Transcript: Fraggle Talk: Back to the Rock – “Lost and Found Fraggles”

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Fraggle Talk: Back to the Rock – Episode 24: Lost and Found Fraggles

[Fraggle Talk theme music plays ]

JOE HENNES: Hello and welcome to Fraggle Talk: Back to the Rock, the unofficial Fraggle Rock podcast brought to you by ToughPigs.com. This is the podcast where we cover Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock episode by episode along with the talented producers, performers, writers, and builders who helped put it all together.

I’m your host, Silly Creature Joe Hennes. Today we’re talking about season two, episode 11, “Lost and Found Fraggles” in which you get a twin and you get a twin and you get a twin. Everybody gets a twin!

KIRA HALL: Yay! Twins for everyone!

JOE: This week, we’ve got two fantastic special guests. First up is a puppeteer who performs Measure Doozer, Brio the Troubadour, and Mokey’s right hand. It’s Kira Hall. Hello, Kira!

KIRA: Hi. Thank you for having me on.

JOE: Thanks so much for being here. Our second guest is all over the Rock as Ma Gorg, Marjory the Trash Heap, Sherry Contrary, and more. It’s Aymee Garcia! Hi Aymee!

AYMEE GARCIA: Oh, hi, hi, hi.

JOE: I’m so happy to have you both here. This is such a joy to get to talk about Fraggle Rock with you. I cannot wait to dive into this episode with you. Or I should say dig into this episode. We’re going deep underground for this one.

Aymee, let’s start with you. You are credited as the co-puppet captain along with John Tartaglia on this season. What does that mean?

AYMEE: That means I got to organize who went where, who did what extra puppet. When we get our scripts, most spoken roles are assigned, and they pretty much know which puppets they’re going to be performing in, but any extraneous little characters. Like all of the refresh people on choreography and make sure that they’re seen and that they’re looking where they’re supposed to look. I’m always eyes on the background as the scene is going on, up front. Yeah.

JOE: So John couldn’t handle that all by himself? [laughs]

AYMEE: [laughs] I know. Right? [laughs]

JOE: I get it. He’s a busy guy. Yeah.

AYMEE: No, but remarkably enough, I bet if I wouldn’t have taken this on, he would have absolutely been able to handle it. I don’t know how Johnny Tartaglia does it. His brain is compartmentalized in a way that no other human’s is. He is able to do all things. I’m pretty sure that he’s a magical creature.

JOE: And he doesn’t sleep. I just assume.

AYMEE: I don’t think he does either. I really don’t. I really don’t.

KIRA: Don’t know how he would fit it in. No.

AYMEE: Yeah, no.

JOE: Yeah. Well, you know what? It takes a lot to bring Fraggle Rock to life, and if there’s one person who’s going to have sleep deprivation, then it’s all worth it. Unfortunately, that person is John Tartaglia.

KIRA: I will say, Aymee is absolutely selling herself short. I love you, Johnny. He couldn’tt do it on his own. Come on. There’s how many of us? 24? How many puppeteers are we?

AYMEE: Yeah, There’re about 24. Yeah.

KIRA: And we’re all goobers. We’re terrible at paying attention. We love goofing with each other. Aymee was stepping in as the co-captain this season and incredible. Aymee is such a great Leader, so clear, so like… What’s the word I’m looking for? You got your stuff, you got your biz together.

AYMEE: Very sweet.

KIRA: I kind of lost my… mind my phraseology, my Ps and Qs. But no, Aymee is just so… You’re an incredible Leader, and it was so awesome having you in that role this season, because I felt like we were just in such good shape.

AYMEE: Oh, you’re so sweet.

KIRA: You’ve been nice to say so.

AYMEE: No, no, no. thank you. I appreciate that. But like this was an insanely talented and very… I know that they’re all like, that you’re saying that everybody was a goober. Yes, that is all true, but you are all my people. And it was… I felt like I am the momma bear right now, and I’m gonna make sure all my little cubs are taken care of. So that felt good, because I know there were a few puppeteers who had really leveled up from season one to season two that were maybe a little nervous that they weren’t going to be able to get utilized more prominently. And it felt good to kind of like nudge that opportunity a little bit. That felt really, really, really great. I think for everybody, but yeah.

JOE: So first of all, I have to put this out there, because I’m sure someone else had the little tingle in their brain. Goober Fraggle. I just had to say it out loud. Second of all, Aymee, as you’re talking about puppeteers who kind of leveled up for season two, would you consider Kira to be one of those people?

AYMEE: Oh my God. Well, the episode that we’re talking about specifically right now, like, Kira was MVP on this one, hands down. I don’t think… What’s weird about the crediting on the episodes is that you don’t actually get to see the list of everything that Kira had their hand in. It was like, as I was watching, Kira, were you also like, “And that’s me. And that’s me. And I’m over there?”

KIRA: I did that with my mom. We sit and watch the episodes when I visit her and I’m like, “Okay, so I’m this hand at this point. And then I’m helping out. I’m under Cotterpin here, and I’m that RC thing in the background.

AYMEE: Okay, now I am actually Cotterpin, and hold on. Now I’m this. [laughs] Yeah, you were all over. Like, I don’t think that there was a single frame that you weren’t a part of.

KIRA: There were a few, because like, Aymee said, I assist Donna [Kimball] primarily, so I’m usually there assisting for Mokey or Cotterpin. And then in this episode, I think, I know you jumped in doing some of Donna’s stuff. Ali Eisner jumped in doing some of Donna’s stuff, because I was focusing more on Leader. But yeah, you know, you just wiggle around wherever you need to go.

JOE: So that’s a good segue to my next question that I have here, which is this episode that we’re about to talk about, there’s so much doubling in this episode and like through many definitions of that word. So when you’re asked to sit in as someone else’s character, because the main performer is busy doing something else, is it scary or is it exciting?

AYMEE: No, it is absolutely terrifying. At least for me. Are you kidding me? I mean, and like, there are very few puppeteers who are able…Like Andy Hayward is a master at being able to like, completely absorb every nuance, every little…every little oomph, right? And to picking up what other puppeteers are doing. So it doesn’t seem…But man, I put on a puppet, I’m like, “This is the only way I know how to move it.”

(laughing) And I try my best. (in normal voice) But vocally I think I can match somewhat, but holy moly. There are just some… Please God, don’t ever ask me to be a Wembley in anything, because Jordan [Lockhart] is so dialed in, you know? I’m so proud of this team. Sorry. I’m like, babbling. More coffee now. Okay, bye.

KIRA: No, you’re right. I do think it’s exciting, because I get into that nerdy stuff, like, what is the difference between how Mokey moves versus how Boober moves. I kind of had that bandage ripped off very early. We were shooting the first song in season one, “Party in Fraggle Rock?”  “Party Down in Fraggle Rock?” Joe’s going to know all the accurate terms and titles and I’m not going to know nothing.

JOE: Like I’m going to sit here and correct you.

[Crosstalk]

KIRA: You’re allowed.

[Joe laughs]

KIRA: But right at the end of that, Marvin walks in front and goes, “Oh, I like that.” Right? Frank [Meschkuleit] doing his thing. And Frank wanted to be in Marvin at that moment. So for that last bit of the Fraggle five dancing, he was like, “Hey Kira, can you do Boober for me?” So I was like, “Guuuuh. Okay, sure.” And did my best. And you know, it was a dance thing. So thank goodness I had some leeway. But yeah, it’s a blend of thrilling and terrifying.

Anytime I’ve had to step in as Mokey, I’m like, “Okay, just make Donna proud.”

AYMEE: And Kira naaaaaails it every time. But can we also, this is the thing that I wish had been recorded. So like I’m kind of segueing into Leader and into Catherine O’Hara. And Kira’s impersonation of Catherine O’Hara, which was a little Moira Rose-ish, which I was really thrilled about…

JOE: Yup.

AYMEE: …was so frighteningly dead on. And I was just like, “Is this a Canadian thing? Do all Canadians know (laughing) how to impersonate other Canadians?” (in normal voice) I was like, “Oh my god, I want her to do all things.” You were spectacular. And I hope somewhere in the world there exists the version of you voicing that character. You know what I mean? Because you left so much space for Catherine O’Hara, I guess, to come in and dub, right? Because you hit every mark. It was fantastic.

KIRA: Well, it’s truly a team effort. And I think, I’m sure this has been talked about on the podcast before, Joe, that when we have someone doing a celebrity voice, they give us a scratch track. So we get used to their intonation and their cadence and everything, kind of what they’re planning to do with the lines. And then we do our best version of that on the set. We’re not trying to like lip sync to their recording, but we’re doing a performance, which is, I think, super smart. Because then it’s way more connected. And then they come back in and do the ADR.

So the scratch tracks that Catherine had recorded that they sent to me were bonkers. Like, she is the queen of the unique line read. And I think that’s why I channeled the Moira Rose stuff when I was trying to do it on set, because she’s got such a great…Catherine O’Hara is such an amazing character actor. And Moira in particular just chews the crap out of every line you give her.

JOE: It’s true.

KIRA: And she’s done the same with Leader. Like these wonderful choices about the musicality of her lines and how quickly or quietly she said things. And so it was a bit intimidating, but I was able to go in knowing that she was probably going to want to make some more bigger choices like that. And so that definitely empowered me to do my best Catherine O’Hara that I could.

AYMEE: So good. It was so, so good.

JOE: Feel free to say no, but can you give us a taste of what that sounded like?

KIRA: Hold on a second.

JOE: Gotta get in character. This is like James Lipton being like, “Can I talk to Leader right now?”

[Aymee and Joe laugh]

KIRA: Is Leader in the room with us right now?”

[Joe laughs]

AYMEE: Yes. Focus. Hold hands. Light the candle.

KIRA: I’m just pulling up the Herb Ertlinger Winery script. Okay. [takes a breath]

(impersonating Moira Rose character) In the lee of a picturesque ridge, lies a small, unpretentious winery, one that pampers its fruit like its own babies. Hi! I’m Moira Rose. And if you love fruit wine as much as I do, then you’ll lo–

(in normal voice) Anyway. You get the idea.

JOE: Oh, beautiful. Well done.

[Aymee laughs]

KIRA: So that was, I think it was basically Moira Rose, but with that Gobo energy, right?

AYMEE: Yeah.

JOE: If only the script had the word “Bébé” in there, that would have made it perfect.

KIRA: (impersonating Moira Rose) The Found Fraggles. Oh, I like that. Not enough to change it, but it’s nice.

[Joe and Aymee laugh]

JOE: That’s so good. It’s like she’s in the room. I love it. Well, let’s talk about this episode. This episode actually picks up where we left off in the previous one, where the Fraggle 5 plus Lanford and Cotterpin are entering this new mysterious cave and there’s all these weird statues and tapestries around.

Before we talk about what actually happens here, I want to talk about this set design. It threw me off, I can’t speak for other Fraggle fans here, but it threw me off a little bit that the statues are really just armatured Fraggles. So I was like, are they statues? Are they frozen? Did it look a little bit more different in person than it did on the screen? Or was it just that? Was it just like gray armatured puppets on displayed?

AYMEE: I can’t remember now. Kira, can you?

KIRA: Yeah, I think we were going for like museum diorama, right?

JOE: Totally. Right.

