 | | Although it will come as a huge surprise to many, the Pee-Wee's Playhouse DVD set is a phenomenal archive of an astoundingly good program |
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Back in 1988, my friend Ryan and I made a 90 minute audio cassette entitled
Drive Your Mom Crazy. Of the 15-20 "songs" on this album (none of which resemble anything
not written by Wesley Willis), my favorite was called "Pee Wee's Dead (Thank the Lord)." It was all about how Pee-Wee and his idiot Playhouse flew out into space, and crashlanded on an alien planet. Extra-terrestials murdered Pee-Wee and there was a joyous celebration thereafter. A tad morbid for a fourth-grade imagination, ye might think, but you have to take into account the copious amounts of sugar and cartoon violence we were imbibing at the time. But to get to the point, this story illustrates something that, after watching some of the new Pee-Wee's Playhouse DVD set, becomes startlingly apparent.
Pee-Wee was WAY over my head in 1988. Back then, I thought Pee-Wee was stupid, fluffy, and prissy. Pee-Wee was for babies. The trouble was, I took Pee-Wee entirely at face value. Can you imagine? A age-indeterminate manchild with heavy makeup in a tight grey suit, prancing around a gawdy novelty home filled with kitschy furniture and talking plastic friends. I took that literally. It took twenty years, but now it's obvious that Pee-Wee's Playhouse was awesome. It's really not so much about Pee-Wee as it is a venue for the truly bizarre and outrageously funny. Each episode is chock full of strange, psychedelic claymations, off-kilter humor, subtle and insular jokes that will be lost on kids, amusing cartoon montages, and of course, the bottomless trove of Pee-Wee's eccentricities.
What's also fascinating about Pee-Wee's Playhouse is that the ostensible focus on Pee-Wee is not so much due to the modeling of each storyline around him, but rather his being a catalyst for a constantly rotating sideshow of bizarre distractions. Pee-Wee has an attention span of about 3-5 seconds, which causes him to run riot all over the set, and engage in a new fad interest every minute or two. All this eclecticism is held together by pieces of plot that in themselves, tend to not be very noteworthy, but as a whole becomes something quite glorious. Pee-Wee's Playhouse, I have concluded, is one of those shows-- like the Simpsons, that operates on two entirely separate levels. While it works for kids (particularly hyperactive ones), it is also a refreshing experience for adults. It's been a while since anything this insular made it onto television. And now that I mention it, it's so eccentric and uncompromising, that's its surprising that it ever made it onto television at all.
I know that many people have an inexplicable (well, maybe not so inexplicable) allergy to Pee-Wee due to associative issues and leftover impressions from youth. You too may find yourself hesitating to view this program, due quite possibly to negative baggage you hold about Pee-Wee and the Playhouse, but do yourself a favor. This new set is killer, and you'll have to do some serious work to convince me otherwise. This is the best thing I've seen in a very long time. And bonus points for Phil Hartmann as Captain Carl, and Lawrence Fishburne as Cowboy Curtis.
