Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday
“Oh, hello, meow meow meow!” says Bear. Bear has answered the door holding a little cardboard cat mask. “It’s so good to see you! Can you guess who I am, meow meow meow?”
Um. Yeah. You’re Bear, and you’re holding a little cardboard cat mask.
I don’t know, maybe it’s me. I usually love Halloween. But this week has just worn me down. Does this happen every week in these columns? I hate to keep doing this, but the barrage of fakey spookiness on the Alice Cooper Muppet Show and Elmo Says Boo has just drained my Halloween spirits. I don’t have a lot of patience for cardboard cat masks at the moment. Meow meow yourself.
Bear has decorated his house with lights and balloons and black cat throw pillows. But he’s still getting ready for Halloween — they have to carve the pumpkin, get their costumes ready, and then they’re all going trick or treating. Then two little bushes walk up to Bear, whispering and rustling. “Rustle rustle rustle!” they giggle. “Sssshhhh! Quiet, quiet. Rustle rustle.” Bear notices the two bushes, and asks if we can guess who they are. It’s Pip and Pop, dressed as bushes! Pop has a ball stuck in his branches, and Bear says that’s very creative: “That’s the great part of dressing up for Halloween! You get to discover what it’s like to be someone or something else!” Pop suggests they go outside and see which one can stand still like a bush the longest, so they rustle rustle away.
And hey, y’know what? That is a cool thing about Halloween. Dressing up in costumes and pretending to be something else really is fun. It occurs to me that none of the shows I’ve seen this week said anything about costumes.
Then Bear goes into the kitchen and finds Tutter excavating a pumpkin, wearing a little miner’s helmet. Tutter scoops out the pumpkin, and says they’re ready for the carving. Bear says: “That’s right, Tutter. My, you’re quite the pumpkin expert, aren’t you?” Tutter shrugs: “Well, yeah, you know. I dabble.”
It’s cute, and funny. This is also the first pumpkin carving I’ve seen this week. Pumpkin carving is great. How come the Muppets did drug abuse and devil worship instead of pumpkin carving?
Meanwhile, on the costume front, Ojo and Treelo are dressing as bats. Pip and Pop are bushes. Tutter makes himself a pumpkin costume. But Bear still needs a costume, so they get out the costume box. They can’t decide which to use, so Ojo and Treelo put a curly blonde wig on Bear’s head and announce that he’ll be “Goldilocks, the Bear!” Treelo flutters his eyes: “You’re very pretty, Bear!”
On a lesser show, this would so be the moment for some gay-baiting anti-drag humor. But Bear is so out of control perfect that he actually says: “Why, thank you, Treelo!” And then he swishes his hand through his hair. “Hey, I could get used to this. Thanks, guys — this is the best Halloween costume ever! Even if it is a bit… unusual.” And then he wears the Goldilocks wig for the whole rest of the episode.
WOW! That is possibly the most amazing pro-drag thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Halloween is like the gay national holiday — there are huge Halloween parades in New York and San Francisco where people put on all kinds of amazing, wild costumes. I really think that there’s some level of subtexting going on here — that Bear’s drag costume is a conscious wink at the queer folks, in the audience and on the production staff. Take that, Elmo!
Then there’s a big trick or treating scene, with the gang going from house to house in the forest and loading up on candied clams and birdseed treats. They all head back to the Big Blue House to stuff their faces and have a festive Halloween party. It really is remarkable that this show has managed to tap in to everything that’s actually fun about Halloween. The ghosts and ghouls on The Muppet Show aren’t that scary, and the Boo-berry jokes on Elmo Says Boo are just lame. But Bear sincerely invokes the fun side of Halloween — making costumes, carving pumpkins, pigging out on candied clams.
Bear’s not pretending to be “spooky,” rattling some chains around and eating main characters. Armed with a pumpkin and a blonde wig, he reminds us that Halloween is a world of friends and surprises and public cross-dressing.
It’s not scary. But this week, I think I’ve learned that scary isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday
by Danny Horn