KIRA: And it was the armatured puppets staged in a way that you might go see like, these are the cavemen at the Natural History Museum. There were some moments of, it’s a little taxidermy.

JOE: Yeah. I mean, maybe they do things differently down there, like when a Fraggle dies, you just stuff them and they’re always there.

KIRA: I’m just going to go with, it’s lost Fraggle craftsmanship. They have really unique way. 

JOE: Yeah. And there’s some cool stuff back there too. I should have taken more time to look at all of them, but there’s one that’s pretty visible on screen of a Fraggle riding a Gorg chicken.

KIRA: Mmhmm. Mmhmm.

AYMEE: Oh, yeah.

JOE: I like that. I like that. I like thinking about the lost Fraggle’s hunting prey on the backs of these giant chickens.

[Aymee laughs]

KIRA: Yeah. There’s definitely some complex agricultural practices in lost Fraggle times.

JOE: Totally.

AYMEE: But I don’t know if they hunt them. They probably just use them as transportation. Because like, I think that for the most part, Fraggle seems to be pretty vegetarian.

JOE: That’s true. Yeah. Except for Icy Joe. Icy Joe admitted to eating Doozers in her day.

AYMEE: Delicious.

[Crosstalk]

KIRA: They don’t talk about that fact.

AYMEE: They’re radish flavored. Aren’t they? No. [laughs]

JOE: Oh! Like, Icy Joe is the only Fraggle who knows the taste of meat.

KIRA: Do Doozers also eat radishes?

JOE: Oh, that’s a good question.

AYMEE: I don’t know. I don’t think so. It’s building material for them. Why would they eat that? Right?

JOE: So what do they eat, is the question.

KIRA: Well, they nibble on the strawberries. So you do see that in season two.

JOE: Whatever they eat, it’s probably very efficient.

AYMEE: Yeah.

JOE: Like, they’ve got the whole thing in a pill or in a gel. Mmhmm.

KIRA: Mmhmm. Soylent.

JOE: Yeah, it’s Soylent.

AYMEE: Soylent. [laughs]

KIRA: Oh, no.

JOE: Oh, no. It’s Doozers! Soylent Green is Doozers!

AYMEE: Oh, no.

KIRA: You have to do it in a Doozer voice, Joe.

JOE: (in high-pitched Doozer voice) It’s Doozers!

[All laugh]

JOE: (in normal voice) Oh, no. Okay. Let’s get off this topic as fast as we can.

AYMEE: (in Doozer voice) Back to work.

JOE: [laughs] So Barry Blueberry pops up to give like a previously on Fraggle Rock recap to no one, I guess. Unfortunately, he is not paired with Sherry Contrary in this moment. But because Aymee, you are here, let’s talk about Sherry Contrary. First of all, I love her. She’s great.

AYMEE: (in normal voice) [laughs] Oh my God. Thanks!

KIRA: Exquisite.

AYMEE: She was not supposed to be mine. Like, vocally she was supposed to be… Can I say this part? Like that she was supposed to be Maya Rudolph.

JOE: Really?

AYMEE: Yeah! And so I was, as Kira had, you know, trying to give a lot of space for that world of somebody coming in and ADRing, because I did not receive a scratch track. And I was like, “Okay, let’s just wing it. I’m going to wing it. I’m going to do my best, ‘Big ol’ girl,’” Right? So, and then even vocally, in one of the episodes she sings their version of the national anthem, I was like, I don’t know what I’m going to do. And, you know, I could kind of rehearse this random thing and when I went to perform it, it was like, “Okay, and good. That’s good enough. Let’s move on.”

JOE: First of all, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but like, first of all, when we talked about that episode, I can’t remember who our guests were, but we were all raving about your national anthem, which was hysterical. But second of all, now knowing that it was originally conceived of as being Maya Rudolph, that’s got to be a reference to her Saturday Night Live sketch where she sings the National Anthem.

AYMEE: Absolutely. Absolutely.

JOE: Oh, that’s so funny.

AYMEE: I know, right? And can you imagine if it would have been her?

JOE: Just get her for another character, because, here’s the thing, is you are wonderful as Sherry and I don’t want to go away from you.

AYMEE: Thank you.

JOE: But I do love Maya Rudolph. And I’d love to see her on Fraggle Rock.

KIRA: We’ll think of something else for her. The execs seeing Aymee doing Sherry and they’re just like, “Yeah, okay.” Quietly pick up the contract for Maya Rudolph. Drop it in the shredder.

[Joe laughs]

KIRA: Love you, Maya Rudolph. But no, Aymee, I’m so glad you got to be. And then just you and Johnny goofing together is the greatest treat.

AYMEE: That was pretty, pretty sweet. That was, yeah. It’s always fun to be in the playpen with John Tartaglia, but like to get to be the Contrary to his Blueberry was (laughing) even more special. (in normal voice) And I just love that she was pink. Like the whole pink and blue. She’s so over the top with her newscastery-ness.

JOE: Yeah. I’ve said this on this podcast before, but the disdain that Barry Blueberry has for Sherry Contrary of just like gritting through his teeth, like, keep that smile on for the camera. I think that’s the funniest thing. I love that. I love that new dynamic for season two.

AYMEE: Yes, yes. And Johnny is able to play that so impeccably. Like, when you think about, it’s a puppet. He’s able to communicate that through his voice acting and also just like the tiny little nuances in his manipulation. I’m just always so impressed by what he literally pulls out of him in playtime even. You know, when the cameras are off, and we’re just kind of all…because that’s, I’m sure other people on this podcast have talked about it. When the cameras are off, we’re still goofing around with those puppets on.

And a lot of times, I feel like people have radar or they’re watching us and they’re like, “Oh, that’s good. We should probably…” You know, because I’ve seen a little bit of our playtime maybe appear in other scenes. I don’t know. I encourage the play.

JOE: Yeah, good, good. It definitely comes across. Especially with characters like this, who seem to be able to do anything. Sherry and Barry can just, they could say anything. They could do anything. It’s in character. That must be so much fun and freeing to just get to riff and not have to worry about like, “Well, would, you know, the puppeteer from 40 years ago who originated this character really do that?” It’s like, no, you made it up. You could do it. No one’s going to tell you you’re wrong.

AYMEE: We were kind of all told as well, yes, we’re honoring OG cast absolutely for sure. But since this is kind of like a parallel universe to the OG, that it’s okay to have those liberties. I keep thinking of it in the way of like, so we have this box. And we have this box of crayons. And we can color whatever we want to, like, whatever color we want to color inside of the box as long as we stay within the lines. And that’s how I sort of feel like the liberties that we’ve been given. It’s just like, alright. All right. That’s all I’ll say.

JOE: Well, but that’s the nice thing about a soft reboot.

AYMEE: Yes.

JOE: As long as it’s the same shape and color, like that’s fine. But mess with it. Have fun with it. It’s fine. Because it’s also that goes way back to Jim Henson’s days of “best idea wins.” It doesn’t matter if it’s not in character. Like continuity is not as important as is this good? Is this fun? Are we getting the message across? And it’s just good TV.

AYMEE: Mmhmm. Yeah. For sure.

JOE: So Gobo does not know what to do now that they’re in this place. And Wembley suggests that he think about the one fraggle that he turns to for inspiration. And I like this moment. Mokey’s like, “Yes, me. But do I have it in me at the moment?” And she’s just immediately ignored.

KIRA: Mokey’s self-confidence is truly delusional. But I have so much respect for it.

JOE: That’s true. We could all use a little bit of that, I think.

KIRA: Yeah.

JOE: Right?

KIRA: Delulu. I don’t know if the kids are still saying delulu.

JOE: I think I’m too old to know what that means.

KIRA: Delusional. Delusional.

JOE: Yeah.

KIRA: Delulu.

JOE: Oh, delulu. Okay. That’s a new one for me. I can’t use it now if the kids are already not using it. I’m behind the times on delulu.

KIRA: You start using it and then the kids stop.

JOE: Right, that’s how it works. Yeah. Once the adults figured out how to dab, that was the death of the dab.

AYMEE: [laughs] That was the end.

JOE: Yes. So, Gobo and Wembley revisit the story of how Traveling Matt discovered the radish. And they clear their throats and they continue to clear their throats. It’s a long moment of them clearing their throats. Very cute. And they flash back to the story of young Traveling Matt and he has this like flowing blonde hair. He’s got bushy eyebrows, a big bushy orange mustache. He’s wearing like an Indiana Jones hat and he’s got the whip. And he’s like striking a pose like Captain Morgan with his leg up. It’s pretty great. I would actually buy a t-shirt with this Matt on it looking very heroic.

AYMEE: Oh, that’s a great idea.

JOE: That is a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. Henson licensing, are you listening? And I also appreciate that as he’s doing this, there’s an inkspot behind him that’s kind of just lounging and not really paying attention to him. And we see him break through a rock wall and he goes into the Gorgs’ garden. Junior Gorg sees him. Presumably the first time Junior has seen a fraggle. I don’t know. And he runs at Matt. Matt dodges him. It’s all kind of happening in slow motion. He whips Junior’s legs around the ankles and it makes him fall over. And then Matt discovers the Gorgs’ garden. And it’s full of radishes and the Age of Radishes has begun.

And that’s it. That’s how we did it.

AYMEE: Incredible.

JOE: We’re going to talk a lot in this episode about how discovering something, quote unquote discovering something, is not actually necessarily discovery if you’re not the first person to find it. But even within the context of the story, like I guess, yeah, sure, he’s the first fraggle to find radishes. But like obviously someone else already knows enough about radishes to be able to cultivate them in a farm. So this story is full of holes. Is what I’m saying.

[Aymee laughs]

KIRA: [laughs] Can’t sneak anything past you.

JOE:Yeah, right. [laughs] So the fraggles start to explore the cave. They’re looking at all these statues. And one of them looks very realistic and is in color. The rest of them are like gray. This one is multicolored. It’s so realistic, it looks like it’s alive. And it is alive. It’s Leader. As we’ve been discussing, voiced by Catherine O’Hara. Legend. And performed by you, Kira. What a cool thing you got to do.

KIRA: What a treat. Johnny asked me about it and I was like both immediately intimidated and incredibly excited. Yeah, I don’t even know what else to say. I got to do a puppet for Catherine O’Hara. That’s rad.

JOE: That’s super rad. So first of all, you mentioned earlier, we were talking obviously about like getting Catherine O’Hara’s intonation, of like how she speaks or how she does character. But you kind of casually mentioned that you’re also trying to copy Gobo a little bit. So what does that look like to you or is it even possible to like tell us exactly what you were doing to try to mimic Gobo’s style?

KIRA: Well, it’s…And it’s Johnny’s Gobo too. So it’s like who I think has a little more pep than the OG, than Jerry Nelson Gobo. So yeah, just try to keep and I mean the costume does a ton of work for me already.

JOE: Yeah.

KIRA: And shape. Like she’s Gobo-shaped. So little things, like the way that Johnny wiggles when he’s puppeteering Gobo. Or like does a little tail waggle when he’s dancing. And the sort of like, he has a kind of looseness to him in terms of head gestures and kind of like nodding to punctuate things. This feels very strange to say out loud.

