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Hey, wake up! Rise and shine, there’s no time to waste — we’ve got to meet Bear over at Kayla’s house four paragraphs from now, and she’s all the way out in the country.
This is the thing: The last season of Bear in the Big Blue House aired in 2002, and since then, Bear’s been kind of kicking back and taking some time off. He went to Europe, he did a triathlon, he worked on his novel. He’s enjoyed it so much that when the Disney Channel wanted him to come back and do a new show, he arranged it so he would only work mornings.
So Disney came up with a new reality show called Breakfast with Bear, where Bear shows up at a kid’s house first thing in the morning, and helps them get ready for their day. It’s an early start for Bear, but he’s out by 8, and then he has the rest of the day to himself.
This week, we’re going to wake up with Bear every day, and see what life is like for the ultimate morning person. Up and at ’em!
Now, this wouldn’t be Bear without a peppy folk-pop theme song, and he doesn’t disappoint. “Hey! It’s a brand new day,” he chirps, “and I’m feeling fine in every way. Have you got some time to spare? Come on! And have Breakfast with Bear.” And already, you can feel that infectious Bear groove, a positive isn’t-life-amazing attitude that’s either completely sincere, or so elegantly calculated that it seems completely sincere. Either way, I’m sucked into it, bopping along with Bear. On the other hand, I just woke up, so I may not be thinking clearly.
And, hey! Bear’s outside. On his old show, Bear was studio-bound, stuck in Woodland Valley all the time. Now, Bear’s out in the real world — and if I’ve learned anything in my long acquaintance with the Muppets, that means he’s about to get chased across the country. It might be that Doc Hopper’s after him, or maybe a couple of guys want to paint him blue and put him in the circus. Either way, somebody’s just on the other side of those trees with a pair of binoculars.
But before that plotline kicks in, Bear has to get this breakfast thing started. “Today, I’m going to visit my friend Kayla,” he says, “who lives out here in the woods, in a log cabin her father and his friends built!” He moves toward the house, but then turns back to explain: “Oh! Logs are really big, round pieces of wood.” And yeah, I know what a log is, thank you very much, Bear. The thing I really want you to explain is how the hell did Kayla get so lucky? The kid’s seven years old, and she lives out in the back end of nowhere. I’m thirty-four, I live in a major city and I have my own website, and I’ve never once had a Muppet show up for breakfast. Not once! What kind of pull does Kayla have? I don’t get it.
Anyway, Kayla’s mom lets Bear in — he says, “Good morning, Kayla’s mom!” which is adorable — and then he just marches right into Kayla’s bedroom. She jumps out of bed and gives him a big hug, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. And maybe it is for her, I don’t know. He looks closely at her: “You know, you look different, there’s something different about you… Let me see…” He gasps. “Your smile! You have a new smile! What happened?” And man, what happened is right. It looks like somebody’s been using Kayla’s mouth for target practice.
Bear moves smoothly past that subject with some good-morning small talk: “So, I have a question. Do you sometimes have a hard time waking up in the morning?” Kayla sure does. “Yeah, especially when you have school, plus you take care of the kids, plus you do dance, plus you do softball, plllluuusss… you have a big bear come to your house.” And the only possible response to that is: wait a second, Kayla has kids? I thought life in the country was pretty relaxed, but you ask Kayla a simple question, and she starts whining about how overscheduled she is. Dude, you’re seven years old, relax.
To her credit, Kayla recovers quick: “And guess which thing is the funnest!” Bear pretends to think. “Hmmm, let’s see. Is it the big bear coming to your house?” She grins and hugs him again, so we’ve gotten through another awkward moment.
Moving things along, Bear sings “The Morning Mambo,” another fun slice of Bear pop that gets Kayla up and dancing. And boy, that girl is shakin’ it! Unfortunately, you don’t get to see as much of their dance as you might like, because all the camera shots are lined up to feature Kayla’s collection of Disney Princess dolls lining the walls. Now, you might not be familiar with these, but apparently, they take all the pretty female characters from the Disney animated movies and they make toys of them, and Kayla has five of them in her bedroom. If you’re interested in the Disney Princess toy line, I’m sure you’ll find that they’re available for sale at all major toy retailers.
I’m just saying all this because obviously these Disney Princess toys are the most important things in the room, and the camera always makes sure they’re in shot. Seriously, whenever Bear and Kayla move down a little, and the camera follows them, then it instantly moves back up to get the dolls in the shot. It’s obvious that they’d rather have the dolls in the frame than Kayla. You can see this happen three times, it’s amazing. How lucky they were that Kayla had such photogenic toys in her room! It’s just a lucky day all around.
Anyway, Bear’s exhausted, so it’s time to take a break for a couple of cartoons. Breakfast with Bear isn’t really a full show, it’s just four Bear segments and a bunch of cartoons, plus some ads for other Disney Channel shows. The whole thing adds up to twelve and a half minutes of Bear material. So that was three minutes of Bear and Kayla, and now we watch cartoons for a while, and we meet up with them again at 7:20.
Hey, welcome back! Now, we’re in Kayla’s kitchen, where she and her mom are cooking “egg in a nest,” which sounds exotic but is really just a fried egg on toast with cheese on top. It’s not a very interesting recipe, so we can take a moment to check out how the kitchen is decorated. And here’s a little note for Kayla’s mom: Just because you live out in the woods doesn’t mean that everything has to be in earth tones. Seriously, there’s enough brown and green right outside your door to last you a lifetime. Would it kill you to buy something red?
Anyway, Bear and Kayla go out on the porch with their plates, and there’s some interesting tension around whether Bear is going to eat or not. Kayla picks up her knife and fork, and then she notices that Bear doesn’t have his. She puts the fork in his hand, and points to his knife. It’s an odd moment — does she really think that Bear’s about to eat those eggs? It’s fascinating.
Bear points out that they’re drinking orange juice, and Kayla gestures at the other food on the table: “And then we have blueberry muffins, blueberries, strawberries and bananas.” Bear’s impressed: “Wow! This is very healthy!” Now, call me a cynic, but there’s something about how those strawberries are arranged perfectly in a little glass bowl that tells me that the fruit was provided by the TV crew. Kayla’s a healthy kid, but she looks like a fried egg on toast kind of girl, and there she goes, chowing down on the eggs, without giving the blueberries a glance. I’m suspicious of that fruit.
Bear asks what she’d like to do today, and she says that she could show him how to jump on her trampoline. Bear’s excited: “You have a trampoline? No way!” And then he says the most magical sentence of all: “Do you think I could get on the trampoline?” And all of a sudden, this is a very, very exciting show. Sometime within the next hour, we’re going to see Bear on a trampoline! There’s some more cartoons coming up, but now I’ve got a reason to keep watching. Before this morning is over, I want Bear up on that trampoline.
But the trampoline action will wait, cause first they have to go back to the bedroom, where Bear sings another song and we get another close look at those Disney Princess dolls. Kayla picks out her clothes and brushes her teeth, and she’s scrubbing so hard and so long that you have to wonder if maybe she just brushes them right out of her head. And man, look at those leaves and twigs around the bathroom mirror. How rustic can you get.
Kayla’s going to go to school soon, and Bear asks what her favorite subject is. She says she likes gym. “Gym!” Bear says. “So, you really like moving. You really like moving your body.” Which is a nice way of saying, so I guess you’re not good at math. This leads into some more signposting of the trampoline thing, but unfortunately, there’s a whole twenty minutes of a Wiggles episode between us and the trampoline.
Fast-forwarding past the Wiggles, which is the only way to travel, we finally get to the trampoline at around 7:56. Kayla jumps for a while, and he asks her to describe what she’s doing with her legs. She gets off, but before he takes his turn, he asks for some more tutoring on how to jump. Stop stalling, Bear! Get up there, I’ve been waiting all morning.
With the help of a quick edit, Bear hoists himself onto the trampoline, but it’s obvious that this is a big effort for poor little Noel MacNeal, struggling to keep his balance inside the heavy Bear costume. He’s already breathing hard, and he’s just standing in one place. He rocks up and down on the trampoline a bit, not moving his feet, and says, “Since this is my first time, maybe this is all I can do for now.”
Now, nobody is more sympathetic to Noel MacNeal’s problems than I am, but I’ve been waiting a whole hour for this, and I want to see some action. Kayla agrees with me, and she tells him to get jumping.
Bear tries a little jump, and he actually gets his feet up one at a time. Then it’s back to the creative editing, and we see Bear’s head jumping up and down. Apparently while we’re not looking at his feet, Bear is just going to town on that trampoline.
Anyway, we do get our money’s worth at the end, with Bear executing a nice fall on his big ol’ bear behind. Noel is clearly exhausted, panting really heavily as he says, “Well — puff puff — I definitely need some more practice. (Puff puff.) But…” — and here he’s trying to roll onto his stomach and nonchalantly crawl towards the edge — “… this was fun! Ha ha ha!” And yeah, it was fun, even though it sounds like Noel is about to die in there. Luckily, that’s the end of the show, so he has the whole rest of the day to sleep it off.
