Bat-Fam follows Bruce Wayne as Batman, his young son Damian Wayne as Little Batman, and butler Alfred Pennyworth after the events of the film Merry Little Batman. The series centers on their adjustment to life at Wayne Manor with three new housemates who join the household unexpectedly. As they navigate family dynamics, the group bands together to safeguard Gotham City from threats including the Joker, Riddler, Killer Croc, and other villains. Bat-Fam Review COMING SOON PARENTAL NOTES COMING SOON WOKE REPORT COMING SOON  The post Bat-Fam (season 1) first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Gus Plus Us is a live-action children’s television series that premiered in 2022, produced by a homeschooling family in Texas.  Each episode centers on Gus, his sidekick Karrot, and their friend Lucy as they navigate adventures that feature original songs and themes such as teamwork and patience. Gus Plus Us Review (S1: E1-3) Competing against their own original program, A Wonderful Day with Mabel Maclay, The Daily Wire has introduced the Texas-born children’s program Gus Plus Us to its children’s streaming platform, Bentkey. Humans have been mixing it up with puppets in children’s broadcast television since 1947, when the Kukla, Fran, and Ollie first went over the airwaves. However, as you can see from the clip below, as spectacles, they’ve come a long way. Visuals and music are what truly set Gus Plus Us apart from other small, single-location preschool programs. While not extravagant, the sets and design elements are crafted with exceptional taste, and the overall composition is remarkably pleasant, giving the impression of a scope and depth that far exceed what is surely a very small soundstage. Those responsible for the visuals are masters of their craft. The third episode takes the core cast “outside” of the home main set for the first time. With only simple camera tricks, green screen, and shockingly good Foley/sound design, the showrunners add a kinetic energy to the program that was noticeably missing in the previous two entries. This promises that, as the show continues to evolve, viewers can expect the same clever sense of play and invention to keep pushing its little world wider. Likewise, the music, though limited, vastly outclasses virtually any other children’s program today. Clearly, the husband-and-wife duo responsible for Gus Plus Us are talented musicians, but rarely has a program outside of Sesame Street produced musical numbers with such skill and professionalism. That the production is minuscule by comparison only makes it that much more impressive. However, when shopping for programs for your very young children, if you’re anything like my wife, you’re almost certainly more concerned with the content than anything else, especially of the educational variety. Unfortunately, this is where Gus Plus Us falls short. Of the three episodes that we were given to screen, the lessons were thin. That’s not to suggest that a program aimed at preschoolers should be teaching existentialism, or anything. Yet, something more substantial than it is nice to be nice would elevate the program from a twelve-minute opportunity for stay-at-home moms to grab a glass of rosé to must-watch TV for the little ones. That said, the last of the three episodes we watched had a lesson of questionable value and perspective, so much so that it would give me pause enough to feel obliged to monitor the next few episodes alongside my children (see Woke Report below). PARENTAL NOTES Age Appropriate There’s nothing shown or said that exceeds the maturity level of its intended audience. WOKE REPORT Ladies Night This one doesn’t make the show woke, but it is noteworthy that the program skews for girls. The first episodes are about baking cakes and decorating for birthday parties, etc. Again, there’s nothing woke about that, but it does mean that it’s not a show that I would choose to put in front of my four-year-old boy. Then Why Compete? The final episode, which was the most thematically male-skewed of the three I was given to view, features an incredibly well-done car race between the two puppet characters. The lesson of the episode is that of the importance of “being a good sport.”  Conceptually, that’s a lesson most of us can get behind. However, the episode’s writers fall into the modern trap of suggesting that being a good sport means not caring whether you win or lose. Few ideas have done more quiet damage to young men than this one. You should care about winning—not for the trophy itself, but because striving to win teaches lessons that carry into nearly every corner of adult life. In fact, it’s impossible to be a true good sport without caring about the outcome. Apathy—the absence of investment—has no place in competition. Good sportsmanship is about grace, poise, honor, and humility. It’s about learning from your mistakes, showing character in defeat, and rising to do better next time, just as much as it’s about handling victory with dignity. We’ve raised whole generations of low-testosterone losers on the despicable notion that winning doesn’t and shouldn’t matter. This isn’t enough of a sample size for us to mark the Woke-O-Meter down below BASED, but it is concerning, nonetheless. The post Gus Plus Us first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