JOE: Right. Yeah. I realized as I was asking the question. It’s such a weird thing of like how do you, can you tell me how you move your arm? Like I guess that’s not easy. Yeah.

KIRA: No, but it’s completely valid to think about. Did you ever do like theater classes or improv stuff?

JOE: Yeah.

KIRA: Yeah. Did you ever do the thing where someone goes in the inside of the circle and walks and then you have to walk behind them and imitate how they walk?

JOE: No, I don’t know that one.

KIRA: Okay. That’s literally all it is. It’s just an exercise in changing your… cause you don’t really think about your walking pattern. Think about changing that to find someone else’s pace. Find where they’re leading from physically. Just looking for those little details. And I think that’s sort of the main way that that energy came into Leader, was trying to just find some of the same physical hallmarks as Johnny’s Gobo. And a lot of that has to do with that confidence. Sort of like, “here I am.” It’s not quite a Peter Pan thing but it’s close to a Peter Pan thing.

JOE: Right. You’re talking about like arms out on your hips. Your fists on your hips.

[Crosstalk]

KIRA: Yeah. Like your hands on your hips and your head is up and you’re walking around and you’re active and you’re engaged. And you’re confident because you’re in the lead.

JOE: Right. Yeah. This is that weird thing I’ve seen other puppeteers do this. Really it’s for like the most famous of puppeteers. You know like the Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson types. They can say, “Oh well, Jim moves his hand in a figure eight. And Jerry Nelson drops syllables.” And like there’s all these little hints. And I would never in a million years be able to enunciate that myself. But once other people say it, you go, “Oh yeah. Like they do do that.”

Like John Tartaglia is one of those too. And I think that’s because he’s all over the show, that I’ve started to notice when he’s playing someone other than Gobo. And I’m like, “That’s Johnny.” I could tell. Like I could tell the way they’re moving. That’s very, like you said, like the head moves. He’s very wiggly. He’s very side to side. You know, certain dance moves especially when there’s choreography you could tell that it’s Johnny.

KIRA: The one where he moves the shoulders.

JOE: Yeah. Yeah he moves.

KIRA: The shoulder dance where the head is static. That’s very Gobo.

JOE: Yeah. That’s very Gobo.

KIRA: I do the same thing. There are scenes that obviously I wasn’t there on the day. For whatever reason I just wasn’t part of that scene and there’ll be a little background character that has a moment. And I’ll do the same thing. I’ll go, “Okay, based on how they’re moving or how that in like who’s that in there?” And there have been a few…Andy Hayward. [laughs] I feel like I can always spot Andy. Oh yeah. That’s Andy. Okay.

AYMEE: That’s Andy.

KIRA: But yeah I love that you’re doing that too while you’re watching. That’s so fun.

JOE: I mean that’s the benefit of being the kind of nerd that I am and also being on my fourth rewatch of the show. Where I can like, yeah, really start to look at, okay I know the plot but like what’s happening right over there in that little corner?

AYMEE: Yeah. Exactly.

JOE: Mmhmm. Yeah. So Leader, which by the way, one more thing about Leader. We’re going to see in a second that all these Fraggles have interesting names. But Leader seems like such a like generic title. Do you know the background behind why Leader is called Leader besides the obvious of her being the Leader?

KIRA: Nope.

JOE: Nope? Okay. That’s fine.

KIRA: Nope. I got nothing.

JOE: I kind of thought like maybe, so we know that Gobo is a lighting term. Maybe Leader is too. But I don’t know. I’m making that up. All right, well, we’ll table that. Maybe it’ll come to us.

[All laugh]

JOE: So she invites all the other lost Fraggles out and they start to sing their first song of the episode which is “The Lost Fraggle Rock theme song” with lyrics like, “Hide yourself away/underneath the rock today/lose the light of day/underneath the rock.”

And we meet four out of five of the Fraggle five; the lost Fraggle five. There’s Leader, Wrigley, is in place of Wembley. Both names of stadiums, famous stadiums. Soupie which is Boober’s doppelganger. And Run and Jump, which is Red’s. Which is, what a name Run and Jump is.

KIRA: Yeah.

JOE: Really tells you everything you need to know.

AYMEE: Exactly.

JOE: And they all look like their doppelgangers. They’re all different colors with different details, kind of a mix. Like Run and Jump has one ponytail instead of two. That sort of thing. And yeah, it’s a really catchy song. And as Mokey points out, there’s something spiritually familiar about it and we may never know what that is.

KIRA: Who’s to say?

JOE: Who’s to say? But that’s fun. I love that. What a nice little detail to just give them their own little theme song and kind of imitate the opening of the main show. Any other thoughts about that song before we move on? Anything that was really fun or exciting to do with that number?

AYMEE: Well the choreo was like that was also just like the opening. You know what I mean? Just like the opening. So like to be able to revisit that with people who might not have been as close to the camera, that were like way deep in the background and just like, “Okay, come on guys. We’re on season two. We’re putting you right up front in this one.”

JOE: Oh my good.

AYMEE: So for them to have that opportunity to like get to do their version of the opening was pretty cool. And I think it was cool for them as well.

JOE: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Actually this is probably a good opportunity too to talk about these four characters. We’ll get to our fifth one in a little bit once they show up. But so we were talking earlier at the top of this episode about doubling and multiple people playing the same character, but here we’ve got, literally we’ve got someone playing Wembley and someone else playing a Wembley look alike, sound alike. And same for all four of these characters.

So… I don’t really have a question here. It’s just so interesting. I’ll just keep talking. It’s so interesting to see characters doing impressions, which we don’t see on Fraggle Rock very often. I feel like Muppets do it every so often. Like I’m thinking specifically of the Mad. Ave. advertising frogs from Muppets Take Manhattan that they’re all kind of doing Kermit the Frog impressions the way they speak.

AYMEE: Yeah, yeah.

JOE: Making fun of Jim a little bit but here, yeah, we’ve got a few more of those. I don’t know. Do you guys have any thoughts on doing impressions that are just a little bit off or like specifically for the camera?

AYMEE: I mean in this episode, I could say what made it easy were that the lines were so quintessentially similar to what the OG Fraggles would have said. You know what I mean? Like what the Fraggle Five would have said that it was like, I think and was easier to slip into a lot of the impersonations than if they were just like random lines that maybe weren’t written as succinctly. You know what I mean?

JOE: Yeah, I could see that. Like if, I’m making this up. But if like Soupie was like really fun-loving and exciting and you know, different from Boober then that wouldn’t necessarily be a Boober impression. That would just be someone who kind of looks like Boober.

AYMEE: Right. Right.

JOE: This way it’s like, “No, they’re like the same guy. Just do your best Boober.

KIRA: We all loved Soupie and Boober by the way that was like… We all know fraggles are ace/ aro but like we were shipping Soupie and Boober hard. We were like, it’s the meet cute of the century. Look at these two.

[Aymee laughs]

JOE: Oh, I kind of like that idea to be honest. Especially, you know, we went into a whole metaphor for orientation with Boober in season one. And Ali Eisner plays Soupie and Ali is non-binary as well and it’s just like there’s all this stuff that could be going on behind the scenes and all this conversation about gender and identity that just happens throughout Fraggle Rock that, I don’t know, maybe their perfect person is the person who’s exactly like them.

KIRA: It could be that like Studio Ghibli sort of romance where nothing actually happens.

JOE: Right.

KIRA: But you can tell that they feel this deeply impactful. Just like doing their laundry. Not even looking at each other or making their soup. They’re both total tsundere. So it’s, you know.

JOE: Yeah. I love this idea for them. We should also point out, Run and Jump is played by Ingrid Hansen who does a fantastic job. And Wrigley is Andy Hayward. And yeah. I mean, no question, these are all talented folks.

KIRA: And when Wrigley and Wembley in that first scene both going [makes Wembley grunt noises] That’s one of my favorite moments.

AYMEE: Oooh, so good.

JOE: [laughs] Is there a name for that? That grunt? Is it just a Wembley grunt? [Makes Wembley grunt noises]

KIRA: That’s a great question. I wonder if Jordan has an official title for it.

JOE: We’re going to find out. We’re gonna get to the bottom of this. I feel like that’s one of those things where like there’s a name we call it this behind the scenes.

KIRA: Maybe a honk.

JOE: Yeah. A honk. Yeah, is it a honk? Is it a grunt? Is he just revving his motor? Yeah.

AYMEE: Right. Happy walk struggle. [Makes Wembley grunt noises]

JOE: Yeah, it’s a little bit of a struggle. Yeah.

AYMEE: Yeah. He might have like tight joints. [laughs]

JOE: [laughs] At this point in the episode, we’re gonna check in with Doc and Sprocket. And we’ll just go through their whole story real quick so we don’t have to jump back and forth. But Doc is trying to figure out how to build wind turbines that could float on the ocean. Which is a great idea, by the way. I assume that that’s real science. I don’t know. That’s not my expertise. I do a Fraggle Rock podcast not a science podcast.

KIRA: I wiggle dolls.

JOE: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Wind power…ocean…I can’t deal with that. But making the little Wembley sound [makes grunts] There we go. That’s my point of expertise.

These wind turbines would be great for the environment but just as importantly the dolphins would think that they look cool. I like that. She’s got to go to work and she has this great moment where she rips off her jumpsuit like it’s held on by velcro and she’s got her pirate waitress outfit underneath. She did a quick change.

And she tells Sprocket that the model has to stay untouched while she’s gone so it can collect data. And of course like, what’d you think he was gonna do? He immediately breaks the whole thing. So the data is incorrect. She comes back. She’s really excited. You know, Sprocket doesn’t tell her the truth.

But the best part of this whole sequence is that Sprocket has a dream sequence where Doc calls the president of science, is discovered to be a fraud and sent to science jail. And then Sprocket has to visit her in prison and they do the thing where they touch hands against the glass like Kirk and Spock at the end of Star Trek 2.

God is that good.

[Aymee laughs]

JOE: The dream sequences that this show in this season has added for Doc has added so much to make those sequences fun and to give Lilli Cooper something really fun and interesting to do other than like be away from the rest of the Fraggle Rock action.

Back underneath Fraggle Rock, Gobo hopes that they can connect with the lost Fraggles because they’re just so different. And this is where they all kind of meet their own doppelgangers and find out that they’re all identical. Except for Mokey. Mokey doesn’t have a counterpart. And she’s feeling really left out which is sad.

I feel like… I don’t know if this is deliberate. I would be surprised if this was deliberate. But it feels a little bit like before Back to the Rock, whenever there was Fraggle Rock merchandise, Mokey was the one who was left out. And it does feel like, yeah, we forgot there was five of them. We only made four. Sorry

AYMEE: Mmhmm.

JOE: Poor Mokey.

KIRA: Poor Mokey. Alone at the party.

JOE: Yeah, just watching everybody else have fun. She’s trying to fool herself into thinking it’s fine.

AYMEE: Yeah, I think the hardest for Mokey in that episode too is knowing that Lanford had a doppelganger and then she (laughing) didn’t.

JOE: Yeah! She’s like, “Well, at least I have Lanford here.” And then Lanford finds his mushroom buddy, Manford.

AYMEE: (in normal voice) Manford. He’s so cute. [laughs]

KIRA: That was Dan [Garza] and Gen, right? Geneviève [Paré]?

