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Fraggle Talk: Back to the Rock - Ep. 204 "The Repeatee Birds" · Muppet Fan Podcasts with ToughPigs.com

• 0:09
  Hello and welcome to Fraggle Talk Back to the Rock, the
• 0:13
  unofficial Fraggle Rock podcast brought to you by toughfix.com.
• 0:16
  This is the podcast where we cover Fraggle Rock Back to the
• 0:19
  Rock episode by episode, along with the talented producers,
• 0:22
  performers, writers and builders who helped put it all together.
• 0:25
  I'm your host, silly creature Johannes.
• 0:28
  Today we are talking about Season 2, Episode 4, The Repeat
• 0:32
  Birds, in which strawberries and radishes go to war thanks to
• 0:36
  some extremely unsettling birds. This week, we have three very
• 0:41
  fragly guests on the podcast. First up, he is a puppet builder
• 0:45
  who's worked with The Muppets, Sesame Street and the Jamaican
• 0:47
  Creature Shop. And I'm back to the rock.
• 0:49
  He's the onset wrangling supervisor and costume stylist.
• 0:53
  It's Alex Jurgen Ferguson. Hello, Jurgen.
• 0:58
  Hello there, thank you for having me on.
• 1:00
  Appreciate it. Course.
• 1:02
  Great to have you here. Our next guest is a puppeteer
• 1:05
  and puppet builder with countless credits on Muppet and
• 1:08
  Henson productions on Back to the Rock.
• 1:10
  He's a costume designer and the creature shop supervisor.
• 1:14
  It's Scott Johnson. Hello, Scott.
• 1:17
  Hello, thanks for having me. Good to see you again.
• 1:20
  Likewise, and thirdly, he's a puppeteer who's been wiggling
• 1:24
  dolls on various projects with Sesame Street and the Gemenson
• 1:27
  Company since 2007. On Back to the Rock, he performs
• 1:31
  Wrenchdoozer, the body of Pog Org, the puppetry for Jamdelin,
• 1:35
  and a giant talking radish. It's Andy Hayward.
• 1:40
  Hey, Andy. Hey, Joe, thanks for having me.
• 1:43
  It's always great to talk to you.
• 1:44
  Likewise, so good to have you guys here.
• 1:47
  I'm really excited to jump into this episode with you.
• 1:49
  Before we do, I want to ask you guys a couple of quick
• 1:52
  questions. Scott and Jurgen, did you guys
• 1:54
  have a different approach to the season for like building or
• 1:58
  refurbishing new characters from season one?
• 2:00
  Or was it just like same old, like you just kind of see
• 2:04
  something in the script and just get it up there?
• 2:06
  Or were you like doing stuff beforehand in preparation before
• 2:10
  the season started? We, well, we started, you know,
• 2:13
  we work for the, the Jim Henson creature shop.
• 2:16
  I work in in Los Angeles and, and Jurgen, Jurgen works there
• 2:19
  too, most of the time. And so we, we, we definitely
• 2:24
  start early. And of course, having having
• 2:28
  done the first season, I think we stepped into this season
• 2:31
  with, with just a little more confidence of to, to just have a
• 2:34
  little more fun and just try to try to do a little more.
• 2:38
  I think first season we were definitely, you know, like just
• 2:42
  trying to trying to find it, you know, trying to, trying to find
• 2:46
  what makes it a new show versus, you know, staying true to the
• 2:50
  original show. And so I think there was a
• 2:53
  little bit more just like kind of diving in and, and really,
• 2:57
  really going for it as much as we can.
• 2:59
  And then and 2:00 we, we, we, because we had our Calgary crew
• 3:03
  all set up and they were all so familiar for it.
• 3:06
  The like first season, you know, we were getting to know everyone
• 3:10
  was getting to know each other. So, you know, it's like when we
• 3:12
  get back up into Calgary, we've got all these puppeteers and all
• 3:16
  the, the Super talented crew up there and knowing all of them,
• 3:20
  it's just easier and quicker to just dive right in.
• 3:23
  So. Yeah.
• 3:26
  And it really felt the second time, like it was like we just
• 3:30
  picked up right where we left off.
• 3:32
  So it was very comfortable and they actually gave us a little
• 3:35
  more time up there. The second season we had more
• 3:37
  time to prep and get things ready to go, so that helped as
• 3:42
  well. Did you have a sense of like
• 3:45
  season one, like we're we're reintroducing Fraggle Rock to
• 3:49
  people, people are gonna get upset if it's too dissimilar
• 3:52
  from the original Fraggle Rock. So like, you know, maybe season
• 3:55
  one was playing it a little bit safer.
• 3:58
  Did you feel like Season 2 you got to kind of spread your wings
• 4:00
  in a different way? Is that for one of us or just
• 4:04
  anyone could join in, I mean. That that was for the two of
• 4:06
  you. I mean, I meant specifically
• 4:08
  about things like character design, costumes, props, like
• 4:11
  everything that you guys are touching.
• 4:13
  You know, there, there feels like usually there's a very
• 4:17
  specific style to, you know, to the characters and to the world
• 4:22
  of Fraggle Rock. But now we're in Season 2, you
• 4:24
  can start to kind of bend the rules a little bit.
• 4:26
  Yeah, I think I, I think there definitely was again, that ease
• 4:29
  of, of jumping in and, and just just kind of going for it.
• 4:35
  And a lot of that too is, is determined by, you know, the,
• 4:39
  the scripts. The, the scripts have kind of a
• 4:41
  broader range this season where where we're touching on a lot of
• 4:45
  different topics. You know, that the, the first
• 4:47
  season really, you know, there was a lot of the, you know, the,
• 4:52
  the, the water issues and this sort of thing.
• 4:54
  So in this season it's, you know, it's all tied together
• 4:57
  with some of the, the, the wind and, and that sort of thing.
• 5:00
  But they really, you know, we're we were able to kind of go to
• 5:04
  different places. And a lot of that's because of
• 5:07
  of, you know, John Tartaglia and the Matt and, and the the other
• 5:12
  writers and, and also our our director on the season with and
• 5:16
  for this episode, Jordan Canning, who again, brings such
• 5:21
  such amazing ideas all the way around that that it it just
• 5:24
  makes it a lot of fun. So I think, you know, I don't
• 5:27
  know if that answers the question, but it it certainly
• 5:29
  was a lot of fun. That's good, that's all that
• 5:32
  matters as long as everyone's having fun.
• 5:35
  Andy, what about you? Did anything change for you
• 5:36
  between season one and season 2? You know what, they did some
• 5:41
  amazing things between the two seasons to make it a little
• 5:44
  easier for the puppeteers. The first season, the 2nd tier
• 5:49
  of The Cave was practical, so you'd go up there and there was
• 5:53
  an actual floor you could walk on, meaning when you're
• 5:56
  puppeteering you had to lay on your back and do puppets over
• 5:59
  your head. And this season they took all
• 6:02
  that out so then you could just stand behind that cave wall in
• 6:05
  puppeteer. So I think from a puppeteer
• 6:08
  standpoint, they were able to troubleshoot a lot of things and
• 6:11
  make it a lot easier I think for all.
• 6:13
  Of us to. Do our jobs.
• 6:15
  You know, actually Andy brought up a good thing.
• 6:17
  They also added a whole new quarter section of The Cave
• 6:20
  where they they, they, they if like before The Cave was like
• 6:25
  you had like a corner and one side and then another corner.
• 6:29
  This season they went on and extended one of the corners onto
• 6:32
  a full other side of The Cave and then curved it around some
• 6:35
  more. So we had more access to area,
• 6:37
  more different places to film where you could change it up so
• 6:41
  that that gave a little more freedom to to move around and
• 6:45
  get a lot of different new settings.
• 6:47
  That's cool because especially, I mean, I definitely noticed in
• 6:50
  this season there's a lot of I mean both seasons really, but
• 6:52
  this season especially, there's a lot of really great moments
• 6:55
  where there it just looks like there's 700 Fraggles on screen
• 6:59
  and they're all over the place. This episode as well has some
• 7:02
  really great scenes with just like a lot of Fraggles.
• 7:04
  And so they have those options to like stick them in this
• 7:07
  corner or put them up there without, you know, making it too
• 7:11
  hard on the puppeteers or the post production people.
• 7:14
  That's great. I'm glad that they did that for
• 7:15
  you. Yeah, and we we got some new
• 7:18
  background fraggles for Season 2 as well, if I recall.
• 7:21
  Yeah. And then they found, yeah.
• 7:25
  I have a couple that I've pointed out, I'm going to point
• 7:27
  out later on in this episode. Yeah, I've been asking everybody
• 7:31
  on this podcast about the about them because it seems like from
• 7:34
  everyone's social media that they're that you guys have given
• 7:37
  them names and maybe even personalities.
• 7:39
  And as a as a super fan, I need all this information.
• 7:44
  I need to know like, who is that purple Fraggle?
• 7:46
  And you're like, oh, that's, you know.
• 7:49
  Jill. And you're like Jill.
• 7:50
  Jill. Is my new favorite character.
• 7:52
  Jurgen, were you not the one who named almost, if not all of the
• 7:56
  background Fraggles? I can't take credit for all of
• 7:59
  them, but for many of them, yes, Yeah, I I do.
• 8:04
  I just take look at one and go, oh, I'm sorry, that one looks
• 8:07
  like Randolph or you never know. So, yeah, I, I, I did name a
• 8:11
  few, but I always tried to get anyone else involved.
• 8:14
  And please, here go name, name them.
• 8:16
  So it it was a group effort, the puppeteers.
• 8:20
  I mean, we would come up with some of the back story, but then
• 8:22
  the puppeteers would if you we told them, oh, that's such and
• 8:25
  such. Like one of our favourites is
• 8:27
  Peach Pit, which is one of the baby Fraggles.
• 8:30
  And Peach Pit's very cute and adorable and everyone fights
• 8:34
  over who gets to play that character.
• 8:36
  But in real life, Peach Pit is actually a mafia Don and is one
• 8:41
  of the most vile and cruel and evil characters in the Fraggle
• 8:45
  world. And so the puppeteers ran with
• 8:48
  this. So while she's on camera, she's
• 8:50
  singing and cute. And then once the camera cuts, I
• 8:53
  mean, she would just turn around and they'd point at me and be
• 8:56
  like, you're next, you're again. So I mean, they they made this
• 9:00
  character sinister behind the scenes.
• 9:03
  That's incredible. And now, now that you said that
• 9:06
  on a podcast that's going on the Muppet Wiki, that's Canon.
• 9:09
  Awesome. Awesome.
• 9:11
  Yeah, he's Pitt and I had a long, long history together.
• 9:15
  Wow, well I I hope. Well now that you've also said
• 9:18
  this publicly, God forbid anything happens to you.
• 9:21
  We know the. The.
• 9:22
  League Culprit is absolutely incredible.
