Dee & Friends in Oz 2024 / A sweet use of Wizard of Oz characters that doesn't do enough with its concept

There’s a strong moral focus to Dee & Friends in Oz that helps keep it from being just a distraction for young children. The series logically continues the theme of outsiders learning to overcome their insecurities and courses this lesson through “Dorothy” herself—with much less peril and wicked witches involved, of course. But the show also finds itself stuck in the ways it expresses itself; the world of Oz here is both colorful and too ordinary, and its storytelling is both sincere and too rigid in its structure. For example, when Dee comes back home to the real world at the end of each episode, it’s meant to feel as if she’s applying the moral lessons to her daily life, but the connection is just too flimsy and makes these scenes feel more like unrelated epilogues.