Transcript: Fraggle Talk: Back to the Rock – “The Great Wind”

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Fraggle Talk: Back to the Rock – Episode 14: The Great Wind

[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 help put it all together. I’m your host, silly creature, Joe Hennes.

[Music ends]

JOE: Today we are talking about season 2, episode 1, “The Great Wind,” in which things get a little breezy down at Fraggle Rock.

This week we’re excited to welcome back two guests without whom this wonderful show would not exist. First up, he is the developer, executive producer, and writer on Back to the Rock. It’s Matt Fussfeld. Hey Matt.

MATT FUSSFELD: Yeah! Yeah! Wow. Happy to be here.

ALEX CUTHBERTSON: I like thinking of you as a developer.

JOE: Yeah, right because this show is developed by you.

MATT: Yeah.

JOE: That is one of your titles. I didn’t know if that was important or not to mention in your intro.

MATT: It’s very important. No, I love it. I love it. No, listen, we’ll take all the credit we can take, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, it’s like a collaborative experience, but yeah, we’ll take any credit.

JOE: It is collaborative because your collaborator is another developer, executive producer and writer on Back to the Rock. It’s Alex Cuthbertson. Hey, Alex!

ALEX: Hello! Thank you for having us.

JOE: Good to have you guys.

ALEX: I missed you.

JOE: I’m so glad to have you both back here on the podcast. First of all, I have to thank you both for all the work that you’ve done on Back to the Rock. The fact that this show exists and that it’s so good, there’s no reason that either of those things should be true and yet here we are. So thank you guys for bringing this show into our lives.

ALEX: That’s nice of you. Thank you, Joe. Thank you for being such a…for throwing so much love toward the show and in publicizing the show, kind of engaging with the fans and the show and making it such a part of the Fraggle Fabric…The Fraggle Fabric? Yeah, that’s the phrase I’m trying to say.

JOE: Fraggle Fragbric? Yes.

ALEX: Fragbric. Fragbric. No, we’re so, I don’t know, we love it. The show is such a labor of love for everybody who works on it. So, like Matt was alluding to, it’s kind of the most collaborative experience imaginable. So it’s fun to get excited about. I think when it’s the your own thing, it’s hard to not feel a little self-conscious about taking credit for something. And because Fraggle is so collaborative and so a product of everybody that works on it, it’s easy to just kind of get psyched about it and say, “Yeah, we love it. It’s great.”

MATT: And to that point, thank you, guys. I mean, you loom very large, Joe Hennes. I’m sure, like, in the 80s when people were making stuff, they were like, “What are Siskel and Ebert gonna think about our movie?”

ALEX: What’s the thumb situation?

MATT: Not even, BSing you that we’re like, “I wonder if Joe Hennes and his crew…” Because you are kind of, in our minds, you are like the leader of the Fraggle fandom. And, seriously, you know, we thrive off of that. And I think that sort of makes it collaborative too. We’re like, we are doing the show for you guys, as one of you.

So, we truly love everything that you guys do too.

JOE: Aw, thank you. That means more than you know.

MATT: No, it’s for real, yeah.

JOE: If I can’t be there in Fraggle Rock in person, the second best thing is that someone in the room is saying my name. [Laughs]

ALEX: If we get, if we get…I would say, when we get a season three, you got to come out. It’s so enjoyable.

MATT: Yeah. 100%.

JOE: Okay, I’m coming. I’ll start walking now. How far is it to Calgary?

[Alex laughs]

MATT: It’s very cold out there.

ALEX: The walk up to Calgary is an interesting walk. It’ll take you through some emotional states. There’ll be times where you think you’re not going to make it. And then you’ll get there. And it’ll be all worthwhile.

JOE: Fantastic. Your words to God’s ears. I’m coming.

ALEX: No, it’s so great. It’s unlike any other set visit experience. You got to do it. We got to make that happen.

JOE: Great. Okay. Thank you. I would love to take you up on that. That is quite important to me. 

ALEX: Yeah. Of course.

JOE: That you guys get a season three. That I can make my way there.

MATT: That’s a Fraggle Promise too, by the way. Like everything we, Alex and I, do, we’re like, like when we finish up work for the day, we’re like, “I guess that’s a Fraggle Tuesday?” [Laughs]

ALEX: Working on other projects. Not even working on–

MATT: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

ALEX: Yeah.

MATT: Well it started on Fraggle Rock.

ALEX: Right.

MATT: That’s a Fraggle… Joe, you need… you will come to set. That’s a Fraggle Promise.

ALEX: That’s a Fraggle Promise.

JOE: Okay. Deal. I’m in. It’s a Fraggle Acceptance of your Fraggle Promise.

ALEX: That’s the full Fraggle.

JOE: So tell me, when did you both find out that Back to the Rock was renewed for a second season?

ALEX: You know, it happened, I gotta say, I think we were preparing ourselves to not know for a while. And it did end up happening relatively quickly. I’m going back now to the premiere of the first season. I think it was within a month, right? There abouts? Where we found out that a second season was really likely.

And so we started to kind of, you know, we’d always had sort of low-level creative conversations, like wish list stuff that we could do. But about a month in, we started to get rumblings. It’s a funny business. There’s a lot of imprecision in our business where you start.

MATT: Now more than ever. It’s always been a funny business.

ALEX: It’s always been funny.

MATT: It’s even funnier now.

ALEX: Yeah. And it’s even funnier now. But there are a lot of wind changes. Not to pull the metaphor from the second season. But you’ll start to feel the breeze blowing one way or another.

MATT: Oh my god.

ALEX: Like, it’s either not look good or look good. And in our case, it started to look good for a second season, I would say, within a month of the first season dropping on Apple. And then we got to ramp up the creative conversations about it and start, you know, reaching out to the staff to make sure people were available.

That’s the other hard thing, because when you don’t know what it’s going to happen, you want to make sure all the people who made the first season greater are able to come back. So we ended up getting really lucky that the staff was available and excited to come back. And, you know, we had the same amazing group that we had from first season. And even got the young woman who was our writer’s assistant got to join as a staff writer for the second season.

So really kind of was all the same family that came up to do the second season. And then we got ramped up and going pretty quickly.

JOE: That’s great. Yeah.

ALEX: We joined each other all in Los Angeles, because we have writers in New York and writers in LA. Even London, so we all were able to gather in LA for just a couple of days of just fun, big picture conversation. And then everyone retreated back to their home bases and we did a 20-week writer’s room.

JOE: So you mentioned this writer’s room, can you tell me a little bit about how you broke season two?

ALEX: Yeah, I mean, I think similar to season one, we really wanted to start with a big physical metaphor that we could dive into. And season one is obviously all about water and then, you know, water is used as a way to break down walls and interconnect worlds in new ways.

And wind was something that really struck us this year as a way to talk about change. And I think that the big idea behind season two is sort of dealing with change. And how change can be an agent for really positive things, really good advancement, but it can also be really scary. And it challenges, you know, everyone in different ways. It brings out the best in some people and brings out the worst in others and their ways to confront all of that and move forward positively.

