MacGYVER YOUR ENTHUSIASM (14)
By:
February 16, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating favorite TV shows from the Eighties (1984–1993). Series edited by Josh Glenn.
PEE-WEE’S PLAYHOUSE | 1986–1991
I was too tall, way too tall. I was hairy, too much body hair for a girl. And I smelled, or at least that’s what it seemed like. Boys hated me; one grabbed my arm and compared me to a gorilla, and that was first grade, and when I think about it now, my cheeks still burn. My parents were intellectual and nerdy; my older sister wanted little to do with me. I sequestered myself in my room and played with my dollhouse or humped a large stuffed sheep or tried to get the cats to pay attention to me as they tried to escape me.
By the time of my first encounter with Pee-wee’s Playhouse, I had just dropped out of my senior year in high school and was no longer a child. Yet, the way Paul Reubens portrayed Pee-wee on what was billed as a children’s show spoke to something deep inside of me. I had seen Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, so I knew who Pee-wee was: a total spaz, a dork who did a weird dance that went viral before the internet, a lovable idiot who seemed to want you to love him as much as he loved you. Here was Pee-wee, in my living room, on a Saturday morning, the same time I’d watched cartoons when I was little.
Pee-wee lived in a crazy, colorful castle and was friends with a talking chair and a talking globe and a talking genie in a box and a talking robot and a talking window. He acted like a child, even though he wasn’t. He talked like a girl, even though he wasn’t. The point of the show was unclear, which was kind of the point of the show. This was a person letting his freak flag fly and encouraging everyone else to do the same. It was hard to resist him, to not want to be him.
After five years, Pee-wee’s Playhouse went off the air, and not a year after that, Reubens was arrested for “exposure of a sexual organ” in an adult theater in Sarasota, Florida. According to The New York Times: “When Mr. Reubens entered the courtroom through a side entrance not normally used by defendants just before 9:30 A.M., he did not resemble either his Pee-wee Herman character or the scowling man in long hair shown in his mug shot after he was arrested.” Was this porn theater masturbator Paul or Pee-wee? I wondered.
Last year, Reubens died, and his midcentury home in the hills of Los Feliz on the east side of Los Angeles was put up for sale. The house had wrap-around views and kitschy wallpaper and a vanity mirror with Hollywood lights. As I clicked through the images, I hoped he had been happy there, whoever he was, Pee-wee or Paul, a freak who made me feel like less of one when I needed it.
MacGYVER YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Michael Grasso on MAX HEADROOM | Heather Quinlan on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 | Mark Kingwell on CHINA BEACH | Judith Zissman on SANTA BARBARA | Adelina Vaca on TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES | Deborah Wassertzug on MOONLIGHTING | Josh Glenn on VOLTRON | Adam McGovern on A VERY BRITISH COUP | Alex Brook Lynn on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION | Nikhil Singh on CHOCKY | Sara Ryan on REMINGTON STEELE | Vanessa Berry on THE YOUNG ONES | Dan Reines on GET A LIFE | Susannah Breslin on PEE-WEE’S PLAYHOUSE | Marc Weidenbaum on LIQUID TELEVISION | Elina Shatkin on PERFECT STRANGERS | Lynn Peril on THE SIMPSONS | David Smay on THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF MOLLY DODD | Annie Nocenti on THE SINGING DETECTIVE | Tom Nealon on MIAMI VICE | Anthony Miller on ST. ELSEWHERE | Gordon Dahlquist on BLACKADDER | Peggy Nelson on SEINFELD | Nicholas Rombes on TWIN PEAKS | Ramona Lyons on ÆON FLUX
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!