• 9:28
  Let's talk about this episode that has all these amazing
• 9:31
  fraggles and background characters with names or no
• 9:34
  names. This episode opens with an ink
• 9:37
  spot relaxing in a pot with a towel on its head and little
• 9:41
  cucumber slices on its eyes. Which is fantastic.
• 9:44
  If that was the beginning and end of this episode, I'd still
• 9:47
  be like five stars. It was great.
• 9:49
  I loved it. That was a.
• 9:50
  A proud performance of me. I got to do that.
• 9:53
  Yeah. Had to keep resetting cucumbers,
• 9:56
  putting new top stick on there. Yeah, it was great.
• 10:00
  Did and so I assumed you guys had to like build fake
• 10:03
  cucumbers. Yep, Yep, I, I, I think it was,
• 10:07
  I think it was Jordan Jordan, the director's idea initially
• 10:11
  and she requested that, you know, that one of the ink spots
• 10:15
  be in the, in the hot tub. So, so then I, you know, it's
• 10:22
  like, so yes, we we build fake cucumbers and then the, the
• 10:26
  little towel, our costume department does the towel up
• 10:30
  and, and yeah. Amazing.
• 10:33
  So. So this seems like the kind of
• 10:35
  thing, so if it was Jordan came from Jordan Canning, that means
• 10:37
  I assume you guys were on the floor, you were filming.
• 10:39
  And she goes, I have an idea. And so when she does something
• 10:42
  like that, how much time do you think it would take to say, OK,
• 10:46
  let me go back to the workshop and I'll come back?
• 10:48
  To you to. Like, is it like I'll be back in
• 10:50
  an hour? I'll be back tomorrow.
• 10:53
  Do you know what sometimes, sometimes it's sometimes it's
• 10:56
  very quick this. 120 minutes. We, we, we had a couple days
• 11:00
  notice on this one, But there have been times and, and
• 11:03
  particularly, you know, Jordan is so creative that, you know,
• 11:08
  there's been times where she'll say, can I have those ink spots,
• 11:12
  you know, dressed as Boy Scouts and, and Jurgen will come
• 11:16
  running into the shop and say it's the next shot.
• 11:20
  And you know, more often than not what that means is it's
• 11:23
  Jurgen grabbing, grabbing some fabric and a scissors and some
• 11:28
  tape and glue and, and trying to make these things and, and again
• 11:32
  in the shop. Then sometimes we'll all jump in
• 11:34
  and just try to make that shot happen.
• 11:37
  But in, in this specific case, we, we had a couple days to work
• 11:41
  that out. But but but it can.
• 11:43
  It can and has been very fast. I love the visual of like Jurgen
• 11:49
  running into the workshop and saying it's an ink spot
• 11:52
  emergency. And it's, it really is.
• 11:56
  It's it's like that old TV show, the MASH show, where like
• 12:00
  literally everyone drops everything and just runs over.
• 12:03
  How can I help? And God bless our Calgary crew.
• 12:06
  They really, really just pulled out all the stops to help
• 12:10
  always. Yeah, you're you make a great
• 12:12
  radar. This is a season one Jurgen
• 12:15
  thing, but we had an ink spot that I don't know.
• 12:18
  I think it was someone came up with it on the spot that was
• 12:20
  being pulled out of a hat like a magic trick.
• 12:23
  And Jurgen, I think you cut up one of your own hats for that.
• 12:27
  Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 12:29
  Yeah, I had like a bowler or no, it was a top hat and I we turned
• 12:33
  it into was it Wembley? I believe Wembley doing.
• 12:36
  Wembley, yeah and yeah. Yeah.
• 12:37
  So it's like, yeah, go ahead, you can always find another hat.
• 12:41
  And you just happen to have a top hat.
• 12:44
  I usually wear different hats every day on set.
• 12:47
  It's it's easy to go all of you. Yeah, well, you know, we're all
• 12:50
  wearing masks back then. So if you if you have a hat on,
• 12:54
  it's easy to. Yeah.
• 12:55
  Just look for the pirate guy. That's that's Jurgen.
• 12:57
  Great, that's a great idea. Look for the guy with a hole in
• 13:00
  his hat. That's Jurgen.
• 13:01
  Yeah. So Buber is acting as head chef
• 13:07
  for a whole bunch of fraggles that are in his kitchen.
• 13:10
  He does that little clap that that chefs do to get everyone's
• 13:13
  attention. And he's wearing oven mitts.
• 13:16
  So he doesn't doesn't quite work the first time he is putting
• 13:19
  together a culinary experience. It's the radish razzle.
• 13:24
  It's the only dinner in a show where the dinner is the show.
• 13:28
  Let's talk a little bit about Boober's outfit here.
• 13:32
  He's got well, you, you explain to me like what?
• 13:35
  What do you see in the script? And then what do you decide to
• 13:38
  do in the in the workshop? I think, I think when, when we
• 13:42
  were figuring out what that was, it was like, you know, it is
• 13:46
  it's dinner and a show. And so I was thinking like, you
• 13:49
  know, like boomers a little more like ATV, you know, this, this
• 13:53
  is like ATV chef. So that's why, that's why, you
• 13:57
  know, like he has a chef's hat that he sometimes wears, but
• 14:00
  it's a little bit floppier of a hat.
• 14:02
  And, but I thought like, well, this is a, he's putting on a
• 14:06
  show. So it's like he's got a kind of
• 14:08
  a crisper hat and a very crisp white chef's coat.
• 14:12
  And then it's the radish razzle. So of course the chef's coat has
• 14:16
  radish buttons all the way down it.
• 14:18
  And, and I, I think there was a logo on the hat too that had a,
• 14:23
  you know, I was kind of thinking about that that would kind of
• 14:26
  help bring it to kind of a, it's a show.
• 14:29
  So it's like, that's why there's like a little star behind the
• 14:31
  radish that's on the hat. So it's a kind of brand.
• 14:34
  It like like this is his big show and and kind of to elevate
• 14:38
  the expectations of of what that presentation would be.
• 14:44
  So in the script, none of that was there.
• 14:45
  It's that was just you making decisions on what you think
• 14:48
  Buber would would be doing in this moment.
• 14:51
  Yeah, well, myself and then Jordan, the the director and,
• 14:55
  and of course in our in our production meetings, we we all
• 14:58
  talk through the show. So, so, yeah, you know, it was,
• 15:01
  I think Jordan that was, you know, bringing to it things like
• 15:05
  the, you know, when he eventually gets to his
• 15:08
  performance, you know, she'll she'll kind of map out what some
• 15:12
  of those things are, you know, and some of it's some of it's in
• 15:15
  the script, but some of it's also just like, oh, he's going
• 15:18
  to be doing this kind of, you know, Benihana.
• 15:21
  Benihana is kind of a show with slicing the slicing the radishes
• 15:27
  and the the radish volcano. And so so it's so it is kind of
• 15:32
  there in the script. It's like, but the but yeah, as
• 15:36
  far as what what that kind of is, is, Yeah, I just, I, I was
• 15:41
  always just thinking the the presentation of it.
• 15:43
  And and then too, that's why the Ink spots, the Ink spots show up
• 15:47
  and they've got kind of background dancer outfits, you
• 15:51
  know, that were, you know, I think in that kind of checkered
• 15:54
  tablecloth motif that that then I think the Wembley shares on
• 15:58
  his minutes. And then also Buber has a
• 16:02
  handkerchief around his neck. I think of that same same
• 16:06
  checkered pattern. Yeah, I noticed that.
• 16:08
  That was a nice touch, just to tie everything together.
• 16:11
  And then on. Buber's part.
• 16:13
  Yeah. And then I, I, I believe too.
• 16:15
  And I, I'd have to look again, but it, but I think that our
• 16:18
  Tyler, our production designer, then he was also kind of running
• 16:21
  with that. And so I think there were
• 16:23
  tablecloths and then all kinds of things for that, for that set
• 16:27
  that, that all tied together real nice in the end.
• 16:31
  So you basically bought Calgary out of all their red and white
• 16:35
  checkered fabric? Yep, Yep, absolutely.
• 16:39
  Great Boomer goes into the cupboard to get more radishes
• 16:43
  for for this radish razzle. But in the cupboard, there's
• 16:47
  Bongo. He's eating them all.
• 16:50
  Bongo, of course, is known to a lot of fans as Bagooni from the
• 16:53
  original Freckle Rock. This is not the first time Bongo
• 16:56
  has been inside of a cupboard eating radishes.
• 17:00
  It is a running gag, folks. Two years in the making, Uber
• 17:05
  holds up a radish stem and immediately it's swooped up and
• 17:08
  stolen by this mysterious bird that we don't really get a good
• 17:11
  look at here. We'll talk about that in a
• 17:14
  minute because I have a lot of questions about what that bird
• 17:17
  was. Oh, lordy.
• 17:21
  Oh, those birds. Not, not complaints.
• 17:24
  No, no, no, no. And Moki volunteers to go to the
• 17:28
  Gorg's garden to get more radishes because that's her job
• 17:33
  at this point. We're going to check in with Doc
• 17:36
  and Sprocket. We'll just go through the whole
• 17:39
  Doc and Sprocket bit here just to, to get all out of the way.
• 17:42
  In this podcast, Doc is bringing back Doc Bots her, her robot
• 17:48
  doppelganger from season one. So let's talk a little bit about
• 17:52
  the design of this thing because Doc Bots.
• 17:56
  Well did either of you work on Doc Bots design for season?
• 18:01
  One, not, not really, not really no Docbot was taking care of our
• 18:05
  prop department and the production design department.
• 18:08
  So they, they, they really ran with that.
• 18:10
  So we didn't, we didn't really have too much to do with with
• 18:14
  Docbot. And I and I don't, I don't
• 18:17
  recall was there who was doing the onset performance for that
• 18:22
  year and was, was. I'm trying to remember all I
• 18:27
  remember was I know because Docbot is also introduced in the
• 18:31
  first season and I know we had one of our onset P as Jared do
• 18:37
  the reading and he was so bad slash funny at it.
• 18:42
  It just we he had us all cracking up and it wasn't the
• 18:47
  final voice and it's a shame because he was so good slash bad
• 18:51
  at it. It was hilarious.
• 18:53
  But I I'm trying to remember who performed it for the second
• 18:58
  season. I'm drawing a blank and I'm I
• 19:01
  apologize to whoever, Andy. Andy is probably the one who
• 19:04
  would know, and Andy's giving me a look like, I don't know.
• 19:06
  Was it you? Yeah, I agree.
• 19:07
  Was it you? Take no effort, Andy.
• 19:09
  It was all me. I knew it.
• 19:11
  It was just. Me now whoever whoever was did a
• 19:15
  wonderful job though. Yeah, that's great.
