjoyable series. I’m just being cautious here. If my children ever get the offer to go on a whimsical field trip with a wacky red-haired teacher, I’ll have no choice but to ask about her education. I’m sure it’ll be fine…just as long she doesn’t use a man named “Dr. Insano” as a teacher reference.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to sit down and regret all the times I ate food from Captain D’s Seafood Kitchen.

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2. Carmen Sandiego’s On PBS-It’s Not THAT Hard To Find Her
3. Giant Robot Invasion’s Best Posts of 2009!
4. Picture Book Smackdown!
5. Bill Nye the Science Guy: Learning How To Hurt People With Science