I love Pee-wee’s Playhouse so much I wanna marry it

Rebel. Nonconformist. Outsider. Weirdo. I know you are, but what am I?

I didn’t get to see the entire run of Pee-wee’s Playhouse during its original airing from 1986-1991. Blame it on my shift from a kiddo to a tween, blame it on divorced-parent custody scheduling that didn’t keep me in front of the same television set every Saturday morning, blame it on whatever.

But after watching the Paul Reubens documentary Pee-wee as Himself this past June, I sure as heckfire wasn’t going to let another minute pass without rectifying that mistake. So over the summer, I devoured all 45 episodes of Pee-wee’s Playhouse plus the hour-long Christmas special and it was a revelation.

No wonder I identified so strongly with the Playhouse crew and why watching these episodes felt like coming home to a long-lost family after all these years!

Pee-wee’s Playhouse is a sanctuary for creative weirdos.

This was a show about being an oddball among your fellow oddballs, not second-guessing your imaginative impulses but celebrating them. And it was developed and nurtured by people who were just as rebellious and inventive as I wanted to be.

Listening to Paul, his fellow cast members and puppeteers, and show producers talk about making the show made me realize what a gift it was to have this tribe of creative weirdos be given so much artistic license with the product.

Pee-wee’s Playhouse had puppets of all kinds, including marionettes; stop-motion animation and claymation in addition to traditional cel animation; and sets that swirled together Googie and Memphis design with touches of psychedelia and Cubism. As artist (and Playhouse production designer) Gary Panter said, the playhouse was “mind-expanding in the best sense of the word.”

It was visually and thematically its own thing, and though it spoke to kids, it didn’t punch down. There was beat poetry, interpretive dance, musical references from boogie-woogie to Dixieland jazz to surf rock to Grace Jones and Cher, and subversive humor for daaaays.

Compare Pee-wee to the other Saturday morning cartoons of 1986: Care Bears, Smurfs, Muppet Babies, The Real Ghostbusters, Punky Brewster, and Jem (hey, you know I loved Jem).

How did The Beat Trio of Puppetland, Miss Yvonne, Cowboy Curtis, Globey, and Pterri fit in with those shows? They didn’t! The minute you saw the Pee-wee sign and heard the soothing jungle music introduction to the theme song, you knew you were watching something wholly unique and vastly different from anything else on TV. And it was glorious.

This is the season two version of the opening. Still the most amazing thing.

No wonder I’m drawn like a tractor beam to absurdist cartoons and comedy. Pee-wee’s nuttiness was the mantle picked up by Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim offerings and other shows in so many ways. I can see the spark in series as varied as Adventure Time, Space Ghost: Coast to Coast/Cartoon Planet, The Tick, and even Flight of the Conchords.

Pee-wee’s Playhouse is more validating than therapy.

I’m kicking myself for falling off the Pee-wee wagon after season two and not making the show a priority watch during my fragile tween years, because it would likely have bolstered my self-confidence and made me feel less alone in my creative desires.

Sometimes watching a Playhouse episode reminds me of the secret movies I used to make with my friends in middle school and high school. We’d dress up in layers of mismatched clothing we found at the Salvation Army, throw on some ratty wigs, and film ourselves in nonsensical plays and music videos for our own amusement.

It didn’t make sense to anyone but ourselves and that was just fine. We weren’t making the movies for anyone but ourselves. As Paul says about the initial process in making the TV series, “Everybody was sort of like, green, and kind of like, ‘let’s put on a show’ and it was like a ricketyness and an innocence about the whole thing and it just felt right.”

Though Paul also wanted the show to be a huge success, “really influential and widely watched” — and it was! — I love how even today, it feels like it’s speaking to me and validating my little lonely weirdo self.

And let’s take a moment to appreciate Pterri:

Before we rocket through the secret side door on our scooter, can we talk about how Pterri is definitely the greatest character and my aspirational spirit animal? He’s sensitive and wants to be appreciated by his people:

But he also has a healthy sense of self-worth:

And he loves snacktime, lunchtime, and dinnertime:

Not to mention that Halloween is his favorite holiday:

Long live Pterri!