• 19:18
  Andy, did you work on these docs and sprocket segments in in any
• 19:21
  way? You know what, just a little bit
• 19:24
  because Johnny plays Sprocket. So if there are scenes where
• 19:29
  Gobo happens to participate, I often will double for Johnny.
• 19:33
  So for season one, they shot all of the dock and Sprocket stuff
• 19:37
  before most of us even got there.
• 19:39
  So it was because of COVID. It was a very small crew.
• 19:42
  This time around they did it throughout the different
• 19:45
  shooting blocks, so I got to be there a little bit.
• 19:49
  Crazy set. It looks so cool in person, and
• 19:53
  then to be underneath it and get to see what Johnny's doing with
• 19:56
  Sprocket is just pretty incredible.
• 19:58
  Oh my God, I'm sure. Yeah.
• 19:59
  So later in this episode, there is a moment where Doc and,
• 20:04
  excuse me, where Sprocket and Gobo are both on screen at the
• 20:07
  same time. So are you playing Gobo in that
• 20:09
  scene? It's possible, yeah.
• 20:12
  I'm. Sure, there's no way to know.
• 20:14
  Yeah, yeah, I at some point, I know I did.
• 20:18
  But yeah. Who's to say?
• 20:20
  Let's just assume it was you. Take a share, dandy.
• 20:24
  Absolutely. So Doc wants to reprogram Docbot
• 20:30
  in her classroom to essentially act as her height man, and to
• 20:33
  make her look cool in front of the students.
• 20:35
  So she's like recording things for Docbot to say and it's
• 20:39
  having trouble reprogramming. And then she starts to just kind
• 20:42
  of be get down on herself and say things like, why are you so
• 20:44
  bad at this? You can't do anything right.
• 20:46
  Of course the machine records it, repeats it back to her, and
• 20:50
  she learns a whole lesson about spreading positive words to make
• 20:53
  the world better. I just summed up a whole episode
• 20:55
  in like 5 seconds, but that's, that's what happens.
• 20:58
  Very impressive dude. It, it seems like nobody really
• 21:02
  remembers working on this segment, but do you guys have
• 21:04
  any, any reflections on anything from Doc and Sprocket, whether
• 21:07
  it's in this episode or something else?
• 21:08
  The. Only the only thing I have to
• 21:12
  say is because. Yeah, because on days with
• 21:15
  Dawkins sprocket, it's usually just sprocket.
• 21:18
  So it would be Johnny and a lot of times Jordan would step in to
• 21:22
  help do the back of the back end.
• 21:26
  Every shot was different. Sometimes it'd be the the half
• 21:29
  body or then we do the three quarters body, which is
• 21:33
  basically a full body sprocket without legs.
• 21:36
  And then we do full body sprocket, which is all of his
• 21:39
  legs. And it usually means that Johnny
• 21:41
  has been buried under a piece of carpet or inside a sofa.
• 21:46
  And so there's always a lot of rigging and a lot of cramped
• 21:49
  spaces for the puppeteers. So a quick shout out to anybody
• 21:53
  who's had to endure me sitting there trying to fluff Sprocket
• 21:57
  to make him look good. And they're sitting there with
• 21:59
  their hand up stuck through a couch.
• 22:02
  They're, they're really taking a brunt.
• 22:05
  A lot of abuse, just waiting for us to get ready to shoot.
• 22:09
  So those guys, they, they put a lot into this.
• 22:14
  Do you think John Sartaglia goes home and like, just to relax and
• 22:20
  to feel like he's, he's comfortable, like gets
• 22:22
  underneath the sofa cushions? Laura and I hope not, no,
• 22:28
  because because we, the couch that's used in Doc's set is
• 22:32
  actually has been almost completely gutted.
• 22:35
  So in fact, you know, the the the, the poor onset people,
• 22:40
  they're just like, please, nobody sit on this couch.
• 22:41
  If you do, you're going to fall through the couch and then fall
• 22:44
  through a hole in the floor. So the couch is way off limits.
• 22:49
  And so, yeah, if Johnny went home and tried to do that with
• 22:51
  the real couch, I think he's going to smother to death
• 22:54
  because it's still full of box springs and sofa framing.
• 22:59
  So but yeah, yeah, the the Doc's couch is absolutely just a
• 23:03
  shell. Just a shell.
• 23:05
  Wow. That.
• 23:06
  Sounds sad, but but it's important in the Gorg's garden.
• 23:13
  First thing we see. Paul Gorg.
• 23:14
  That's you, Andy. You're Paul Gorg.
• 23:16
  Yeah. You you finally got out from the
• 23:19
  castle in this season. Like we have.
• 23:22
  Legs. You know what?
• 23:23
  During season one, yeah, we were, but we were wishing just
• 23:28
  to get out of because we're always up on that tower or in a
• 23:30
  window. We're like, man, it'd be fun to
• 23:32
  get out on that lawn. And then once we did, we did.
• 23:36
  Ingrid and I both like, I don't think we fully comprehended what
• 23:39
  Ben was going through on that terrain because it is.
• 23:43
  I think the, the original series, it was all built out on
• 23:46
  one flat, you know, floor. But what we have with the Gorg's
• 23:50
  garden, it's got hills and slopes and there are little
• 23:53
  rocks. There are two steps going up to
• 23:56
  the front door, so you have to like clock that, you know, and
• 23:59
  try not to fall. So it was a fun challenge, but
• 24:04
  yeah, definitely broke a sweat. I believe you, yes.
• 24:08
  Yeah, yeah. Pennsylvania.
• 24:10
  It's Pennsylvania. Such an interesting character in
• 24:13
  this season because like you said, he's kind of stuck in the
• 24:17
  castle in season one and like, he only has so much to do.
• 24:21
  But here, like, we kind of have to start with him liking the
• 24:24
  Fraggles and then disliking the Fraggles.
• 24:26
  And, you know, like he goes through this weird journey where
• 24:29
  he's just so dumb and so full of himself.
• 24:34
  Did you? I mean, I, I, I hate to see you
• 24:36
  or just the body, which is not true.
• 24:37
  You put in so much into that performance.
• 24:39
  But because you're not providing a voice for the character, do
• 24:43
  you feel like you have an opportunity to add a lot to his
• 24:47
  journey through the season? Yeah, You know, and, and just
• 24:50
  being free from the castle window, we could do a lot more
• 24:54
  physicality. And I think seasoned into paw,
• 24:57
  got to do a backflip off of a chair at one point.
• 25:02
  The end of the season I fell straight on like all kinds of
• 25:05
  fun hijinx. And it's always fun working that
• 25:08
  stuff out with Frank because he's an ideal man.
• 25:10
  He always helps, you know, an AB and AC and this would be great.
• 25:14
  And what about that? The other challenge this season
• 25:17
  2 is that the creature shop kind of rebuilt Paw and MA, so now
• 25:23
  they have more. You probably can both talk to
• 25:26
  this better than I can, but more expression.
• 25:28
  The eyes move left to right now. I think the mouth has a little
• 25:32
  bit more as well, Yeah. So playing with eye focus even,
• 25:36
  and when to pivot and when Frank's going to move those eyes
• 25:38
  was a whole new challenge too. We, we just did that to make
• 25:42
  that heavier for you. Yes, we thought you know what?
• 25:46
  You know what would make it heavier is more motors.
• 25:49
  Yeah, and louder too. It's much louder.
• 25:52
  We wait till next season, we're putting in eyebrows and oh your
• 25:58
  poor. Neck.
• 26:00
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we first, when we first got
• 26:04
  those costumes for season one, there were weights tied to the
• 26:08
  back of the head that I later had talked to Gord Robertson.
• 26:12
  He was in the suit originally. And he's like, Oh yeah, we put
• 26:14
  those there to counterbalance some of the weight, and they
• 26:17
  managed to stay there for I don't know how many decades it's
• 26:19
  been, but. Yeah.
• 26:21
  And do you know what, when we were, when we were refurbing
• 26:23
  those heads, those weights were still on there.
• 26:25
  And what the weights were, were bags of Canadian pennies.
• 26:29
  No way. So we have, we have at the
• 26:33
  creature shop here some bags of Canadian pennies from 1980.
• 26:38
  I don't even think you have pennies up there anymore.
• 26:40
  You not think so? I don't think that exists
• 26:43
  anywhere. Wow.
• 26:44
  Did you know that POG org was so valuable?
• 26:46
  There's money in those gourds. There's something else to put on
• 26:50
  eBay. Paws.
• 26:50
  Pennies. Pennies.
• 26:51
  Paws. Pennies.
• 26:56
  So how wants junior to get rid of all those pesky strawberries
• 27:00
  in the in the garden, Junior spots Moki.
• 27:05
  She's there, tiny little Moki next to her next to him.
• 27:09
  Excuse me. And she's got her radishes, but
• 27:13
  she's tells him like the fraggles love the strawberries
• 27:16
  and he's like, oh, great, you take them.
• 27:18
  And I love that that like he just drops some strawberries on
• 27:21
  her and they're huge. That's such a good I love all
• 27:26
  the moments in the season of like the Gorg is holding
• 27:29
  something and it's small, gives it to a fragile, it's big or
• 27:31
  vice versa. There's so many of those and I
• 27:33
  absolutely love it. I mean, I know that's prop
• 27:37
  stuff, but like I'm sure you guys appreciate it too.
• 27:40
  There was. It was amazing.
• 27:42
  Like specifically this season, because the strawberries are so
• 27:45
  prevalent. There were every scale of
• 27:49
  strawberries. So they made, you know, maybe
• 27:51
  they, the, the props department was making little strawberries
• 27:55
  and bigger strawberries and then huge strawberries and there was
• 27:59
  it, it just seemed like they were doing it all season long,
• 28:02
  you know, for, for almost every episode.
• 28:04
  It was like, oh, there's more strawberries.
• 28:06
  And but yeah, there, there, there, there.
• 28:09
  Lots of strawberries. A strawberry.
• 28:11
  Emergency. Just like an 8 spot emergency.
• 28:13
  We need more strawberries. Somebody get on that.
• 28:16
  Yep. Another thing that I, I, I, it
• 28:20
  made it, it was a lot more work, but in, in the end, I think it
• 28:24
  paid off was in the first season we would film Gourd's point of
• 28:29
  view and then we would go back later and shoot the blue screen
• 28:33
  and put in the Fraggles. This season more than ever, we
• 28:37
  actually had a blue screen, what we call the Blue Cube.
• 28:40
  And it was this tent that would come down from the ceiling and
• 28:43
  they would actually record the Fraggles doing their bit while
• 28:48
  they were filming the Gorgs, which was right next to the Blue
• 28:51
  Cube. And then they would have the,
• 28:53
  they would actually, the video would go in, put the Fraggles
• 28:57
  onto the screen so we could actually see where everybody was
• 29:01
  real time in their actual size. And so we got, we got to go
• 29:05
  ahead and just film the whole scene and didn't have to wait
• 29:07
  another day to finish it up. And again, it was all the, it
• 29:11
  was the timing of trying to lower those strawberries down
• 29:15
  from Gorg's point of view to then Moki's point of view.
