Hello internet! Welcome to Film Theory, the show that's been ruining puppets for you since 2016.

The theorists, it is back! The OG of Internet Horror, Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared, has returned.

Now, if you're not familiar with the series, I can't really blame you. It's been a long time since we've gotten any sort of update.

Three years, in fact.

To catch you up, don't hug me I'm scared, or D-H-M-I-S, is a YouTube series created by Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling,

where puppets learn important life lessons about creativity.

Mine is being creative.

Love.

Love.

And nutrition. Greedy, to eat all that, you'll end up with your gums all gray.

But something's wrong.

Well spotted there, Duck, something is very clearly wrong.

At a glance, the show feels like your typical Sesame Street-inspired children's program about learning.

In fact, the visuals are such a good imitation of a kid's show that YouTube marked one of my D-HMAS theories as made for kids and tried to shove the thing onto the kids app.

At which point I was forced to write an explanation to the machine gods that sometimes the visuals of something don't match the actual content.

You see, by the end of every episode, things go horribly off the rails, and lessons about love suddenly turn into cult

recruitment tools.

Nutrition facts wind up with characters eating each other.

The whole thing is a disturbing satire on the nature of kids programming.

Luckily, my, um, thoughtfully worded letter to YouTube got them to see reason.

The flag was removed and a generation of toddlers was spared from witnessing this.

Kids app, sure. In 2016, after six episodes, the creators literally pulled the plug on the series. But by then, it had already cemented its place as an internet classic. Things were quiet until 2018 when DHMAS uploaded a trailer for a TV show based on the series.

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