DVD Review: Fraggle Rock: Complete First Season, 1983
One April day on a Concorde flight between London and NYC, head Muppeteer Jim Henson decided he wanted help children understand other cultures and encourage environmentalism. From his scrawled notes replicated in this boxed set came the 1980s kids’ TV show Fraggle Rock.
The premise is simple: there are three worlds. One is inhabited by the Fraggles: adventurous Gobo, indecisive Hawaiian-shirt clad Wembley, chronic worrier Boober, hippie chick Mokey, and Red, the ultimate Type A personality who looks like a Sesame Street Twiddlebug with 2 pom-poms stuck to her head. Down in Fraggle Rock they are joined by the Doozers, small green workaholics who make drinking-straw-like constructions that the Fraggles eat. The Rock is linked to an open area inhabited by the doofy monster Gorgs, and another tunnel leads to “Outer Space” aka where the human beings, or “Silly Creatures” live.
I haven’t seent he show in about 20 years, and I actually found myself appreciating parts of it more than I did at the time. Mokey and Red don’t grate on my young-boy-uninterested-in-girls nerves as much as they used to, although I find myself wondering how anybody could maintain a relationship with Red, and what Mokey and Red have in common that produces their friendship. I can also appreciate the music more, especially the cute “Love Potion #9″ spoof in the episode “We Love You Wembley” and the song about friendship performed by Boober and Red while trapped in a cave in the episode “Marooned”. That segment, which also includes a serious discussion of death and asphyxiation, was a bit shocking to me now, let alone a 7-year-old watching it at the time.
Fraggle Rock ranks a distant third in the Henson TV canon, coming after Sesame Street and The Muppet Show. This is not an insult. It’s simply just more squarely aimed at kids and lacking the slight adult smirking snarkiness that made the other 2 shows so memorable. Most of the characters, with the exception of Wembley (love those rolling eyes) and Boober (the wonderful neuroticism) aren’t very memorable. Henson took a largely hands-off approach to the show due to his work in movies, and the most memorable figures are Henson’s Convincing John and Cantus, incidental characters who only appear in one episode each. John is an excellent recast of Henson’s manic Sesame Street game show host Guy Smiley as a revivalist preacher, and Cantus is a Zen minstrel flautist who travels throughout the Rock.
The bonuses include a long but fascinating hour-long interview with the show’s cast and crew that reveal the following;
- Mokey was named after one of Henson’s childhood friends.
- The caves were based on Bermuda landmarks.
-The show was HBO’s first original program, which I suppose makes it the predecessor of Sex and the City and The Sopranos.
Contemplate that.
Grade: B+
