Inside Pee-wee's Playhouse by Caseen Gaines

Just as cassette players had replaced turntables, the new and inventive consumed the old and traditional. The show not only provided a generation of children with something wildly entertaining to watch as they ate their sugared cereal, but it also became symbolic of a national changing of the guard. Burroughs once said, 'In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents.' This was certainly true for Playhouse. In the weeks following its debut, Playhouse was frequently cited as being not only the best new show of the season, but the best program on Saturday morning, period. The Washington Post described the program as 'utterly magical, beautifully realized, and veritably giddy with plaintive charm.' The show gained the respect of parent advocacy groups and critics alike for being the lone Saturday morning children’s show that was not completely animated. While Pee-wee’s Playhouse was hardly the first show to blend animation, puppetry, and liveaction - pbs’s Sesame Street had crossed that bridge almost 20 years earlier - it added a subversive, hipster sensibility to the format, providing a gust of fresh air to a tired timeslot reserved for the stale ideas of network execs. Into the Saturday morning television war zone stepped Pee-wee Herman, the man-child in a too-small gray suit of armor, a soldier of a new era of creative children’s programming. Television as we knew it would be forever changed. With the scrutiny of children’s television increasing, President Ronald Reagan established National Children’s Television Awareness Week that October, a month after the new season of Saturday morning programming debuted. Peggy Charren, the founder and president of Action for Children’s Television, claimed that Saturday morning tv was 'filled with do-goody nonsense' and she urged networks to introduce shows with more educational value. Critics described the networks’ lineups as being filled with 'program-length commercials' for merchandising like Pound Puppies, G.I. As children urged their parents to empty their wallets for toys based on their favorite Saturday morning cartoons, some parents began paying closer attention to children’s programming, and many didn’t like what they saw. There were superheroes (Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians), animated adaptations of live-action movies and tv shows (It’s Punky Brewster, Star Wars), new shows with established characters (Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Smurfs), and even a show starring a larger-than-life wrestling personality (Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling). The three major television networks, abc, cbs, and nbc, aired cartoons that lacked in originality and, for the most part, had no educational value. In the spring of 1986, Saturday morning children’s television was popular, profitable, and predictable.

Inside Pee-wee's Playhouse by Caseen Gaines