family: motion pictures on my tv screen....

So I (or rather, Santa) bought K the first season of Saddle Club for Christmas. This is an Australian horsey-girl show that K and I used to watch every Sunday morning as a father-daughter bonding experience because we're both so horsey and girl and we've not seen it since the switch to digital because:

1. we don't have cable/satellite/radar TV
2. we don't get PBS
   

But Christmas morning K found the complete first season of Saddle Club in her stocking, and we've been watching 2 episodes a day since 12/25.

Which is a lot of Saddle Club and a lot of TV and I'm not sure how to reduce the amount except as a punishment when she loses "privileges" which happened 2 days ago:

(a bunch of stuff happens that leads to...)
me: If you don't lie down quietly, you'll lose the privilege of Saddle Club tomorrow.
K (failing to lie down quietly)
me: No Saddle Club tomorrow.
K: No! (wails loudly enough to wake her sister, which is one of the main reasons she was being threatened in the first place) Sob sob sob.
me (wishing maybe I'd come up with another lost privilege instead): now lie quietly (right!).

Nice parenting, dude!

So the next day, instead of Saddle Club, we watch 2 episodes of Curious George taking the sting out of the consequences such that it probably was a waste of both our time/energy except that it gives her one more thing to talk to her therapist about in 20 years.

But here's the deal -- We don't like to expose either girl to too much TV. We rarely watch, so it's down in our basement and not often on. Except during Saddle Club. And 2 episodes every day seems like a lot to me.

I also am finding several issues with Saddle Club:

1. The season we were watching on PBS was the 3rd season (apparently)
2. The actors all changed after the 2nd season, so there's the "who is that?" question each time someone appears
3. The plots are frequently over K's head, and always over L's entire little toddler body
4. The plots are more often than expected quite scary (lightening storm leading to young girl horse riders falling over cliff, snake biting young girl horse rider's leg, uninsured racehorse with hurt leg being threatened with falling over cliff snake bite being sent to the glue factory)
   

So you can imagine the conversations that come as a result of each episode.

K: Why stealing horse?
K: Why snake?
K: Why mean dogs?
L: Wha?
me: uh... uh.... want to watch another one?
L: Horsie!

The problem is, 2 episodes of Saddle Club means upwards of 40 minutes of uninterrupted time for at least one of us parental types (minus time spent sitting with K&L, explaining things like wild dogs and mean racehorse owners).

Damn that Santa! Damn that insidious Australian mega-corporation intent on ruining my girls' minds!