Fictitious producers kept The Magic School Bus grounded

(Image by LRO_Crafts via Pixabay)

Before The Magic School Bus rolled the credits on its debut episode, it took the time and responsibility to clarify its poetic liberties.

To that end, a fictionalized spokesperson voiced by the late Malcolm-Jamal Warner let a fictitious young viewer say his piece about Ms. Frizzle’s (voice of Lily Tomlin) class’s exploits across the solar system. Accepting an initial critique that the episode “had more science fiction than fact,” Warner’s “producer” makes the first move toward the specifics.

“Well, we realize a school bus would make a lousy spacecraft,” he concedes. As he says this, his grin assures that no showrunners are taking anybody for a dupe.

For the rest of the chat, he lets the caller fill in the rest of the story’s scientific seams and compliments him as “one bright kid.”

For the balance of its mid-1990s run on PBS, MSB made this closing segment an integral part of its own M.O. as well as the network’s. It mastered an edutainment tightrope walk by working nutritious nuggets of information into a fluid teleplay, then leaving room to shout out the key omissions.

That practice is not unlike a magazine journalist, book author, or documentarian going on talk shows, podcasts, and promotional tours to discuss the material that didn’t make the product’s final edit. The difference here was that a fictionalized discussion exemplified an ideal open dialogue between student and teacher.

Like its contemporary competitor for attention on Nickelodeon (though without comical irreverence), MSB had a tasteful way of encouraging its young audience to challenge authority. It invited its target demographic to find and follow a passion through curiosity and self-confidence. To neither shy away from bringing their existing knowledge to the table nor admit when they were missing something.

As part of that principle, within the show’s own multilayered universe, kids were empowered to contribute what they already knew but that the episode did not touch on and that their peers (from their world and the real one) might otherwise not have realized until they brought it up.

The lessons for kids and adults alike were not limited to the scope of natural science either. Case in point: The epilogue segment’s second-most frequent phone-call fielder was another unnamed producer played by MSB’s voice director, Susan Blu.

In back-to-back episodes to close out the first season (“Gets Ants in Its Pants” and “Kicks Up a Storm”) Blu and Warner’s characters share a shift. Both times, they put the phone on speaker and Warner’s producer identifies himself singularly before humbly correcting himself when his coequal colleague’s expression firmly begs his pardon.

That sequence demonstrates a subtle and fair lesson of caution against even the most accidental gestures of sexism. Knowing better from then on, Warner’s producer goes back to taking queries and ensuring a tidy wrap-up on the story.

Anybody who stood in for either producer was just as dutiful in enabling an insatiable appetite for knowledge. When both Warner and Blu were out, a one-off character played by a guest star or even one of the Frizz’s students was available to impart or absorb more wisdom.

For Season 2’s “The Busasaurus”, Rita Moreno’s paleontologist character finishes the first call and marvels to Ms. Frizzle’s pet lizard, Liz, “Kids these days. They’re just so inquisitive.” Moreno’s delivery comes with an unequivocal sigh of admiration.

She then tells the second caller that even the most learned experts are short of all the answers in a given discipline. Just as Warner’s producer had allowed regarding professional space whizzes, Moreno’s dinosaur master admits she and her peers bear some theories purely out of “educated guesses.”

Likewise, Warner, Blu, and other call takers were perpetually apt to explain deceptive time lapses as cooperating with the episode’s half-hour cap. When they put it that way, it is far less of a copout than, say, the moment in Monty Python’s “Parrot Sketch” where the late Terry Jones’s complaint-desk clerk goes off topic before breaking the fourth wall by confessing the writers had desperately padded the script.

MSB wasn’t going to make like Mystery Science Theater 3000, whose theme song implored viewers to suspend disbelief because “it’s just a show, and you should really just relax.” Not that there isn’t any place for empty-calorie humor in anyone’s entertainment diet. PBS, Nelvana, and Scholastic’s joint venture of science and fantasy just wasn’t aiming to deliver that.

Rather, when and if it made you laugh, The Magic School Bus would set you up to stay engaged and think critically with a busier brain. With or without the touch of humor, it continuously exemplified the value of pursuing knowledge within and without the classroom.

In the “Haunted House” episode, Ms. Frizzle herself encourages her students to “keep asking questions,” promising that they’ll “keep getting answers.” The fictionalized producers and their one-off substitutes fulfilled that promise beyond the boundaries of every teleplay.

In the process, just like Blu’s in her more sporadic appearances, Warner’s character especially enjoyed his share of hearty chuckles. They could have come from his own dry humor, a kid caller’s good-natured zinger, or the impressive trove of interest and information a viewer brought to the talk.

Those little moments signified the show’s willingness to laugh at itself. In turn, MSB met its goal of imparting serious fun to impressionable ’90s kids in their living rooms and classrooms. Those in charge of such environments would be ever apt to emulate that example.