• 29:19
  So it's a lot of a lot of clever camera angles and editing going
• 29:23
  on during those scenes. Is there like a, like a, like a
• 29:29
  math a problem? I don't know what I'm talking
• 29:33
  about, but like a, like a, like a math equation where you're
• 29:35
  like, OK, so junior's holding this thing and it's 6 inches
• 29:38
  big. And so when we give it to the to
• 29:41
  the fraggles, we have to divide it by X and move the denominator
• 29:45
  to make sure we know how big it is.
• 29:47
  They did. They did have a scale and and in
• 29:49
  fact we. Have a big.
• 29:50
  Post poster on our wall in the workshop that that I think Tyler
• 29:54
  the production designer had made.
• 29:56
  But it was a big poster that showed every character at their
• 30:00
  scale to each other and then strawberries next to that.
• 30:04
  So they were they, you know, that it was the production
• 30:09
  designer again, because he and crops had to generate all these
• 30:12
  scales of strawberries because then there were, you know, even
• 30:15
  bigger ones that they had made to interact with the, the
• 30:18
  doosers. So it's just like we had a, we
• 30:22
  had a, it's a cool poster. People love this poster.
• 30:25
  It was because it was, it was like all the fraggles and then
• 30:28
  like strawberries kind of ghosted over them at different
• 30:31
  scales so that you could kind of and and again, he mathematically
• 30:35
  had figured that all out so. I'm sure Fraggle fans would love
• 30:38
  that. I'm sure Strawberry fans would
• 30:40
  love that. Math fans would love that.
• 30:44
  Yeah. At the Radish razzle Red is
• 30:49
  ready. She says when Buber does that
• 30:52
  soup toss, I want to be in the splash zone.
• 30:54
  And she is wearing this poncho with a double hood to cover her
• 30:59
  pigtails, which is actually incredible.
• 31:02
  Congratulations. That.
• 31:03
  That is a phenomenal and yet very simple costume piece that
• 31:08
  that got a big laugh out of me. Yeah, very, very funny.
• 31:12
  I I think actually that might have been Karen Frel's idea.
• 31:15
  I can't, I can't, I can't remember exactly, but I think it
• 31:18
  was Karen Frel. But that and again, she's a,
• 31:21
  she's a genius all the way around, like a genius performer,
• 31:25
  but also an amazing artist. And I, I think it might have
• 31:28
  been her that that was like, what if there was a hood for
• 31:31
  each, each pom pom on her head? So.
• 31:36
  Brilliant, but yeah. Pretty great.
• 31:39
  Gobo obviously loved it too because he says oh I wish I had
• 31:41
  a poncho and Red says well I got bad news for you bud, you don't
• 31:45
  have to wish anymore because I got you one.
• 31:46
  And they start chanting poncho poncho poncho and I want one
• 31:52
  too. If you guys are making more,
• 31:53
  I'll take one. Go right down the order.
• 31:59
  I'll pay you in Canadian pennies.
• 32:02
  Papennies. Papennies Boober starts the the
• 32:07
  razzle, and this is the scene where, like, he's doing some
• 32:10
  fancy tricks, tossing knives. He's throws a radish in the air
• 32:13
  and slicing it over the grill. It's amazing, by the way, that
• 32:16
  in the past year or so, there have been two different Muppet
• 32:19
  productions with a character doing this, you know, hibachi
• 32:23
  style. Yeah, because Animal does it
• 32:27
  too. Muppets Mayhem.
• 32:30
  We also learned in our Muppets Mayhem Backstage Pass podcast,
• 32:33
  which is on this this channel, that there's a difference
• 32:37
  between hibachi cooking and teppanyaki cooking.
• 32:41
  And apparently what we think is hibachi is actually teppanyaki.
• 32:45
  I don't remember what the difference is, but if anyone
• 32:47
  wants to Google it, feel free. You can learn a little
• 32:50
  something. You can listen to a different
• 32:52
  podcast about that cuz we don't need to really get on down to
• 32:54
  that subject again, but it is kind of interesting to someone.
• 33:01
  Uber makes a radish volcano and it's great because you could see
• 33:05
  like the seams of like where he sliced it.
• 33:07
  And then there's like steam that comes right off the top.
• 33:10
  It's a great effect. Oh, and then and there's the two
• 33:13
  ink spots that you mentioned before in the Plaid dresses and
• 33:17
  they've got bows in their, in their, on their heads.
• 33:19
  They're dancing for Boober. It's adorable.
• 33:22
  It's a great moment. Andy, did you work on on any of
• 33:26
  part of this from the puppetry side?
• 33:29
  Yeah, yeah, this episode was a little bit interesting for me
• 33:33
  because I think that we often do, like there are some
• 33:36
  performers of many characters, so often times you'll double for
• 33:40
  them based on what they need. But COVID was still very real
• 33:44
  and they were still illnesses. So I actually had to jump into
• 33:47
  Boober for a lot of this episode.
• 33:50
  So yeah, the, the knife, the knife bit, that was me and I had
• 33:54
  Ingrid and helping me out. Yeah, yeah.
• 33:57
  Just thrown right in there. So, so it's just you and Ingrid.
• 34:01
  So does that mean that are, are you handling one of the arms and
• 34:03
  she's doing the other or is she doing both for this?
• 34:05
  Because that's a lot of choreography.
• 34:07
  Yeah, if I recall, she was. She was doing both arms for me
• 34:10
  while I was busy, you know, overacting with the face making.
• 34:15
  Uber looked a little too pleased with himself there.
• 34:18
  He should be pleased with himself.
• 34:20
  You should be pleased with yourself.
• 34:21
  It looks great. It's I I love that.
• 34:23
  Oh, right on. I would I would gladly eat at
• 34:26
  Boober's Teppanyaki restaurant. Too you at least you know it
• 34:31
  would be clean, right? You wouldn't have to worry about
• 34:33
  contamination or anything like that.
• 34:36
  True, although the chef is not wearing shoes or pants, so I'm
• 34:40
  concerned about that part for that.
• 34:42
  Yeah, and. Yeah, fair, fair.
• 34:47
  Nobody is paying attention to Boober because they are
• 34:50
  distracted by all these delicious strawberries that are
• 34:52
  in Fraggle Rock now. And he says strawberry, more
• 34:56
  like rude Berry. What do we even know about them?
• 34:58
  They might be a disaster. And the camera pans up and we
• 35:02
  see that strange bird again above him listening.
• 35:05
  Wait, let's talk about this strange bird.
• 35:07
  We will later learn that this is a repeat E bird and it kind of
• 35:10
  looks like A cute odd looking Furby.
• 35:17
  So who designed? First of all, who designed these
• 35:19
  things? The original designs for those
• 35:23
  came through Pete Brooke at our, at our Los Angeles creature shop
• 35:30
  and he had done a whole series of different birds.
• 35:33
  And, and of course the director and Johnny and all the other
• 35:38
  producers all kind of go through those designs and pick out parts
• 35:42
  they like. So, you know, on that design,
• 35:45
  like some of the cool parts of the design is, you know, it's
• 35:47
  got the little ears that are kind of like little owl, you
• 35:51
  know, kind of almost little owl tuft ears.
• 35:53
  But again, like those, those ears were great because they,
• 35:56
  they, you know, had a little pull string mechanism on them so
• 35:59
  that they could lift an ear when they would hear, hear things
• 36:04
  and, and things like that. And then I believe at some point
• 36:08
  they, the New York shop built the repeating birds.
• 36:12
  And I think we had, we had expressly kind of asked.
• 36:17
  For. A certain kind of wing
• 36:20
  mechanism. So there were actually little
• 36:22
  motors in the wings to get those to flap.
• 36:26
  And I think we had asked for those so that they could,
• 36:29
  because we had used a similar thing or a similar mechanism for
• 36:33
  our the nom nom birds from the holiday special we had done
• 36:40
  previously. But it it made for very easy,
• 36:42
  easy shooting to have kind of a a little on off switch on the
• 36:46
  wing so that we could fly around a lot because because most of
• 36:50
  the time there. I'm sure the puppeteers were
• 36:53
  happy about that because the flapping that they do, it's very
• 36:55
  quick obviously because it's motorized, but I'm sure like if
• 36:58
  it was a string and to know every time they're on the
• 37:00
  screen, you got to go, OK, here we go.
• 37:03
  OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 37:06
  One less thing to worry about. I got that.
• 37:11
  On the other hand, yes, those things that was going to say
• 37:16
  there was one motor per wing and they were on either side of the
• 37:20
  puppeteer's arm. So the only thing whenever they
• 37:23
  would have to go into, I would be there going, please don't
• 37:26
  tear the machine. Please don't tear it.
• 37:28
  So they had to be very careful sliding their hand up and out of
• 37:32
  the puppet sleeve because those two little motors were nestled
• 37:35
  right on either side. And I'm not sure where they
• 37:39
  where the New York shop got those little motors.
• 37:41
  They were tiny little things, but they were powerhouses.
• 37:45
  But you just, you did not want to nudge or break them or move
• 37:48
  them or breathe on them wrong. So they were if they were a.
• 37:52
  Lot too is that I mean, I assume that's.
• 37:54
  Something you guys have? To deal with daily of just
• 37:56
  something breaking down. No, it wasn't breaking down.
• 37:59
  It was because they were so tiny that just nudging them the wrong
• 38:03
  way and suddenly the wing would be flapping the wrong way upside
• 38:07
  down. So you had to really be careful
• 38:10
  to keep the motors the right way up.
• 38:13
  So that that was also be like, please, please be careful when
• 38:15
  you put your arm in there. But everyone you know, they all
• 38:19
  worked out. It looked great and so no harms,
• 38:22
  no fouls. They're such unique designs,
• 38:27
  these puppets, and I can't put my finger on just this idea that
• 38:31
  like they kind of look fraggly, but they don't really look
• 38:33
  fraggly, by which I mean from the world of Fraggle Rock,
• 38:35
  obviously they look nothing like Fraggles.
• 38:37
  And I think I it's maybe the eyes are just very small and
• 38:41
  very like like far apart. It was that deliberate.
• 38:47
  I, I, I, I remember a lot of they were funny.
• 38:54
  Like I, I always remember everyone kind of looking at them
• 38:56
  and going like, are the eyes that far apart?
• 38:59
  And they're, but then you kind of laugh because they're very
• 39:02
  funny. So yeah.
• 39:04
  So yeah, it was, it was certainly, certainly delivered
• 39:07
  in the design. I don't know if there was any
• 39:09
  reason beyond it other than other than it is a funny look.
• 39:14
  That. That's reason enough.
