Zoom's 2nd anniversary: The one with the low budget

Let me paint a bleak picture for you, readers: It’s 2001, and the United States is in the middle of a significant oil and gas crisis. What does that mean? No funding for anything frivolous from PBS from any donors, private or corporate. ZOOM  was in its infancy and desperately wanted to produce a special to celebrate its second anniversary. What do our industrious pals over at WGBH do? Attempt to throw something up for about two hundred bucks, of course. And I’m not using the term “throw something up” lightly because this is… not a good anniversary special and it resembles vomit on a screen.

The main question when reviewing the fourth anniversary special is, what do you get for $200? Like a single actor on a poorly mic’d and lit set and, uh that’s about it. Caroline and Kenny were busy guest starring on Arthur, Zoe was busy at home, Alisa, Ray, and Jessie were forging a new legacy on Yo Awesome Awesome. The only guy they could get was Claudio Jimenez. Remember him?

Yep. That guy. Hey, I don’t hate him, but he’s not the most exciting one of all of them, is he?

Well, there’s a reason he barely speaks on the show, usually. The  ZOOM  writers refused to work for free on this, too, so poor Claudio had to improvise all his dialogue. I wish I could show you full footage from this disaster, but very few copies of it still exist. In fact, I was mailed a grubby Betamax tape of this abomination just a few weeks ago in an envelope with a fake return address from someone apparently named “Tate Kaylor.” Anyway, I’ve tried to meticulously transcribe just a section of poor Claudio's opening scene, which lasted for over half the special (too much to digitize, unfortunately):

“Well, hi, boys and girls. It’s me. One of the ZOOMers and boy… um…  ZOOM … it sure is two years old now… and uh… who can forget all the fun… science and games sent in by kids … I mean… uh… the hip cast is your flesh and blood friends… You know them all. Yes… yes… and the rest of ’em!”

This is really all I could get though. Poor ol’ Claudio goes on like this for another 17 minutes.

What follows after this rambly monologue is a complete breakdown in form and structure for the special. Apparently, WGBH couldn’t license their own interstitial  ZOOM  clips (WTF?) for their own second anniversary. So instead, they got some guy (who clearly shot all these in their living room) to churn out stuff like this: