‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor?’ on HBO: The Mr. Rogers Doc Proves That Not Everything Sucks

Everything sucks. Everything sucks so much all the time that we’re all now used to everything sucking. Burnout, depression, anxiety, anger, fear, this has incrementally become our new normal over the last few years. It’s to the point where I can start an article with the words “everything sucks” and know in my bones that the reader agrees with me. That’s the baseline reality we all wade through everyday, our feet trudging through the muck of news and social media. Our heroes fall, villains rise, the music and movies we love are tainted by the predators that made them, and everyone is shouting all the time–half for good reasons and the other half for bad reasons. It’s exhausting.

This is exactly why watching Won’t You Be My Neighbor? felt like a form of therapy, of self-care. The documentary is a reminder that there is good in the world–or at least there was while Fred Rogers was alive. The film focuses on Rogers’ life, career, and philosophy, specifically the creation and evolution of the kids’ show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. It also charts Rogers’ ascendance from local TV puppeteer to a quiet crusader championing the dignity of children and the positive impact television can have on young lives. It’s a beautiful film, quiet and charming and moving, effective enough to make a 34-year-old man who actually didn’t even grow up taking regular trips to Fred’s neighborhood weep just a little bit on an airplane.

What resonates in this film, the reason it pulled even a casual fan like myself in and didn’t let go, is its depiction of a purely good person whose only major flaw was literally caring too much. Rogers cared about kids, wanting to treat them with respect. He cared about what they thought and felt, asking them the kind of direct questions adults reserve for each other. And his message, present in every single segment and song and skit, was that kids–every kid, no matter where they lived or what they looked like–were special.

It sounds like a groaner message, the kind of mushy junk that’s ripe for parody (and Mr. Rogers was definitely parodied). But Rogers knew that there were plenty of kids, young kids, that weren’t hearing that message at home or at school and that he could provide that warmth via public broadcasting.

Mr. Rogers was truly good, but we can’t have truly good things. I could start listing the names of beloved public figures that have been outed as everything ranging from racists to rapists and every gross and/or criminal thing in between. But I don’t need to because you know everyone I’m talking about, and probably even a few I don’t yet know about and will be even more upset to learn about. And for all of his life, even stretching back before the current suckiness we’re currently stuck in, people have been trying to expose Mr. Rogers. He has to have some dark secret. Why would he care about kids? Why was he so sensitive? He had to be hiding something!

This idea that Fred Rogers could not actually be as pure as he presented himself led to a whole lot of rumors about him having a violent past, particularly one about him being an ex-military sniper with arms covered in tattoos, hidden by his sensible cardigan. It’s all false. He was not a child molester, he never flipped off America on TV, and he had no tattoos counting off all of his confirmed kills. By all accounts, he was a thoroughly ordinary man with an extraordinary level of compassion.

It feels like everything in the world sucks and everyone betrays us, so we all assume that Fred Rogers has to suck to. He doesn’t. If there’s only one good person in entertainment, it looks like it was Fred Rogers. And Won’t You Be My Neighbor? brings a little bit of good back into the world while you watch it.

Where to stream Won't You Be My Neighbor?