Monday Wednesday Thursday Friday
For my second Halloween episode, I’m watching the Fraggle Rock third season episode “Scared Silly.” I’ve seen it a bunch of times, and it’s one of my favorite episodes — a nice simple farce plot, with a huge funny Wembley breakdown at the end. But watching it for this Halloween week, the thing that I noticed most was the lighting.
It starts out with Boober jumping out from a pile of laundry to scare Wembley. He’s testing everyone’s bilubius, the furry tuft on the end of Fraggles’ tails that flare out when they’re scared. Wembley gets mad, and goes to the Trash Heap for help scaring Boober. The Trash Heap gets all Yoda on him, saying that he should just forget about it: “If you try to scare your friend back, that is REVENGE. And if you seek revenge, you take the consequences.” But the Trash Heap’s rats, Philo and Gunge, encourage Wembley to scare the daylights out of Boober.
And here’s where the cool lighting effects happen. Wembley and the rats sing a song about how great it would be to scare Boober, and the lights start to get dimmer. Wembley leaves the rats and goes into the Fraggle caves, and his second chorus is backed up by a huge pack of monsters. Here the lights get really dark, and Wembley is illuminated from underneath. It’s an amazing, subtle effect that shows that Wembley is giving himself over to darkness and revenge.
Wembley’s scaring efforts fail, and he just gets more and more frustrated. Later on, when Wembley is hiding around a corner planning to jump out at Boober, he’s lit with a red glow. And when Wembley plants spiders and scary masks all over Boober’s room, his spunky song is counterpointed by the darkness in the room.
There’s a whole bunch of plot that happens after this, with Wembley becoming convinced that he made Boober so scared that he blew up — but I’m just fascinated by the lights. The mood of every scene — from frustrated to furious to the bright happy ending — is highlighted by a very subtle lighting effect. The fake spiders and popping snakes aren’t scary here; Boober certainly isn’t scared by any of Wembley’s tricks. The scary thing is the idea that Wembley could be taken over with feelings of revenge and anger.
The Trash Heap warns Wembley of terrible consequences. Wembley thinks that means that Boober’s blown up — but the real danger here is Wembley losing his soul, and losing his friends, because he’s so focused on revenge. When he realizes that his friends are more important than his anger, things get a lot brighter.
Monday Wednesday Thursday Friday
by Danny Horn