• 39:15
  As long as they're funny, as long as I'm entertained, that's
• 39:18
  all I care about. Someone laughs, right?
• 39:23
  Done. Check.
• 39:25
  We check in with the Doozers once again.
• 39:28
  Let's we'll go through the whole Doozer plot here.
• 39:30
  But the architects thinks that these strawberries could make
• 39:34
  for great building material. But Counterpin thinks it's a bad
• 39:36
  idea. And so we meet Measure Doozer,
• 39:39
  who is a Doozer with like a measuring tape belt and holding
• 39:44
  a big a piece of measuring tape, suggesting that we send it to
• 39:48
  research and developments. That is the name of two frag,
• 39:51
  excuse me, two Doozers, research and developments.
• 39:55
  They're two Doozers in lab coats with these tiny little photo IDs
• 39:59
  on their lapels, which is adorable.
• 40:02
  Before I go on, any comments about any of these three
• 40:05
  costumes for these Doozers? No, though they were fun.
• 40:09
  I think they the measure measure was interesting because of the
• 40:12
  measure I think. I think her, her trim on on her
• 40:17
  vest, you know, she had a similar vest to everyone's, but
• 40:20
  her trim I think was also like little tape measures.
• 40:25
  I kind of, I kind of, I, I recall the, the the toughest bit
• 40:29
  of that was that to do a measuring tape and try not to
• 40:34
  feature numbers because because in inducer slash fraggle like
• 40:42
  like it, it turns into kind of a thing of, of do they do they use
• 40:46
  human numbers? Do we use, you know, so it's
• 40:50
  like, I think on the on the little best, we didn't have
• 40:52
  numbers. I think the little tape measure
• 40:56
  on her back may have ended up having having a couple little
• 40:59
  numbers in there. But but yeah, it was, it's, it's
• 41:02
  that sort of the, it's always kind of the question of what
• 41:05
  keeps it in the world and doesn't let the human world
• 41:09
  sneak in too much. And I think we were, you know,
• 41:12
  writing a dangerous line on this one because it's like, because
• 41:15
  it was a very human looking tape measure and a very, you know, so
• 41:19
  it's so it's like that. So that sort of thing, like
• 41:21
  what's what's dudes are technology versus human
• 41:24
  technology and how far are we allowed to kind of let those
• 41:28
  things bleed into each other? I would have never thought about
• 41:31
  the numbers thing. I think that's, I'm glad that
• 41:33
  you guys are thinking about that because that's this lore stuff
• 41:36
  that I mean, someone would have pointed out and then we would
• 41:38
  have said, oh, the whole thing's broken.
• 41:39
  Now we saw the number three on a Doozer.
• 41:43
  But I mean, As for the technology, I mean, I feel like
• 41:46
  the Doozers especially, it's like, you know, Cotter pin has a
• 41:49
  Cotter pin and like the Doozers have little wrenches and
• 41:52
  hammers. And it's like, I feel like
• 41:53
  there's a lot, there's so much crossover that like we wouldn't
• 41:56
  have thought twice about the fact that measure has a, has a
• 41:59
  thing of measuring tape. But yes, the numbers.
• 42:02
  That's that is fascinating. Yeah, it is.
• 42:04
  It's, it's just one of the little things we we think about
• 42:07
  and then and then whether or not we, we stay absolute to that or,
• 42:12
  or, or if it makes someone laugh, then it's like, get it in
• 42:15
  there. Yeah, right.
• 42:16
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that.
• 42:17
  And again, that's all that matters.
• 42:19
  You're making me laugh. I'm happy they're testing the
• 42:23
  strawberries. We get a shot of Wrench and
• 42:25
  Turbo Doozers. They're wearing splash suits,
• 42:28
  and they're getting splattered with strawberry guts.
• 42:31
  Andy, you are. You are Wrench.
• 42:34
  Yeah, yeah, I think we had one. I think we had to get that in
• 42:39
  one, as far as I remember. It's like.
• 42:41
  Yeah, there wasn't. Yeah.
• 42:43
  Yeah, there wasn't. There wasn't a way to clean that
• 42:45
  mess up. Yeah.
• 42:46
  Were you? Were you the one that took the
• 42:48
  Did ranch take the big splat? Oh gosh, I don't remember but it
• 42:53
  was. It was hilarious.
• 42:54
  It was, yeah. Then also, yeah, that explains
• 42:58
  too why like the first one is like a little bit of strawberry
• 43:00
  and the second one is a ton of strawberry.
• 43:02
  You only have one take what? What was actually throwing the
• 43:06
  whatever, whatever the goo is like, is it like, is someone
• 43:10
  throwing with their hand? Is there like a like a spoon
• 43:12
  that they're flinging? Do you recall?
• 43:15
  You not remember, I want to say I was under the stage, so I
• 43:18
  wasn't even really seeing. Yeah, that it was, you know what
• 43:22
  it was our special effects crew had put together an air cannon.
• 43:27
  And so they, they actually had an air cannon that they could,
• 43:30
  that they could kind of dial back and, and get the aim just
• 43:34
  right. So yeah, they, they, they had.
• 43:38
  And I think that's what it was, I think.
• 43:40
  And in fact, I think the first one might have been kind of a
• 43:42
  manual pump where they just kind of spat out a little bit.
• 43:46
  And then the second one actually had an air tank and A and a hose
• 43:50
  and really, really shot it out fast.
• 43:54
  That feels excessive, right? Like like you built a strawberry
• 43:57
  gun for Fraggle Rock? Oh, you should have seen the
• 44:02
  strawberry cannon they had for later on in the in the Gorg's
• 44:05
  Garden. That thing had power.
• 44:07
  But we're jumping two different episodes.
• 44:09
  No, no, please tell me more about that.
• 44:11
  We're we can jump around. I don't mind, but.
• 44:13
  Yeah, yeah, No, they, the special effects team came up
• 44:16
  because we had those strawberries that were being
• 44:18
  pelted at Paw and Junior and they they came up with, they
• 44:22
  would load them into a Canyon and they would fire at us.
• 44:25
  Amazing. Yeah, they, I think they had a
• 44:28
  little too much fun with that, but it looked amazing.
• 44:30
  It was great. And once we wrap that episode,
• 44:34
  they let Ben and I go in and shoot strawberries at them.
• 44:37
  Just for a little good. Is it?
• 44:43
  Is it actually strawberry like? Is that the?
• 44:47
  Substance that they use. Oh, for the juicers I I would
• 44:52
  guess. Either 1 the juicers or the OR
• 44:54
  the boards. Like is it, is it strawberry goo
• 44:55
  or is it just like, I don't know, like.
• 44:57
  Blue painted red. You know what, I, I, I kind of
• 45:00
  feel like there was actual, actual kind of jam because I
• 45:03
  remember there being kind of a discussion as to, you know,
• 45:06
  because when they had written that, I don't think there were
• 45:09
  full hazmat suits. I think it, I think it was just
• 45:11
  kind of written that the, that the splat would happen.
• 45:15
  And then, of course, you start kind of working that out like,
• 45:18
  well, how are we going to, you know, can we have a take two?
• 45:21
  Can we, you know, are we going to ruin the deuce or to do this?
• 45:25
  Are we going to do, you know, how do we protect the puppet?
• 45:29
  And I think that's when I think I, I think I had kind of
• 45:32
  recommended, well, why don't we put them in the, the hazmat
• 45:35
  suits and seal those suits up top to bottom so that there's no
• 45:39
  way any red is going to get to them.
• 45:43
  And then I think at that point, then the kind of the idea of
• 45:45
  like what the actual goo was kind of becomes irrelevant.
• 45:49
  It doesn't need to like initially the talk was like, oh,
• 45:51
  we need something that's not going to stain, not going to not
• 45:55
  be sticky, not be this, but I I don't remember exactly what they
• 45:59
  came to in the end. And it, and it may be some kind
• 46:01
  of an artificial thing, but it might, it might also be
• 46:05
  strawberry Jelly. I.
• 46:07
  Mean if you want something that looks like strawberry, then
• 46:09
  that's the easiest way to go, yeah.
• 46:11
  Yeah, yeah. So.
• 46:15
  Well, just to wrap up that that plotline, they do all the
• 46:18
  research. Measure announces that the
• 46:20
  results, the strawberries are fine.
• 46:24
  They're not great building materials, but they're delicious
• 46:27
  and they're tops make for great little festive hats.
• 46:31
  But I do want to go back a quick second to Wrench in Turbo
• 46:36
  because I think they're hysterical.
• 46:39
  Can we please get a full episode just about them in Season 3?
• 46:45
  Can we can we plant that seed? Hey.
• 46:48
  I'm all for it. I think that'd.
• 46:50
  Be great. I bet you do.
• 46:53
  No, I think it'd be I think it'd be fun.
• 46:54
  Like there's there's such this like little like Rosencrantz and
• 46:56
  Guildenstern of Fraggle Rock, like they're always there.
• 46:59
  They're always there and they're, they're in, in my mind
• 47:02
  and I think Allie Eisner, they're always just having their
• 47:04
  own little drama in the corner, right?
• 47:06
  It's they're always present, but they're going through their own
• 47:09
  stuff. It's they're, they're just two
• 47:11
  idiots. They're two idiots.
• 47:14
  Yeah, so Uber overhears 2 Fraggles saying that thing that
• 47:20
  he just said a few minutes ago about the root berries and the
• 47:24
  strawberries might be a disaster.
• 47:26
  And he follows that weird looking bird and he finds out
• 47:30
  that he's been repeating what he's what he said.
• 47:33
  So he has an idea. He says strawberries are bad for
• 47:36
  Fraggles and they repeat it. The bird flies out, says
• 47:40
  strawberries bad for Fraggles and then some Fraggle says, you
• 47:46
  know, he repeats it as well and says a bird said that.
• 47:48
  And I believe birds, which I thought was a great line and a
• 47:51
  good line reading from whoever that was.
• 47:55
  And word spreads quickly and the Fraggle start to gravitate back
• 47:59
  toward Boobers Radish Razzle Gobo, who's just come back from
• 48:06
  getting traveling. Matt's latest package says that
• 48:09
  he saw Doc eating a strawberry and says, oh, silly creatures
• 48:12
  eat strawberries too. And a couple of the Fraggles get
• 48:15
  excited about that. Oh, it's good enough for a silly
• 48:18
  creature. It's good enough for me.
• 48:18
  I don't really get that logic, but it seems like they're more
• 48:22
  afraid of silly creatures. But sure.
• 48:23
  OK, we'll, we'll run with it for the sake of the episode.
• 48:27
  So this is where I started to notice some of these background
• 48:29
  Fraggles and how unique they look.
• 48:33
  Like really different from, definitely different from the
• 48:35
  old original series, but different even from season one.
• 48:38
  The one that stood out to me most is there's a fraggle with a
• 48:40
  Mohawk. You're going to give this one a
• 48:44
  name? What is it?
