Hello friends and welcome back to another exciting episode of Conspiracies with Alyssa. I'm your host and I'm going to walk you through and oldie but a goodie - Dexter's Laboratory. The show follows Dexter, a child genius who's forced to contend with his very average family, including his sister, Dee Dee (boy they sure loved this name on kid's shows, huh?) who often runs amuck in his secret laboratory underneath his bedroom.
Apart from being a cartoon, this show becomes totally unrealistic (albeit, super fun to watch) with the whole "lab beneath the bedroom" thing. I know that's the point of cartoons, but I've always had some serious questions about Dexter and his lab, so let's jump right in.
Who the hell is paying for all that power?
Powering a laboratory, especially one as monolithic and sophisticated as Dexter's, requires some serious power. I'm talking nuclear energy. Where does all that power come from? Are his parents paying for it? What the hell does their electric bill look like? Is Dexter using like, high grade Uranium to power his machines? Where does he get it? Where does he come by all his supplies?
The questions about the actual structure and running of the lab are endless, but I'm personally more concerned about the cost and the maintenance of the lab. Who the hell is helping Dexter do all this? He may be a genius, but he's just a kid! He can hardly reach half the controls!
In the opening titles, a huge sign displaying the name of the show, we find out, is just controlled by an A/C power plug. Like, a plug that goes into a socket in the wall. WHAT?! That forces us to believe that the power has to come from an electrical source, and there's no way he has generators by the hundreds just laying around. Regardless of the power source, energy is expensive and I want to know where it's coming from.
Which reminds me...
Dexter has a ton of ground-breaking technology. Why is he keeping it to himself?
So Dex literally has a shrink ray, an "atom smasher", and a literal space shuttle in his laboratory that he himself says he "created". Yes, the kid's a genius with a lot of spare time on his hands but developing those kinds of things takes time, resources, and energy. He could literally be changing the world. So why isn't he?
I mean, the kid invented successful, mature cloning technology. An actual copy of you steps out of the machine. At the very least, he could be making billions of dollars, and he could also probably cure cancer in about 2 and a half days. Why isn't he taking advantage of this? The kid could have more money than Oprah if he called up NASA and told them about half the shit he has in his basement.
But that raises another question...
Why does Dexter have a weird, vaguely German-French accent?
His family is all clearly from the United States. There are flags displayed on their schools. They live in a suburb and seem to be very normal people. Why, then, does Dexter speak with a very strange mix of a German and French accent? Is it because he's trying to sound smarter? Did he just think it sounded good? Did his voice get stuck that way after listening to a scientist on tv?
It's something that has genuinely bothered me for the entire run of the show. I was older when Dexter's Laboratory came on, but I still watched it after school and on Saturday mornings. This was the aspect of the show that always bothered me the most though. My friends would just laugh it off or tell me not to worry about it, but I did.
Was Dexter apprehended at a very early age by German/French scientists to study because of his high IQ? Is he a spy? Is he even a child?
Speaking of which...
A child has created all of this by himself. The government isn't interested?
Unless Dexter has managed to figure out a way to keep his inventions totally off-the-grid, why hasn't the government shown interest in him? He's clearly a genius beyond normal comprehension. Yet he just comes home from school (which he should have already graduated from, by the way, considering how smart he is) and tinkers in his lab.
You're going to tell me that the United States Government isn't interested in a shrink ray or an atom smasher? Yeah, okay. You keep telling yourself that, sunshine. Dexter's biggest problem in life is Dee Dee running around his laboratory and causing mayhem, but he never has to deal with Gary from NASA trying to recruit him?
Dexter is wise beyond his years, but the questions posed today are big ones that I would sincerely like answers to. I'm looking at you, Gendy Tartakovsky. I will await a response in the form of an email.
That's all the time we have for today, kids. Make sure you tune in next time when we talk about a pair of kids with access to heavy-duty machinery and absolutely NO adult supervision.
