On Daniel Tiger and Those Other Little... Darlings

My child currently being obsessed with one TV show, and one only, means that my mind often becomes involuntarily preoccupied by the goings-on within it. She is only going to be this age once, and so I feel it is beholden on me to conserve some of my thoughts on Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood for posterity. So, without further ado, I present my assessment of Daniel and his preschool friends, ranked in order from least to most annoying.

6. O the Owl. Being raised by his uncle, who is the neighborhood librarian, O is naturally the book-smart one of the gang. Aside from his unfortunate tendency to describe anything he approves of as "nifty galifty", he has much to endear him to us. He is knowledgeable about almost everything and somehow manages to have an appropriate book instantly to hand in any situation. O suffers from self-esteem issues, which we suspect may have much to do with his uncle's insistence (he's from the South, which may explain it) on sending him to school naked except for a pair of sneakers.

5. Jodi Platypus. A relative newcomer to the group, Jodi lives with her younger twin brothers, her mother, and an older woman she refers to as her "nana" although the two are very blatantly a closeted gay couple. Jodi is asthmatic, which is an unfortunate affliction for a platypus as it presents special challenges with regard to using an inhaler. She uses the catchphrase "Yippee skippy!" and is rather too attached to her tablet, but other than that has very little to turn us against her, except that we do wish her grownups would just come out already.

4. Daniel Tiger. As the eponymous hero of the show, Daniel obviously has much more screen time than anyone else and therefore greater opportunity to drive us round the twist. He can get irritated and frustrated by a plethora of absurd things, and is sometimes irrationally jealous of his baby sister (e.g. when it's her birthday and she's getting all the attention), but in this he's no different than any other preschooler. Let's not even get started on his and the other male members of his family's lack of pants, which compared to the Owl household's sartorial choices is practically normal. By far his most aggravating trait is that he not only listens to his parents but also absorbs and applies the life lessons they impart to him. Now the show just needs to let us in on Mom and Dad Tiger's secret.

3. Miss Elaina. The bunch-headed, biracial daughter of Lady Elaine and Music Man Stan is distinguished by her exhausting hyperactivity and a pathological compulsion to do everything backwards. She nonetheless possesses a strange ability to project these qualities as endearing, and has her dad (who calls her "Elainaberry") wrapped around her little finger. The main reason she isn't higher up the list is because she gleans much from the unhealthy influence of her mother, who has clearly been skipping her Adderall for quite some time now, and I feel we can cut her quite a bit of slack as a result.

2. Katerina Kittycat. Exposure to Katerina's over the top, in your face girly girlishness is like being force-fed an eight-gallon sugar cookie batter, Ben & Jerry's ice cream and birthday cake milkshake. Her favorite toy is a stuffed pig of nightmare-inducing creepiness, and she possesses a single talent: twirling. She gets all this from her mother, Henrietta Pussycat, who is exactly the same. Mother and daughter incongruously share a love of camping, for which they make no concessions whatsoever in the form of dress. In case we were in any doubt that they are cats, they helpfully end almost every utterance with "meow meow". Katerina is only saved from being the most annoying member of Daniel's peer group by...

1. Prince Wednesday. It isn't even close. The regal rapscallion is Daniel's best friend and everyone thinks he's funny because his dad's the king. In reality he's about as hilarious as rhinoceros dung on your $300 hairdo. The only adjectives he knows are "royal" and "royally", which would seem to indicate he's a few jewels short of a scepter, given that he walks around wearing a crown and the only person who would therefore need reminding of his social status is himself. In support of this hypothesis is the fact that he has been known to get spooked by the shadows of his own toys. Oh, and he has a pet rock. On a side note, we suspect that the reason Wednesday's older brother, the teenage Prince Tuesday, has so many jobs is that King Friday keeps beheading people and his son then has to fill in.

Honorable Mention: Baker Aker. The local purveyor of breads, cakes and other confections is a Cuban exile with a face contorted into a permanent rictus of a smile that makes his mouth look large enough to accommodate a freight train. He also thinks he has jokes (spoiler alert: he doesn't). Put together, these features have the intangible effect of making him the most disturbing resident of the neighborhood; far more so than any of the kids or their parents/guardians.

And there you have it. Presumably this invaluable information will enable you to navigate 21st century life with renewed assurance, as was the author's intent. Allegedly.