• 48:45
  Yeah. Titane.
• 48:46
  Titane. Titane.
• 48:47
  French. It's French.
• 48:49
  Titane is. It named after the the body
• 48:50
  horror film Titane. Absolutely.
• 48:57
  Might very well be. Yeah.
• 49:00
  We, I, I just, again, when we saw the new ones, it's like, oh
• 49:04
  boy, you know, fresh new names. And I took one look and said,
• 49:07
  oh, that one right there. So.
• 49:10
  Yeah. Wow, amazing.
• 49:12
  I wish I could talk about the movie Titane on this podcast,
• 49:15
  but I feel like it's a little, it's a little little off topic.
• 49:20
  Yeah. If you're, if you're, I don't
• 49:21
  know, over 18, maybe you could, you could Google it.
• 49:25
  But yeah, there's so many interesting looking Fraggles
• 49:28
  back there. I wish I could.
• 49:29
  I mean, I should have paused it and been like, OK, what's that
• 49:31
  one? And what's that one?
• 49:32
  What's that one? Do you have any other favorites
• 49:35
  or any others that you're like so excited when they grab it off
• 49:38
  of the shelf and they put it in the background of the scene?
• 49:42
  Well, they're always going to grab the puppeteers.
• 49:44
  There's a select few who are always going to go for the three
• 49:47
  babies, which I believe are Cantaloupe, Peach Pit and
• 49:51
  Honeydew. Those are the three Fraggle
• 49:54
  baby. So they're always going to be
• 49:55
  the first ones to go. So we sometimes literally have
• 49:58
  to put like big swatches of blue tape or ribbon around and say no
• 50:03
  because, you know, the the first AD or Jordan or the direct
• 50:08
  whatever director is on set at the time will say, I don't want
• 50:10
  babies in this scene. No baby.
• 50:12
  So we have to like literally slap the puppeteer's hand back
• 50:15
  off away from away from the babies.
• 50:18
  But no, those are always favorites.
• 50:21
  And of course with, with brand new, what is it Scott?
• 50:24
  We got like 10 new ones, I believe.
• 50:27
  But then of course people were out up here like, oh, got to try
• 50:30
  the new ones now. So, but everyone definitely has
• 50:33
  their one or two favorites that they always go to and we we try
• 50:38
  to accommodate where we can. The new, the new character, the
• 50:42
  new, the new background that came this season very, very
• 50:47
  pointedly. They're they're a little bit
• 50:48
  larger in general, like they were there, though there's more
• 50:51
  body shapes and more, more shapes in general.
• 50:56
  Some of them have kind of bigger jaws, but they're they, they are
• 51:00
  kind of bigger puppets. And a lot of that is, is so that
• 51:03
  in the big group scenes, you know, it's it, it kind of fills
• 51:08
  the frame a little more so that you can so that you can have
• 51:11
  kind of one of the larger fraggles deep in the background
• 51:16
  and still be able to see it, you know, so, so they are, there are
• 51:20
  a lot of more again, just kind of larger, larger and different
• 51:24
  body shapes different, you know, some of them with broader
• 51:27
  shoulders or, or broader hips. And that's good.
• 51:31
  So yeah, it makes them feel. Less generic in that way,
• 51:34
  because I feel like especially when there's a whole fraggle
• 51:36
  gaggle and so many of them are just like, yeah, that's just,
• 51:39
  that's the orange one and the Gray one and the blue one.
• 51:41
  They all look identical to each other.
• 51:43
  Like, I mean, deliberately, you know, they're supposed to fade
• 51:45
  into the background in a way. But I, I, I think I prefer to
• 51:48
  have like this variety of like, there's all these fraggles.
• 51:51
  They all have their own lives. And, you know, any one of them
• 51:53
  could have a line and they have like, they have a, a specific
• 51:56
  voice and a character behind them.
• 51:58
  I love that idea. It's, it's world building.
• 52:01
  Yep. Andy, do you have a favorite
• 52:04
  Fraggle gaggle to grab? I was going to say, do we have
• 52:10
  they have like Beaky, they have the kind of pointed and I don't
• 52:14
  really, but there's a gold one that I love.
• 52:18
  Yeah. I like anything that's super
• 52:20
  broken into. So I always go for the oldest
• 52:23
  things I can find because they've got the smushiest mouths
• 52:25
  and and you know, the foam's nice and broken in it.
• 52:28
  So I. Oh, that's nice.
• 52:30
  Yeah. And then do you, do you also
• 52:31
  feel like because I assume those are refurbished puppets from
• 52:34
  from the old show, Like do you feel like that connection to the
• 52:38
  old puppeteers that? Yeah, absolutely.
• 52:42
  I think for me, I've noticed a lot of The Cave creatures seem
• 52:46
  to be original. So I always, I always will nerd
• 52:50
  that a little bit. I'll flip the sub sleeve over
• 52:53
  and take a look at the label. Be like Oh my God, 1982 and here
• 52:57
  this thing is. Yeah, I love that.
• 52:59
  Pretty neat. Yeah.
• 52:59
  Yeah. So Uber panics, he finds a
• 53:05
  repeat E bird and says, Shaw razor from outer space.
• 53:07
  How can we even trust them so that the bird will repeat it all
• 53:10
  over Fraggle Rock? We had a great shot here where
• 53:12
  the camera kind of follows this repeat E bird as it's flying
• 53:15
  around the Great Hall. We get like what kind of looks
• 53:18
  like a 360° look of the of the whole Great Hall and all the
• 53:22
  Fraggles around. We're all hearing this message
• 53:24
  from the bird. Gobo thinks the radishes, excuse
• 53:28
  me, that the strawberries are delicious.
• 53:29
  So he says it out loud and the bird repeats that.
• 53:32
  So now we've got, you know, mixed messages all over Fraggle
• 53:35
  Rock and the Fraggles have split into two camps.
• 53:40
  There's pro strawberry and there's anti strawberry and they
• 53:43
  come equipped with costumes. There's radish.
• 53:50
  Hats, rash rash costumes. Pogies wearing like a radish
• 53:54
  bib. There's strawberry hats and
• 53:57
  antennae. So is this one of those things
• 54:00
  where like you guys see this in the script and you're like, oh,
• 54:02
  we're going to have fun with this?
• 54:04
  Oh yeah, of course. Well, and, and that's the sort
• 54:07
  of thing where the, the whole shop kind of jumps in and, and,
• 54:11
  and what's so great is, is it's such a collaborative show that
• 54:16
  you know, like I, I think it was just on the show, you know, like
• 54:19
  one of the customers came up and they're like, can I make a, a
• 54:22
  whole baby onesie that's a whole strawberry just to put one of
• 54:28
  the babies in. And it's like, well, of course
• 54:30
  that'd be great. And, and then of course, you
• 54:32
  know, then somebody else will be like, well, I'm going to make
• 54:35
  the radish one that goes with that baby one.
• 54:38
  And then, and then some people like kind of gravitate towards
• 54:41
  the hats and some of them, some of them want to be like, oh,
• 54:44
  I'll make radish bracelets for everyone.
• 54:48
  And then, and then, and then realistically for a few days,
• 54:51
  it's a, it's a radish strawberry factory in our workshop.
• 54:55
  And everyone's just making, making hats and costumes and,
• 55:00
  and, and, you know, pennies and, and different things for all
• 55:04
  the, the fraggles to wear. And then I think that the prop
• 55:07
  department does the same, you know, like the props jumps on to
• 55:11
  the, you know, they've got all the, the, the banners and, and
• 55:15
  different signage and stuff that they, they all have.
• 55:18
  So so yeah, those kind of crowd scenes are are the most fun.
• 55:25
  What? An awful job you have.
• 55:28
  Like it must be so hard to like, have to go to work in the
• 55:31
  morning and bake strawberry and radish costumes and hats and oh
• 55:37
  it sounds. Like somebody's got to do it,
• 55:39
  somebody's got to do it. Someone does have to do it.
• 55:41
  Thank you for doing it. It is, it feels very special.
• 55:46
  Red comes in. She is, she's got like flags and
• 55:50
  stuff and she is very ro strawberry.
• 55:53
  She loves them because they're red like her, even though
• 55:56
  radishes are also red, but strawberries are redder.
• 55:59
  It's all very arbitrary, but it's kind of I just like, I like
• 56:02
  when Red gets excited about things.
• 56:05
  Yeah. It's adorable.
• 56:07
  This is where we get our first song of the episode.
• 56:10
  The song is radishes versus strawberries.
• 56:12
  It's a big back and forth with all the fraggles.
• 56:14
  There's like this dramatic lighting on them.
• 56:17
  Feels very like stage musically music.
• 56:21
  Y I don't know why. It reminded me a lot of Les Mis.
• 56:25
  You know, when they're doing their big battle scene.
• 56:30
  And it's cool too, because like the repeating birds are flying
• 56:33
  above, like they're circling like vultures.
• 56:36
  Visually, it's great. It looks awesome.
• 56:38
  Andy, What? Where were you in this scene?
• 56:42
  This was interesting for me. So we do a pre record ahead of
• 56:46
  time for the songs. So I sang and had learned the
• 56:52
  strawberry side, no, the radish side.
• 56:56
  Then we had a little choreography rehearsal and I was
• 56:58
  a background at that time. So I flipped it and had to learn
• 57:02
  the part. I didn't record.
• 57:03
  And then I ended up having to into Boober and going back and
• 57:06
  reversing my mind. So I was I was Boober in that.
• 57:10
  And I love that you brought up Les Mis because when we started
• 57:15
  filming, Johnny came over to me and he's like, OK, this is
• 57:18
  defiant. And I'm like defiant like how
• 57:20
  he's like he paused and he said Les Mis and I'm like, gotcha. 1
• 57:26
  broadly nerds 1 nerd. So you said Les Mis and I'm
• 57:30
  like, Yep. It came through well.
• 57:32
  And then and then and that and that theme, like all the way
• 57:35
  through, like from the, you know, even the the set design
• 57:38
  Tyler was, you know, in the production meetings, bringing
• 57:41
  that up where he was. He was like, what if, what if
• 57:44
  they've overturned the tables that are, that were the tables
• 57:48
  for the radish razzle and they've turned those over.
• 57:52
  So those become like walls. And so it was, it was, it was
• 57:56
  definitely staged to be Les Mis. You know, it was, it was
• 57:59
  definitely and, and, and and yeah, and then the lighting, the
• 58:03
  lighting was great. Like it was great.
• 58:07
  I do like that when you guys do stuff like that with the with
• 58:09
  the lighting, especially where it feels like, OK, pause, like
• 58:13
  we're doing a thing now, we're doing, we're doing a musical
• 58:15
  number. We're like kind of taking us
• 58:17
  even out of the reality of Fraggle Rock for a minute to do
• 58:21
  this special thing. I don't know.