AYMEE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

KIRA: Yeah, one of the Calgary puppeteers. Delightful.

JOE: Great. And Dan Garza was the other person you mentioned. Just getting that last name in there. Dan Garza as the head of Manford. Yeah, which is great. And I appreciate that just like everyone else looks slightly different, like you could have made a second Lanford and just made it blue or something. Like no, it’s a mushroom. Very different. Yeah.

KIRA: He’s a real fun guy.

JOE: Aaah. Kira.

AYMEE: [laughs] Aaaaaaand thank you.

JOE Should we just end the podcast here? Go out with a bang.

KIRA: I think, oof. Where are we gonna go from there?

JOE: Yeah, really. God, what a downer the rest of this episode’s gonna be. Speaking of downers, Cotterpin introduces herself and all the lost Fraggles laugh because they’re like, “You can’t be a Doozer. Doozers are extinct.” And so rather than them being like, oh well, obviously there’s a Doozer here with these new people who just showed up. Cotterpin’s just like, she’s starting to feel bad. Like I don’t know what she’s feeling bad about, but she’s like, “They don’t believe that I even exist even though I’m right in front of them.”

Which I guess makes sense too, because as a Doozer, she believes in facts and data. And it’s like look, the fact is here in front of you and I am telling you that I am a Doozer. And nope, they think that’s hysterical.

KIRA: Yeah, poor Cotterpin. Like you said earlier, the whole episode is kind of about the concept of revisionist history and convincing yourself of the truth of a history that isn’t actually true. So there’s definitely some denial happening here.

JOE: Yep.

KIRA: Right? You could have the thing that’s true right in front of your face but if you believe so strongly that, “No, of course Doozers are extinct. So logically you cannot be a Doozer. That’s just how it’s going to be.”

JOE: That reminds me so much of… Did you ever watch the sketch comedy show The State?

AYMEE: Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes.

JOE: Kira, it was a sketch comedy show on MTV in the 90s and like all of the people from The State went on to be like the folks from Reno 9-1-1 and Wet Hot American Summer and like all these other cult classic things. And there’s a short sketch called “The Bearded Men of Space Station Eleven.” And it’s like four guys, they’re on a space station and they all have these big beards. And another person comes in he says, “I’m here to tell you, the bearded men of space station eleven, that beards cannot grow in space. Therefore you’re all aliens.”

And they go, “Beg to differ. We grow beards because we’re the bearded men of space station eleven. And then the first guy goes, “No, you’re not. You’re obviously aliens.” And like that’s the whole sketch. It’s a very calm conversation where they’re trying to explain your data is wrong and we’re the proof right in front of you. And they just don’t want to hear it. And that’s the whole thing. It’s very funny. It’s funnier than I make it sound.

KIRA: I like the title.

JOE: The Bearded Men of Space Station eleven. It’s good stuff. You should also watch The State. It’s a great show.

AYMEE: Oh yeah. The State is a great show. Absolutely. What’s interesting about that The State sketch and this fraggle sketch as well is that it’s still so timely.

JOE: Yeah.

AYMEE: Right? It’s just like, no if I say something enough times, you’re gonna believe it. It’s that base of like wait, no, but there are facts. Right? Anyway…

[Crosstalk]

JOE: Unfortunately. Why is that? Why is it that it has to be so timely? I hate that.

AYMEE: I know.

JOE: I don’t want the world to be this way.

AYMEE: I know but it was timely then as well, which makes me believe like did I just literally like start paying attention. [laughs]

[Crosstalk]

AYMEE: Yeah.

KIRA: This would have been early internet days then. I don’t know. I feel like the ability to get truthful and reliable information when the internet started and started to become more popularly used, I think we had an increase in that.

JOE: Yep.

KIRA: Like we started by doing a good job on our fact checking and then somewhere in the last 10 years or so we’ve just kind of… it’s completely slingshotted around into the trash.

JOE: Yeah.

KIRA: It’s so hard to distinguish real facts, real science, real information about what’s happening in the world from what is perhaps driven by a different motive. Or even not driven by motive but just driven by someone’s confirmation bias. So, I don’t know. That’s just my theory about the internet, but people will always benefit from having their own narrative of how things should be. And in this case…

[Crosstalk]

AYMEE: But also like what was. You know what I mean?

JOE: Yes.

AYMEE: Like literally revisionist history, right?

JOE: And things that we did think that we maybe even had good reason to think. This whole story about Traveling Matt discovering radishes, there was no one to disprove him. And as far as Matt knew, he was discovering radishes. So things that were facts can be proven as, like actually we’ve learned, we’ve got new information and we can change the way that we think but you have to be willing to change and adapt and listen.

And honestly that’s why this show, Fraggle Rock, is so important because we’re not necessarily delivering facts. This isn’t like a kind of show where we’re teaching letters and numbers and history, etc. But we’re hopefully teaching kids who are watching, you got to do your research. You got to listen to the right people. You have to be willing to adapt. You have to be willing to like hear something that you thought otherwise and be willing to change your own way of thinking. So this is very important stuff.

KIRA: I love that you flagged adaptation because we always see the messages about interconnectedness and cooperation and working with others. But yeah, adaptation is a huge theme in both of the new seasons, for sure. You know, working with what happens when the water goes, what happens when strawberries show up, and the radishes go down. And it’s by working together that they’re able to adapt. So I hadn’t clocked adaptation as a major theme before. So thank you for that, Joe.

JOE: Of course. Yeah, I mean, I wish I could take credit for it but I think it’s just there. It just seems so prevalent on Fraggle Rock. And you know what? This is a good show, you guys. This is like a really smart show that might actually end war as Jim Henson wanted.

AYMEE: Oh god. Wouldn’t that be great?

JOE: Wouldn’t that be great? But honestly, baby steps. And this is the kind of baby steps we’re talking about. Any little bit here. Anyone who’s watching who’s gonna take a lesson home with it,  that’s the goal.

AYMEE: Mmhmm.

JOE: Yeah. So meanwhile, while this is going on, in the Gorgs’ garden, that dust storm is still going on. And the best part about it is there’s a tumbleweed that has like a face. And it’s rolling by going, “tumble tumble tumble.” Who is that and how did that happen? I mean, like how did you guys do that shot?

AYMEE: That was me. I puppeteered it. It was RC All that it did was just move in a circle and then they digitally then moved it across the screen. So they took a static shot of it just tumbling with me like, “tumble, tumble.” Like doing it up on an RC thing. Secrets!

JOE: That’s so interesting. So it is rotating in real life where like, I mean if they were gonna have it, if they were gonna put it in in post anyway to have it move across the screen, I guess they could have had it rotate around.

AYMEE: Just rotate. Mmhmm.

JOE: Yeah.

AYMEE: They were rotating it.

JOE: Really went the extra mile there. Yeah.

AYMEE: Yeah. But also like I think once it started to rotate because they just kept shooting it. It started to like fall apart a little bit. It wasn’t an actual tumbleweed but it was made to look like tumbleweeds. And it was on this mechanism, so it was just like the more it spun, it was just like, “Oh god, what is it turning into? I don’t know what kind of creature that is.” It was just like this machine thing with all of this tumbleweed stuff kind of separating from it. So they had to slow down. Slow it down. Yeah.

JOE: That’s kind of amazing. That’s also very much like a tumbleweed. Like that would happen. It would break apart. Sure.

AYMEE: Yeah.

JOE: I assume. I don’t live anywhere near where there’s tumbleweeds. I don’t know what they look like.

AYMEE: Just like that with mouths.

JOE: Right.

KIRA: Spin it. Film it. Because then you still get a sense of gravity. Right? Because the tumbleweeds would tumble as it moves so you still have that horizontal movement. But if you’re turning it, you still…

AYMEE: Yeah, it would be static.

KIRA: It would still tumbleweed but you still might get that sense of like that direction is where the ground is. Rather than if you just took the thing, held it in the same spot, and went turn, turn, turn.

AYMEE: Yeah.

KIRA: I don’t know what I’m talking about.

AYMEE: No, you absolutely do. It’s like the sympathetic movement of the little hay or whatever it was. I can’t even remember. It was like little sticks.They were feeling gravity in the way that a tumbleweed does when you see it kind of roll.

JOE: Yeah. Yeah.

AYMEE: Tumbleweed Talk.

JOE: No. You’re totally on point and this is the kind of thing where I feel like you all are so good about going the extra mile and just doing a little bit extra to make it feel real, where like maybe nobody would have noticed it. But also, in this day and age with the days of streaming, where we’re probably gonna be watching these episodes over and over and over again and really dissecting them. And I’m not talking about just me as the fans but like kids or parents watching at home. If a kid is really into a show and they want to watch it many times that eventually it…

[Aymee says something indecipherable]

JOE: Yeah and there’s like seams that make it look not real or make it feel less in the world, then you’ll really start to see them after a few times. And so by adding that weight, by letting it rotate and whatever it is that you have to do, it really, I think it adds a lot to the rewatchability even if you never really notice it.

AYMEE: Well and that’s like I think in the direction sometimes like that…This is like a way bigger conversation and I don’t want to derail it. But in the direction that most puppet shows are going nowadays, where they won’t have a whole set. I worked on Slumberkins which had a digital set. Like it was even more important that the practical pieces felt real and that the puppets were stepping on something that it felt real and that that was digitized.

And I think that we really pay attention to that sort of stuff on Fraggle because the moment that somebody can see, can clock, yeah, that’s digital, you disengage because you literally disconnect as a human. It’s like there’s just something unspoken where you understand that there’s another person. That there’s a person connected to that puppet that’s being performed as opposed to just watching something animated.

Which animation is great, but you even notice with animation, animation is becoming more and more realistic in order to connect and, you know what I mean? So it’s like we’re all striving for the same thing, but just in different ways I think.

JOE: But it’s about what you were just saying you know and an animation can look very realistic but the thing that we’ve learned is that over time, doesn’t matter how realistic it looks today, ten years from now it’s gonna look old because animation is gonna get better.

AYMEE: Yeah. Mmhmm.

JOE: And it’s funny because I was wat–Just the other day…Speaking of Catherine O’Hara, I went to go see the new Beetlejuice movie.

AYMEE: Ooh.

JOE: And there are a lot of scenes in there, a lot of scenes where you could tell they went the extra mile and did practical effects. And there’s puppets and there’s real sets and like all this stuff that like Tim Burton didn’t really use in his last few movies.  And then there’s one scene where there’s a cake and it’s oozing this green liquid and the whole cake is CG and all the liquid is CG.

And it took me out of it because so much of the movie was real with CG just kind of improving things just a little bit here and there. And then suddenly you’ve got this big animated piece and like who cares? You know? Because it doesn’t look as real as a puppet it doesn’t look like I could reach out and touch it. It doesn’t make me grossed out by seeing the green goo come out of this cake.

So that said, I mean that really brings me back. I think Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock is such a shining example of that because the CG that you all use on the show is so minimal just to enhance that everything feels real. I never notice the CG on this show. That’s just so cool. The weight of a puppet. It really makes a difference.

AYMEE: Mmhmm. Mmhmm.

