I was talking to my friend and Good Wife-recapper extraordinaire Kate last night about A Gifted Man, which I liked rather more than she did. She was arguing that the show’s solution to the health care crisis in the presence of Patrick Wilson as a Fancy Neurologist Who Decides to Serve the Poor is incremental rather than systematic, which I basically agree with. But I also think that the existence of a show that illustrates all the big and little things that makes it difficult to obtain health care is worthwhile. Laying out and emphasizing the full extent of a problem while providing emotional hooks for viewers is something pop culture can do well. Though of course, it’s important to lay out the problem in a way that supports the best possible solution. I agree with Kate that positing that clinic employees are clueless is a bad way to go, though it’s smart for A Gifted Man to emphasize that it’s nice to have health insurance, but you also have to have a place you can use it, the knowledge to seek out the right treatment, and the resources to maintain your health in other ways.
All of which is a long way of saying that I’m curious to see what Sesame Street will do with a new character it’s introducing: Lily, whose family is financially disadvantaged enough that they have trouble keeping food on the table. As much as very special episodes are annoying, this strikes me as a good idea. The prospect of not having enough to eat is really viscerally terrifying, especially if you’re young. But it’s important for kids (and adults as well) to understand how many Americans are hungry in what’s supposed to be a land of opportunity. More than 10 percent of Americans relied on food stamps for at least part of 2010. Trying to communicate the magnitude of that problem while spurring people to action (rather than scaring them so much they shut down) is a difficult task, but I hope this special can be an occasion for broader family conversations about poverty and the economy.
And I hope they manage to integrate Lily into episodes regularly. It would be unfortunate to trot her out and then shove her and her family’s financial situation out of the picture a la Glee‘s approach to Sam’s homelessness — that show didn’t just eliminate the plotline, it got rid of the whole character. There may be two Americas, but it’s not as if they’re on opposite sides of a wall. Teaching kids not to assume that everyone has the same level of resources is a valuable lesson in social awareness. So many signifiers of coolness — clothes, birthdays, activities, cars, housing — are really signifiers of wealth, and in a deep and prolonged recession, poverty makes you socially as well as materially vulnerable. And Sesame Street can demonstrate both that vulnerability and the hope for something better by sending Lily out into the world of the show and encouraging other characters to recognize that even if they themselves aren’t hungry, poverty still affects them through their friendships.