In the scorched wastelands of a distant world, Predator: Badlands unleashes a rogue Yautja warrior—young, fierce, and exiled—teaming up with a sharp-witted survivor for a hunt that blurs the line between hunter and hunted. Predator: Badlands Review COMING SOON WOKE REPORT COMING SOON  The post Predator: Badlands first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

Storytime with Zoodles is a children’s television series that premiered in 2025 on the Bentkey streaming platform. The show combines puppetry and animation to deliver interactive storytelling. It features the puppet character Zoodles, voiced by John Kennedy, and the animated inventor Inchy, voiced by Rickey Boyd. Created by Cory Basil, the series includes episodes based on books such as “I Love You, Little Truck” and “Nom Nom Shapes,” incorporating songs and audience participation elements. Storytime with Zoodles Review (S1: E1-4) Those who grew up flying twice as high as butterflies in the sky will appreciate Storytime with Zoodles the most. A bit of a misnomer, the fun and brightly colored Zoodles actually has little to do with the meat of the show, and truly only serves to open and close each program. At its core, Storytime with Zoodles, an original DailyWire+ program produced by Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boering, is a simple program. After Zoodles and his sidekick give a short, fun intro, a story with an age-appropriate lesson is narrated as the pages of its book are brought to life with some simple animation. The quality of the lessons, at least in these initial four episodes, varies pretty significantly, though, even at their simplest, they steer clear of the shallow pool of insipid, brain-blending trash in which programs like Bubble Guppies or Firebuds drown our children’s IQs while strobe lighting their dopamine to dust. The initial two discuss topics like not being afraid when going from kindergarten to 1st grade—not exactly splitting the atom. However, episodes 3 and 4, which coincidentally also have a more polished feel and slightly upgraded animation than the previous two entires, introduce kids to Newton’s three laws of motion and Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’. Each of these is worlds beyond the show’s target audience’s capability to fully appreciate or understand; however, rather than talking down to the children watching or simply distracting them with bright colors, the showrunners do an excellent job of simplifying the concepts in the hopes of nurturing future curiosity in the subject (Newton), and letting the artwork ease them into what is likely new emotional territory for most (Frost). In either case, the attempt to lay the groundwork for advanced learning and conceptual growth is as refreshing as it is audacious (at least relative to most of today’s slop). My Four-Year-Old Having inadvertently and very pleasantly created my own focus group for children’s programming, I asked my 4-year-old, 9-year-old, and 11-year-old children (two boys and a girl) to watch with me so I could observe them and ask for some feedback. While Storytime with Zoodles would understandably not have been the oldest of the three’s first choice, he appreciated the content of the latter two episodes and had no difficulty focusing while they played. The 9-year-old also generally enjoyed them and even hopefully asked if there were more to view. Now, the youngest of the trio loved all four episodes. When asked, he was indifferent to the puppets but thoroughly enjoyed the stories, relaying (in his limited 4-year-old parlance) the aspects of each he appreciated most. Interestingly enough, he too focused almost entirely on the more advanced topics, curious about how things “go up and move,” etc. These programs are the spiritual children of the type that our kindergarten teachers used to roll into the classrooms the day after a bender (Letter People, et al.)—simply made, well-told, and designed to jog developing prefrontal cortexes into an early start. As a far too rare occurrence, it’s always a joy to be able to recommend a children’s program as Worth it. PARENTAL NOTES None Age appropriate WOKE REPORT That’s the Point Bentkey exists to be the antidote to woke children’s programming. The post Storytime with Zoodles first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

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