Doc McStuffins
This episode (The Bunny Blues?) is clearly the training wheels for TLC's "Hoarders". A children's equivalent of the old Ikea commercial with the crying lamp.
In the course of what passes for a regular day in Doc McStuffins land, Doc comes across Pickles the Bunny, her neighbor's beloved toy, in a box that has been put out at a garage sale. Pickles feels that she is no longer loved because her nose has fallen off, and she is depressed and heartbroken that the little girl no longer wants her (the no-longer-desired, depressive toy is a common theme on the show). Doc and her team help fix the problem by reconfiguring a nose for the bunny and, in the end, she is discovered by her owner who, despite appreciating the new nose, never intended for her to be out at the yard sale anyway. It was all a mistake and Pickles is taken back inside. To be loved forever and ever.
Nothing wrong with that, right? Perhaps I'm misinterpreting the message of the show. Perhaps its a very non-consumerist message about how items in general, and toys in particular, are not simply disposable- that we should fix, reuse and recycle our possessions before simply acquiring more of them. (I mean, check out the dearth of the Doc McStuffins merchandise available- that must be it!)
Or the message is a little more emotionally damaging. That all of those toys you love but no longer play with, all of those toys that don't work, all of those toys that you've outgrown are sitting in a box or a closet somewhere crying for you. Physically crying for you and wondering why you don't love them any more. That if you were to give or sell those toys to another child, one who would play with and love them, those toys will feel inadequate and abandoned. That you will be damaging the very fiber of their anthropomorphized beings and forever endangering their self esteems. So perhaps you'd just buy a second house to keep your things in. So they never feel sad. And buy them some friends to keep them company. So they never feel lonely.