So I think wind just felt like this perfect way to talk about all of that, talk about uncertainty, the world, do a big metaphor for climate change and what young people and all people on the planet are dealing with as far as knowing that that is a reality, but yet here we are and on we go. So it’s sort of like grabbing onto that as a positive metaphor, you know, not that climate change is positive, but that hey, here we are together and what we do within it, it can be really positive.

So that was the big physical metaphor. And then we just kind of went from there to talk about what those types of stories inspired and people, and especially when all the writers got together in person, it was just sharing stories and laughing. And certain episodes came out of those first couple of days.

I mean, like the “I’m Pogey” episode really in many ways came out of that day and talking about really personal stories on staff and yeah.

MATT: That was literally like one of our writers has a young son who came, like was excited to go to the playground with a ponytail and another kid was like, “You can’t wear a ponytail. That’s for girls.” And that opened up this incredible conversation with this awesome group that, yeah, eventually became “I’m Pogey.”

ALEX: So it’s like the macro and the micro.

MATT: Oh, there’s something you were going to say, Alex. The thing that Henson and Halle in particular, and Lisa really responded to as we started talking about it was kind of what you were saying, Alex, like this idea of, I think Halle, likes to call it hopepunk. Like just like radical hope.

ALEX: Yeah, radical hope.

MATT: All right, the sky is falling a little bit. Like, what are we going to do? Like, we’re going to be hopeful in the face of, you know, all reasons sort of–

ALEX: Yeah. And it’s also like the wind is a really interesting thing because it’s lean into it. You could stand still and sort of say all these things are happening, and then there’s sort of like, all right, what’s my agency in that? How can I be a positive influence within that? How do I lean into that wind and then kind of create a new current within it? So really, you can get yourself–

MATT: There’s a little thing me and Alex, like everybody in the business, like we’re talking about, just talking about how the business is changing, the business is changing, and there’s so much “the sky is falling” type attitude from a lot of our friends.

ALEX: Oh, yeah.

MATT: And it’s like, our attitude is like, are we just–We’re doing the Fraggle Rock season two. That’s our attitude, right? Like, things are different, but we’re just embracing that, and it’s kind of cool.

ALEX: It is really interesting to mention that, because Matt and I have worked together. I mean, we’re friends from college. We’ve worked together as professional TV writers now for a long time now. It’s now sneakily become a long time, and we’ve seen massive changes in that time.

And so it really is funny that the seeds, the themes in Fraggle Rock, which are obviously echoing throughout the entire world, kind of hit in this really specific way for our job, and in our industry right now, because just the way particularly writers, sort of approach their careers, it’s changed so much. And it can be scary. It really can be. You know, it’s your livelihood.

MATT: But it’s for everything too. It’s everything, you know?

ALEX: It’s everything.

MATT: It’s like kids with phones. Change is the only constant, you know? But it does feel like this point in time is particularly accelerated.

ALEX: Either because of the number of things happening, or our access to follow everything that’s happening, or a combination of both. It just does feel like we live in a time that is absolutely rocked by change, and I do think the way through that is to try to find the positive side of it.

MATT: The first thing is to just be like, “All right, change is happening. There’s nothing we can do about that now what?” And it’s like, we’re all together. We’ll try our best.

ALEX: Matt, what’s the thing you’ve been? Is it good that you kind of approach every…?

MATT: Oh yeah, I had a yoga teacher tell me this. He’s like, “You know what, I think it’s the Navy Seals, the Navy SEALs’ motto, apparently, is good.” It’s like the bomb went off, like good. The car broke down, good. And it’s like, “Oh, I guess you’re just like, yeah, this happened, like, now what? Basically. So good.

JOE: Let’s put our skills to the test. Let’s solve an issue.

[Crosstalk]

MATT: I know, I know, I can’t believe that’s what you led me into.

ALEX: I’m so sorry.

[Crosstalk]

MATT: If it’s any consolation, I got that from a yoga teacher.

ALEX: Yes, exactly. Let’s just stop it there.

MATT: It was very Fraggly. It was like a Mokey-type. I have a Mokey-type man who’s just very like, yeah. Anyway, a lot of this stuff comes from him honestly, a lot of Mokey-stuff comes from him.

JOE: Tell me what else from your background as a Navy SEAL you’ve used as a writer on Fraggle Rock?

[All laugh]

MATT: Well, first of all, I mean, Jim Henson created this show to start wars and kill people.

JOE: Yeah, exactly.

[Crosstalk]

ALEX: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JOE: Yeah, famously.

ALEX: We’re going to use our platform to really talk about how cool (laughing) the Navy SEALs are.

JOE: Okay, so season one is all about water and season two is all about wind. Does that mean that season three is going to be all about fire?

ALEX: I don’t want to say. Okay, we talk about it.

MATT: Listen, we hear you. I go on discord sometimes. I lurk around there. We understand the prat falls of that. But maybe. We’ll see. We’ll see. We’ll see.

JOE: Yeah, just light Fraggle Rock on fire. That sounds like a great idea.

[Crosstalk]

MATT: I mean, that sounds terrifying, 100%. We’ve had those conversations.

ALEX: No, we did. You could think about fire in lots of different ways, but no, I don’t, I don’t necessarily know if it’ll be as literal a third element as the first two were, but if you think about, you know, the physical metaphor of Fraggle Rock, there is something about how the earth, especially the earth beneath the surface is interconnected in a way that lends itself to that sort of thing. And there’s a timelessness to that idea. Oh, there’s forces that are so much larger than our own tiny perspective on things.

JOE: Sure.

ALEX: And you know, wind and water really lend themselves to that. And so it kind of like they flowed, pardon me, naturally from one to the other. I don’t know if we’ll commit ourselves to continuing that.

MATT: Pretty sure it’s just going to be like Wembley leaving the fire department and joining the Navy SEALs, basically, is going to be season three, right? And them learning to let go. Yeah, it’s that kind of thing. Wembley gets ripped and he’s just like, “good, good, good.”

JOE: His new catchphrase, good.

MATT: Yeah.

JOE: Great. I think we just broke season three. I think we did it.

MATT: Yeah, we did it. 

JOE: Yeah. All right. Let’s talk about this premiere episode. The episode begins. It is morning on Fraggle Rock. We open on Sprocket. He’s taking a little nap. Camera zooms down to Fraggle Rock. We see some inkspots in pajamas, which is adorable.

ALEX: I mean, come on. What are you going to not start the season with inkspots wearing pajamas?

JOE: Thank you. That’s important to me.

ALEX: You gotta do what you gotta do. Yeah.

JOE: I love those little guys. Barry Blueberry is there. He’s announcing the morning. And we jump right into our first song. It is “The Rock Goes On.” That’s from the original series episode, “The Honk of Honks.”

ALEX: Yes.

JOE: Love this song. Great song.

ALEX: It’s a great song. I mean, talk about a song to just welcome you back. I think that’s what we were thinking about. You know, Johnny being just one of the most talented people on the planet. One of the things he’s a particular savant about is just knowing the song for the moment.

MATT: He knows. He knows.

