The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones
Television show? Movie series? Uhhh... both? They took the episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, re-edited, reformatted, added new content... basically George Lucased the thing... and ended up with a series of movie-length releases under this name which is how the series is available today.
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
X01: My First Adventure
(First watched 2023-06-09, -) Before making this page I discussed this one a bit elsewhere, so I'll paste that in:
Started up Young Indy on D+. Very early on, but some immediate things: I should've been expecting this, but the show is in SD. Also, it's not quite in its original form. In the later 90s they reedited them into the form of "movies" in a pretty complicated way. Episodes that originally had parts with both the younger and older actor were split up and then those parts would be put together to form near-feature-length adventures for one or the other. Looking at Wikipedia now, some things surprise me... but maybe I should've expected it from George Lucas. Like, the show was originally aired in '92 and '93, but some new stuff was filmed for the new versions in '96 and '97.
"Wahoo!" "Jeepers creepers!" "Holy smokes!" - Henry Jones before the half hour mark.
I've reached the midway of this moviesode of Young Indy and oh my this is weird. I could tell they moved to a new episode, because Indy's actor was very visibly older. Looking at it now, this is one of those parts produced later that was intended for a third season but instead got placed with the older content and so the intended timeframe for it was moved from July 1909 to May 1908 to match the other episode, though the halves were filmed something like 4 years apart. Which is VERY OBVIOUS when your lead actor goes from something like age 11 to age 15.
OK, now some non-pasted stuff: As far as a concept for very young Indiana Jones, "goes on a world tour with his scholar father who is giving presentations" is probably about as good as you could get, even if watching baby Indiana Jones in baby adventures isn't really something exciting to watch. Kind of funny that it starts out introducing his dog namesake and then is immediately like "...aaaand he got left home while we went around the world!"
X02: Passion for Life
(First watched 2023-07-05, -07) I don't see how this kid is going to have many more adventures. Everywhere they go he runs off, gets lost, or gets kidnapped. They're going to start immediately chaining him up at the hotels.
This kid runs into more historical figures per episode than The Doctor.
Creaky gate sound effect 1:13:28.
X03: The Perils of Cupid
(First watched 2023-07-08) Indy falls in love with... the daughter of Franz Ferdinand. I was really feeling bad for these folks, knowing this kid of 8 or 9 was beating their security when clearly there were dangerous people wanting them dead.
Second part very abnormal for this show. Less about Young Indiana Jones himself, more about famous opera writer Puccini trying to seduce Young Indiana Jones's mother.
X04: Travels With Father
(First watched 2023-07-10) Both halves fairly interesting, though the naming doesn't really fit both. I mean, the first half has Indy running away from his family. It's about as far from traveling with his father as he gets in these years of traveling with his father. BUT the road teamup of Indy + Tolstoy worked unexpectedly well.
For a change there's actually some death-defying going on in the second half, with the rope elevator malfunction. Seemed to bring Henry and Henry closer together, though that seems to have only lasted about two minutes since they're back to bickering immediately as the timeline continues.
X05: Journey of Radiance
(First watched 2023-07-11) The first half was more straightforward informative than most, without being too boring about it. Indy learning about comparative religion from a rising star, while his teacher deals with the fact that rising star's benefactors are full of shit.
Second half... well, it's just people getting sick in China. And most of the action takes place in a really poor family's house that they take over. *shrug* If you ever wondered if Indiana Jones canonically had diarrhea? This provides the answer.
No offense to Corey Carrier, but I am glad to be past this Youngest Indy phase.