• 58:23
  It's just like, what a great opportunity to like, get, like,
• 58:25
  have fun with what's going on the screen.
• 58:28
  I, I would like to point out, because after I found out we
• 58:31
  were going to be discussing this episode, I was going back
• 58:34
  through all of my photos and all my reference stuff, all from on
• 58:38
  set. And I found videos where I got
• 58:41
  the whole cast singing, where they're going back and forth,
• 58:46
  radishes, strawberries. And there's Johnny in front of
• 58:51
  everybody and he's literally with his hand motions, doing
• 58:55
  the, you know, urging on the choreography.
• 58:58
  And then Jordan walks up and then she's sitting here and
• 59:02
  she's jumping up and down in time to the music.
• 59:04
  So it's you've got Johnny, the choreographer, the director
• 59:07
  bouncing along. Then you have these two massive
• 59:09
  groups of puppeteers with like little puppets on their arms,
• 59:12
  and they're just lurching back and forth at each other.
• 59:15
  And I wish that the audience could see this, this behind the
• 59:19
  scene, this insanity that's going on, because it's quite
• 59:23
  beautiful to see that not only are the puppets dancing, but the
• 59:26
  puppeteers below, they're getting into it as well.
• 59:29
  And it's, it's, it's quite fun and, and lovely to see all of
• 59:33
  this action going on that no one else will see except the
• 59:36
  puppets, though. But it's, it's, it's, it's a lot
• 59:40
  of fun watching the people as well as the puppets on set.
• 59:45
  Yeah, yeah. And like, that energy definitely
• 59:47
  comes across with, you know, through the puppets on on the
• 59:50
  screen. Another interesting thing about
• 59:53
  this song is so apparently the Fraggle Rock TikTok uploaded 2
• 59:59
  versions of the song. One is Gobo singing his half and
• 1:00:02
  the other one was Boober singing his half.
• 1:00:04
  And the half of they're not singing is is karaoke style.
• 1:00:09
  So I guess the idea is you would duet the video and sing the
• 1:00:13
  other half of the song with Gobo or or with Boober, which is
• 1:00:17
  brilliant. That's a great idea.
• 1:00:18
  Whoever came up with this. Yeah.
• 1:00:22
  So this is all chaotic. Buber has to escape.
• 1:00:27
  He climbs into a hidey hole, and immediately afterward Red climbs
• 1:00:31
  and squeezes next to him, and then Moki, and then Gobo, and
• 1:00:35
  then Wembley. Well, actually, Wembley was
• 1:00:37
  there before everyone. He's just been quiet and they're
• 1:00:40
  all crammed in together, and it's like that famous stateroom
• 1:00:44
  scene from a Night of the Opera where it's just like a tiny
• 1:00:47
  little space in way too many characters.
• 1:00:50
  And it's a great visual, like just having the characters just
• 1:00:54
  smooshed up against each other. Andy, are you playing Boober in
• 1:00:59
  this, in this moment here? You know what, I I did that
• 1:01:02
  scene as Boober. And then later on, they reshot
• 1:01:04
  it because the original set that we had used, it looked too
• 1:01:09
  spacious. So, yeah, so I I had shot all
• 1:01:13
  those scenes and then they decided they needed to fix it.
• 1:01:16
  So they they'd made a new set or they rearranged the rocks a bit.
• 1:01:19
  So yeah. Yeah, that's, that's all right
• 1:01:21
  to you? Almost.
• 1:01:23
  Yeah. You know what?
• 1:01:23
  Inspir. Take credit for it, Andy, it's
• 1:01:26
  all you. There's a, there's a cut out
• 1:01:28
  there. There's one cut of it that
• 1:01:31
  existed, yeah. Somewhere.
• 1:01:33
  I don't know, release the Andy cut.
• 1:01:36
  Why not? But I I always wonder about
• 1:01:38
  these things when it's at least 5 puppeteers in this in this
• 1:01:42
  case. Where?
• 1:01:43
  I can't picture where you all are because two solid objects
• 1:01:47
  cannot occupy the same space, so you guys must just be like on
• 1:01:53
  top of each other for these things.
• 1:01:56
  You know, you just, you get cozy, you have to get cozy.
• 1:02:00
  It's just, it's inevitable. Yeah, deodorant is your friend.
• 1:02:04
  That is your brand. That's right.
• 1:02:08
  Uber admits that all this chaos has been his faults.
• 1:02:11
  He was worried that the radishes might be forgotten and that
• 1:02:14
  maybe he'd be forgotten. And that's something that is
• 1:02:18
  actually, I think, the most profound thing in this episode,
• 1:02:22
  this idea that I'm championing this idea because it's actually
• 1:02:27
  because I have this fear about myself that I might be
• 1:02:29
  forgotten. And I feel like we've all felt
• 1:02:31
  that way at one point in their lives.
• 1:02:34
  So it's it's interesting to hear Buber kind of say this through
• 1:02:37
  this ridiculous analogy of radishes and strawberries.
• 1:02:43
  He also, he also admits he's never even tried a strawberry.
• 1:02:47
  Like, come on, Buber, just try it.
• 1:02:51
  Yeah, come on. The Fraggle 5 go back to the
• 1:02:55
  Great Hall. And now they're starting to give
• 1:02:58
  the repeat E bird some positive comments to spread around to the
• 1:03:01
  to the rest of the Fraggles. Fraggle love is back.
• 1:03:03
  Pass it on. Our difference in taste cannot
• 1:03:06
  mean hate. Pass it on.
• 1:03:08
  Healing works, pass it on. And what's next?
• 1:03:12
  It's a song, pass it on. What a great song.
• 1:03:16
  What a great, great song. It's from the original Fraggle
• 1:03:19
  Rock series episode The Perfect Brew Rolly, but it was also
• 1:03:23
  played on Fraggle Rock the animated series in the Jim
• 1:03:27
  Henson's Musical World live show at Carnegie Hall a few years
• 1:03:30
  back. It was heard in the Fraggle Rock
• 1:03:33
  Rock on miniseries, and I think most famously, everyone knows it
• 1:03:38
  from Muppet Family Christmas, This and Andy for this song, for
• 1:03:46
  you being a big Muppet fan, this song and probably the the
• 1:03:51
  classic songs that we hear in almost every episode in the
• 1:03:53
  series. It's got to be such a joy for
• 1:03:55
  you to get an opportunity to perform in them.
• 1:03:59
  Is that accurate? It is.
• 1:04:00
  It is crazy because every time like when a legacy song comes up
• 1:04:05
  and I see it in the script and I then I get the demo, it brings
• 1:04:09
  me back to the first time I heard that that song.
• 1:04:12
  And for a lot of them, and this is going to go way back, but and
• 1:04:18
  I grew up in a small town in Minnesota and we have like 1
• 1:04:21
  teeny little mall with one record store.
• 1:04:23
  But I remember going and buying my Fraggle Rock CD from there.
• 1:04:28
  And so like, I'm like, Oh my God, I remember, you know,
• 1:04:30
  laying on my stomach on the floor and listening to this CD
• 1:04:32
  and, and here I am with the with the Fraggle on my hand.
• 1:04:35
  What? What is life?
• 1:04:37
  So yeah, it is. It is very special.
• 1:04:39
  I love that. I love that.
• 1:04:42
  And this song, again, like not only is this a great song, you
• 1:04:45
  guys perform it really well. It's really fun and all the
• 1:04:48
  different Fraggles get a get a bit to sing.
• 1:04:51
  Wembley's jumping in with the the, I don't know, there's
• 1:04:55
  probably a name for those grunts.
• 1:04:58
  Maybe they just call them grunts.
• 1:04:59
  I don't know. And like everyone from Fraggle
• 1:05:04
  Rock is there. It's just like, again, this
• 1:05:06
  gaggle of Fraggles, everyone's there singing, singing along.
• 1:05:10
  The visual that stood out to me on this one is there's a like a
• 1:05:14
  big sign of with like a radish on a stick and same thing as
• 1:05:18
  strawberry on a stick. And then they kind of cross each
• 1:05:21
  other and they make a glowing. Heart.
• 1:05:23
  That was really pretty. Is that the kind of thing that
• 1:05:25
  shows up in a script or is that like that comes out in the like
• 1:05:27
  the production meetings? Like here's an idea.
• 1:05:29
  Let's try this. I think, I think that came out
• 1:05:32
  of the production meetings and I I think that was somewhere
• 1:05:35
  between Tyler and Tyler Herron and and Jordan.
• 1:05:40
  I think had that, had that, had that kind of idea.
• 1:05:45
  But yeah, it certainly, certainly comes out.
• 1:05:48
  But yeah, I don't I don't think it was necessarily a scripted
• 1:05:51
  scripted moment. Well, it's beautiful.
• 1:05:54
  I think. I think it came out really well.
• 1:05:56
  A nice way to kind of put a little bow on that storyline,
• 1:06:00
  but the story's not really over because there's a repeating bird
• 1:06:03
  still repeating. Strawberries are bad for
• 1:06:05
  Fraggles, I guess. He missed this entire episode.
• 1:06:08
  Didn't get all the other all the other comments to repeat it.
• 1:06:12
  Flies into the Gorg's garden and we see Pog Org and he's like
• 1:06:15
  admiring his crown in a mirror. It's such a weird moment.
• 1:06:20
  He's like doing this, like you talking to me moment.
• 1:06:23
  Yeah, and. If.
• 1:06:25
  It's if you notice there, I mean it's he has a little throw away
• 1:06:28
  at the top of the episode, but he's like, I'm gonna go inside
• 1:06:30
  and try on my crowns. So like, yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:34
  But I guess he decided. To be nudie.
• 1:06:36
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the fun thing with that is
• 1:06:40
  that our wonderful prop department came over with this
• 1:06:43
  spare crown for me, you know, to juggle and to drop on the
• 1:06:46
  ground. And I'm like, Are you sure this
• 1:06:48
  is safe? Like, oh, positive, it's going
• 1:06:50
  to be fine, OK, Because I'm going to drop it.
• 1:06:51
  We're going to rehearse. I'm going to drop it like, no
• 1:06:53
  worries, go for it. Dropped it.
• 1:06:55
  Cracked right in half. So after that episode they they
• 1:07:02
  put the broken crown. I don't know if you can ever see
• 1:07:04
  it, but when the doors open into the castle there's a shelf and
• 1:07:08
  they put my broken crown there for me to see every time I I go
• 1:07:11
  inside. Yeah.
• 1:07:13
  Is that done? Is that done for you?
• 1:07:16
  So you feel bad every time you see it.
• 1:07:18
  I, you know what? I think it's a tribute to my
• 1:07:21
  artistry is what it is. I'm so good.
• 1:07:24
  I'm so good at breaking things, you know?
• 1:07:26
  And you know, it's modern arts. It's.
• 1:07:30
  It's Gorg history. That's right.
