By Asher Hancock:
If you’re like me, a devilishly handsome fellow with a heart of sunshine and pockets of rubles, you probably don’t like the Care Bears. I am diametrically opposed to these fuzzy critters; displays of emotion and empathy are an affront to my masculinity. If you are like me, you might read about the Care Bears and think you are going to be reading some mumbo jumbo about kindness and respect that will trigger flashbacks to your divorce and bring about a mid-life crisis that would never have happened if you had seen that therapist like Kathy told you to and finally confronted your childhood traumas.
However, I am here to tell you to keep reading because rather than force feed you pleasant anecdotes about Do-Your-Best Bear and Share Bear that end with a moral lesson, I will instead be exposing Care Bears Incorporated as a FASCIST organization! That’s right-- over the years, I have sent about fifty proposals for Care Bears that I feel would be more valuable than Always There Bear, because nobody is always there-- especially not Kathy. No matter what you do, she’ll end up leaving you for her SoulCycle instructor, Fernando, and moving with him to his beachside estate in Portugal “indefinitely.” Being sunshine and smiles all the time is not real life and I believe the Care Bears should reflect that. For that reason, below you will find some of my favorite ideas for Care Bears that are objectively too good to be rejected if fascism isn’t in play.
Appalachian Coal Miner Bear
When you think of Care Bears, the natural train of thought is that since they spend all their time doing nothing but prancing around and going on adventures, they must be upper class heathens who have never had to work a day in their lives because Papa Bear doesn’t put limits on their credit cards. I want the bears to represent all sorts of people, especially America’s working class. The perfect representation of blue collar workers in the US of A is a disgraced coal miner working in the Appalachian Region, likely in Tennessee or Kentucky.
Instead of Season 2 Episode 3 “Awesomest Day Ever,” I’m thinking something more like “A Day on the Job” about Appalachian Coal Miner Bear’s experience working in the mine, being exposed to toxic gases and living under constant threat of being crushed to smithereens while making just enough to bring home McDonald’s every night for the children. Another episode about this bear could be “Papa’s Exhausted” in which he gets home from work covered in soot, sits on his recliner and implores his six-year-old daughter to go get him a beer. His wife starts yelling at him (such a Kathy move) to take a shower for once to which he responds by not taking a shower and making her bring him more beer.
Socialist Bear a.k.a. Bearnie Sanders
Whoever says that society should not be exposing young children to politics is a snowflake. I think it’s important that this nation’s youth is exposed to all sorts of opinions in order to prepare them for the real world. I think a great way to do this with Care Bears would be to have certain bears represent certain political movements. I think the best example of this is Bearnie Sanders because he’s the only politician whose name works so well with “Bear” in it and his real quotes would fit so naturally into the dialogue. I’m not advocating for or against socialism, as I believe it's for the viewer to decide whether or not the radical left is destroying democracy from the inside. I think Socialist Bear would actually fit in well with the other bears -- indeed, I’ve suspected that Share Bear has been a socialist all along.
Let me describe a scene that might help paint a picture of this character. Wish Bear is lying in bed and says to himself, “I wish everybody was equal.” Then Bearnie Sanders pokes his head through the windows and says, “let us wage a moral and political war against the billionaires and corporate leaders, on Wall Street and elsewhere, whose policies and greed are destroying the middle class of America.” What an interesting storyline it would be if Wish Bear decides that he too believes in socialism and together they arrange a political campaign and the entirety of season 3 documents the Kingdom of Caring’s decline into a communist society not unlike Soviet Russia.
Q Bear
As I said previously, I am not the type to discriminate politically, so I think we should also have a bear to represent the Republican equivalent of socialism, which is obviously QAnon. So, let’s go back to the aforementioned episode pitch and look at how Q Bear would come into play. Once Bearnie Sanders has finally left Wish Bear alone after about 30 minutes of straight monologuing, Wish Bear then thinks to himself, “I wish there weren’t so many bad bears in the world.” Q Bear would poke his head through the window and say something like, “so do I, but the reality of the situation is that the people who control politics are actually a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring. The only bear who can help is Donald J. Trump Bear.” If we want to get realistic with it, Wish Bear would then fall into a manic-depressive state triggered by a realization of the unprecedented polarization in the Kingdom of Caring. He would then go for a walk outside, bump into Funshine Bear and ask “How are you so happy?” to which Funshine would respond by saying “I’ll tell you for 15 shekels” (I’m assuming the Kingdom of Caring uses Israeli currency). Wish Bear would pay up and Funshine Bear would give him a bottle of pills. “I call this Funshine,” he would say and then they would both take some and spend the rest of the episode frolicking through the sunflower fields. I’m not saying characters like Q Bear should be central to the plot, but I think they should influence the lives of the other Bears in a way that paints a more realistic picture of society.
Sleep Apnea Bear
Just a bear with sleep apnea, pretty self explanatory.
Ex-Wife Bear
You may think I’m really obsessed with this whole Kathy situation, but I promise I’m over her. The reality of the situation is that with the divorce rates in America, it's unfathomable that divorce does not exist within the Kingdom of Caring. This character would just be representative of ex-wives everywhere. Maybe Harmony Bear’s wife, Love-a-lot Bear decides to leave and then she transforms into Ex-Wife Bear. There might be an episode where the day after the divorce, Harmony Bear, wandering around town in a heartbroken drunken stupor, peers into the window of Ex-Wife Bear and sees her having a glass of wine with friends, laughing in a way she never did when they were together. He’ll then knock on the door in hopes of confronting her for kicking him out of the house but they’ll just keep on laughing and pretending like nobody’s there. Maybe he comes back a week later and Ex-Wife Bear is now having a glass of wine with Fernando Bear, her BearCycle instructor. Then Harmony Bear will become filled with vengeful rage which he will release by opening all their mail. He will then go to prison for mail fraud where he himself will transform from Harmony Bear into one of my personal favorites, Felon Bear.
If you want to read more about Felon Bear, I’ll continue putting these lists of my Rejected Care Bears up on the bulletin board at the local Starbucks-- just make sure you grab one before Janet the barista takes it down for being “too graphic”.