It’s hard not to develop head canon about your kid’s shows. Especially in these days of rewatch, where you can see the same thing streaming dozens of times just by leaving YouTube on autoplay. (We had another thing banned from viewership this week, because it made me angry.) You see Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood over and over and over and over, you start thinking about things you probably aren’t meant to. It’s perfectly natural. And it’s what has led me to decide that the show is actually about a cult.
I mean, it’s a canon monarchy; there’s a royal family. And while Daniel (another child character voiced by different actors, in his case Jake Beale and Devan Cohen) is friends with Prince Wednesday (Nicholas Kaegi), it’s always very clear that he’s the prince and Daniel is not, even though Wednesday is the younger son. There’s at least one episode where King Friday (Jamie Watson) gets to order the entire community to go pick fruit, and they even have to pick the kind of fruit he wants. Which is frankly more control than most real-world monarchs have.
Still, that could just be that children’s programming is not necessarily the place for complicated examination of governing systems. This, I grant you. But the more I watched, the more it started to get to me that, no matter where Daniel went, everyone knew the same little jingles about handling life problems. Yes, all right, in practical terms, it’s so that the kids watching learn them better, and it’s certainly true that I’ve heard my four-year-old muttering lyrics under his breath in stressful situations or what have you. But in-show, what’s the explanation for that?
Well, how about the fact that it’s a community of five families and a handful of others, where practically the only outside visitor we ever see is Daniel’s Grandpere (François Klanfer)? So even though one assumes that Dr. Anna (Laara Saadiq) is not from wherever-they-are (she has a distinct Indian accent), she’s been indoctrinated into the ways of the community and can sing the song about washing your hands or whatever. When Daniel turns out to be allergic to peaches, the song she produces about being allergic to things is one that other people in the group already know. Really, Daniel’s just lucky that the group acknowledges Outlander medicine!
This is all before you even get into the economic nature of a community where the main industries seem to be a clock factory, a crayon factory, a music store, and a bakery. Which, again, children’s show. Not intended to be an insight into the real-world economy. That’s fine; whatever. But I really wish more shows would put some thought into the whole thing for the sake of the parents being forced to watch the thing or else risk letting their kids surf the free options on Amazon on their own, which I’m really not inclined to do.
For those curious about the real-world background of the show, it’s an animated series based on the Land of Make-Believe segments from the original Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. A show my kid has only seen a couple of episodes of and been uninterested in.
