If you’ve been watching the repeats of “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” on Adult Swim, you know they recently ran through the entire catalog of episodes. I wasn’t a regular watcher of Pee-Wee in its first run (to my regret), and watching all five years of the show now, I have one question:
Why did it get so bad?
By the last season, it seems that Miss Yvonne and King of Cartoons were the only guest characters who turned up with any regularity. Cartoons or other weird video segments were introduced and allowed to run longer than before, almost as if they were deliberately trying to fill space in the show. The last episode was a clip show, for gosh sakes. The last shows have little energy or creativity; they actually seem kind of sad, like a party where only a few people showed up.
So noticeable is the drop in quality that I can’t put it down to any kind of creative choice—I can’t believe Paul Reubens actually wanted the show to be like that. So I wonder if there’s some kind of scoop behind it. Did CBS cut Pee-Wee’s budget? Did they not have the time they needed to write the episodes? Did Paul Reubens just not care anymore?
Anyone have any knowledge of this? Or is it all in my head, and the last season of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse is actually great?
To your second post, perhaps because parents don’t want their kids watching a show whose creator and star was arrested for public masturbation at a gay porn theater.
Although Pee-Wee’s Playhouse was a kids’ show, its bizarre humor and double entendres gave it a large adult fan base as well. It was actually based on a stage show Paul Reubens created called The Pee-Wee Herman Show both parodying and paying tribute to such kids shows with a little ribald humor thrown in. The show was filmed for an HBO special, which is now available on DVD.
I vote for “Paul Reubens didn’t care anymore.” According to Wiki:
In early 1991, Reubens had been offered by CBS to continue for a 6th season, but Reubens had other ideas. He had decided early on to end the Playhouse at the end of his 5th season, but did agree to allow re-runs of the show to continue throughout the summer.
I remember seeing that show on HBO at age 10 or 12. I was rather disturbed by it; the combination of kid-show style and adult content threw my young brain for a loop.
One segment–I think it was the closing bit–involved Pee-Wee bringing a woman from the audience up on stage, hypnotizing her with a puppet, and having her remove her dress. She then left the theater and walked down the street wearing only her slip (which was far more conservative than most of Paris Hilton’s outfits), as the camera followed her along during the closing credits.
Being an impressionable young’un, I believed without question that this poor woman had suffered the embarrassment of walking down the street in her underwear, and it never occurred to me that she might be a confederate. I was really upset by the whole thing; I’d forgotten about it until now.
I had a guy friend (who wanted more, but, um, no) named Phil who was a great underage drinking buddy. Every Saturday morning when PW came on one or the other of us would phone the other and we’d stay on the phone throughout the show. We’d laugh together about the funnies and yell out the secret word together on the phone. It was a lot of fun. I think we watched Smurfs via phone too.
Now, I have maybe 10 eps TiVo’d for my 5 y-o son and he LOVES the show. It’s quite harmless, basically just a grown man acting like a child and being silly. Small kids really enjoy that premise.
Pee-Wee’s Playhouse was my favorite show when I was 6-8 years old. I even had the entire action figure set, along with a miniature playhouse, and my brother and friends and I would act out our own live show in my basement. However, by around season 4, I either grew out with it, or realized myself that it was past its prime.
I’m reloving the show now in adult swim…I honestly think that the reason it was placed there was to appeal to #1 people like me and #2 potheads. And I’m amazed how much adult humor was actually snuck into the show - they weren’t even trying to be discreet about Dogchair looking up Ms Yyvonne’s dress.