ALEX: He knows. He’s just like an antenna. And a signal comes through him and he just knows which song.

MATT: He knows. And then by the way, like the slight wind of change, just makes me think when you describe that opening scene already about this extra component this season, which was we had Jordan Canning direct, like really be just a huge presence there. And her and Johnny have such a shorthand. We have such a shorthand. So it’s already the collaboration is beginning just in that she’s like, “I’m thinking we go down the caves.” Just gets me how she wanted to stage that whole song.

ALEX: Yeah. 

MATT: I feel like there was like a controversial, I feel like the Barry Blueberry thing was like a discussion, right? Whether it was going to be like–Not from us. We always want Barry Blueberry but like I feel like that was, I can’t remember.

ALEX: You know, these characters you see them time and time again, especially in writers’ rooms, there’s like characters that you just fall in love with and then you tend to go to them too much because you’re so in love with them.

MATT: Right. We don’t want Barry Blueberry to be our Urkel, you know?

ALEX: But I actually think it ended up working.

JOE: Sure.

ALEX: I think you guys talked about this a bit in some of the reviews that I do think they know there’s concern about whether or not he’d be used or overused and that sort of thing, but I do think particularly once in episode 202 in “The Twisty-turny-thon, once Sherry Contrary’s introduced.

[Crosstalk]

MATT: Yeah. Yin and yang.

JOE: Well, that’s a good way to, like you say, if you’re trying to not Urkel-ize the show, to keep it interesting. You’re not just hitting the same note over and over again with Barry Blueberry. You’re not just having him come in and be like, we’re going to do the announcer thing again.

ALEX: Exactly.

JOE: Like you found a way to change it up a little bit.

ALEX: Yeah, there’s a scene in the Mezzo concert.

MATT: The Mezzo, yeah, my favorite Barry Blueberry bit.

ALEX: It’s just a very like, it’s kind of thing it passes by quickly, but we all loved it, which is just Barry showing up on a day he’s not going to announce. He’s just there as a fan.

MATT: To see Mezzo. He’s just a fan.

ALEX: He’s just there to meet Mezzo. He’s polite about it, but he doesn’t really want to strain his instrument.

MATT: Johnny’s doing Barry Blueberry, like, you know, like you caught me at the stage door. Not tonight, not tonight.

ALEX: Not tonight. Not tonight. Yeah.

JOE: Yeah.

MATT: I’m just here to see Mezzo.

JOE: It’s like running into the weatherman at the grocery store.

ALEX: No, I love it. Yeah, sort of like I’m here with my family. I’m here. I’m here. I’m not mad that you recognized me, but I’m also not going to perform.

MATT: Yeah. All right. I’ll sign something real quick. But just real quick. All right. All right. One picture. Yeah.

ALEX: Cause I do love it. Secretly, I love it.

MATT: Yeah.

ALEX: Barry would be devastated.

MATT: Be horrified.

ALEX: If no one recognized him at the Mezzo show? Devastated. Would not get out of bed for three days.

JOE: [laughs] So this is such a great introduction to the new season. And I’m sure that’s got to be hard for you guys as writers to say, “Okay, we’ve already done 13, 14 episodes of let’s welcome you back to Fraggle Rock. How do we fit that into just two minutes here?” And already it’s like you get Sprocket, you get the Fraggle Five, you get inkspots, the World’s Oldest Fraggle, The Storyteller, the Doozers, Trash Heap, Gorgs. Everyone’s singing the song and the song’s not so hyper-specific to any moment. It’s just like, yeah, we just like singing.

ALEX: It’s kind of an anthem.

JOE: Yeah, it really is.

ALEX: In a way that, we kind of did that in the pilot as well. In the pilot it wasn’t an original song. It was a new song, not a song from the library. But yeah, this is the idea of like, all right, what’s a fun, just celebrate the fact that you’re back in Fraggle Rock kind of thing?

Because just generally season twos are kind of interesting to approach, as writers, you know, and particularly the first episode of season two, because there is a little bit of…re-piloting is the wrong word. But there’s really, were only 13 episodes plus a holiday special. So there’s a little bit of sort of saying like, “Alright, we’re not looking to do a hard left turn here. We do want to welcome everybody back to the world of the show. And we want to be able to set some sort of patterns that show that ease you back in here. And you’re in sort of the hands of the show that you knew.”

But if you haven’t seen the show, this is also a way to get acquainted, you know? So it was meant to be really kind of inclusion.

MATT: Not even like a cynically, not even in a cynical way. It’s like, these seasons now with this business model and streaming and everything binge-watching, it’s like, we’re doing, all right, here’s a new movie basically.

And yeah, it’s a challenge for sure, because you’re like, what? I know all this stuff. For the die-hard, so not alienating that fan, but also orienting yourself for what’s ahead.

ALEX: And then we made a couple of creative choices too, which is like you can feel any number of ways about, but we made a choice to repeat a little bit of the vibe and pattern.

MATT: Right. Yeah.

ALEX: That the pilot established as far as Uncle Matt asking Gobo to go to Outer Space and then doing an episode that kind of shows why Gobo chooses not to make that decision to go.

MATT: And I mean, even down to the bit at the end where I mean not to skip ahead, but where Gobo makes his speech again that he’s not going to go. And then we do the same joke, which is Uncle Matt saying, “Cool.” Like when he makes this big emotional plea. We did that on purpose, you know, like Alex said, yeah, it was a choice, you know.

ALEX: Yeah, I think part of it is a little bit engaging with what is the show as far as is it a reboot? Is it a retelling? Is it a reimagining? Whatever. There’s a little bit of like stepping into the hard to pin down timing of Fraggle Rock. Has time gone by? Are we referencing the original series. No, spiritually, yes. Are we recognizing that there are patterns that play out in Fraggle Rock, that there’s going to be an ongoing dynamic between Uncle Traveling Matt and Gobo that’s not just going to change from first season to second season? Totally.

We wanted to keep certain dynamics as they were intentionally from first season to second season thinking back on the original Fraggle Rock that maintained many of the dynamics throughout the entire series. We wanted to do some of that, but then also recognize there we’re a different era. We do more serialized and kind of arced storytelling in these seasons. So we wanted to have certain patterns that we could kind of bring back and repeat while moving the needle a little bit as far as where the show goes.

And then maybe, when we start to get into seasons three and onward, we can start to take some of those dynamics and do harder shifts on them that we can actually dig deeper into. It just felt, honestly, felt too early to upend a lot of those things. Which is why partly, I’m kind of skipping ahead, but why we reset Pa in this episode. At the end of the first season–

JOE: Oh yeah, we have to really talk about that.

ALEX: Yeah, we’ll dig into it!

JOE: There’s a lot to dig into.

MATT: I think there is like, by the way, I do think to Alex’s point, like that I think there was less, I don’t know why honestly, but it does feel like there was less pressure when you were a more traditional show, like the original version. It didn’t seem like there was as much, you could just kind of keep it going, you know, like more or more episodes. Whereas this does feel like we kind of do need to set up these sort of arbitrary beginning and ending points to the seasons. Which is, again, it is what it is. This is the media landscape that we’re in now and like how people consume stuff versus how they used to.

