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'Mister Rogers' doesn't appeal to everyone
© St. Petersburg Times, Saying something like this now feels totally indelicate -- like insulting your grandmother just after she has handed you a homemade birthday cake. But we should be honest with each other. So here goes. I've never liked Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. It's a positively blasphemous thought, rising unbidden as I peruse the hoopla over the final original episode of Fred Rogers' landmark children's TV series, airing at 11:30 a.m. Monday on WEDU-Ch. 3 (in a curious bit that likely makes sense only within its walls, WEDU airs Mister Rogers' Neighborhood episodes one day later than the national PBS feed, which presents the final original show today).
Always focused on the needs of his viewers and an upbeat, educational mission, Rogers shined as that rarest of celebrities -- shy, self-effacing and pretty much the friendly guy you saw on your TV screen (even while watching comic Drew Carey crack a series of dirty jokes during a Television Critics Awards ceremony I attended a few years ago). Unlike the creators of Barney or the Teletubbies or even Sesame Street, Rogers refused to expose his characters to super-size commercial exploitation, sparing us all the sight of King Friday XIII Happy Meals and Trolley Treats breakfast cereal. Consider his words about why he has welcomed children to "a beautiful day in the neighborhood" for more than three decades: "Through television, we have a great chance to show and tell our children that they really matter," Rogers says in press materials. "We have a chance to communicate the fact that childhood lies at the very basis of what people are and what they become." Who couldn't like a guy like that? But, at age 35, I'm young enough to have watched the show as a child. So this isn't some jaded critic hopped up on Sopranos reruns and the latest glitzy WB cartoon looking down his nose at a public television legend. This is a guy who learned every word on the first Sesame Street cast album -- back when it was new -- by playing it repeatedly on his Show 'N Tell phonograph. This is somebody who knows Morgan Freeman and Rita Moreno not as the sidekick in Unforgiven and the nun in Oz but as The Electric Company's Easy Reader and Carmela. And from my earliest days in front of the tube, I never really got Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Perhaps it's because, growing up in gritty Gary, Ind., I bonded better with the urban and urbane flavor of Sesame Street and Electric Company. Or by the time I started really watching kids TV in the early '70s, I had aged out of Rogers' primary group -- the 2- to 6-year-olds. But I think it's something deeper. I just felt that Mr. Rogers wasn't talking to me. The simple songs. The sweater. The ritual of changing into sneakers after walking in the door, like some dad I never had. His gentle, soothing way of talking about everything from divorce to getting a needle shot just didn't connect with a kid who was reading Isaac Asimov novels by age 9. Sesame Street seemed to crack the kind of jokes adults might laugh at, only with kid-friendly subjects. Mr. Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister, was the broccoli to their french fries, offering material so laid back and simplified, I couldn't help feeling like he was talking down to me a bit. For Rogers, it was all part of a carefully considered formula -- offering a calm, hurry-free zone for preschoolers who would have plenty of time to pick up the pace later in life. Before you crank up the nasty e-mails, calls and letters, know this: I realize my reaction says more about me that it does about Rogers. I also realize that kids still watch and enjoy the show (ratings from July's sweeps period show Tampa Bay area viewership in line with most of PBS' other shows for small children, attracting about 3 percent of viewers 2 to 11). Rogers has a response for viewers like me. "I'm always afraid . . . people will think it's sappy," he told USA Today in August. "That's probably one of the worst outcomes of the fast, superficial things people are fed. I think we're created deep and simple, and society doesn't nurture that." Fans can relax a little. Rogers' departure isn't about retiring, as any employee at his non-profit, Pittsburgh-based Family Communications Inc. will readily tell you ("We don't use the "r' word around here," one spokeswoman for the show said Thursday). He won't even offer a special goodbye on the last original show. Rogers plans to focus on new projects, including Web sites, publications and special museum programs. And PBS will air repeats from the 1,000 or so shows he created over the past three decades until further notice. And with a vacation home near his alma mater, Rollins College in Winter Park, Rogers might even surface in the Sunshine State here and there. But in a world of Blue's Clues and Between the Lions, this critic can't help seeing Mister Rogers' Neighborhood as a quaint throwback. For me, it was more like a pleasant melody I never quite learned to dance to. -- Information from Times wires was used in this report. To reach Eric Deggans, call (727) 893-8521, e-mail deggans@sptimes.com.
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