Fairly Odd Parents

Timmy's dad knocks on the door. He yells out, "I'm respecting your privacy by knocking, but I'm showing my authority as a parent by coming in anyway." Then he busts a door down with something resmembling an old ACME battering ram.

Who said there's nothing good on TV during the day? The "Fairly OddParents" on Nickelodeon are the Looney Tunes of our era. It's a wonderful mix of sight gags, quick-witted dialogue and biting story lines.

The show centers around Timmy, a 10-year-old with well-meaning parents who are fairly busy and self-absorbed too. So he picks up a pair of fairy godparents, Cosmo and Wanda, to help grease the wheels of his childhood. Unfortunately, they tend to mess things up as often as not.

It leads to some pretty humorous stuff. You have Timmy chasing an e-mail through the Internet. You have Cosmo and Wanda on a "Dating Game" show to see if they should stay together when they confuse whether their anniversary is the "Styrofoam Anniversary" or "Fake Fighting Anniversary." You have the two godparents pretending to be human parents when Timmy brings a real dinosaur to school and his parents need to meet with the teacher. [Best sight gag here... Cosmo gets addicted to coffee after just one cup. Take that, Folgers.]

A recent story by the Associated Press on the CNN Web site says the show is the second-highest rated show among children ages 2 to 11. Yet 40 percent of its viewership is older than that. If you ever check it out, you'll know why.

Incidentally, I can finally put a number on just how long it takes me to be cool. I am cool five months after the Associated Press is cool, given they knew about it in February and I'm just discovering the show recently.