JOE: Sure, yeah. Before we get too far ahead, I do want to call out two shots from “The Rock Goes On” sequence. One is there’s a great shot of Junior Gorg sitting with his arms out and all five Fraggles are dancing on him.

ALEX: Yes.

JOE: Which looks so good. Such a great image. I love that.

ALEX: Yeah, really cool.

JOE: The other one is at the end of the song. So this whole song has like such a cool gospel feel to it.

ALEX: Yes. Yes. Uplifting.

JOE: And later there’s a bit where we see the whole of Fraggle Rock and all the Fraggles are there and there are Fraggles in the background being thrown, just like yeeted in the air. And I love the movie Blues Brothers and there’s a scene with James Brown where he’s doing a gospel song and people are just flying 20 feet in the air just like that. I don’t know if that was deliberate but it felt spot on.

ALEX: You know, I don’t know if that was ever discussed really but I love the reference. I love the yeah, and I also think of Ferris Bueller during the “Twist and Shout” sequence.

JOE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ALEX: They were all flying in the air on that one. They look a lot like Muppets. No, the Fraggle Toss is like one of the best moves. I mean, I think we use it whenever possible. It’s just always funny.

JOE: You gotta.

ALEX: It’s so funny.

JOE: Yeah, yeah, you have to.

ALEX: No, I mean, that song is so great. What you’re pointing out with you know, the Fraggles dancing on Junior. There’s a lot of stuff. There was an earlier version of the episode, just in script form, that was a lot longer, had a lot more early scenes between the Fraggles and the Gorgs kind of about how things have changed, how playful they are together now.

We had to end up condensing all of that into something you could understand immediately and took no production and page time. So putting it into the song kind of ended up being the most natural way to do it. So we’re just seeing them play and it’s a quick moment but I do love that shot of them all together.

MATT: All that is evidence to this isn’t like starting fresh at all. This is episode like what 14, 15?

ALEX: Yeah.

MATT: Where now at the end of the last season people were in the zone and now everybody is just working together to get those. That shot with them all on Junior’s arms, I can’t even imagine. It would’ve taken like four times as long in the beginning of the whole production and now they know exactly what to do.

ALEX: I mean all the kind of comp stuff that they do where the puppeteering for the Fraggles are shot as the puppeteering for the Gorgs’ is shot. We do comp them live. And then of course we go back in post and make it, you know, the amazing team makes it look better. S the rough version of what you’re seeing is happening live. All those performances are happening at the same time.

JOE: All five of the Fraggles are being green screened at the same time?

ALEX: Yes.

JOE: That’s cool

ALEX: Yeah. It’s really cool.

MATT: You’ll see. You’ll see. Fraggle promise. You’ll see. It’s very cool. We have like the… what do you call it? Like the blue boxes?

ALEX: It was a cube. Yeah.

MATT: The cube. Yeah.

ALEX: Basically the box is like full-sided. Like the Las Vegas Sphere but for blue screen, like the inside of it. And then we could do all of our comp stuff there. So whether it was shooting like Mezzo and her band as full-sized Fraggles that we then shrunk down or if it’s shooting the Fraggles in scenes where they have to be put into the Gorgs’ garden, all that’s happening at the same time.

MATT: And now just really they’ve got it down. I mean you got like our VFX provider there just like with his glasses on looking at it. It’s very cool.

JOE: That’s cool and that’s good again good collaboration. Everyone working at the same time. MATT: Yeah.

ALEX: Oh yeah.

JOE: Yeah. I love it.

ALEX: Such a makery show in that way where everything is constructed and even when we are using things like you know obviously digital effects it to comp it together. You’re still doing it in the most sort of tactile and real-way possible where the Gorgs’ performers are watching Fraggles on the screen being performed live you know in their laps or on their hands or whatever. And so it’s, yeah, it’s pretty cool.

JOE: That is cool. Yeah. So everyone is so happy with the new harmony in Fraggle Rock. The Fraggles and the Gorgs especially. Traveling Matt enters. He is accompanied by three inkspots dressed as Boy Scouts. Now do you guys write this stuff into the scripts? Like, there’s inkspots there and they’re dressed as scouts.

MATT: I wish I could take credit so badly for that one. Sometimes, yeah, but not that.

ALEX: Not that one. No.

MATT: I mean who do you give credit to for that?

ALEX: I mean it’s the shop, you know.

MATT: I know but who specifically?

ALEX: I wish I knew who specifically. It’s like Scotty [Johnson].

MATT: Like it could have been Scotty it could have been Jurgen [Ferguson]. Like yeah. It’s dangerous for us as writers who hopefully will continue to work beyond Fraggle Rock. You almost get a little lazy sometimes because you’re like, “Oh they’ll come up with something fantastic.”

JOE: Oh sure.

MATT: Yeah.

JOE: Well especially when it’s like, it’s such a good physical gag that like there might be a moment where there’s not a joke but the joke is there’s an inkspot in the background and if you’re watching it, then it’s hysterical.

ALEX: I mean that’s the joy of Fraggle Rock is it’s so silly and it sort of like inspires everybody on set. And so if you look around in any shot if there’s a sign, think about the artist who created that sign and there’s gonna be some detail on that sign that’s ridiculous and funny. And you know, I think everybody just gets so excited to hit all of the details.

MATT: Truly those production meetings I mean are truly like just a “yes and” fest and like just a joyful experience which is not always the case.

ALEX: Not always the case.

MATT: On a TV show. Yeah.

JOE: So Matt is, in lieu of a postcard because he’s there in person, he’s telling everybody about his recent excursion into Outer Space. He found a farmer’s marke  and he brought back the sweet radish. Silly Creatures call it a strawberry but sweet radish is the scientific name.

ALEX: Sure.

JOE: Now, okay so first of all there was something I’m not gonna say off, but odd, about the farmer’s market scene. And I think on this my most recent viewing of it I put my finger on it, which is everyone can see Matt. Like there’s always that question of whether he’s kind of like, is he just kind of under the radar? They don’t notice him? You know whatever.

ALEX: It’s interesting. We’ve had his conversation and it’s like in the original there are definitely moments where it’s very clear that people can see him and are actually interacting.

JOE: Sure. Yes.

ALEX: And I think that we kind of rode the balance a little bit in season one. Although there’s absolutely times, like when he’s riding around on the Zamboni, the people on the ice can. They’re looking up at him. We had big conversations even just with sort of background performers about are they regarding him as an oddity? Are they scared of him? Like what is the deal?

MATT: Talking to Dave Goelz and Jocelyn Stevenson also about what the original sort of intent was yeah. There’s not a satisfying answer. Truly.

JOE: No that’s okay. We don’t need a satisfying answer.

ALEX: I mean it’s a little halfway between a Muppet in the wild, where the public interacts with the Muppets in ways that are sort of like, depending on the gag, either straight up, “Hey there. I’m talking to you as if you’re a person on the street.” Or, “What are you? What are you doing here? You’re ridiculous.”

