Numberjacks
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“The Numberjacks are on Their Way”
Numberjacks is a British animated children's television series, which, like many other such series, aimed to teach pre-schoolers how to navigate the adult world around them, and taught them the value of team-work, friendship, and (uniquely) the virtue of relentless advance in the teeth of overwhelming enemy fire.
Episode One[edit | edit source]
In the opening episode of the series, the Numberjacks takes raw recruits through basic training, hardening them for greater tests to come. His men struggle with the tough regime and we see the Numberjacks beasting them through 20 km night-marches in the rain, berating them for falling to their deaths from the high-wire section of the assault course, and humiliating them for their inability to make their beds in the correct military fashion due to three-fingered hands with stubby digits that lack knuckles.
“There’s no crying at Boot Camp!” he screams when 0 complains that he will need his walking-frame to complete the 3000 foot ascent of 1, slapping him. “Suck it up, camper!”
He presses his face to within a few inches of 2’s to shout:
“Your workout is my warm-up, soldier. These press-ups don’t like you either. Be sore, not sorry. Shut up & squat!”
In a courageous ending for a show aimed at the three to five age group, the episode closes with 3’s coffin being lowered into the earth following execution for desertion. A mournful, instrumental version of the familiar theme tune is played behind 4’s monologue:
“If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man,” he says. “All men are frightened. The more educated they are, the more they are frightened. And that is why I have chosen you 5 to lead the rest of Greendale Primary School into battle. May God have mercy on your souls because I shall have none if I see your faces back here before every 6 in Greendale is on their way to Hades.”
Episode Two[edit | edit source]
4 is contemptuous of the sofa advice on entry to the war, believing that:
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