Not only do people these days not appreciate the beauty of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, they also overlook the perfection that was/is the operas that the denizens of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe used to put on. The big, end-of-the-week production number operas, that is, as opposed to the day to day soap opera of the ongoing adventures of X and Henrietta and Lady Elaine and King Friday and so on.

And as much as I love the romantic reverse-Cinderellaism of All in the Laundry, the Alpine charm of Spoon Mountain, and the condemnation of consumer capitalism thinly veiled in the plot of Trouble in Bubbleland, my hands down all-time favorite Mr. Rogers' opera would have to be Swans and Beavers.

In large part because of the warped subtext that somehow made it beyond the notice of both the writers and of any PBS censors they might have had back in the early 80s. You see, one of the stars of Swans and Beavers is Mr. All-Mine, who on his previous visit to The Neighborhood of Make-Believe had a big book with pictures of all these things he thought belonged to him...including Daniel Striped Tiger's clock. He soon repented of his greedy ways, and he later returned for a second visit as a total fitness buff who ran around the Neighborhood for a week exercising, barefoot and barechested and wearing nothing but orange shorty-shorts and an unzipped green windbreaker. It was the most brazen display of pulchritudinous nakedness since Slim Goodbody first donned a bodysuit.

And it won him a starring role in Swans and Beavers at the end of the week. His wardrobe (or rather lack thereof) helped him enact the part of Betty Aberlin's exercise-obsessed brother Lloyd to a T. It admittedly was not a very strenuous role, acting-wise. All he had to do was be captured by Lady Elaine, playing an evil witch who runs a taffy factory, and imprisoned by her in a little glass room (ok, he also had to do mime hands to convince us he is actually in a glass box).

So he spends the majority of the opera in what is basically a foam-frame phone booth, swinging on rings, running in place, doing push-ups etc., while Lady Elaine (putting all those lesbian rumors to rest) ogles him shamelessly and forces him to do more and more exercises. Plus there is this constant threat of her turning him into taffy if he gets too tired to exercise. As Eager Beaver puts it, rubbing his hands gleefully, "She'll make him into taffy! Taffy TAFFY TAFFY TAAAFFY!!!"

Then Eager Beaver remembers that it's his week to be nice and apologizes to poor Betty Aberlin, who is quite worried about her brother.

So you can see how all those jokes about Mr. McFeely and his 'speedy deliveries' and Mr. Rogers wanting to be your 'special friend' sort of pale in comparison next to the spectacle of a half-naked, exercise slave--in a glass box--being offered up as quality children's entertainment.

I love Mr. Rogers. He is a good and decent man who was very sweet when I met him and presented him with a sheaf of crayon drawings I had done of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.

But hee!