KIRA: I think I mentioned this when I was on for the pride things, so my apologies if I’m repeating myself, but we had this book of special effects in my house when I was a kid. Just like how film special effects work. Things like the matte paintings or stop motion, all the foley. Like all of the real practical effect information and then at the end it was like two pages on, “Oh CGI is coming. Is this the wave of the future?”

Which I was like whatever. There’s a dragon in there and it kind of looks [bleep]. But the rest of it I was always fascinated by. And they talk about also fire and water and how you do all of that in a film. And that’s a different category because then why not make it safe if you can? But there’s something about like seeing a tactile space and seeing tactile things on screen where you’re like, I could go there.

JOE: Yes.

KIRA: I could go there and I could be part of this and I could touch that and pick it up and feel the texture of it and that’s… it’s… I don’t know. I should learn more about the psychology of it because it’s so fascinating. But that word, “tactility,” always sticks for me. I want to see things on screen that I feel like I could have a full sensory experience of. And you don’t always get that with CG if it’s not well-executed.

AYMEE: Mmhmm. Mmhmm.

JOE: Yeah.

AYMEE: The other thing that that also does, having those tactile things, tactile elements to it is that it does inspire you as a young artist or whatever to want to create those sort of things or want to be in that world. So it’s just like everything kind of goes full circle. You know what I mean? Oh wow. I could make that and that’s when you see little kids make drawings or their own versions of characters in the show or I don’t know. I think that having those elements is very important.

JOE: And it’s, I think, especially for kids entertainment to feel like you could walk down the street and run into Big Bird because Big Bird’s real. That like you could turn a corner and like you could find yourself on Sesame Street. You could find a fraggle hole and the fraggles are there. And I don’t think you feel that way about Frozen, Spongebob, or Bluey.

I mean, not that any of these are bad for any reason but there’s always going to be that disconnect from reality for anything that’s animated. But for puppets and for practical effects and to be able to have that, not just the, like you said, Kira, like you could reach out and touch them but like that they could actually be real. They could be in your real world. And if you’re teaching something–

KIRA: Well, not only could but are. Right?

JOE: Yeah. Right. They are. Yes. Right. And if you’re teaching something, if you know that like that character is in the real world and they’re telling you something important, I think that’s going to sink in for a kid a lot more than it would if it was a CG creation that exists on some other plane of existence.

AYMEE: Mmhmm.

KIRA: Totally.

JOE: Yeah. Wow, we got real deep on in the weeds on this one.

AYMEE: I know.

JOE: Yeah, whew. Do you need a break?

AYMEE: But in a good way.

JOE: Do you want a drink of water before we get back to whatever the gorgs are doing? The gorgs, speaking of actually, speaking of real locations. The gorgs go into a new place that I don’t know if we’ve seen before. They’re inside the shed in the gorgs’ garden.

AYMEE: Yes.

JOE: Maybe we saw this on the old show. I didn’t have a memory of it. I didn’t bother to look it up but like, that’s pretty cool like just for this scene. They had to get out of the storm and they go right into that shed and it’s just full of Gorg stuff. It’s all sheddy in there.

[All laugh]

AYMEE: And the light dappling through the windows. Right? Doesn’t it look so pretty?

JOE: Yeah.

AYMEE: Oh my god. I loved the lighting.

JOE: Again it puts them in a real space, you know? It takes advantage of what they have there in the gorgs’ universe. And I don’t know, we always wondered what was in that little shed back there. Now we know. It’s gorg stuff.

AYMEE: It’s gorg stuff.

JOE: Surprise.

AYMEE: It’s almost like, that moment to me sort of reminded me of when I was little, I always imagined what was inside of Oscar the Grouch’s trash can.

JOE: Yes.

AYMEE: And I always wanted the camera to go down into the trash can to like let me just see his house. And in my head, it was like I always imagined it to be. Anyway but now we know it’s in the shed.

JOE:  That’s right.

AYMEE: It’s not a man cave.

JOE: No.

AYMEE: Or a Gorg cave. It’s a shed.

JOE: Yeah. I mean is there anything cool in there that you guys noticed? I mean I just assume it’s all… I didn’t notice anything like easter eggs or whatever but maybe there is.

AYMEE: I think there were.

JOE: Yeah.

KIRA: I’d be astonished if there weren’t easter eggs in there.

JOE: Yeah. Right. Well especially, you know, it’s probably a lot of old props from the old show because why would you create all new stuff? You would probably just literally take whatever’s in the drawer and just chuck it on the floor. Put it all over the table. Hang it off the walls.

KIRA: Yeah, I don’t know.

AYMEE: I don’t know.

JOE: All right. Well, we’re going to have to go back and do some pausing. [laughs] Really do some research. We’ll have the Muppet wiki folks tell us, “Okay here’s a list of all the reused props that are in the gorg shed.”

Pa says to Junior that they listened to their gorg-cestors without questioning or updating their methods. They used the gorgamax. They had a ton of waste. Where did they go wrong? And it turns out they look at their book and that was a list of what not to do. Classic mistake.

AYMEE: Womp, womp, waaaaah.

[Kira laughs]

JOE: I do love, I have to give Dan Garza and Ben Durocher some props here for their performance as Junior. Because Junior’s, he has this explosion of just like we were supposed to learn from our mistakes and now history is repeating itself. And he’s a little nail on the head there for the lesson but he’s not wrong.

AYMEE: Yeah.

JOE: Yeah.

KIRA: Can I just say here, I’ve been meaning to send this to all the gorg performers, Aymee and Ingrid and Frank [Meschkuleit] and Andy [Hayward] and Ben and Dan. And I just didn’t get around to it because my brain is garbage but I’ll say it now. Just watching the gorg work on this season, we talked at the beginning of the episode about leveling up, oh my god. Like if you were fantastic in season one just the level of nuance and like synchronicity with all the gorg performers is incredible. Like that was some of my favorite stuff to watch this season was you guys just being so in tune and Ma especially. You and Ingrid worked so beautifully together with Ma this season.

AYMEE: Aw, thank you. Thank you.

KIRA: Yeah. Major, major kudos to our gorg performers because wow, like [chef’s kiss]. Beautiful work.

AYMEE: Yeah. I think that all gorg performers really learned a lot from season one as to what they were already able to do and then and how to improve. Right? Like, oh I would like to be able to see better or I would like to be able to any of those things. And also I know that creating Ma, I would not be able to do it without Ingrid. So getting Ingrid’s input throughout it all helps me as well. So what are you physically able to do and so then I can sort of dance around that to allow Ingrid’s version of Ma to come out as well. So yeah, it was a big learning curve and I was so pleased that it’s visible because it felt a lot easier second season.

KIRA: It’s really cool. Like any time I’m working on a new puppet character that’s part of the thing you consider is what are the physical capabilities of the actual puppet. If I can’t do a move that looks like XYZ, that’s not going to be part of this character’s vocabulary.

And so you and Ingrid have this whole other layer where Ingrid has to consider like the built puppet’s capabilities and then you’re considering that plus Ingrid’s capabilities, which for Ingrid is quite a lot. And she has to work with whatever the face is able to offer and whatever you’re able to do with the RC controls. So that’s [makes explosion sound]. That’s a galaxy-brain moment. I love it.

AYMEE: Yeah.

JOE: And just to add on to that too, specifically talking about Ma Gorg, one of our big, I don’t want to say complaints, but like one of the things that we kind of came out of season one hoping for more of was like, get Ma out of the castle. Because we never saw her. We didn’t know if she had legs back there. She was just always kind of ducking through the window or like through the door. You know, whatever.

[Aymee and Kira laugh]

JOE: We didn’t really see much of her. And especially on the back half of this season, we’re getting so much good Ma Gorg stuff which I never thought. Even on the old show and we didn’t get great Ma Gorg stuff. So yeah, it’s great to see not only, I mean because, I’m going to add a third person. Like you’re talking about your performance with Ingrid to create Ma, but it’s also in the writing. Where like Ma’s given good stuff to do and you really have an opportunity to show off and to create this character.

So now, season three, gotta get them some songs. Like the gorgs don’t really…Do they sing at all in this season? I mean, a little bit.

AYMEE: No. Not really.

KIRA: In the latter half of this episode we have the great Aymee Garcia showpiece.

JOE: Oh yeah. That’s right. You are singing this episode, aren’t you? God, I forgot already. We’ll get there. Okay, that’s a sign that we got to move on with the story so we can get to that and talk about that. Good god.

All right so speaking of Ma Gorg, she’s in this next scene. She’s having her conversation with Marjory the Trash Heap. And Marjory looks so tiny next to her. [laughs]

AYMEE: Wee.

JOE: We were talking about this before we were recording but like, we think of the Trash Heap as being this huge pile of garbage and then once you see her next to a gorg, you’re like, oh you’re like a little leaf pile.

AYMEE: Yeah. A sensible amount of garbage.

JOE: Right. Yes. Exactly.

AYMEE: Yeah. It’s not anything to be concerned about. [laughs]

JOE: No. No. It actually seems like it’s a normal amount of like, yeah, they’re composting, You know, they haven’t like bagged it up yet.

AYMEE: Yeah, exactly.

JOE: So Aymee, you’re doing double duty here. You’re performing two different characters. When you were performing in specifically in these scenes with Marjory and Ma together, were you just like painfully aware of like how do I make sure that I keep these two voices or these two personalities separate? Or was that already built in.

AYMEE: Oh yeah. I was having panic attacks about it. Because, you know, everything resonates in your head and I was like, they sound exactly the same to me. I don’t know how to make them different, doodly do. But then when I heard the recording back of the song, I was like there was like a little bit of a relief. And I was able to sort of let go and be able to get into it a little bit better.

But yeah, and we shot because obviously we need the element of both groups of people to be able to do that scene. So we shot that scene separately and just kind of digitally glued it together which I think looks really good because there’s never any actual physical interaction between the two of them. So that’s what I think sells that moment. And the way that the whole thing is sort of laid out, you buy it.

But yeah. It was it was tricky. And we were like all trying to remember what the inflections were and what the movements were. I try to be very, very consistent when I’m working, when partnering up with people. Like for Ma Gorg, Kira is also inside of Ma Gorg, as well as Ingrid so it’s the three of us inside of Ma.

KIRA: Do you mean Marjory?

AYMEE: Oh sorry. Marjory. Sorry, Marjory not Ma. Not enough coffee.

KIRA: It’s getting iffy in there.

JOE: Yeah, getting them confused.

AYMEE: Sorry. So inside of Marjory there’s the three of us. And so I always try to stay vocally consistent. And then for the three of us to sort of do a little bit of a rehearsal of what we all want to see and then continue to record that.

And the same goes with Ma. Just to make sure that we get the timing right and all sort of sync up. But yeah. I don’t take any credit for that. This is all my two co-workers who are just exceptional that make it look that way.

JOE: That is very kind of you but also it’s hard to believe you when you say, I don’t take any credit, when you’re performing two larger than life characters here. At the same time.

AYMEE: No, no. But I just feel like it was like vocally it was easier to perform because that groundwork was laid down and because I had had my panic attack early.

JOE: [laughs] Got it out of the way. Very efficient.

AYMEE: Got it out of the way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That song was fun to record and I, you know, we all had joked afterwards it’s like, ooh, I want this song to get a disco version and just sneak it into all the gay clubs. You know what I mean?

