The Magic of Pee-wee Herman in a Dark Year
The day the World Health Organization labeled Omicron a “variant of concern” felt as heavy as any since the pandemic had begun, and I was listening to Pee-wee Herman crack bad jokes with a talking chair. For one night, his puppet friends from Pee-wee’s Playhouse, the hit children’s TV show from the ’80s, had reunited on the radio for an hour of banter and old soul records. Their jokes were stilted but comfortable—the type that make you roll your eyes and chuckle simultaneously. But the episode felt almost like a transmission from another planet, or at least a simpler time. For me, sitting on my living-room couch, trying to push away the dread of this mysterious new coronavirus strain, it was a light shining into darkness.
I was in middle school when came out. The show was a jubilant, chaotic mix of live action, puppetry, and animation that looked nothing like the typical, cheaply drawn . The tone mashed up the corny innocence of ’50s kids’ TV with the mirror-and-laser-beam aesthetic of ’80s New Wave. At the helm was the rail-thin Pee-wee Herman, dressed in a close-fitting gray suit, red bow tie, and white-leather loafers. He was a grown man who acted like a 5-year-old who had just downed a box of Frosted Flakes. didn’t stand a chance.
