‘Learn with Lady Rachel’ review – undoubtedly the TV event of the year for millions of us | TV and radio

FOr those whose cultural experiences are largely absorbed through the prism of their infants demanding the same thing 437 times in a row, it’s been a long four months. In late October last year, Rachel Accurso released the song “Brush Your Teeth” with Ms. Rachel and Elmo. The 48 million views it has achieved since then reflect its status as a solid addition to Ms Rachel’s canon, and the whole thing has clearly been boosted by Elmo’s guest spot. But it was studded with reheated clips from previous compilations, like The Wheels on the Bus from Blippi & Ms Rachel Learn Vehicles, and It’s Potty Time from Potty Training With Ms Rachel. There is a limit to the number of plays an adult can reasonably be expected to tolerate a teddy bear in a diaper singing about his ability to relieve himself, and Lady Rachel’s cell is hungry for something new.

Enter, on Friday, Learn with Mrs. Rachel – Friendship and Social Skills, an hour-long digest where the contemporary kids’ edutainment juggernaut helps her guests “model important social skills like kindness, taking turns, sharing, asking a friend to play and helping others.” A few minutes on any of the subreddits pondering Ms. Rachel’s content makes clear the importance of this cultural moment. Or you can ask my 2 year old about that.

However, the new video is more than just a placate to the hordes of toddlers who devour the stuff, and is Accurso’s first full-length attempt to merge her bold assertion of the rights of Palestinian children to play, and even live, with the lyrical joy of Ms. Rachel’s works. Keep politics out of diapers that distract my child while making dinner, some critics have demanded. Lady Rachel thought about it, and decided she would rather not.

So, after a short introduction in which we are asked to share pretend ice cream, the doorbell rings: “Rahaf is here!” We cut to Mrs. Rachel sitting on the floor with a button-nosed three-year-old sitting on her lap. As well as being absurdly cute, Rahaf is an amputee: she doesn’t mention in the video that she lost her legs when an Israeli airstrike hit her home in Gaza. Her mother brought her to the United States for surgery, but her father and two brothers were not allowed to go with them. The pictures of Rahaf in the hospital in previous reports can only indicate the disaster that she and her family experienced; But here she is, pretending to nap alongside the titular bunnies in Hop Little Bunnies, sunnyly hopping from side to side when she wakes, then throwing herself back into Ms. Rachel’s arms.

Accurso has always sought to emphasize that she wants every child to have the same freedom that she claims for Rahaf, and the rest of the episode serves as a proof of principle. We learn how to say hello in Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, French, Tagalog, and American Sign Language; A worried doll named Frankie is assured that his purple skin doesn’t make him weird; There are children with physical and intellectual disabilities, a wheelchair swing, and a video call with Zach who uses a communication device to say, “Hi Ms. Rachel, I love you.” None of these kids were stared at. They take their rightful place in the kindergarten, and that’s the end of it.

The overall effect is an expanded view of who will play, or who will be seen as worthy of care. There’s something funny and poignant about the unapologetic joy with which Accurso rejects the idea that any of this lies outside her path, as each new scene takes another turn of her waking tombola. Oh, did you think the various language lessons were a lot? Wait until you hear this young Palestinian play the qanun!

Ms. Rachel is not the first artist and educator to offer her audience something other than the elaborate monochrome of Watch With Mother. In an unusual 1981 episode of the American show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Fred Rogers met Jeff Erlanger, a 10-year-old wheelchair user, who described his recent surgery, explained how stories had cheered him up when he felt down, and sang his host’s most famous song, “It’s You That I Love.” In BBC’s brilliant Something Special, Mr Temple (Justin Fletcher) puts disabled and neurodiverse children front and centre. The revolutionary appeal of Sesame Street was to make “the inner-city black four-year-old” its target audience above all others.

However, Accurso is doing something radical in the current climate. Kids like Rahaf and Jeff remain prominent mostly because of their absence from the mainstream. And much of the content offered on YouTube Kids is produced by people who seem to see the model primarily as a business opportunity; After all, the creator of the cursed Blippi was formerly known as Steezy Grossman, a crude comedian who went viral when he defecated on a naked collaborator.

In return, Accurso worked at a summer camp for disabled children, taught refugee children in Maine and spent years as a preschool music teacher. Anyone who seeks to dismiss her as a tired symbol of the virus of the awakened mind must also accept that the children who love her are infected, too. Friendship and social skills suggest that if a toddler can understand that killing children is wrong, this is not a sign of the naivety of that assertion – but evidence of its fundamental truth.

The low estimate of Ms. Rachel’s total views is 13.5 billion. Although it’s enormous, that number is less a measure of algorithmic cruelty than it might be assumed by parents who entrust their children to it, which is the same thing it can give Rahaf, at least for the duration of the clip: joy. Warmth. Above all, safety.