the simpsons

Description

Arthur Arthur is an American/Canadian animated educational television series for children. The show is set in the fictional American city of Elwood City, and revolves around the lives of 8-year-old Arthur Read, an anthropomorphic aardvark, his friends and family, and their daily interactions with each other. There is a strong emphasis on the educational value of books and libraries as well as relationships with friends and family members. The series is often noted for dealing with social and health-related issues that affect young children, such as the death of a pet, dyslexia, and more recently cancer, Asperger syndrome and Alzheimer's disease. Characters Arthur and his sister D.W. are the main characters of the series. The main supporting characters are Buster, Francine, Muffy, the Brain, Mr. Ratburn, and Arthur's parents. Over the years, the roles of each character have changed as more episodes focused on characters besides Arthur or D.W., most notably Buster, Francine, Muffy, and Binky. Minor supporting characters such as Sue Ellen, George, and Fern have also had expanded roles in the series. Like The Simpsons, characters in the Arthur series do not age in order to remain the status quo, although their universe does in parallel to the real world in terms of social and economic state, progression in technology, and influences of popular culture. Episodes Each episode of Arthur runs for half an hour. Episodes usually consist of two completely self-contained 11-minute stories. The episodes start off with one of the characters (usually Arthur) speaking towards the audience about a situation within the story followed by the title card. The episodes are separated by a one- to two-minute live-action interstitial called "And Now a Word from Us Kids" (or, in some cases, a permutation of that title more specific to its contents). The live-action segments almost always feature children from elementary schools (generally in the Boston area) presenting subjects they are currently learning about or projects they have been working on in their classes (the subjects covered here relate to the first cartoon segment in the half-hour). This segment is seen exclusively on PBS telecasts of the show, filling space otherwise used for commercials, which are generally forbidden on PBS. There is also a relatively new segment that sometimes appears at the end of the second 11-minute episode called "And Now a Word from Marc Brown" where he shows the viewers how to draw various main characters from the show. In 2007, the show began encouraging viewers to send in "video postcards" (similar to those used in the spin-off show Postcards from Buster), which were shown in the interstitials of episodes until the middle of Season 12. Beginning with Episode 151, the show reverted back "And Now a Word from Us Kids".