He abuses his power all the time

A Candorville cartoon, and a plan gone up in flames

Disney/Pixar’s atrocious easter eggs ruined everything.

I had a plan. When he turned seven, I would introduce my oldest son to Star Trek in the same order that made me fall in love with it. First I’d show him “Space Seed,” the TOS episode that introduced Khan Noonien Singh. I’d also show him just a handful of carefully curated episodes that would cement the virtues of Kirk, Spock, and Bones, in

his mind, and then, of course, the Tribbles. Then, I’d show him the trilogy: Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, and Voyage Home. I’d skip Star Trek V, show him The Undiscovered Country, and then all of TNG, culminating in Generations and First Contact. Then, and only then, would I introduce him to Star Wars, for which I’d also worked out the perfect sequence.

Spoiler for Toy Story 4 below.

But then we showed him Toy Story 4, and all of my planning went right out the window. As an “homage,” I guess, Toy Story 4 pitted Buzz Lightyear against Emperor Zurgh, who, during their climactic battle, declared to Buzz “No, I am your father.” It shocked my son. It blew him away. Pixar had ”borrowed” and shown one of the best moments in movie history to my son, and probably to millions of other kids who were too young to have seen Star Wars yet. They ruined it.

My son had already seen countless Star Wars toys at Target, and he was old enough to put two and two together. And he was old enough to ask his friends about Star Wars, and at least one of them had already seen Empire Strikes Back. So I executed Order 66 my Star Wars sequence at once.

I showed him the first two films, then the first two prequels, followed by the Clone Wars series, and then Tales of the Jedi, which sets up something amazing Ashoka will later do during the final two episodes of Clone Wars. Those episodes take place at the same time as Revenge of the Sith, the third prequel film. So, I showed those to him, flipping back and forth between the film and the show, for maximum emotional impact. Afterward, I discovered I could’ve just shown him an amazing fan edit that did the same thing. Here’s a trailer for that:

Then I showed him Rebels, The Bad Batch, Rogue One, and finally Return of the Jedi, to finish Anakin’s story. Shown in that sequence, it was an amazing, epic, emotional roller coaster, and the most satisfying story I had ever seen. For my son, it set the bar for epic storytelling impossibly high. And since it took us about three years to watch all that, it lasted for a third of his life.

All along, I had tried to alternate all this with Star Trek, but he insisted on finishing one story at a time, and I didn’t want to force him to watch anything against his will. That’s no way to get someone to like something. Meanwhile, my daughter was now the age her big brother had been when he and I had started Star Wars, and she began asking me when it would be her turn. She’s more sensitive to antagonism on screen, so I told her she’d have to wait a year or so.

Anyway, the week after my son and I finished Return of the Jedi, I sat my him down and turned on The Wrath of Khan. He purposely fell asleep just fifteen minutes into it. When I woke him up, he said “this is boring. Do we have any more Star Wars?” He asked if Trek has light sabers and Jedi and Sith, and when I told him it doesn’t, he informed me that if that’s the case, he has no interest in watching it. Outwardly, I was stoic. But I felt crushed. And I considered boycotting any more Pixar films. I decided this was all their fault.

A few weeks later, the kids wanted to watch a Pixar film, and I told them no. I didn’t want any Easter eggs to spoil anything for the younger ones, the way it had for my oldest son. I put on Sesame Street for them, and then went out into the kitchen to help my wife make breakfast. After a while, that episode ended and automatically went to the next one. While I was stirring the eggs, the sound from the TV finally registered with me. They were doing a Star Wars parody, and the puppet who was playing “Luke” said “I don’t know what to do. If only I had a daddy to tell me what I should do… but I never knew my own father.”

I dropped the whisk, almost knocked the pot of eggs off the burner, and ran to the family room. There are no physical buttons on the TV, and the remote was nowhere in sight. Half-crazed, I demanded that the kids give me the remote. They were frozen. So I said “COVER YOUR EARS! COVER YOUR EARS!” They didn’t. They just looked at me as if I were a crazy man.

That’s when a puppet dressed like Darth Vader skipped onto the screen and said “You’re in luck!” I grabbed two pillows off the couch and held them up to block the screen, but it was too late. My six year old daughter had peered around me at the TV. Her face morphed into a look of surprise, and she turned her eyes to me and said “Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s daddy?” My three year old younger son then repeated it.

I don’t know what I thought I’d accomplish at that point by yanking the TV’s plug out of the wall, but I tried to do it anyway. I succeeded only in unplugging the Alexa.