Mister Rogers recap

For those of you that missed it because of whatever the hell it is you're doing at eleven o'clock am-- I thought I'd recap today's episode of Mister Rogers.

Today's episode was called "Noisy and Quiet." After Mister Rogers came home and changed his jacket, shoes, etc-- he said that he had some noisemakers in his bag. He took the noisemakers out of the bag and demonstrated them all one by one. Then he posed the question, "Can you imagine what a quietmaker would look like?" He gave some time to think about that.

Then he pulled a tape recorder out of the bag and said that he thought it would be fun to record the noisemakers (I thought this would be a waste of time, but whatever). Then he said he had a tape of different sounds and he played it. He thought the last sound on the tape was a knock on the door-- but it REALLY WAS a knock on his door. It was Chuck Aber. He acted like we should know who Chuck Aber was.


I guess Chuck Aber heard that Mister Rogers had some noisemakers at his house (word travels fast in Mister Rogers Neighborhood). Chuck said he was going to be in a parade and needed to borrow a noisemaker (from the looks of Chuck, I think I know what kind of parade he was going to be in).

After Chuck left, Mister Rogers played some parade music on his piano and I kind of zoned out. Then he said that it was time to go to the Neighborhood of Make Believe (I always hated this part of the show, made me nervous, talking cats, etc.)

In the Neighborhood of Make Believe they were planning a parade where everyone either dressed up as different animals or space aliens (even the trolley was dressed up as an alien trolley). The space aliens part freaked out X the Owl and Henrietta Pussycat so they were hiding in Lady Elaine's Museum-Go-Round in the "S room." "S for Scared and Safe," Lady Elaine remarked. Lady Aberlin told X and Henrietta that although people were dressing up in animal and space alien costumes, it didn't really mean that they really were animals and space aliens. This explanation seemed to calm everyone down a little.

Back to Mister Rogers house. Mister Rogers said he had a book of smiles, it was basically pictures of people from his neighborhood smiling. He went on about how when you see people smile it can make you want to smile. He thought it would be a good idea if we practiced smiling for a little bit, which was actually pretty cool.

Then there was a knock at the door and it was Marilyn Barnett (Mister Rogers again assumed that we knew who this was). Marilyn asked Mister Rogers if he had some time to exercise. They went out on the porch and started doing jumping jacks and tried to balance on one foot. Mister Rogers said it would be easier if they held on to each other while they tried to balance (which is cheating, but it's his show).

After Marilyn left, Mister Rogers fed the fish and before he wrapped things up he said that, "There are all kinds of ways to remember people, by their sounds, by the way they look and by the way you feel about them."

It was a pretty good episode except for the extended parade music segment. The highlight was the smile practicing. I'll try to keep you posted.