Arian Foster hates Caillou and you should, too

Arian Foster isn’t wrong about anything, ever. He answered questions in pterodactyl-speak at Tennessee, wants to take DMT when he retires from the NFL, and curses on Twitter just like you do. He congratulates long-dead geniuses for inventing calculus, and also hates the children’s television program Caillou:

Oh, God, thank you, Arian Foster.

If you are not familiar, you lucky person. Caillou is a despicable, spineless 4-year-old boy who cannot do anything. He can’t grow hair, not because he has cancer or progeria, but because he sucks, and even his own body recognizes that he does not deserve hair or food or love. He has a baby sister who dominates his life because she is a normal, loving child who does not whine about the slightest fart of the breeze. Caillou’s parents love her better because she is a better person.

Someday Caillou will realize this and probably whine while falling face-first onto the pavement in front of a Tim Horton’s for no reason whatsoever. Maybe he’ll die from his injuries. That would be great, especially because Caillou is Canadian and his health care in event of catastrophic injury isn’t on my tab. Win-win for American parents everywhere, really.

Arian Foster is not lying: There is indeed no plot whatsoever to any episode of Caillou. The average episode involves Caillou being challenged by something: dogs, loud noises, the wind, stairs, cats, vegetables, sitting up, taking really big breaths. He fails at all of these and cries before being left by the side of the road by his laughing parents. They drive off, ecstatic and free, as the credits roll and the screen fades on a shivering silhouette of Caillou alone in the wilds of rural Quebec.

Foster’s right about the art, too. Caillou started out life as a cartoon baby, and when he got bigger, the animators simply gave him longer legs and arms. At his rate of current growth, Caillou will look like a human version of a Daddy Long Legs when he reaches adulthood. Adult faces are frozen and expressionless. This is because it is in Canada, which is very cold, and also because the mundane horror of living with Caillou has killed anything human in their souls. Backgrounds are barely fleshed out; the animators hate this show as much as you do, and they want to give it as little effort as possible before returning to making anime pornography and drinking to forget their pain.

It’s not even that Caillou is bad at things. I have a 4-year-old. They are astonishingly inept at things, but they try, and also randomly excel at things they’ve never even tried before. They are people, in other words. Caillou is not human. No human has ever given up and cried at every single thing ever attempted and then whined into his parents sweater. Which parent? Either, any, whoever: It is a Canadian cartoon, so everyone wears a sweater all the time, even when nude.

This is Caillou playing baseball before crying and giving up completely:

This is actually pretty good effort by Caillou on the “Caillou sucks at life and quits” curve. Maybe the design of the show was to show 4-year-olds another 4-year-old who would go through many of the same scary things they would undergo in life. Then they would take that 4-year-old, rob him of all will, skill and character, and show him failing and being the worst child on the planet. Then the 4-year-old viewer would feel better about everything because at least they weren’t Caillou, who even to 4-year-olds is the walking embodiment of failure and everything they will never, ever be.

This is not an isolated opinion. Every parent I know hates Caillou with a passion usually reserved for cockroaches and Hitler, and with good reason: Children who watch Caillou get whinier after watching the show and become more like Caillou, and thus less lovable and more likely to wind up abandoned by their parents on a cold Canadian roadside as bear food.

Arian Foster has the solution for this, too:

In summary: Bullying is no laughing matter, unless it is done to Caillou. Caillou is awful, and Arian Foster will get it off the air as soon as he retires and finally takes some DMT.