JOE: Oh yeah, “Be a Queen.” So we’re not quite at the song yet, but we’ll talk about it here anyway. Because the song comes up in a few minutes. But yes, you get a little duet with yourself with “Be a Queen.” And you’re right. Just the title alone is like get down to the gay clubs. For sure.

And also like when you sing, not only are you alternating between two different voices, but you’re almost singing in two different styles. Where like the Trash Heap gets the fast verse stuff here and then Ma is singing these high notes and like you’re just showing off all of your Broadway training here.

Which, if people don’t know, you are also a Broadway star. Like I think that’s obviousl–

AYMEE: No, not a star.

JOE: Yes. Yes, a star. Don’t argue with me on that one. [laughs]

AYMEE: No, I have been lucky to have performed on certain shows but not a star. But thank you though.

JOE: You’re so welcome. [laughs] Okay, we’re gonna come back to the song in a second but let’s back up a hot sec to this conversation that Ma and Marjory are having. And Ma is jealous that Marjory has Philo and Gunge, who show her so much respect. Because Ma doesn’t get any respect from Pa and Junior, which is sad to see her admit that. On the old show and even in the first season and the first half of this season on Back to the Rock, it seemed like she was oblivious to it. And now she’s like finally coming to grips with like, Oh they don’t even seem to like me very much.

AYMEE: Yeah. Yeah.

JOE: I mean, Junior likes her but that’s a different, that’s another toxic relationship in a very different way that we don’t need to dive into right now. But that’s something for me and my therapist to work out.

KIRA: Fraggle Talk: Mommy issues.

[Aymee laughs]

JOE: (laughing) Right. (in normal voice) Marjory reminds Ma that she is a queen descended from the great gorg queens of old. And this is one of those moments where like we’re talking about Gorg history and I want to know more about this. I would love to really have the show break into what does the gorg Kingdom, the gorg universe look like? What are the historical responsibilities of being king of the universe? What did it used to look like because now it’s kind of a joke but I bet it used to be pretty cool.

AYMEE: Oh, spectacular, right?

JOE: Yes.

AYMEE: Opulent. Yeah.

JOE: Yes, exactly. So yeah, we’re getting like a taste of that here and maybe season three we’ll get a little bit more of whatever that looks like. Hmmm.

So meanwhile, Wembley and Wrigley, his doppelganger, are bopping through the cave. They’re  grunting. Whatever it is that Wembleys do.

[Aymee and Joe do the Wembley grunt]

JOE: They pass some cave paintings, and they see these pictures of ancient fraggles with radishes. And Wembley learns very quickly that Traveling Matt did not discover the radishes after all. They’re obviously much older. But the story about Matt and the radishes gives Gobo so much strength that Wembley feels like he needs to hide the truth from his friend. And Gobo enters the scene. And it’s a cute shot of Wembley, like, splaying himself against the rock to cover the, to like poorly cover by the way, the artwork.

And I have no idea how they hide the Puppeteer here because you could, it looks like Wembley, he’s up on one leg and he’s up against the rock. And I don’t know where Jordan is. And it didn’t even occur to me until, this is my fourth watching of this episode. I didn’t think about it until today essentially. This is just gonna be a fraggle secret, we think?

AYMEE: Maybe.

JOE: Maybe? Okay. So Wembley’s alive is what you’re telling me?

AYMEE: Yeah.

JOE: Yes, there’s no puppeteer. It’s just Wembley.

AYMEE: No no no. He has a great apartment in Calgary.

[All laugh]

JOE: Ah, great. That’s perfect. That’s fine. Let’s leave that one be a secret. Some things we just gotta leave behind the scenes. The Lost Fraggles are showing off their underground farm. They’ve got mushroom. They’ve got gushroom. They got shushroom. And you put them all together and you get gootine. That’s gotta be a reference to Canada, right?

AYMEE: 100 percent. 100 percent.

JOE: Great.

KIRA: I actually used to get… well they called them disco fries, at a diner in Toronto. And it was like sweet potato fries, and regular fries and cheese curds and gravy. And I think they put back bacon on it too. But that’s what those little bowls looked like so that made me chuckle. I’m like, oh, we’re doing the Lakeview. All right.

[Joe and Aymee laugh]

KIRA: For edible joy.

JOE: It sounds delicious.

AYMEE: Oh, it is.

JOE: Well, poutine sounds delicious. Gootine sounds less delicious. I’m not a big mushroom guy. But yes, that sounds great. Also like they’re eating mushrooms but they have a friend who’s a mushroom with Manford.

AYMEE: Yes.

JOE: I’m sorry, what was that, Kira?

KIRA: You don’t eat all mushrooms. Some are good for eating. There’s a Concerned Children’s Advertisers ad from the 90s in Canada that’s about raccoons eating…The raccoon saw delicious looking this. And the parents said, “Oh, careful baby. Some mushrooms are not for raccoons.” So that’s always what’s in my head.

Anyway, you eat some and some you just look at because they will kill you. That’ll be the mushroom you eat one time.

[Aymee and Joe laugh]

KIRA: And then some mushrooms are your friends. So, you know.

JOE: So are you suggesting that Manford is poisonous?

KIRA: He could be. I think it’s more so that he’s sentient. Which they take an issue towards.

JOE: Got it.

KIRA: I don’t think the gushrooms and the shushrooms are sentient necessarily. But Manford definitely. We’re not. No.

AYMEE: I think Manford might have some toxic traits.

JOE: [laughs] Oh yeah. There it is.

KIRA: Codependency. Yeah.

JOE: Codependency. Don’t eat codependent mushrooms.

AYMEE: No.

JOE: Good advice. Fraggle Rock, saving the world. 

[Aymee and Joe laugh]

JOE: Back at the Trash Heap, Marjory is convincing Ma to own her queenness. Ma finds a crown in the trash and puts it on.

AYMEE: Yeah.

JOE: First of all, I don’t recommend putting garbage on your head but whatever. I’m not a gorg. Second of all, I guess because it’s in her trash, that means it used to be hers or something like that.

AYMEE: It was made of like spoons and spoons and forks and things that you would find in the garbage. It almost looked like something that maybe Junior had created and played with, is what I believe.

JOE: Sure. Yeah.

AYMEE: You know, because it was all intact. It wasn’t like she built it in the moment. She’s like, “Oh, what is this?”

JOE: I would have guessed like maybe Philo and Gunge made it for Marjory but that would have been way too big for Marjory. That would have been like a belt for her.

AYMEE: Oh yeah. For sure. Or a corset. [laughs]

JOE: Right.

KIRA: With Marjory and the boys before, there was the spaghetti sweaters.

JOE: Oh, that’s true. Yeah.

KIRA: So it could just be a craft experience and sometimes when you’re trying a new form, you don’t always get the size right.

JOE: That’s a really great observation. I’ll also throw out one more and it’s because Marjory is all-knowing, she knew this was going to happen. She may have had a crown ready for when Ma shows up.

AYMEE: Yeah. She put that she put the rats to task. And yeah, created this beautiful. This is actually really pretty. I really liked that crown. It was nice. [laughs]

JOE: You need a human-sized replica to take home with you.

AYMEE: Oh my god. Wouldn’t that be great.

JOE: Yeah. Well, you got Forks. Yeah, you could put something together. [laughs]

AYMEE: Just an art project. Just to wear it around town.

JOE: Yeah, you could be that lady wearing a fork crown.

AYMEE: Yeah.

JOE: No one’s gonna mess with you. No one’s gonna mess with the fork queen.

AYMEE: Definitely not here in San Francisco.

JOE: Exactly.

AYMEE: Everything goes. [laughs]

JOE: So this is where we get that song, “Be a Queen,” we were just discussing. During the song, Ma kind of has this fantasy moment where the gorgs’ castle is like all decked out and Junior and Pa are like welcoming her home. And they’re throwing flowers for her. And Philo and Gunge are there. And they’re wearing these like little royal outfits. I don’t know how to describe them. They’re adorable. And Ma has a scepter which, I think if I saw it right, it’s got like a gilded radish on top.

Back underground, the fraggles are so grateful they met the Lost Fraggles after that dust storm. Leader says that the Lost Fraggles ancestors fled from a dust storm as well, which is how they ended up underground. And when they fled underground, they also lost their favorite food. Which I know when I talk about a disaster that leads to like people who have had to leave their homes, the first thing you think is, “Ah, but that food that we used to have. That was so good.”

That’s really like the top two things. We lost our old home and oh, there was this one thing that we used to eat all the time? Mmm. It was good.

KIRA: No, I come from a family that goes on vacation, like we’d go on vacation when I was little and come back and go. Yeah, it was nice. We had this really tasty dessert at this place. So I can resonate with the concept of the food as central.

JOE: No, that’s true. That is true. And also food is very important to the fraggles. And I will admit like, you know, there are certain places in this world where like, if you’re like, oh, I went to Paris. It’s like, yeah. Blah blah blah. I saw the Louvre, but have you ever had a baguette? Whoa!

[Aymee laughs]

KIRA: Had lasagna in Italy.

JOE: Yeah.

KIRA: It’s a different experience, man.

JOE: It’s true. It’s true.

KIRA: After Italy? Haven’t had lasagna anymore. It’s just not happening.

JOE: It’s true. And it makes me think that the radishes that are grown in the gorgs’ garden, I bet they taste way better than our radishes. I bet they taste real good.

AYMEE: Oh for sure.

JOE: Yeah.

AYMEE: Right?

JOE: Yep.

KIRA: Not spicy, not wood. Little spicy but not. Yeah.

JOE: Do you think there’s a little bit of spice in them?

AYMEE: You know, like that little tingle that a radish. You know, when you bite a radish…

JOE: I see what you’re saying like, they come with, like they growl them with paprika already baked into them or something. Yeah, no. That makes more sense. Yes. The radish spice.

KIRA: Oh no, no. Cobby-ish.

JOE: Yeah. Great. Anyway.

[Aymee laughs]

JOE: They obviously loved radishes so much that they made a statue to commemorate the radish. And, as they unveil this little statue, Wembley throws himself in front of it, but right behind him is a giant radish statue. Because as Leader says, the little one was just the model that they used to make the big one. And so now, Gobo knows that Uncle Matt’s story about discovering radishes, it was all bull. As if we could have trusted Traveling Matt anyway, but maybe Gobo doesn’t know that.

And he’s not mad, he’s just disappointed. You know, he just wanted to know the whole story and the Lost Fraggles, this is also one of my favorite things in this episode because this prop is so cool. The Lost Fraggles tell the story of how the gorgs used this chemical and destroyed the radishes, created the dust storm. They all had to flee underground and they’re doing it with this hand-cranked, hand-drawn tableau. It’s like on a big piece of fabric. I don’t really know how to describe it. Hopefully you’ve seen the episode. You know what it looks like. And what a great prop that is! Like it’s a really cool looking thing.

KIRA: I love the art style too. This like Lost Fraggle art with these kind of little stick figure fraggles. It’s very good. Dan’s puppet arm popped off at one point when we were filming that.

[Aymee laughs]

JOE: Cranking the thing.

KIRA: The one cranking going [makes sounds of struggle]. And I’m doing the speech as Leader, and all of a sudden, I hear Dan go, “Aaaah.” And I just thought he was enjoying his character to the fullest and thought it would be cool to scream in the middle of my monologue. So I was kind of wildly offended for a second.