• 1:07:33
  Yeah. Gorg Lore.
• 1:07:35
  And it's worth probably dozens of paw pennies.
• 1:07:39
  I'm sure at least. Paw hears the repeaty bird
• 1:07:45
  saying strawberries are bad for Fraggles.
• 1:07:46
  And he's like, oh, they're bad for Fraggles.
• 1:07:48
  And he tells Junior, change of plans now we want more
• 1:07:51
  strawberries. And Junior's like, I just, I
• 1:07:54
  just picked all these strawberries out, you jerk.
• 1:07:57
  And then they have a big fight. And no, they don't do that.
• 1:08:02
  But we that's where we close with the Gorgs.
• 1:08:04
  We check with the Fraggles one more time.
• 1:08:06
  Boober is finally trying his first strawberry.
• 1:08:09
  And they say, well, Boober, how do you like it?
• 1:08:11
  And he goes, it's, it's, it's, it's fine.
• 1:08:16
  It's just fine. I don't think I had a bigger
• 1:08:20
  laugh in this entire series than I did after that line reading of
• 1:08:25
  Boobers. That was absolutely hysterical.
• 1:08:28
  It's just like so much build up and then it's nothing and then
• 1:08:30
  the credits roll and we're done and that's it.
• 1:08:36
  Oh, and I have one more question about this episode as a whole,
• 1:08:39
  and then I want to kind of throw it back to you guys.
• 1:08:40
  But I noticed that, you know, we started this episode Boobers
• 1:08:44
  wearing his chef's hat. As we discussed later on.
• 1:08:47
  We didn't really talk about it with the traveling mat stuff,
• 1:08:49
  but he's wearing a like a like a pointed party hat at one point.
• 1:08:53
  And in this scene, he's not wearing a hat at all.
• 1:08:56
  Do you think this is the first episode of any Frackle Rock
• 1:08:59
  series where Buber never wears his trademark hat?
• 1:09:05
  Oh. Wow, that's an interesting
• 1:09:07
  information. Oh wow.
• 1:09:10
  Wow yeah, now the lore is broken open.
• 1:09:13
  You might. You might be.
• 1:09:14
  You might be right. Yeah.
• 1:09:16
  I didn't think because he starts in the chef's hat.
• 1:09:19
  Yeah. He takes the chef's hat off
• 1:09:22
  halfway through and then wow. Yeah, no hat.
• 1:09:27
  I mean it really. Sucks me that.
• 1:09:28
  He was hatless for most of the for so much of this episode.
• 1:09:31
  So I kind of assumed that by this this scene, you know, where
• 1:09:36
  there has been a little bit of a gap since we saw him last.
• 1:09:39
  That's, you know, he could probably put his old hat back
• 1:09:41
  on, but no, still hatless. Right.
• 1:09:45
  What does it mean? That's for you to figure out.
• 1:09:49
  Hold on. OK, real quick I'm going to go
• 1:09:51
  because I've got a complete breakdown of costumes.
• 1:09:54
  I'm going to go look and see what it says.
• 1:09:57
  If I I would just see if there's any notes you keep going, but
• 1:10:00
  I'm just I'm going to look this up.
• 1:10:02
  We're. We really are breaking this one
• 1:10:03
  wide open. Fascinating.
• 1:10:06
  Well, here I have that. Yeah, go ahead.
• 1:10:09
  Well, you're just doing that. Do you guys have any other
• 1:10:12
  reflections on this episode, any other memories of filming it?
• 1:10:15
  Or if not, anything from any other episode that really stands
• 1:10:17
  out to you, since you might not necessarily be here for the the
• 1:10:20
  other episodes of this podcast. Yeah, no, no, I mean just just
• 1:10:24
  in general like these for for me, these are my favorite kind
• 1:10:28
  of episodes where where where you can kind of feel the musical
• 1:10:31
  structure of it and it and it really does play out like a
• 1:10:34
  musical. And then too, it's like, because
• 1:10:38
  you know, the, the way the kind of the message works in it and
• 1:10:41
  stuff is, is it is, it's, it's, it's deep on so many levels.
• 1:10:47
  But then you can still just break out and sing songs and,
• 1:10:50
  and, and have fun with it. So, so it, it, it's, it's of the
• 1:10:55
  season. This one's one of my favorite
• 1:10:56
  episodes. It really is.
• 1:10:58
  And, and I find myself a lot, you know, around the shop like
• 1:11:02
  people, people hate us because we were often singing
• 1:11:05
  strawberries, radishes, strawberries, radishes because
• 1:11:10
  it's fun to sing, too. It's it's an earworm for sure.
• 1:11:15
  All the songs on this season have really been they're so
• 1:11:18
  strong. Either great choices from the
• 1:11:20
  original series or these Harvey Mason Junior songs that are just
• 1:11:25
  honestly, I think they're catchier than the season one
• 1:11:27
  songs, most of the season one songs that they wrote.
• 1:11:31
  Yeah, they really, they did a phenomenal job with the music
• 1:11:33
  this this year. Yeah, it was definitely one of
• 1:11:36
  my favorite songs of the whole show, of the whole season was
• 1:11:40
  the strawberry radishes. And by the way, I did, I looked
• 1:11:43
  up, I just found it. I'm going through my continuity
• 1:11:47
  and it's amazing. But it says over halfway
• 1:11:51
  through, halfway through the episode and to the end it has no
• 1:11:55
  hat in giant capital letters. Just to make sure I didn't screw
• 1:12:00
  up and go and put it on. No hat on any scene.
• 1:12:03
  So Yep, there's someone made a point of telling me no hats.
• 1:12:07
  So. Well, there you have it.
• 1:12:09
  Amazing. Well, someone, someone listening
• 1:12:11
  to this is going to tell me how wrong I am.
• 1:12:13
  They're going to say, actually, there's this other episode where
• 1:12:16
  Uber doesn't wear a hat, and I'm going to go, oh, I totally
• 1:12:18
  forgot about that. I feel dumb, but hey, still
• 1:12:21
  pretty neat. Yeah.
• 1:12:25
  So for each of you guys, I have one more question I'd love to
• 1:12:29
  ask you. Based on this episode.
• 1:12:33
  Based on your whole experience working on Back to the Rock or
• 1:12:36
  anything else that's happening in your lives, how do you plan
• 1:12:40
  to make the world a little fragglier?
• 1:12:43
  What do you think, Andy? I mean, I'm going to, I'm going
• 1:12:47
  to shake my Bolivius is what I'm going to do.
• 1:12:50
  I think that would help, right? Yeah, it.
• 1:12:52
  Couldn't hurt. Sure.
• 1:12:53
  That's fragile. Shake it.
• 1:12:55
  Shake it like a Polaroid picture.
• 1:13:00
  I think, I think, you know what I, I always, I always try to
• 1:13:02
  just make sure everyone's, you know, every, everyone can find
• 1:13:08
  the humor, can find the humor in anything.
• 1:13:11
  And, and, and as long as everyone can kind of find a
• 1:13:14
  place to laugh. It's like that's, that's what I
• 1:13:16
  always kind of hope that I'm bringing to some of this, is
• 1:13:19
  that, that even if it's just dumb or, you know, with
• 1:13:24
  everything else going on or differing opinions, if everyone
• 1:13:27
  can just kind of find where that's funny.
• 1:13:30
  It's like, I think that's a a good place to point yourself.
• 1:13:35
  I love that. That's great.
• 1:13:36
  And you're definitely bringing a lot of humor to the show through
• 1:13:39
  everything each each of you guys are doing.
• 1:13:40
  So you're you're a big success in that regard.
• 1:13:44
  Well, and it's, and it's, and again, it's, it's, you know,
• 1:13:48
  it's my favorite show I've ever worked on.
• 1:13:50
  And, and, and, and a lot of that is because every single person
• 1:13:54
  working on it and every on the crew and all the puppeteers are
• 1:13:59
  all just, you know, they're just so much fun to hang around with.
• 1:14:02
  Like and and and they, they are all hilarious and they all
• 1:14:06
  bring, you know, they all bring their, you know, the talents
• 1:14:09
  they have. And it turns out everyone's just
• 1:14:12
  got tons of talents. It's just like, so it's, you
• 1:14:15
  know, it really is just kind of an abundance of, of joy.
• 1:14:18
  I guess for me, I, I know first season I went into the show and
• 1:14:23
  I think it was a little, I was so serious because you know,
• 1:14:26
  we're, we're, we're having to, you know, we're restarting or
• 1:14:30
  rebooting this this classic Henson iconic piece of
• 1:14:35
  entertainment and we have to do it in.
• 1:14:38
  I, I think I got a little too into my head about it.
• 1:14:42
  Second season, just thrilled that we got to come back.
• 1:14:46
  And I suddenly realized, don't think it's so seriously like
• 1:14:49
  Scott said, enjoy the humor, but relax.
• 1:14:53
  You're with a group of people who want to come to work, are
• 1:14:57
  enjoying what they do, whether it's making costumes or you
• 1:15:01
  know, or throwing strawberry splatters at little green men.
• 1:15:06
  Everybody is coming to work and having a great time.
• 1:15:08
  So just relax, enjoy it. And I had so much more fun the
• 1:15:14
  second season because it's like we're just one big happy family
• 1:15:18
  and just take it one day at a time and enjoy it so.
• 1:15:23
  Love that you can you can relax right up until there's an ink
• 1:15:25
  spot emergency and then it's. Panic.
• 1:15:29
  And then we get to have way more fun, yes.
• 1:15:32
  Well, yeah, but surely. Absolutely.
• 1:15:36
  The, the wranglers and everybody in the shop are the unsung
• 1:15:40
  heroes of the show. They are the first people there
• 1:15:44
  in the morning. They are the last ones to leave
• 1:15:46
  because they're busy rigging and planning for the next day.
• 1:15:49
  So just acknowledging the work that they do, it's and they
• 1:15:54
  don't often get, they very seldom get the credit they
• 1:15:56
  deserve. So yeah, amazing work.
• 1:16:01
  Jurgen, Scott, Andy, thank you all so much for being here.
• 1:16:05
  And seriously, thank you for all the work that you've done to
• 1:16:07
  bring back to the Rock to us. It's such a phenomenal show and
• 1:16:11
  I'm so happy to get to celebrate it with you and with everyone
• 1:16:13
  listening to this podcast. But most of all, thank you for
• 1:16:16
  being here on this podcast. You, you didn't have to take the
• 1:16:21
  time and you did, and I'm very grateful for it.
• 1:16:24
  Cool. Very welcome.
• 1:16:26
  Yeah. Thanks for having us.
• 1:16:28
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• 1:16:40
  Fraggle Rock Podcast, is brought to you by toughpigs.com.
• 1:16:43
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• 1:16:47
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• 1:16:50
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• 1:16:52
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• 1:16:55
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• 1:17:27
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