Bill Nye is a Moron
Say you’re in the mood for some delicious nostalgia, and your doctor has told that you aren’t ingesting enough madness. What’s an innocent Netflix subscriber to do? Well, fortunately, corporate entertainment has got you covered.
First, take one washed-up pop star who got his name doing a children’s television show about 20 years ago, one live-audience full of Rick & Morty-watching millennials who F**king Love Science, and more leftist propaganda than you thought was feasibly possible in one half-hour chunk. Then spice it up with dance numbers, cartoons, and wacky hijinks. Repeat for however long a season is supposed to be. Slap on a title, like maybe Bill Nye Is Awesome or Bill Nye the Cool Guy With A Mechanical Engineering B.S. or Bill Nye Saves the Planet From Stupid Poopy-Headed Idiots Like Donald Trump. Presto! Instant success, just like Amy Schumer’s recent special on the same platform!
Wait a minute. The result is completely awful. How did that happen?
Listen, there is something fundamentally wrong with the audience of this show. What I hope is, there really isn’t an audience for this show. What I hope is, it’s all the baseless, tasteless, hapless attempt at propagandizing our culture using beloved childhood superstars from PBS TV shows, and that no one is falling for it. What I hope is, there’s nothing here except another piece of meat tossed to the conservative commentators who sit around saying “Can you believe this?” And yet, people un-ironically enjoyed Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s revitalization of The Cosmos, which was about as accurate and interesting on topics such as, say, religion, as trying to get a blind man to shoot you in the head from fifty yards away. I’ll give credit where it’s due—Tyson at least studied some sort of science, even if his understanding of history and the Church’s role in all of it is completely misinformed. Nye can’t say the same, especially when he prattles off gender studies jargon with the alacrity of a deer in the headlights, trying to pass off completely unsubstantiated claims on biology as the facts of this brave new world.
But if this is the best they’ve got, then I actually feel second-hand embarrassment. What kind of producer do you have to be to pitch a children’s show to adults? These are entertainers dressed up in animal costumes, putting on jingoistic sing-a-longs, interspersed with crude science experiments for nine-year-olds and cute-looking cartoons, but it’s all been twisted so as to appeal to the child-like mind of the modern, delusional, college-educated millennial.
And Bill Nye? The man has no shame. I don’t know where they dug him up from a couple years ago, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was from out of a grave. The man looks about as comfortable in front of a camera these days as Nosferatu, and his ability to read lines from a teleprompter seems about as natural as any of your most cringe-inducing late-night comedy hosts. It’s like nobody on his show is even trying.
And our next guest is very special! She wrote some stuff for an obnoxious sitcom that I can guarantee you did not actually watch! And she’s good with music too—just listen to DJ (funny animal) blast a bit of bass and interrupt the rhythm with obnoxious screeching that you kids like to call “dubstep!” Hah, I just called you kids, like way back when my show was on PBS, and I talked about archeology to an audience of eight-year-olds. Now you’re twenty-seven. Or thirty. And you should have a job. And taste. And be ashamed of yourselves.
This is really disgusting. Not just in how low Bill Nye will stoop to get a paycheck, if that even is his motivation in the first place. And not the propaganda he’s mouthing off, either—we’re well-conditioned enough to brush it off. It’s the medium he’s using. He wants to prey on your nostalgia, but in doing so, he’s infantilizing his entire audience while juxtaposing the cool dinosaurs or electromagnetism from his old show with sexual deviancy and pointedly anti-scientific, politicized talking points. This isn’t a science show, and Bill Nye isn’t a scientist. He isn’t even saving the world. With segments like the gender & sexuality bits, it’s far easier to argue that he’s destroying it. Oh, but that sort of talk is downright reactionary, isn’t it?
My bad, sorry. What was I saying? Oh right, sex is non-binary. Orgies are totally great. Shut up and dance. Ignore everything and just have fun. Any bigot who disagrees needs to be reeducated through the use of these cartoons and totally hip bass-beats that make you want to hammer nails through your ears. Thanks, Mister Science Dude! Go to hell.
