RIP Reading Rainbow

Reading Rainbow aired its final episode yesterday.

On one hand I'm crushed; on the other hand, I had no idea the show was still going on. Were they just re-airing old episodes? Producing new episodes?

If you're looking for a scapegoat, you can turn to everyone's favorite contemporary villain: George W. Bush. According to NPR, the Department of Education decided that the show wasn't focusing enough on the nuts and bolts of how to read and instead focused too much on all the cool things books had to offer. According to another NPR article, "Of the nearly 8 million children entering kindergarten and first grade this school year, up to one-third will arrive with little or no familiarity with the written word." It's increasingly up to PBS to teach kids how to read.

But that's another story, one for a pissed off sociologist. The show spanned 26 years and 155 episodes and will soon be gone without a trace. The show's website claims that 153 of those episodes are on DVD, but I have no idea how commercially available they are. The sets listed on Amazon seem to be out of print, so I guess a re-release would be doubtful.

It's been over 15 years since I've watched the show but I can still remember some of the episodes, although my memory is a tad foggy. There was one about science fiction that I really liked (naturally, it went into LeVar Burton's stint on Star Trek: The Next Generation) and another about pottery made from volcanic soil. One about mummies freaked me out because it described the embalming process and how all the organs got put in jars.

And even though I wouldn't have needed YouTube to refresh my memory, I really loved this musical number (now that I'm older, the first thing I notice is how LeVar Burton gets the easiest dance moves):