I think with Matt it’s a little bit of both where it’s not like an alien encounter where people are (laughing) concerned about it. (normal voice) But his behavior I think is what we try to lean into as far as what people are reacting to. Because Matt is a fool by design and gets everything wrong. And you know that’s what we want people to be reacting to.

MATT: I think that’s right. That’s what spiritually for sure where we come from. But it’s hard not to get, I think I saw in Discord someone say, which I’ve said since the beginning, “Can you imagine Matt going and getting a stamp somewhere in a store?” Or going to like a Boxes Etc. to send this package.

ALEX: (laughing) Right.

JOE: I have so many questions. How does Matt understand how the postal service works?

[Crosstalk]

MATT: We’re just trying to honor, we really looked to the past for that. Like they seem to have their spiritual logic to it which we’re trying to honor.

ALEX: Or in our suspension of disbelief. I mean like there’s a part of it too which is like alright you know there’s a little bit of lightness to it where, you know, if you dig too deep you kind of, it’s like when you look for the magic trick to learn the magic you lose the magic.

MATT: Right.

ALEX: I’m not comparing this to the magic trick I’m saying there’s a little bit of like, “Okay, I can’t overly intellectualize this.”

JOE: What it really comes down to is that Matt is writing text on a postcard. Gobo is able to read it but it’s pretty clear that the Fraggles don’t have a written language.

ALEX: Yes.

MATT: Right.

JOE: So first we have to get through that barrier and then we talk about how the postal service works.

[Crosstalk]

ALEX: there’s a shorthand.

MATT: Yes, this is the kind of stuff that truly, yeah, would keep us up at night when we first started this project. And I feel like Dave and Jocelyn they’re just like they had a way where they were like, “It’s cool, baby. It’s cool. Don’t worry about it.”

ALEX: Sometimes it’s nice to run things by them. Just be like, “Do you have any feelings about this? Is our justification for it?” If they say, “Yeah that’s very.”

MATT: Sounds good.

ALEX: Yeah. That’s great. That’s great.

JOE: Nice to have Dave and Jocelyn and also Karen Prell.

ALEX: Yeah, Karen Prell.

JOE: Who like they can kind of give the whole like “look this is how it was back in the day and if anyone gets upset about it you can send them to us.”

ALEX: Totally.

JOE: Oh it’s like, “Well I’m not going to argue with Karen Prell.” You know what I mean?

ALEX: Totally.

JOE: What she says, goes. That’s it.

ALEX: It’s sort of like if you need like, as far as details from the first season there’s no greater historian, librarian and archivist than Johnny. And then as far as like the actual lived experience of creating the show, we’ve got legends that are still heavily involved in this one. So we do feel it’s nice protection for selfishly.

JOE: Sure.

ALEX: We get a lot of protection from that.

JOE: Yeah.

MATT: I mean at the end of the day my kids just want to know, they would always just want to know like what’s Uncle Matt sending back this time. And I consider that a victory.

JOE: Yeah, especially because of what he sends back at the end of this episode. Which we’ll get there. We’ll get there.

MATT: Yeah.

JOE: It’s the best one.

ALEX: By the way, did you notice Matt Fussfeld at the farmers market as “guy tasting strawberry?”

JOE: Oh, how was it?

MATT: It was uhhhh… It was good. It was good.

ALEX: A funny preview of that is the weird mixing of worlds where it’s like we’re at the farmer’s markets so we had real strawberries. Matt is Matt Fussfeld eating a real strawberry.

MATT: Yeah that’s what I was worried about. Yeah.

ALEX: Next to a very nice young guy named Jordan who’s an up-and-coming puppeteer. So they’re eating the strawberries but then also, if you look on the rack of berries, there are the Fraggle fake strawberries because we need to establish that to bring it into the world because we’re gonna need. And you’re like, “Aaaahhh, those don’t look right together. But it’s just a funny.

MATT: That’s a headline of what I’m worried about on that day more than anything. Is this crazy, that we’re seeing this. And also wanting so badly the bit of Uncle Matt being chased by a dog to play but not having completely… We didn’t have like an…that was just someone’s dog there and like really trying to do it on the fly. But knowing how I would love that gag to play and what we’re actually able to achieve on the day.

ALEX: You’re also like, okay, it’s part of the set.

MATT: But my kids think it’s cool that I’m in the show.

JOE: Yeah. It is cool. 

MATT: Yeah yeah yeah. No, it was fun. It is cool.

JOE: Yeah

MATT: Alex is in a later episode, by the way. That you’ll see.

ALEX: My kids did go buck wild by the way. I was very excited about it.

MATT: Oh, wow.

ALEX: Joe, my cameo’s maybe not as pronounced as Matt’s. I’m the guy sweeping up the gum wrapper in the episode about “This for That.”

MATT: Plays a New York City janitor.

ALEX: I’m wearing a New York City street jumpsuit. But my kids did go nuts when they saw it. They really liked it.

JOE: Did they wonder like did you lose your job? You gotta make ends meet by being a janitor.

ALEX: My six-year-old did ask me, “Were you doing that that day and they just shot you? Like were you doing that job?” No, I’m doing this specifically for the show.

JOE: That’s what they say. So yeah, so he brings back the strawberries to Fraggle Rock. Everyone loves them. Boober refuses to try them because they are a sponge of bacteria that everyone touched before it got to him. And you know what? He’s right. You should wash your fruit before you eat it. You don’t know where it’s been.

ALEX: I remember going to jam band concerts in college where people would hand around like baskets of fruit just as kind of like, “Hey we’re sharing.” I was like, “Oh, get that away for me.”

MATT: Yeah.

ALEX: People are disgusting.

MATT: Actually I’m pretending. Like I just made a face there. Like I’m the guy at the jam band show.

ALEX: Yeah, you’d eat the peach. You’d eat the peach.

MATT: Oh my god. This is amazing. Thank you.

ALEX: You would say your favorite Navy SEAL slogan.

MATT: Yeah. Yeah. What are you going to turn down a peach when it comes around? You know, when you’re right, you’re right.

JOE: You say good.

 MATT: Good.

JOE: Yes. Yes, a disgusting cherry, good.

MATT: Yeah. I got a bacterial infection from it. Yeah.

ALEX: A little pink eye from the cherry but you know the point is that Boober is correct to turn it  down.

MATT: He’s a hundred percent correct.

ALEX: He’s also being a curmudgeon as he does.

JOE: Yeah,there’s a plus side to being a curmudgeon.

ALEX: That’s right. Protective.

JOE: So up in Outer Space, Doc has made an important discovery. It’s inside the Fraggle hole. What could it be? It’s the exhaust fan.

ALEX: The fan.

JOE: That we’ve been staring at for years.

ALEX: Yes.

JOE: Finally a use for the fan in there. You guys are bringing it into the world.

ALEX: And Lilli is so good as Doc and she’s so funny in this episode. What an amazing thing as an actor. You’re playing off of the cutest puppet of all time but still, you’re playing off of just a puppet. And that’s it.

MATT: She’s just soliloquy city and somehow makes them like.