JOE: Yeah, what a character choice you made there, Dan.

[Aymee laughs]

AYMEE: No, my arm.

JOE: Maybe Lost Fraggles, they have detachable limbs. Maybe that’s just one of the many ways that make them different from regular fraggles.

AYMEE: And they grow them back instantly, like lizards.

JOE: Yes, right, yes. [laughs] So they tell the story and apparently, before they fled underground, they planted some radish seeds with some compost as an act of hope. So, as we’ve learned here, something happens in between when they planted those seeds and when the gorgs started harvesting them. They’re responsible for there still being radishes up above ground. And Traveling Matt may not have discovered the radishes first, but he did discover these new radishes that came from those seeds.

Or at least as far as the fraggles are concerned. I guess the gorgs technically would have discovered them beforehand but we’re nitpicking. The word discover is a little, we’re a little loose with the definition there.

KIRA: I like to tell people, “This for That” is the episode about capitalism and this is the episode about colonialism. It’s broad strokes but it’s like, yeah, if Uncle Matt had asked Junior, “Hey, what are these?” It would have been a different conversation. But of course, that’s not what Uncle Matt would do.

 JOE: Right.

KIRA: It all filters in there.

JOE: And I think actually you’re making a good point here because that’s what he does in all of his postcards. And he doesn’t ask what things are. He just makes assumptions and then he writes back and he’s like, look, I made this discovery of this thing that already exists. And I’m going to tell you incorrect information about what that is. And It reminds me of, as you said, it’s colonialism. It’s Christopher Columbus showing up on our shores and saying, well, this must be India. And no one’s correcting him because he’s the captain and now… You know the history. It’s exhausting.

KIRA: And the rest is truly history. 

JOE: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But we don’t need to get into all of that. That’s another podcast. We don’t have the time to really break that thing open. But the important thing here is that the fraggles now know that compost can help to heal the scorched land up above. That’s a pretty important thing that they’ve learned here from the Lost Fraggles.

And this is where we get our third song of the episode, which is exciting that we got three songs in this episode. It is “Is It True,” which comes from the original series episode “The Wizard of Fraggle Rock.” And what a gift we get to hear Catherine, O’Hara sing. I love that. I love that for us.

Now Kira, you were saying earlier that you had the scratch track that you could record the lines and then Catherine O’Hara came in and did some ADR for the character afterward. At what point is the song recorded? So did you have her voice in your ear for the song?

KIRA: Yeah. Including the yelling. Is it true!?

[Joe and Aymee laugh]

KIRA: Yeah. No, fortunately that was just a lip-sync situation.

JOE: Yeah. That’s awesome though because you got to have Catherine O’Hara in your ear and like what a gift that is for any of us.

KIRA: Yeah. Truly, truly.

JOE: And I mean nothing incredibly special about what we’re seeing on screen for the song but like there’s some fun choreography. There’s like an interesting light shining down from the cave ceiling, kind of like emulating spotlights on everybody. And I appreciate that because like it’s a good reminder that we are further underground than we’re used to. The light is coming from above. It’s not just kind of a general light situation I guess from the ditzies.

We haven’t really gotten into ditzies in Back to the Rock. But yeah, like it’s because, you know, below the lost and found caves, they look really similar to regular Fraggle Rock caves. So that’s one way that I guess you guys can kind of differentiate was with the lighting.

Actually, that’s a good question too. Was there anything that makes this different just visually speaking? Besides the statues, the artwork that we saw and this light situation. Is there anything else about it that makes it different from the regular Fraggle Rock that we see?

KIRA: I think the light, like you said, is a big thing. I feel like the light is a lot more like, you see it kind of more pointed in certain places. I don’t know if this is true or if I’m just imagining it. Everything feels more kind of like light brown and dusty.

JOE: Yeah.

KIRA: Except for the mushroom garden, which is necessarily darker, more moist. It’s like all the moisture from everywhere else went into growing these mushrooms. So that’s when I think about lost Fraggle Rock, it has more of that like kind of what you would imagine I guess if you were looking at ancient Egyptian ruins, or something. It’s all tan, all so sort of sandy desert colors and yeah.

JOE: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah and I feel like that’ll be the easiest way to kind of just tell the difference is just change the color palette a little bit and there you go.

And then one other thing about these lost fraggles. When the regular fraggles…God I don’t know what to call them. Our fraggles. Like when they’ve found other fraggle communities, it’s like we’ve seen the merggles and the craggles. And then we’ve met Pryce who comes from another community, that sort of thing.

But this feels like it’s the first one that’s really like an actual offshoot of the regular Fraggle Rock. So are we assuming that there’s even more of these like that? That there’s all these other Fraggle communities that are, if you just dig in the right place, if you just go through the right cave, then there could be any sorts of Fraggle communities that are just slightly different from the one that we’re used to.

AYMEE: Yeah. They’re all like little hamlets, right?

JOE: Yeah.

AYMEE: [laughs] With just other types of, yeah, exactly little communities, that have their own rules and hierarchy and who knows?

JOE: Yeah.

AYMEE: Yeah.

KIRA: I suppose their world is less globally connected than Silly Creature world is, I think.

JOE: Mmhmm. Right.

KIRA: We’ve all found each other mostly at this point. Although I do still wonder whether there are still groups out there that’s like that have no human contact or no, like contact with the outside world, I should say. Because they’re still humans. But not. I don’t know the proper term. 

JOE: Yeah. There are.

KIRA: Tribes in like the Amazon.

JOE: Yes.

KIRA: If they’re still undiscovered is a thing I wonder sometimes because like are there still groups out there that just haven’t been found because they’re living in a particularly isolated or hidden way. And is that even possible in this day and age?

JOE: Right.

KIRA: So why not have that be possible in the fraggle world? Underground covers a lot of space.

JOE: That’s true. And also like Fraggle Rock is magic. So it’s an infinite amount of space as far as we’re concerned. It’s not just what’s directly below Fraggle Rock. It’s also a portal that leads to wherever or there’s something that used to be here. Now, it’s something else. And it could be anything.

But I love this idea and I think the old Fraggle Rock leaned so much on the inner connectivity between fraggles, silly creatures, Gorgs, Doozers period. And although we did see other fraggle types that was the main theme there. And I feel like Back to the Rock is really starting to plant those seeds of there’s all kinds of fraggles. And, like you said, it’s not a global, you know, it’s not like we have a government that’s above all of them. That’s overseeing all these different fraggles and just tracking them.

KIRA: Fraggle UN.

JOE: Yeah, there’s no Fraggle UN. Right. But, I don’t know. I would love to learn more about that and to meet more of these Fraggle communities and see how they differ and how they complement each other. I think that’s fun. Yeah.

AYMEE: And also within each community there are also probably different creatures, right? Like all the little like the talking flowers, all the underwater creatures.

JOE: Yeah.

AYMEE: All the plants that have, you know, sentient plant being. Yeah.

JOE: Yeah. Manford.

AYMEE: Yeah. They probably all have… What I’ve always wondered is the Fraggle society with the Fraggle five, is that the only one with outside communication to silly creatures or do all the other ones also have their own version of Traveling Matt where they get info or intel.

JOE: Yeah. Or like, do they have access to a fraggle hole that has their own Doc? Or someone who’s on the other side? Yeah. Hmm.

AYMEE: Yeah. And what weren’t. Or somebody that’s not like a Doc at all, you know what I mean? Where it’s just like, literally a hole into a garbage pit or somebody’s I don’t know. Like, an insane asylum. I don’t know if we’re going there. We’re going.

JOE: Oh yes. Season three! Fraggles in the insane asylum.

[Crosstalk]

[Aymee laughs]

JOE: Well, we do know actually. I mean, if we’re following the rules of the original Fraggle Rock, there was a cave. Of course, I can’t remember all the details off the top of my head. But like, there’s an episode where they find another cave that has portals that can go to a dozen different places all around the world. And kind of cementing this idea that Fraggle Rock is not in a specific place in our world. The magic kind of makes it exist in many different places.

AYMEE: I love that.

JOE: So, yeah, so that’s actually pretty likely that they could have a fraggle hole that could lead to anywhere. I dunno. Okay, well, we could maybe some conversations with the writers about what’s next.

All right, we’ll let our imaginations run wild with that one. And so now that the fraggles have an inkling of a strategy with all this stuff with the compost and, oh, there’s also this whole thing with Cotterpin where she says, “Oh, we could also use technology.” And she goes into a bunch of technobabble that I don’t understand. And after she says that, the Lost Fraggles go, “Oh, you are a Doozer.”

So, alright. You didn’t have to listen to her when she said it, but now that she’s proven it, she’s gone, you know, bent over backwards to explain to you about science, now you believe her. Okay.

AYMEE: Yeah. Again.

JOE: Yeah. Trust Doozers is what I’m saying. Listen to Doozers.

[Crosstalk]

JOE: So, the Lost Fraggles, they don’t really seem interested in exploring the world above now. Even now that they know that it’s safe. They just seem like they’re going to be fine hanging out underground which is a choice. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong but it’s a choice. And Mokey has to drag Lanford away from Manford because they love each other. And she says, it’s probably good that she doesn’t have a twin because now she doesn’t have to be sad saying goodbye to them.

And just as they leave, her doppelganger, Slowpokey, shows up fashionably late. And Aymee, that’s you, right? You’re playing Slowpokey?

AYMEE: That’s me. Yeah.

JOE: I genuinely thought until today when I saw it listed on the Muppet Wiki that it was Donna because the voice match is so good. I really thought it was Donna.

AYMEE: Oh my God, thank you. That was another one that I was just like, “No, it does not. I could never sound like Donna.” But thank you.

JOE: You did it.

AYMEE: Woohoo!

[Joe laughs]

AYMEE: Yeah, her Mokey is just perfection.

JOE: Yes. Yes and the fact that she’s Slowpokey and being late because she was meditating makes sense because you can’t make her too different. It’s like, “Oh, it’s just like Mokey except she’s always late.” It’s like no, no, she’s also space age-y and meditate-y and, you know, she has reasons for being late. Yeah.

[Aymee laughs]

JOE: And then finally back at the gorgs’ garden, Junior and Pa are wailing about not having the garden, and not having Ma around. And Pa is all out of kingley ideas. And then from off screen, Ma says, “Then I’ll lead you.” And she walks in, puts down a pizza box. Philo and Gunge pop out of it. And there’s still a slice of pizza on there, which I appreciate. And they give her a queenly introduction. She’s taken over. Taken over the whole thing.

I love this. I love everything about this. I love the way that Ma has grown and she’s taking control. She’s really gonna cut Paw down a peg, which he desperately needs. And, you know, they got a problem they gotta solve and he wasn’t up to the task.

[Aymee laughs]

JOE: So, this is great. I love everything about this. That’s where our episode ends. This episode was a blast. Do either of you have any final thoughts about this or anything that we didn’t cover that you wanted to talk about? Or if something comes to you about another episode that feels like it’s important to say feel free to chime in.

