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The video release of "Pee-wee's Playhouse" gives a Saturday morning TV classic its due

BY JOYCE MILLMAN
Illustration by Katherine Streeter

It was a stroke of very bad luck. For exposing himself in a Sarasota, Florida porno theater, a misdemeanor to which he later pled "no contest," Pee-wee Herman has suffered out of all proportion to the crime. Actually, it's Pee-wee's creator, Paul Reubens, who has done the suffering. Pee-wee, for all intents and purposes, died with Reubens' arrest that July day in 1991. Judgment was swift and amazingly mean-spirited. Reubens lost everything: CBS immediately took his Emmy-winning Saturday morning kids' show, "Pee-wee's Playhouse," off the air. Production of Pee-wee toys ceased. The media pounced, printing Reubens' mug shot and running stories about how to tell your kids Pee-wee won't be on TV anymore. Comedians kicked him when he was down. Traces of Pee-wee were zealously removed from children's eyes (his cameo was excised from the celebrity-studded "Sesame Street" video "Put Down the Duckie" ) as thoroughly as a Kremlin purge. It was as if years of bottled up animosity towards — and fear of — Pee-wee Herman had been gleefully set free. Compare Pee-wee's ordeal to the relative quickness with which Hugh Grant was welcomed back into America's good graces after his much publicized sex scandal. Of course, it was different with Grant. He played the game, charmingly stuttering out an apology on national TV. And he wasn't the star of a kiddie show. But more important, his indiscretion — being caught by police getting a blow job from a hooker in a parked car — was perceived as good, clean heterosexual fun. But Pee-wee... Pee-wee made people nervous, with his sexual ambiguity and his red lipstick and his giggle and his little mincing walk which was a dead-perfect imitation of a four-year-old's busy gait but which, to people without kids — like, say, David Letterman — looked mighty odd. Letterman's queasy, hostile behavior towards Pee-wee, a frequent guest on the old "Late Night," may have been a put-on, but who could tell for sure? (Richard Simmons bears the brunt of Dave's abuse these days.) A lot of people, it seemed, were waiting for an excuse to run Pee-wee out of town, and the poor guy went and gave them one. By all accounts, Reubens was devastated by the arrest and its consequences. In September of 1991, he emerged from seclusion to make a brief stab at being a good sport. Dressed as Pee-wee for what may have been the last time, Reubens opened the MTV Awards by asking, "Heard any good jokes lately?," and received a prolonged, poignant ovation. Then he dropped out of sight. But, after a while, Reubens started to pick up the pieces. He had a cameo in his friend Tim Burton's "Batman Returns," and a larger role in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Last year, he won an Emmy nomination for his recurring role on "Murphy Brown" as Andrew Lansing, the network boss's scheming, officious nephew. Andrew is basically Pee-wee, without the makeup and at his spoiled-brattiest. Now 44, Reubens — who was quoted at the height of Pee-weemania as saying he didn't want to be 40 and still squeezing into the little gray suit — had found a way to keep his alter ego alive while maintaining his (admittedly tattered) dignity. Emboldened by the enthusiastic response to the "Murphy Brown" role, Reubens is now working to restore "Pee-wee's Playhouse" — his masterwork— to its rightful place as one of TV's most influential and honored (22 Emmys, two Parents Choice awards) kids' shows. Reubens is overseeing the reissue of "Pee-wee's Playhouse" on home video, with the first four volumes (each containing two episodes) arriving in stores on November 5. As any channel surfer will tell you, MGM/United Artists' infomercial campaign for the "Playhouse" reissues has been going strong since August. Hosted by E! Entertainment's Eleanor Mondale and Mike Rowe, the infomercial features clips from the show, appearances by Pee-wee's pals Miss Yvonne (Lynne Stewart) and the King of Cartoons (William Marshall) and testimonials from parents (mostly moms) about the show's value as fun and educational kids' TV. "Playhouse" is clearly being pitched to boomer types who were Pee-wee fans 10 years ago and who now have young children of their own — the type of parents who aren't about to let a perfectly neat part of their past (not to mention, a perfectly neat show they can watch with their kids) disappear forever, just because some bully-bigot thinks Pee-wee is too scary. Indeed, for anyone who once worshipped at the altar of "Pee-wee's Playhouse," the reissues are an occasion for joy, or at least a Big Shoe Dance. Watching these episodes again is like coming across the old box of treasures you used to keep hidden under the bed when you were a kid. "Pee-wee's Playhouse," which ran from 1986 to 1991, was the essence of '80s post-modernism. A convergence of the L.A. art, animation, comedy and music