User:BlakeIsHere458/sandbox/Something Special (Series 3-present)

Something Special is a British children's television programme presented by Justin Fletcher. It was created and co-directed by Allan Johnston. It is broadcast by the BBC, debuting on 1 September 2003. It is designed to introduce children to Makaton signing and is specifically aimed at children with delayed learning and communication difficulties. It is aired on the CBeebies channel and is currently the longest-running CBeebies programme and the longest-running preschool series in Britain. In the past, it was also broadcast as part of the CBeebies programme strand on BBC One and BBC Two.

However, when the format was changed in series 3, the show went into seasonal rot and hasn't recovered since.

Why It Isn't Special Now

 * 1) The main problem that these seasons suffer from is that they abandon the simple and easy formula of the previous two seasons of Makaton learning to disabled people who have difficulties knowing what certain things are, to a blatant Mickey Mouse Clubhouse clone with none of the charm that show had, since MMCH took the Mickey Mouse brand and used it for a preschool show in very well implemented way as it treated the audience in a respectful manner and taught kids about certain things like colours and numbers with the characters also exploring some locations here and there to spice things up which made the show a easy watch for toddlers and can still at least be enjoyed by adults even if the show and most of the stuff in it isn't meant to be for them, the Out and About seasons don't do that as they pander to the audience and treat them very poorly to the point where it becomes Dora levels of annoying with the constant amount of fourth wall breaking that becomes repetitive and starts the audience like idiots with the objectives being very easy to spot and the plot structure being very formulaic and repetitive with nothing enjoyable happening in the slightest with only the Mr Tumble segments spicing things up a bit but even then some of them are rehashed from the first two seasons and not as funny as they used to be.
 * 2) As mentioned above in WIISN#1, the fourth wall breaking is just downright annoying at best and constant shoved down the audience's throats, as Justin or the narrator will always point out the obvious and will often treat the audience like mindless children, which can get on so many people's nerves, as it becomes clear in the We're All Friends era of the show, where the fourth wall breaking is cranked up to eleven and is even worse than it was in the previous Out and About seasons making it a chore for adults to sit through for how mind-bogglingly tedious it is.
 * 3) The Makaton is a lot weaker in these seasons than in Series 1 & 2, as it's a lot more simple and more basic than before and is very easy for disabled toddlers to do when in Series 1 & 2, the Makaton signs can be hard for them at first but they'll manage to do them when they've mastered it which is what the Out & About series doesn't do at all in the slightest bit of context ever. And to add insult to injury, the Makaton segments now rely on Mr Tumble to do the signing instead of Justin, which is just unnecessary since Mr Tumble is meant to be the comic relief of the show and Justin himself is meant to be the host of the show himself, as removing Justin from the Makaton signing entirely gives him less screen time as a whole.
 * 4) Nearly all of the episodes completely play out the same way with the same premise as the next, with the episode starting with Mr Tumble doing his usual shtick before the narrator says something to him and tells him to send the bag to Justin for his new trip with a new friend that has Special Needs with the episode either about going to somewhere extremely simple such as a Swimming Pool, a Zoo, a Theme Park, a Fire Station or a Farm, with Justin and the gang meeting and having fun at where they are at with a Mr Tumble segment in the middle and Justin with his gang trying to look for 3 special things that are in very easy places and later with Justin saying goodbye to the friends he has made and sending to the bag back to Mr Tumble with a different ending with Mr Tumble reacting to something that Justin and the gang have to send him and then the episode ends, that's it. It's extremely repetitive at best since the amount of variety that the episodes have is extremely limited and almost nothing changes in the slightest bit, with the series being the same old stuff that has been done in other educational shows.
 * 5) Later seasons have started to put less focus on Justin and suddenly more focus on Mr Tumble in an attempt to sell more merchandise of the character himself, which just comes off as a publicity stunt since Justin is meant to be the host and Mr Tumble is only meant to be the comic relief to entertain kids with his mime actions, so seeing Mr Tumble getting more focus than the actual host himself is just cheap and comes off as jumping the shark. This is apparent in the We're All Friends era where Mr Tumble takes over as the Makaton host and also gets song segments dedicated to him and even sings the actual theme song himself, which started to show signs that the show was running out of ideas and that the BBC doesn't know what to do with the series anymore.
 * 6) New characters have suddenly started to show instantly without any introduction or backstory at all and are just introduced to sell more toys & get higher views, with several examples including Spotty the Horse (Mr Tumble's pet horse) who has appeared in two episodes and hasn't made an appearance in other episodes aside from the two aforementioned ones that he debuted in, and Fisherman Tumble who is just a Fisherman variant of Mr Tumble but with a different personality.
 * 7) * In fact, many of the family members of the Tumble family are just stereotypes of different types of people or even generic parodies of British celebrities such as Cliff Tumble (who is an obvious parody of Cliff Richard, the famous rock 'n roller from the UK back in the 1950s).
 * 8) The show panders to the 2010's demographic and uses current trends to implement into the show without any effort at all and are just shown to get higher views, unlike the first two seasons where the show was about entertaining children with its simple charm about a man doing Makaton to help disabled kids learn about certain things, which is what these seasons don't do. The most notable example is with the Tumble Tapp where Justin has to press on whatever coloured button he has chosen and then touches to open up a picture of a (insert random thing) he has to go to along with his new gang, which ruins the charm of what made the first two seasons so unique in the first place.
 * 9) The title names for the episodes are overly generic and basic, as they are just simple words put together with no effort at all or are just one word only and that's it, which may not be a bad thing for the show's standards but Series 2 featured more variety in the names of the episodes and did it in an interesting way that felt unique for the show itself, which these seasons don't do in the slightest bit, with the title cards either being just named "Park", "Café", "Music" and "Cooking" with the title giving the purpose that the episode is about doing that certain topic with no effort at all.
 * 10) The We're All Friends era of the show worsened the decline of the show overall, as it gave more focus to Mr Tumble instead of Justin, and more characters were introduced just to make more toys and sell more products without any effort at all, and it also introduced more flaws to the series and worsen the fourth wall breaking even more to an extent that it becomes painful to sit through and become accustomed to, and to make matters worse, the location changed for no reason at all and nearly everything was given an unneeded redesign that just happened, as the show doesn't take place by the seaside anymore, and Fisherman Tumble was flat out removed from this era entirely.
 * 11) The Mr Tumble segments are downgraded from the first two seasons, as they are less funny than they were before and don't have simple activaties as they did in Series 1 & 2, as they are now reliant on Comedy instead of being a simple story segment of Mr Tumble doing a certain thing, which isn't a good thing since as mentioned already, it isn't as funny as it was previously and most of the comedy falls flat, and they rely on episode plots that feel out of place for Mr Tumble standards, and the new song segments featuring The Tumble Family are rather cringeworthy and aren't fun to listen to in the slightest, and that they also feature way too many characters in them for a Mr Tumble segment since Series 1 & 2 featured Mr Tumble as the only character in the segment, with a second character being featured in a few of them, whereas with these seasons, they feature a lot of Tumbles and none of them are fleshed out at all, with all of them just being used as plot devices or are just there for the sake of being filler to fill up a quota.
 * 12) This show has become a cash cow for the BBC, with the CBeebies channel heavily airing and adoring the show. It is so adored that some of the channel's other shows like Postman Pat and even Teletubbies don't get enough air time thanks to the BBC milking the show and constantly keep running it into the ground a lot of times.