AYMEE: No, I just love these deep dives. These are, I mean, Kira, I don’t know about you. But  reliving these episodes is, oh gosh, it just does it feel so good. And it’s so nice to see the final product too, because while you’re on the floor sometimes you’re like, oh man, I hope this works the way that it’s been envisioned. And then when you finally see it, just I’m so proud of everybody. Like it’s just been a really, very fulfilling ride.

KIRA: Yeah, it was a long journey from wrapping season two to the actual release of season two because of the strikes. Which of course, love a union. Go team. But yeah, seeing how everything came together and getting this opportunity to chat with someone, two someones who really know their stuff and are just as enthusiastic about the cool puppet bits and deep metaphors, and deep thinking, just getting to talk all that has been nice.

I just remembered that while we were shooting this episode was when I got shingles.

JOE: Oh nooo. No fun.

AYMEE: That’s right.

KIRA: I’m gonna choose to say that I was so determined and so really wanting to do right by Canadian icon Catherine O’Hara, that I gave myself shingles. So Catherine, I got shingles for you.

[Joe laughs]

AYMEE: [laughs] Yeah, say that.

KIRA: And also if you ever see me because I didn’t actually, you know, we don’t get to meet the voice stars necessarily but Catherine, if you ever find yourself in Toronto and want to say hi, just look me up. We can hang out.

JOE: Yeah, she’s a dedicated listener to this podcast, Catherine O’Hara. So I’m sure she’ll get your message.

KIRA: Closeted fraggle fanatic, Catherine O’Hara. You never know.

JOE: You never know. Look, Catherine O’Hara, you’re great. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being a part of the game. Yeah.

KIRA: (imitating Catherine O’Hara) I’m the biggest.. I mean, I’m such a huge puppet fan. You have no idea. I love the Muppets and Fraggles. Oh my gosh. (in normal voice) Like they’re ashamed of themselves. So it’s possible. I’ll hold out hope.

JOE: You never know. I mean, look, I will say you guys had Brett Goldstein on the show, who I think he only got this role because he would not shut up in interviews about how much he loves the Muppets.

AYMEE: Oh, yeah.

JOE: And like within the year he made it onto Fraggle Rock. He made it onto Sesame Street. He did some live stuff with the Muppets. It’s like everyone heard him. So, like, I think the moral here is, if you’re listening to this podcast, and if you’re a huge Muppet fan, but you’re also a celebrity, just start talking about it. Just start saying out loud.

You know who’s another one? We did an interview with Yvette Nicole Brown from Community, and who is fantastic. And she’s a huge Muppet fan. And we made sure that she got in contact with the people who she needed to get in contact with. And she’d already done Muppets Haunted Mansion. But like she’s gonna be on Sesame Street or if not already. And like, just start saying it out loud and you know, I think all three, Muppets, Fraggles and Sesame, like they want to work with celebrities.

AYMEE: Oh, 100 percent.

JOE: Just gotta make sure the right person hears you.

KIRA: Aymee, you’re the queen of manifestation. When I think of manifesting things and making them happen and knowing 800 ways to do that, I always think of you. So, yes, send…What would be your number one tip to a celebrity looking to manifest their Muppet dreams?

AYMEE: You know, utilize the socials. But also manifest it into your water before you drink it. “I want to work Muppets.” And then drink your water.

KIRA: I love that one.

AYMEE: That’s the manifestation right there. And maybe light a candle.

JOE: Do you just talk to your water? Is that it?

AYMEE: Yeah, you have to. You have to.

JOE: That’s the whole thing? That’s the secret?

AYMEE: No, it is a thing. Apparently, it is a thing. Because water holds energy. And if you like speak positive and do it. Try it. Try it. Try it!

KIRA: There’s the full moon thing too.

AYMEE: Yeah.

JOE: Oh my goodness. Okay, I’m gonna try. I gotta get something good to manifest in the full moon into my water.

AYMEE: Every time you drink your water just like say “I would like to own a mansion one day.” And then like or whatever. You know, I would like to meet Brett Goldstein.

JOE: Yeah. Would it work in chocolate milk?

AYMEE: It has to be water. I don’t think chocolate milk holds the same amount of magic. [laughs]

JOE: [laughs] Okay. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop talking to my chocolate milk.

AYMEE: Okay. You can talk to your chocolate milk.

JOE: Yeah. I appreciate that. Yeah, thank you. [laughs]

So, Kira, Aymee. I have a question that we like to ask everybody at the end of our podcast. For each of you, how do you plan to make the world a little Fragglier?

AYMEE: I’m traveling a lot right now. So I do feel like Traveling Matt in a lot of ways. And a lot of my career outside of puppetry has been about me traveling different places. So I’ve seen specifically United States change a lot throughout the years and watched a lot of communities struggle. And one thing that I’m really, really aware of right now is the unhoused. People who are just who don’t have homes. And it’s pretty much in every major city here in the states.

And I am trying to be more mindful of being as human as possible and help any way that I can when I get to these cities. Whether that’s literally just bringing an extra sandwich or like not throwing my clothing away. But folding it up or like or even having a conversation and finding out what people need.

I mean, I’m just one person and I know that there are systems built in order to help a lot of people in a lot of these communities. But yeah, I feel like that’s the biggest pain point in the US currently. I mean there are more, obviously but this is the one that I’ve noticed quite a bit lately. So I personally need to get a lot more involved than I already am. That’s how I would like to make the world more fraggly.

And it’s I think it also falls into the whole storyline too about reusing and recycling, and being aware of our environment, and our communities. And the butterfly effect of like this act of kindness can also perpetuate another act of kindness. And it will heal, I think, a lot of Issues just to help people get back on their feet.

JOE: Yeah. That’s great.

AYMEE: I’m going to do that.

JOE: Absolutely. No, that’s important work. And like you said you may feel like you’re one person, but that’s what it takes. Like it takes a lot of just one persons to make a difference. And that’s how it starts. You have to be that person.

AYMEE: Yeah.

KIRA: And you’re building community.

AYMEE: Yeah.

KIRA: That’s the folks who you might see asking for change near the grocery store. If you’re seeing the same people all the time. They’re your neighbor.

AYMEE: Mmhmm.

JOE: That’s true.

KIRA: So they deserve to be treated with kindness and respect, same as everyone. So I love that you highlighted that.

JOE: Kira, how about you? How do you plan to make the world a little fragglier?

KIRA: A thing I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is the relationship that we have with the planet and with our natural environment. I really like gardening. I really like going out and learning more about the native plants in my area. I was just back home in my hometown of Yellowknife up north and revisiting the differences between like the native flora there and down here in Toronto where I currently live.

And I read an incredible book called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is a botanist and also a member of the, I believe it’s the Potawatomi Nation indigenous group in the states. And it’s about the intersection of botany with indigenous wisdom and ways of knowing. And the concept of the relationship with the land.

And I sort of got into this stuff. I like the idea of like foraging, which feels very fraggly like, oh, what’s here? We’re gonna, you know, figure out a way to take just what we need from nature and then I attended a talk about foraging and someone pointed out that that’s still a very take mindset. And there’s like, great, you forage. You take from the land. Now, what are you giving back?

And I was like, oh, yeah. And then I read Braiding Sweetgrass and that’s I think a lot of how we think about the natural world as humans in our current society is very disconnected. It’s like, here’s us and we’re in our city, and we’re in our house or whatever. And then here’s nature over there. And sometimes we do stuff. And often the attitude is maybe all the humans should just disappear and then nature would be better off without us.

But what Kimmerer presented in her book is more of a reciprocal relationship, right? You’re living. Humans are part of the ecosystem. We are part of the landscape. We’ve had a massive effect on it, right? And we’re living in the…Oh gosh, what’s the word? The anthropocene. It’s basically a period of time where human development and building and the effect on the environment is creating massive changes in the global ecosystem.

And recognizing that we’re not a thing that has been plopped down into nature but a thing that exists within nature and how do we create more stewardship of the land around us. What are we doing to give back to the planet? What gifts does the planet give us? What gifts can we give the planet back? And I think just because the ecological messages in Fraggle Rock are so strong and the connections to the rocks and the water and the plants are all so rich in that world, that’s my very woo sort of thing that I’ve been thinking about and feeling a lot lately as I go out in the world and know what plants are coming up through the sidewalk and which ones are meant to be here and which ones have come from other places and are creating problems. Which ones are going to, if you have a little cut, will slow the bleeding faster.

Or even just learning the trees in your front yard. Somebody said, I didn’t get interested in this until I looked out my window and thought I don’t know what any of the trees in my front yard are. So even just that little bit of knowledge gets you so much more connected with the ecosystem that you live in. And It starts to build a relationship between you and the planet, rather than this siloed existence that we have.

So, I just ranted and rambled on that for a real long time. I am so sorry.

AYMEE: I loved it. I loved it, Kira. And also, it’s like, as you were speaking on it, it’s sort of like, wow, all that information has felt so gatekept to me because my only interaction with produce, right, or things that grow, are things that I could find in a supermarket. I don’t know how to like, I mean, I’m sure I can figure out how to plant a tomato by looking it up online. But the fact that we don’t…Each sort of know and respect the time it takes for that seed to turn into a plant to then turn into fruit that you can eat and then get recycled and continue that process. We then tend to not care for the planet in general because we take zero responsibility in it.

So, oh my God, I agree with you 100 percent. And yeah, I would love to to learn more about that, as well. And literally dig my hands in the dirt and figure it all out.

KIRA: Literally, put your hands in some dirt.

AYMEE: In dirt.

KIRA: Touch a plant. Not the ones that are going to irritate your skin but touch a plant, learn which ones are irritating your skin.

AYMEE: Right.

KIRA: Yeah. Do read that book. Anyone who’s interested, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass. I listened to the audiobook, which it’s like 14-hour audiobook, but it’s read by the author and she has just the nicest voice. And I listened to it while I was gardening. And it was just the most like soul-healing thing.

AYMEE: I love it.

JOE: And I think it’s also really important to know which plants are sentient.

KIRA: Yes.

JOE: And might, you know, be a Manford or a Lanford.

KIRA: Exactly. Critical part of the knowledge. 

JOE: Easily, maybe the most important.

[Aymee and Kira laugh]

JOE: Kira Hall, Aymee Garcia, thank you both so much for being here. Thank you so much for talking about this episode with us and just for being such an important part of Fraggle Rock. It really is a better place because each of you are in it.

AYMEE: Oh, that’s so sweet.

JOE: So thank you for all you’ve done. And again, thank you for being here on this podcast. It was a joy to get to talk to you both.

AYMEE: Ditto, friend. This was amazing.

[Fraggle Talk theme music plays]

JOE: Fraggle Talk: the unofficial Fraggle Rock podcast is brought to you by ToughPigs.com. Produced, written and hosted by Joe Hennes. Fraggle Talk art by Dave Hulteen Jr. Fraggle Rock mark and logo, characters and elements are trademarks of the Jim Henson Company. All rights reserved. Transcripts provided by Katilyn Miller.

Fraggle Rock theme song, written by Philip Balsam and Dennis Lee, is used with permission. Special thanks to The Jim Henson company, Apple TV+ and the entire Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock family.

Be sure to follow ToughPigs @ToughPigs on all social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. And please consider supporting us on patreon or by buying merchandise on Teepublic.

For more Fraggle podcast fun, listen to Fraggle Talk: Classic on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time, down at Fraggle Talk.

[Music ends]