ALEX: And just comes off so endearing and you know that could go a million different ways just a person talking to themselves in a room. She’s so great and she just puts such joy and love into that character.

MATT: As soon as we thought of the wind just if Doc causes a windstorm. Like almost immediately that’s what that fan is for that we’ve been looking at forever. Yeah.

JOE: I do love that.

MATT: We got very excited about. Yeah. We got excited. And then having those discussions with Tyler [Bishop Harron], the production designer, and like what that actually would be and like. Yeah. Fascinating.

JOE: Doc talks a bit about, she had such successful work last season, she got to meet the Dean of her school. And there’s a great photo of her with the Dean. And who is it? It’s Lisa Henson. 

ALEX: That’s Lisa Henson.

[Crosstalk]

MATT: Such a fun photo shoot. We did so many. She came to visit set and it was super fun. Yeah that was the pièce de résistance.

ALEX: I think we did write that one in by the way.

MATT: Yeah.

ALEX: I think that was in the first draft of the script was her shaking hands with the dean.

MATT: Oh yeah, who’s gonna be the dean?

ALEX: Lisa Henson.

MATT: We got so many alts. Like maybe Sprocket’s there. Like Doc brought Sprocket.We had like a bunch of shots of like Doc shaking Lisa Henson’s hand and then Sprocket there too. Like she brought her dog to college.

ALEX: Photobomb.

JOE: He accidentally got into the photo. Yeah.

MATT: Yeah. He’s like, “I’m not missing. You’re getting celebrated by the Dean? Of course I’m coming. I’m in the car already.”

JOE: That’s her family. Right. Of course.

MATT: Yeah.

JOE: I also just love the fact that Doc has this look on her face. Like she is not photogenic.

MATT: Yeah. Yeah.

JOE: She’s just geeking out over the Dean.

ALEX: I was just watching that. Yeah.

JOE: Lisa looks so serious and stern. Like there’s a lot of like… what’s what’s the word? Like an air of importance to her.

ALEX: Yes, gravitas.

JOE: Gravitas. Thank you.

ALEX: And Doc’s whole head is sinking into her shoulders. Like she just doesn’t know how to stand in a photo which seems really correct for that character. Just has no idea how to be where the Dean is just standing there almost like a cardboard cutout. Like take your picture with me and the next person will take a picture with me.

MATT: I feel like I cut you guys off when you were about to like celebrate Lilli more and I shouldn’t that because yeah, she is the best.

JOE: That’s okay. I was just gonna say one thing that she does that I love so much on the show is how she’s not afraid to be a little bit crazy. She’s not afraid. Because the old Doc on the old show, Gerry Parkes character, he was aloof. Like there was so much that he just missed and like he was very sure of himself. But this Doc is like, no she’s a little bit weird and she owns up to that. And if she gets things wrong, she owns up to that. And like she makes funny faces in photos and treats her dog like a baby sometimes. Andit feels very real and funny and not everyone would take it to the length that Lilli Cooper does.

ALEX: I totally agree.

JOE: I appreciate it.

ALEX: Right with you. Totally agree.

MATT: It’s really nice to hear because the central thing with that when we started talking about this in the beginning of it was the relationship with the dog. How do you treat your dog? Like you kind of treat it like a baby a lot of times.

JOE: Yeah.

MATT: Was that a criticism, I can’t recall, of like the original? That the original Doc was a little bit like meaner to Sprocket?

JOE: He was.

ALEX: For sure.

JOE: We have another podcast on a different channel that we do through ToughPigs. It’s also

called Fraggle Talk. We call it Fraggle Talk: Classic.

ALEX: Yeah.

JOE: They’re going through the old Fraggle Rock episodes and they’re kind of discovering as they’re going through like Doc is borderline abusive to Sprocket.

ALEX: Yeah.

JOE: He really doesn’t treat him well and it’s still fun and funny but like that would never fly today.

ALEX: It is an interesting thing and it’s like no excuse but it is a little bit of a different time thing.

MATT: It’s also that person like perhaps like that was an older person you could see that relationship maybe.

JOE: Yes.

MATT: It would be weird if it was like a young person doing that. You shouldn’t have a dog then.

JOE: Like no, it’s never intentional. He’s never like, “Oh that darn dog.” And then, you know, taking a swing at him.It’s like he’s not paying attention to the fact that Sprocket’s so hungry and is holding his bowl up because he wants to figure out how to sew a button on a fried egg.

ALEX: Right. I remember that.

JOE: He just can’t get out of that mindset.

ALEX: So he’s a little nutty or he’s a little bit harsher. Harsher or, you know, unintentionally unaware of Sprocket’s needs.

MATT: Oh and by the way like if I can, Sprocket is eternal and lives forever. So when this Doc is that Doc’s age I would imagine their relationship might more closely resemble that one. It’s just the evolution of getting older.

ALEX: That’s when it’s time for a new Doc and that’s when it’s a ceremonial time to get a new Doc.

JOE: That’s like a Doctor Who we’re just going to replace Doc.

ALEX: Yes.

MATT: Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

JOE: Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen times.

[Crosstalk]

MATT: Oh that’s a really good title for season three episode four.

JOE: That’s for you. That’s a freebie. Take it.

ALEX: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

JOE: Yeah. Enjoy. So Doc’s new idea, because of this fan discovery, she’s gonna use the fan to study wind currents. And she starts to blow air into the fraggle hole. And somehow that little fan with the exhaust fan it’s creating these incredible winds all through Fraggle Rock. Everything’s being tossed around.

And there’s some amazing visual gags here that I have to call out including…

ALEX: A windy Fraggle Rock, very fun.

JOE: An inkspot dressed as a cow. Obviously a reference to Twister. Hysterical.

ALEX: Yes

JOE: We see a doozer flying around knitting in a rocking chair. That’s got to be a reference to Wizard of Oz.

ALEX: Of course. The twister. The twister classic. For sure.

JOE: You gotta. There’s a doozer on a bike which I assume might also be a Wizard of Oz thing. 

ALEX: Yes.

JOE: And a doozer in a kayak. I’m not sure what that might be a reference to other than the fact that it’s adorable. Is it a reference?

MATT: Is that a Karen Prell reference? Karen Prell’s a big kayaker. Right?

ALEX: I think it’s also just a hint to the world of the doozers that we don’t see every day.

JOE: Sure.

ALEX: They have a whole life and I think when we catch little glimpses of that is pretty fun.

JOE: We also see four inkspots like all holding hands with the white scarves.

MATT: Yeah, that’s the skydiver routine.

JOE: They’re skydiving. Hysterical.

ALEX: I think that’s one we maybe wrote into the script. It’s again so you start to think about these things and then you get them on their feet and then everyone has a million new ideas and then the whole thing comes together. But yeah, you start to visualize what a wind sequence would look like. That was one of them.

JOE: So with these four or five gags that just kind of go boom boom boom, I have to assume you guys had like 15 of them written out. These are just the ones that made it to screen. Were there other things you wanted to throw into the Twister?