scene (Gary Panter designed the set, Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh did the music), "Playhouse" mixed up cartoons from the '30s and '40s and decor, furniture, fashions and lingo from the '50s, '60s and '70s into the ultimate '80s stew. Fast-paced, kitschy and side-splittingly goofy, "Playhouse" is still a wonder to behold. With its off-kilter Jetsons-meets-Dali set design, computer and traditional animation, and talking furniture and puppets (including Chairry, Globey, Pterry the Pteradactyl, Randy the Bully and the little Claymation dinosaur family who lived in the mouse hole), the Playhouse is Pee-wee's imagination come to life, and it's the imagination of the eternal 8-year-old. "Pee-wee's Playhouse" is utterly timeless. What's refreshingly absent from the show is the ironic detachment that soured comedy in the '80s. "Playhouse" was campy for sure, gay campy most definitely. But Reubens was unabashedly sincere. And he was remarkably in touch with the kiddie psyche — you can see that in Pee-wee's relationship to his toys. Pee-wee kept the most awesome of his playthings under glass in a whirling pastry case that he'd sometimes inspect at the start of the show, squealing "I love my toys!" with bow-tie-busting pride. Reubens understood that, for kids, toys are the currency, the stuff of dreams, the root of all joy, envy and ecstasy, the first and truest playmates; toys bridge the gap between the secret world of the imagination and the big world outside. Simultaneously sending up and reveling in kid acquisitiveness and the culture of plenty, "Pee-wee's Playhouse" vividly conjures the gleam, the smell, the feel of a brand new toy. On "Playhouse," Pee-wee waged a constant struggle between sweetness and selfishness, generosity and greed, and that was a struggle anybody could relate to. In the 1988 prime-time Christmas special (which aired once and is part of the reissue), Pee-wee's wish list is so long that Santa doesn't have any toys left to give to other children. "Gee, I'm so sorry to hear that," says Pee-wee in the mockingly polite, high-pitched warble he saves for his most withering taunts. "Please let me know how it turns out!" Pee-wee is the Id unleashed, and like other wise children's TV shows ("Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" and the "Playhouse"-influenced "Big Comfy Couch"), "Playhouse" says it's OK to be a kid (although it's doubtful that Mister Rogers ever ran around with giant underpants on his head). Not that the "Playhouse" was without boundaries. Pee-wee learned lessons too, in simple, direct and funny ways. Some of these were lessons in friendship or honesty. Others were practical lessons, like how to make French toast or throw a pajama party. "Playhouse" was a wholesome oasis amid the carnage of the networks' Saturday morning lineup. It was as educational as anything on PBS. Yet it dared to teach the stuff that can't be taught, that has to be absorbed, like parody and satire — stuff that makes life infinitely richer, and funnier, once you crack the code. Stressing above all else that play was good for the soul, "Pee-wee's Playhouse" was as liberating for grown-ups as it was for kids. Watching it as an adult is, of course, a whole different experience; like "Rocky and Bullwinkle" and "Looney Tunes," it's a trove of hidden meanings and double entendres. In the "Conky's Breakdown" episode (Volume 2 of the reissue), for example, a then-unknown Jimmy Smits plays a repairman who comes to the Playhouse to fix Pee-wee's robot Conky and catches the eye of man-hungry Miss Yvonne ("The most beautiful woman in Puppetland"). Showing her his wrench, he tells her that a repairman always has "the right tools and knows how to use them." The disembodied genie-head Jambi (John Paragon) sends off a queenly vibe, especially in the presence of hunky Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne, back when people called him Larry). In one episode, Pee-wee asks Jambi to grant Curtis some new footwear and Jambi raises an eyebrow and says, "You know what they say about big feet..." (The answer: "Big boots!") As for camp, the Christmas special is a veritable who's-who of gay and lesbian icons, from k.d. lang to Grace Jones to the Del Rubio Triplets. Whether you take it at face value or as a goof, "Pee-wee's Playhouse" has the same giggling-in-the-dark effect. It's about fun and mischief, naughtiness and gratification, and the knowledge that none of those things are so awful that they can't be forgiven. (No wonder "Playhouse" became a gay refuge.) Pee-wee gave his audience the gifts of security and optimism. Sure, life outside the Playhouse can be cold and unforgiving, and nobody knows that better than Reubens. But when you pop a "Playhouse" episode into the VCR and Pee-wee starts cutting up to the calliope bounce of the theme song, you know in an instant that innocence lost is often just misplaced and despite everything, you can go home again. Any Pee-wee fans left? Join the discussion in Table Talk.