16th May 2017, 9:02 PM
Now, I have always said that Mr. Rogers Neighborhood is the best childrens' television show ever. The best thing about the show has to be his message that everyone is best just the way they are, and he is famous for that message. Almost as important, however, is the shows' focus, or rather, the absence of the constant barrage of thirty second long scenes; instead, each episode has only two major parts, in his house and in the land of make-believe. As a kid I liked the longer-form nature of Mr. Rogers over Sesame Street's short, constantly changing scenes. The calmer tone of Mr. Rogers is great too, I really like it; not being another one of those kids shows that is a 'barrage on the senses' was one of Fred Rogers' major aims with the show, and I at least always liked it more for that. Of course Mr. Rogers' way of speaking straight to the audience is the most important part of what makes it so great, but the tone and longer story arcs, often even with stories that continue through multiple episodes, is fantastic as well.
So, you may have heard of this, but previously Twitch streamed all of Bob Ross (painting) and Julia Child (cooking) shows, those classic PBS hits. I didn't watch much of either, but it was an interesting thing to do. They are following those with this, a run through the entire well over 800 episode run of Mr. Rogers episodes. It started on the 15th at noon (PST), so now it is in the middle of the very long first season -- looking it up, the first season, which is from 1968, is a whole 130 episodes, and is in black and white. Most of these first-season episodes have never been reran since they aired once in 1968, so only people watching then saw them. So yeah, I've been watching a bunch of this, and it's great stuff, different because it's in B&W and is older than the episodes I remember as a kid, but it's also so familiar because the show is what it is, it didn't change much. It's awesome. The songs are even charming, and I am not exactly a fan of music.
(The first season, from 1968, is 130 episodes, all black and white and not rerun. Then season 2 through 9, from '69 to '75, are about 65 episodes per season, and are all in color. Then there were no new episodes, only reruns, for over three years. When it returned in 1979, for the second series that ran 22 seasons until ending in 2001, the number of episodes dropped to only 10-20 per season most of the time, so that shorter first series ended up producing far more episodes than the longer second one. Huh.)
... Now, on the one hand, you've got this incredible childrens' show, with lots of not-seen-in-49-years episodes on right now (and for the next day or two as well)... and on the other hand
you've got it on Twitch, representing the internet, with its often-toxic comments bar scrolling by on the right. It's a pretty weird mix. The internet is both one of the best things ever and one of the worst things ever, depending on when and where you look... but it's very much worth watching anyway, just ignore a lot of that chat stuff.
https://www.twitch.tv/misterrogers
So, you may have heard of this, but previously Twitch streamed all of Bob Ross (painting) and Julia Child (cooking) shows, those classic PBS hits. I didn't watch much of either, but it was an interesting thing to do. They are following those with this, a run through the entire well over 800 episode run of Mr. Rogers episodes. It started on the 15th at noon (PST), so now it is in the middle of the very long first season -- looking it up, the first season, which is from 1968, is a whole 130 episodes, and is in black and white. Most of these first-season episodes have never been reran since they aired once in 1968, so only people watching then saw them. So yeah, I've been watching a bunch of this, and it's great stuff, different because it's in B&W and is older than the episodes I remember as a kid, but it's also so familiar because the show is what it is, it didn't change much. It's awesome. The songs are even charming, and I am not exactly a fan of music.
(The first season, from 1968, is 130 episodes, all black and white and not rerun. Then season 2 through 9, from '69 to '75, are about 65 episodes per season, and are all in color. Then there were no new episodes, only reruns, for over three years. When it returned in 1979, for the second series that ran 22 seasons until ending in 2001, the number of episodes dropped to only 10-20 per season most of the time, so that shorter first series ended up producing far more episodes than the longer second one. Huh.)
... Now, on the one hand, you've got this incredible childrens' show, with lots of not-seen-in-49-years episodes on right now (and for the next day or two as well)... and on the other hand
you've got it on Twitch, representing the internet, with its often-toxic comments bar scrolling by on the right. It's a pretty weird mix. The internet is both one of the best things ever and one of the worst things ever, depending on when and where you look... but it's very much worth watching anyway, just ignore a lot of that chat stuff.
https://www.twitch.tv/misterrogers