I've written about children's TV programming before: my confusion about Oswald the Above Ocean Octopus, Wow Wow Wubzy, the giant phallus of Yo! Gabba Gabba!. Apparently, for the last seven years, a show has been stealthily lurking under my radar. A show so strange that it cowered in its early time slot, lest I discover it. A show that left me shaking my head in confusion.
Jack's Big Music Show.
Or, as I would have called it: Muppets Take Acid.
This is Ms. Piggy on drugs. The puppetry is dizzying. The lips of the puppets move so quickly, that Marlee Matlin, were she to be interested in Muppets on Acid, would be convinced they were speaking another language. And that they were on fast forward. Also, and this is something the talented Ms. Matlin would not notice, is that these crazy-fast talking puppets are SCREAMING AT ME ALL THE TIME.
I hate being screamed at. I hate it, hate it, hate it. Why can't they have a normal conversation? Why do these puppets have to jibber jabber all at the same time, all desperate to be heard over the scream of another, so that like some kind of verbal cold war, everything escalates to super loud atomic screaming? WHY, I ASK YOU?
Then, of course, are the psychedelic colors of said Muppets. All of them are multi-toned, fuschia, cobalt, electric yellow, shocking chartreuse, every color bolder and louder than the next to contribute to the overall sense of chaos on the show. And there aren't just a couple of little ratlings. Scads of puppets fill every shot, such that one wonders if they could all possibly have names and identities. I suspect that Oswald the Eight Legged Octopus and his octo-pod friends are required to be the puppeteers. How is there room under that set for 16 people and their frantically waving puppet-mittened arms? Is this why the puppets have to be centimeters away from the camera? There's just not enough room on the set, so the one who is YELLING the loudest has to be doing so directly AT the camera? Why is this androgynous Muppet up in my grill at this hour?
The background, too, is obnoxious. Bright pink walls are pasted with miniature fake musical instruments. The impression is pell-mell insanity, as though set decorations are the work of a Charles Manson and Dizzie Gillespie lovechild. Awful.
Finally, the show relies on a gimmick that is one of my (many) pet peeves. Elmo does this, too, and it has chapped my hide for years: the characters turn on their own fake TV. Really? We need the metafictive device of children watching puppet children watching TV? Holy crap, Sesame Street and this drug-infested, rat occupied tree house of Jack are some complicated fictional worlds.
So, the zany neon yellow Muppet turns on a TV that seems to be powered by accordions. (I wish I were making this up.) We are taken to some poorly digitized world where 8 or so singers (who desperately wish they HAD slept with that recording studio executive all those years ago, because maybe then their careers would not have led them to Jack's den of hallucinations) are dancing and playing a quasi-rock song. But, the thing is, the singers look like a combination of Jonas Brothers and Pussy Cat Dolls. The females are dressed in red rubberized trench coats and green wigs, and Jonas #1 is wearing human sideburns emerging from a fuscia afro. (Again, all true.) Their song, dubbed so poorly that the visual song and the auditory song are contrapuntal and disorienting, seems to be about super spies and private eyes. Which sounds like it should be a Kim Carnes Top 40 hit of the early 80s. Jonas #2 is talking about bronzing the super sleuth's shoe? And asserts that the whole place is lousy with clues? Does that rhyme with I'm so effing confused?
Anyhoodles, after that musical number within a musical number, I grew weary and left S alone with the close-talking Muppets. Never again will the TV be tuned to that station before Toot and Puddles comes on. Ever. Again. I can handle globe-trotting piglets.