ALEX: I will say, I’m not necessarily recalling specifics of things that we shot and maybe, Matt, you can think of it but I do remember that there were a lot of conversations about how violent to make this because obviously like we need it, we’re riding that line where it needs to actually be legitimately scary, for Wembley in particular, but in general it needs to kind of rock them a little bit.

But it’s also like we didn’t want to scare children. You know the Wizard of Oz was, that scene is scary. It’s still scary now when you watch it. And we didn’t want to do that. It’s still Fraggle Rock. We wanted there to be a goofiness to it. That’s why I think the inkspots coming in are such an important part of it. And there are characters that are kind of enjoying it. Mokey’s kind of enjoying it. Pogey’s kind of enjoying it, you know. I think that was the line we were trying to walk of that. This is an event. A serious event happening but it’s not without silliness and not without kind of like fun.

JOE: Yeah.

ALEX: So that’s what we were trying to find. For sure.

JOE: Well, as you said, Wembley is freaking out over this whole thing and he’s holding onto a moss-covered rock. And the moss just rips right off. It covers him. It kind of looks like a mix of a ghost and a parachute.

ALEX: Like a Slimer kind of thing.

JOE: Yeah, like Slimer. It looks like stuff from the moss kind of got on it, so it looks like a face a little bit. I’m not sure if that was something I missed as he was holding on to it.

And he pops up right through the well in the Gorg’s garden just as Pa Gorg is coming out and questioning, you know, is this a good idea? Wouldn’t my father, Pa Pa, be upset about the fact that we’re friends with the fraggles now? And he’s like, “Give me a sign.” And then that’s when Wembley as Slimer pops up and screaming. So that’s a sign. You’ve immediately, at the beginning of this episode, reset Pa Gorg.

ALEX: Right. Which, again, was a choice. And you know, not in any way be defensive. I definitely know that you guys gave us a little flack for that choice.

JOE: Just a little bit, yeah.

ALEX: A little bit in a loving way. In a loving relationship we need to be able to talk about these things.

MATT: Agreed.

ALEX: But yeah totally hear you but at the same time I think the reason we made the choice and I think the reason we would probably make it again is that Pa Gorg’s thousands of years old. He’s been taught a lot about what Fraggles are. I think there’s a moment at the end of the first season where you know he had to come around. And we love that he came around and had a new perspective on it. But I think in the nature of characters, he’s definitely a character that’s going to slide back in and change is going to be really hard for him.

And the idea of a new dynamic with the Fraggles is not something that’s just going to sit there easily for him. I think he’s going to be looking for the very first excuse to go back to the way he was and then we could set him up for a more gradual journey over the course of the season. 

Obviously, as we start to get into who he is as a king, who Ma is as a queen, what their relationship is like, actually moving them into a new place toward the end of the season. But yeah, we really did want to intentionally quickly reset Pa at the beginning of the season and that’s when all the pieces started coming together of okay, well, how do we get a strawberry seed up into the garden? How do we get Pa to shift back to his old perspective and then the windstorm and Wembley and all those pieces started to come together of a mistaken ghost and Wembley carrying the strawberry up there. And it kind of was this very efficient thing. But we hear the criticism.

JOE: Yeah.

MATT: Well, it’s the interesting part of this format in general. If we had the luxury, if we were writing a book, yeah, maybe we would spend like several chapters with Pa inside his head. But I think that’s also what’s so great about this show is like that completely is what that guy would do. He would just be like, it’s all very sped up, but it is like, “Oh yeah I’m looking for an excuse to not accept these Fraggles.”

ALEX: Please, give me a sign.

MATT: Yes, so it’s almost, if anything, leaning into it a little harder.

ALEX: And a little silliness. There’s definitely stuff that we do on this show that’s like purposefully silly in its simplicity. Like Pa switching back. Pa’s an idiot, you know. It’s fun to think of him having these real hard swings and really, really silly ways. And it’s also like why the show, why we kind of engage in real physical metaphor on the show and real kind of like literalism sometimes.

I.e. the echo chamber from last season, which is(laughing)  another thing we’ve heard flak about, oddly more this year looking back on it rather than at the time. But you know the idea of like okay it’s a literal echo chamber. Yeah, yeah. It’s a literal echo chamber.

JOE: I think that’s fine.

ALEX: That’s Fraggle Rock, baby.

JOE: The phrase “echo chamber” is already a metaphor.

ALEX: Yeah.

JOE: You know what I mean? It’s fine that you metaphor that. I do want to say about Pa. I understand that Fraggle Rock historically, and this also has more to do with like TV shows that are a little bit more episodic than serialized in general from that era, but like there is a status quo that we always have to kind of get back to at the end. And it’s not really until the end of the series when the gorgs start to come around.

ALEX: Exactly.

JOE: So I understand there’s a little bit of getting back to the status quo and definitely a lot of where there’s conflict there’s story so like you want to get to a place where like if everything’s always hunky dory in the gorg’s garden then it’s almost too easy. We need to create some conflict there.

The issue that I personally had with it was how quickly that came. I wanted to see, and you guys talked about this earlier about you did have more of this in earlier drafts, but I wanted to see what does it look like that the fraggles and the gorgs are getting together, both getting along before everything kind of goes to pot and we have to take two steps back before we take three steps forward.

ALEX: No, I totally hear you. That was one of these like reality-of-production things. That’s what we wanted too honestly. I think it’s what everybody wanted. I think there was just a literal number of minutes we could spend and production days that we could spend.; The gorg’s garden is really complicated for shooting and so we are often put in the position to find ways to simplify those stories.

And I totally hear you. I think that it’s like we kind of did our best as far as establishing the dynamic in the song and then in passing with the fraggle’s walking through and saying, “value your friendship,” and that kind of thing. But yes, we did kind of miss out on the opportunity to spend. Ideally you want the first act to have a good meaty scene where you see what it’s like where you have the fraggles and gorgs in harmony. And we did miss that and I totally hear you. It’s missing from the episode.

JOE: I mean the real thing, the real problem here is nothing that you guys did or didn’t do, it’s the fact that AppleTV only got 13 episodes of this season.

MATT: Yeah.

ALEX: Exactly.

JOE: If there were 26 then you would have had plenty of time.

ALEX: No, it is exactly that.

MATT: I think that something we value, Alex and I value a lot in our partnership is self-reflection. We’ll be like, “All right that’s interesting. We learned something about…This was the first time we ever did this and would we do it differently next time?” Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s like always taking these lessons and I think that’s kind of the nature of being any kind of artist. Right? That you’re constantly learning and improving and trying and taking the lessons. But it is interesting and we we definitely think about it and hear the reaction.

But at the same time yeah, also stand by it too of course. It’s not like we were doing it in a vacuum either. Like we always listen to the feedback around us and I wish you were there, Joe, I guess is what I’m saying.

[All laugh]

JOE: Thank you.

[Crosstalk]

JOE: You want me there so I could seethe in the corner while you guys are making decisions that I don’t like.

MATT: Yeah yeah yeah.

ALEX: No, I do think you’re representing the opinion that we all kind of had as far as like the dream version of it. And I think that because of condensing and production stuff there was a certain reality of needing to do all that a lot quicker. So we’re like, okay let’s make it goofy.

