At some point in 1990, Ted Turner unleashed his environmentalist fury upon the children of America by creating one of the least subtle educational cartoons ever conceived. It was a certified hit. Captain Planet and the Planeteers was a show about pollution tearing the world apart, and Mother Nature herself (named Gaia) getting proactive in stopping it. She kidnapped five teenagers from five different corners of the world, gave them magical powers and a solar powered jet plane, told them to combine their powers to summon Captain Planet when they were in a fix, and put the fate of the planet in their hands.

Now, most people would say that Ma-Ti has the most useless power ring. After all, the rest of the team could move the elements, and he had… heart? I respectfully disagree. I say Gi had the most useless power of all. I mean, what the hell was she going to do with water, hmm? Wash something off? Put out a fire? Gi needed to find a nearby water source to use her powers. Clean water, at that. Not only was she no more powerful than someone with a bucket, but she became completely useless if the water was just a little too murky. Half of the planeteers’ adventures took place either in a dry savanna, a North American desert, or in the middle of a freaking city. If a building caught fire, who would you rather call: a professional fire fighter, or Gi so she could crack open a nearby fire hydrant like a kid in the summertime? You know what, forget Gi. You’d have an easier time getting ahold of the kid with the wrench.

At least Ma-Ti’s ring had variety. And by “variety,” I mean the writers weren’t quite sure what he could do, so they gave ‘heart’ a new power in every episode. If the planeteers were split up, Ma-Ti could telepathically contact everybody. One villain tried to take control of their minds, and Ma-Ti was somehow immune. The one consistent power he had was the ability to control animals. Every few episodes, a villain would do something stupid like put Ma-Ti in a pit or cage with a leopard or a bear or some other wild carnivore you shouldn’t fuck with. Within five seconds, Ma-Ti was on its back and riding it to safety. One time he even got a family of chimps to find him food. Useless my ass! Give me that ring!

A green high-top mullet. Really?

In every episode, the planeteers were in a new place, investigating some sort of environmental folly. They’d find a problem, spend 15 minutes of the episode trying in vain to explain why it’s bad to the locals, almost die, then summon Captain Planet. Captain Planet was so powerful, I wonder why Gaia even bothered with the planeteers. The planeteers could spend half an episode trying to convince the bad guy that their polluting machines or factories were going to bite them in the ass, but Captain Planet explains nothing to nobody. The moment he was summoned, he’d save someone from immediate death, gather the polluting things in one spot, destroy them, and then recycle them into something like a playground set or an all-new fully functional recycling center. In 2 minutes. While making horrible puns and sporting that hideous fucking haircut! The planeteers could’ve summoned him at the beginning of the episode, went home, ate some all natural veggies, and shat in the compost heap they no doubt had in their backyard.

The most ridiculous thing about this show was the gallery of villains. The villains on Captain Planet had names like Dr. Blight, Looten Plunder, Hoggish Greedly, and Verminous Scum. That last one’s not even subtle. Characters like Greedly and Plunder were just businessmen who didn’t care how much shit they dumped in the local river, or that their cars never passed emission standards. Dr. Blight, on the other hand, genuinely wanted the planet to die. She went out of her way to dump toxic waste in the ocean, poison people’s food, build nuclear warheads, buy styrofoam cups, kick puppies, and punch babies– you know, when she wasn’t busy dry-humping her computer. Verminous Scum… he was just a drug dealer.

Captain Planet and the Planeteers was a stupid cartoon, but it was a stupid cartoon with a purpose. It taught an entire generation how to recycle, conserve energy, and to stop littering so damn much. Or at least it tried. And there were far worse educational cartoons about the environment in those days. I’m looking at you, Widget the World Watcher.