Carmen Sandiego, a review

I had initially planned on writing this review earlier, however with the show having recently ended I can think of no better time to write it. In a similar genre to Carmen Sandiego was the show She-Ra with which I was less than impressed in earlier seasons, however in the later seasons they addressed all of my criticism, as a result I wanted to give Carmen Sandiego the same luxury. The result, not a whole lot changed, every critique I had in episode one was still an issue I had as the series was ending. But before I begin criticising, allow me to begin with some positives. The character of Carmen Sandiego is quite well written, she has nuances, complexities she isn’t just some nigh impossible badass, she’s a human being with faults, foibles and personal failures. Even her supporting cast is fairly endearing, it’s very clear that they do very much care about one another, and the closeness can be seen in many an episode. The Villains are interesting and well developed as characters, reacting and playing off each other and San Diego in ways that make logical sense. The heists themselves never fail to impress, and given that they are the star of the show, failing to provide good heists would be to falter at the first hurdle. However the show is not without a whole host of problems, to start with the fact that there seems to be little narrative progression to speak of, most episodes could be completely rearranged with little consequence. In addition to the fact is that Vile is so whingingly incompetent, that one wonders how they still exist as a functioning crime group. Every single time bar none Carmen Sandiego defeats them, and their solution, let’s send the exact same people after targets she’s after as well. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, and based on this data, Vile is insane on top of being generally incompetent. The character’s of Zack and Ivy are also painful to deal with, they get basically no character development, and everything we really know about them starts and ends with Boston, one episode about them being racers not withstanding. Another great Sin is how they handle Acme, because apparently only Carmen gets to hold the competence staff, they fail to release the fact that Sandiego only steals from thieves, or to prevent thefts. They don’t work, at all, in order to have done Acme properly they would need to either lower the morality of Carmen or Acme. Either have it so that Acme is overzealous at stopping any and all crimes, no matter the reason, or have Carmen actually commit some crimes worth getting upset about. It is possible for people who legitimately own things to be awful people, see the British hoarding the crown jewels of India. To further up on that, no one aside from Carmen receives any real character development, the other characters have interesting elements to them, but they never get explored. Now one could argue that this is first and foremost an edutainment show and should be judged on those merits. Based on those merits, it’s still not very good, every time they visit a new country the viewers are given an info dump. Every single time I watch it, it invariably loses me and I get bored, I am an adult who enjoys learning about things, if it loses me, I highly doubt it holds onto the target audience. Carmen Sandiego could have been a good show, if it had a stronger narrative, more of a focus on character and character development, including showing us the start of Carmen’s journey. However as it stands, the show is decent but it could have been amazing.