Iconography: Critics liken Bindi show to Twilight Zone

You may choose to discontinue reading when we warn you that this item contains negative commentary on Bindi Irwin. Her new TV show on America's Discovery Kids channel, Bindi the Jungle Girl, has been described as "a little bit creepy" by the critic for the newspaper Newsday, and as "disconcerting" by The New York Times.
From Newsday: "The grade-schoolers for whom Bindi the Jungle Girl is designed should find this new series a breezy, affectionate, info-packed introduction to the world's animals, vivaciously led by someone their size. Their parents and other adults may find the show hosted by eight-year-old Bindi Irwin a little bit creepy. That's because her dead dad Steve is everywhere. He's shown and mentioned in the present tense, even popping up in the show's studio "treehouse" with Bindi and mom Terri, as though he's well among the living.
"While this shouldn't matter to six-year-olds - who may not even be aware the beloved Crocodile Hunter died last September off the coast of Queensland in a freak encounter with a stingray - it can be a serious jolt for those of us who whiled away tube-years with the zesty Aussie zoo-master known the world-over for his delighted cries of "Crikey!" The shock and mourning are still too fresh.
"It's downright - well, I don't know what, but not comfortable - when Steve pops into the treehouse in Saturday's 5.30pm second episode. He's crouched behind a desk resting his chin on its edge, his head alongside that of a gorilla skull, which Bindi asks us to tell apart. Sorry. That's more than I can handle. By the time Steve and wife/widow Terri helped Bindi bid the audience bye-bye at the end of my hour screening disc, I was seriously weirded out."
From The New York Times: "Bindi: The Jungle Girl ... gave me the creeps, not merely because Bindi seems to be affecting childhood rather than experiencing it, but because it is disconcerting to see a little girl wear a snake around her neck as if it were a charm necklace from Forever 21.
"Bindi talks about her father in the present tense. So be prepared to tell your children, should they inquire, that Irwin is up at that big crocodile-hunter party in the sky."