My neighbor just lent me a few old videos of 'Pee Wee’s Play House" for my 5 year old son.
He just loves them. I never saw it when it was on, but they are… ummmmm… quite odd.
Obviously children eat this stuff up, but they are eccentric.
It makes me sad that the stupid (in my opinion) controversy surrounding Mr. Herman’s private life led to the end of this show.
Opinions?
I LOVED Peewee, but when my kids were little, they were afraid of him and never wanted to watch the show. Now that they’re teens, they think he’s cool.
And yeah, I thought the whole thing was ridiculous, too.
I was a preschool teacher when Pee-Wee’s Playhouse was TV and every week my class would play the Secret Word game, much to my Director’s chagrin.
My daughter and I absolutely loved that show. I’m insanely jealous that you have them on tape. That’s one of the few shows she liked that my Mom didn’t tape hours and hours of for her.
First, the character’s name is spelled Pee-wee Herman, hyphen and small “w”.
Second, Pee-wee’s Playhouse had already been cancelled, due to low ratings, by mutual agreement between CBS and Paul Reubens, before the arrest in Florida in July 1991. That’s why he was in Florida with long hair and a goatee – production on the series had already shut down. Normally summertime is one of the busiest times of production, given the typical lead time of two months between production and airing of a filmed television episode.
The arrest did pull the remaining summertime reruns off the air sooner than planned.
9 a.m. Saturday mornings were a definite date with my eldest daughter when she was quite young. Usually she’d be wearing her PW PJs. I wish her younger siblings had been able to appreciate it as it happened. (Did somebody say wish?)
We now have a boxed set of several tapes (a Father’s Day gift from my kids), the Christmas special, and Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.
Mekka-lekka hi, mekka-hiney-ho!
I love Pee-wee’s Playhouse. My favourite scene was where Cowboy Curtis (Lawrence Fishburn), Peewee, and Carlos were sitting around the camp fire with the paraphrased dialogue below:
CC: Dang! Peewee, your weiner is bigger than mine.
Peewee: Well Duh!
Carlos: I could have told you that Cowboy Curtis.
CC: Well, that’s because your weiner is the biggest of them all.
I laughed so hard when I saw that one. The Christmas special was pretty funny too with all the cheap sexual innuendo.
HBO Comedy has been rerunning the old Pee-wee Herman Show special staged in Los Angeles before Pee-wee went kiddie. Absolutely worth seeing if you haven’t and even if you have.
I was in my 30s when Pee-wee’s Playhouse was on, and it actually got me out of bed on Saturday mornings to watch. No small feat. I loved Jambi, he was such a queen, and I also recall some byplay with him and Cowboy Curtis, who has just wished for new cowboy boots:
Jambi: What size do you wear?
CC: Fourteen.
Jambi, impressed: Fourteen?
CC: Well, you know what they say . . . Big feet, big boots!
I also remember Pee-wee wishing for a grass skirt to sway and swish, and Jambi going, “Swish? Did somebody say swish?”
Gayest show on TV! Loved it.
The Christmas special was some of the most bizarre children’s programming I’ve ever seen. k.d. lang, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Cher, Oprah Winfrey (looking quite scary), Joan Rivers, and (gasp) Charo.
If Nancy Reagan had seen this stuff she’d have said to hell with the war on drugs. 
I was always amazed at Miss Yvonne. The juxtaposition of that ridiculous hairstyle and that amazing cleavage simply fried my brain.
I recall quite clearly some mention of smoke detectors, and her saying in a breathy voice, “I’ve got a smoke detector in my kitchen, right over the stove.” Well, that’s what you heard. But her lips clearly formed the words “in my bedroom, right over the bed.” It was re-dubbed, and I always wondered if it was because of network bluenoses or because they wanted that innuendo…
I miss Chairy! and looking up Pee-wee’s nose right into his brain!
Miss Yvonne was the best! She was the sluttiest person in town…not to mention the oldest. LOL