1981
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Family
Family opens with Jodie setting up a camera and calling for Sam, Muffy and Jeff to come in and have a picture taken for her photo album. Sam smoothes out his mustache and hair. Jeff comes in playing with a paddle ball and asks why they are getting their pictures taken. Jodie says because she realizes she doesn't have a picture of the four of them together. Muffy shows up dressed in a fancy hat and frilly dress. She saw the camera and thought a professional photographer was coming, and she hoped this might launch her modeling career. Jodie feels badly that Muffy misunderstood but tells her she looks pretty enough for a picture.
Jodie sets the timer on the camera, brings the picture into focus and then joins them for a picture. After it's taken she rushes off with the camera to develop the pictures, leaving Sam, Muffy and Jeff frozen in place, wondering if it's O.K. to move yet.
Later, Jeff is looking over Jodie's shoulder as she looks at a picture of her Aunt Millie, and she tells him she's sad because there's a family party at her Aunt Millie's farm and she couldn't go because she had to work instead. Aunt Millie's farm is special to her because she and her brother spent almost every summer there. She's sad because she misses her family.
"What's a family?" Jeff wonders. Jodie explains a family is people who live together and take care of each other. She sings, "A Family is Love."
Next, in Muffy's room, Muffy shows us her photograph of her family. Everyone's names rhyme but hers -- her family ran out of rhyme so they named her Muffy.
To try and cheer her up, Sam takes Jodie to a nearby hospital on her meal break. Jodie wonders what could possibly cheer her up in a hospital, and then Sam shows her that they're in the nursery, where the newborn babies are, and it does make her smile.
Back at the store, Jeff is setting up a group of mannequins for his own "family picture", a man and woman for a mom and dad, and two kids for a brother and sister. He sets them up, sets the timer, telling the mannequins to "try and look natural", and gets into the picture himself. But he realizes they aren't a real family, because unlike us he was "born into a department store". Still, he realizes that his life is quite special.
Next we see Jeff dancing through the department store singing "Hocus Pocus Alimagocus".
Though he appreciates with he has, he's sorry he doesn't have a family. "I wish there was a little magic left over for that."
In the computer room, TXL shows Sam a picture of a group of gorillas, and explains that unlike most animals, gorillas live in extended family groups. Sam remarks that the gorillas remind him of the Crenshaws at Thanksgiving!
Suddenly, an alarm sounds. It's the burglar alarm. Sam is at a loss as to what could have caused it, and then he realizes maybe there's a burglar in the store. As he goes to find out he says that if it�s a burglar, "I sure hope it's a small one."
Muffy is also searching for the burglar, and they bump into each other and startle each other before joining forces to look some more.
Jeff is taking his "sister" mannequin Cynthia back down to the stock room, but when he gets on the elevator there's a strange lady there. He wonders who she might be, and then blurts out, "the burglar! . . . You must be the burglar that Sam is looking for!"
"For heavens sake, what do you take me for!" the lady exclaims. Then Jeff begins to recognize the woman and asks us, "Where have we seen that face before? You're Jodie's Aunt Millie!"
Aunt Millie has heard of Jeff, too, and tells him she's been walking around for hours waiting for Jodie. She begins examining him closely and feeling his face. "Are you sure you used to be a mannequin? You look so real!" Jeff explains that he is real as long as he has the magic hat on. He accidentally leaves the elevator without Cynthia, and after the door closes, Aunt Millie decides to try to bring her to life with magic words too. It doesn't work. "Well, it was worth a try!" she says.
Next TXL sings about "All Kinds of Families" and we see doll houses with different kinds of families, a two parent family with many children, two parents with only one child, maybe just a mother by herself raising the kids.
Back in the children's department, Jodie is finishing her camera display and decides to take a picture of it. As she focuses the camera, Aunt Millie sneaks in front of the camera to surprise her. Jodie is surprised and delighted and gives Aunt Millie a hug. Aunt Millie has brought oatmeal cookies and a large warm scarf she just knitted.
Jeff looks on rather sadly and sings, "A Family is Love".
Next Emma Jones reads a Willoby tale about Wendall's weak tail which causes him to fall off the branch while sleeping, and how his sister Wanda knits a sleeping sack to hold him up while he sleeps.
Now Jodie is showing Aunt Millie pictures of her friends, Sam, Muffy and Jeff. Jeff is sitting a little bit out of the way, feeling left out. "Everybody has a family except me." Aunt Millie overhears him and tells him, "You have a family! . . . Where I come from families are people who look out for each other and help each other." Just like Jodie, Sam, Muffy, and Jeff. "You have got a family," Aunt Millie explains, "a very special family!"
Jeff is delighted, and Jodie, Sam and Muffy sing to him, "Welcome to the Family!"
Quizzes:
- A picture of Sam and his sisters. Who is the tallest?
- A picture of Muffy's family, which of her brothers or sisters are twins?
- A picture of a family, what's wrong with this picture? (One little boy has bird's feet).
Nursery Rhyme:
Notes:
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