MATT: And also just not wanting to make like a melodrama. I think that’s a big driving force behind what we bring to it is like we know what the ethos of this show is and spiritually what it wants to be. But let’s make sure it’s quick and funny too.

JOE: Yeah, absolutely.

MATT: So that’s how you end up with [laughs] Wembley popping up out of the well in a moss-ghost costume saying, “No no no.” And that’s how you end up with that. It’s like, yeah. I mean even saying it makes me smile so I don’t know.

JOE: Yeah, no. I’m right there with you.

ALEX: Anything from Wembley.

JOE: I don’t want you guys to think that I’m actually criticizing what you guys put together.

MATT: Oh no no. We love this. This is truly, you’re the only person we can have this conversation with.

JOE: Yeah, exactly. These are questions that are raised by the fans.

MATT: Love it. Love it.

JOE: And like you know there’s always satisfying answers to these things but you know, we got to talk about this stuff.

ALEX: No. For sure.

JOE: So Traveling Matt is so impressed by Gobo’s bravery during the windstorm that he invites him to come out to Outer Space, as we discussed. He’s doing it all over again.

MATT: Yeah.

JOE: So he’s excitedly going to tell his friends but Wembley is so shaken up by the winds. And he’s clutching his little Wembley doll which is adorable. I know we talked about this last season too. But what a great little prop.

MATT: Bembley, right? Bembley.

ALEX: Bembley.

JOE: Bembley, yes.

ALEX: Bembley is one of the cutest things on the show, I would say.

JOE: I also wondered, is this the fraggle equivalent of the American Girl doll? Like is everyone just gonna like get a doll that looks like themselves?

MATT: I’ll tell you one thing, I don’t know if Wembley’s gonna bring that to the Navy SEALs. I just hope they go easy on him.

ALEX: I hope everyone’s cool with it.

MATT: I’m worried about him in the Navy SEALs.

JOE: Everyone in the Navy SEALs already has a stuffed seal from what I understand. So that makes sense. That’s why they call them that. Right?

MATT: They give you one when you enlist.

ALEX: Yeah that’s the only version I want to be a part of.

MATT: That’s why half the people do it.

ALEX: Yeah.

[All laugh]

JOE: If you’re lucky you’ll get one of those seals with the sunglasses. So cool. So cool.

MATT: Yeah.

JOE: Gobo asks Wembley if a trip to the Trash Heap would help. And I just love this scene. Wembley goes, “Maybe,” and Gobo says, “Let’s turn that maybe into a yay b. The B stands for Boober” And Boober’s like, what are you talking about?

ALEX: Boober’s like, “Leave me out of this.” I don’t know what you’re I don’t what you’re doing, but please keep me out of it.

JOE: Good stuff.

MATT: I love getting to like, I think that was born from watching Johnny perform all first season.

JOE: I was gonna ask that.

MATT: And then writing it was like, “Oh, we know exactly.” Getting to know his voice and be able to write for it. And then Frank Meschkuleit’s playing Boober on set too. He’s just got it and it’s very satisfying.

JOE: I love that. Especially I think one thing that I’m gonna be trying to call out a lot as I rewatch this season for this podcast is specifically characters that are performed by John Tartaglia.

ALEX: Yeah.

JOE: And wondering, is this in the script or is this John just messing around on set?

ALEX: He does so many things.

JOE: And maybe this was one of those moments. I don’t know.

ALEX: But he’s constantly bringing something to it. I mean, that’s the thing about Johnny. It’s like he can make something out of nothing. There are times where, just because of the nature of how the shows come together, there might be an entire musical sequence where all we know is the song is great and we know what story-wise it’s doing, but he may in the moment there, put together half of the elements or more than half the elements that you’re seeing as part of that song sequence.

And it’s just Johnny being Johnny. And being able to rally people really quickly. There is like, as much as we are able to storyboard and plan, there is still so much just because that’s the way production goes where it is doing things very, very quickly sometimes. And he’s an incredible kind of master of ceremonies in that way.

JOE: Mmhmm.

MATT: Alex and I are a team but the sort of partnership we have with Johnny is really awesome because he’s there the whole time. So just the shorthand that we have developed now with him, just working those those types of scenes out, that type of patter for Gobo. It’s funny. We’ll send audio messages back and forth. I’ll text him, like hey, Johnny what does The Architect think about…Did he watch the Oscars this year?

[Joe laughs]

MATT: And he’s so game and he’ll write back, “Oh, did I watch it?” Yeah, we have a really fun partnership with Johnny now that I think allows us to write a lot of stuff. And he comes up I mean, it’s just a great partnership.

ALEX: It’s mutually beneficial. We can try stuff on the page and then he can take that and take it into a totally different dimension. you know.

JOE: That’s great and hysterical and it’s got to be so much fun. I love it.

MATT: Very fun. 

JOE: So the Fraggles visit the Trash Heap. She tells them it sounds like the winds came from Whistling Hollow.

MATT: I think there’s a bit right there, if I’m not mistaken, that Philo and Gunge are like…

JOE: Yes.

MATT: “Hold on. Hold on. They’re coming.” Like you get like a tiny glimpse, like a half-second before. They’re like, “Oh, they’re coming.”

JOE: Right because and as we’ll see in a second too like we kind of have to every so often remind the viewer why Philo and Gunge are there. They’re not just there to like pump her up. But they’re like, “Okay, the fraggles are coming. Get ready.” You do a big entrance. Or in this moment, Boober has a little exchange with them where he says…

MATT: Oh, I love that.

JOE: “Oh look, if she ever has any laundry that she needs done.” You know, he’s happy to help. And they’re like, “That’s our job.” And he’s like, [scoffs] “I could tell.” And he gets all huffy about it.

MATT: That’s a perfect example where like that was the joke that we wrote and I remember being on set and I’m like it’s pretty good, it’s sort of working but can use Johnny as Gunge and Dan is Philo, and I was like, “Can you guys just like really, really be offended by that like even more.” And that’s that prolonged like, taking their time like, [imitates Philo and Gunge] “Ah, ah, ah, ah.” Love that.

ALEX: Including some just sort of a sound that’s like [imitates baffled noise]. It’s the sort of sound you can barely make. And it makes no sense and it also is exactly right for the scene.

MATT: But on its own, that joke probably just stands okay, but that is what makes the joke. And like that’s a perfect example of the collaboration I think.

ALEX: I mean, everyone is so playful. Everyone is just like… that’s the whole thing. It’s like, everybody’s just very playful and very down to just try stuff and everybody inhabits the characters. And you start to get these little dynamics between the performers. Particularly there’s some great duos. Like Philo and Gunge or on the doozer side, Turbo and Wrench or Architect and Cotterpin. And it’s such a repertory of players that come in and out. And they inhabit these little dynamics as we go and it’s just very fun.

MATT: It’s funny with Marjory, Aymee Garcia is one of the funniest people in the world but I feel like as I’m thinking about it, she’s under such like duress to operate.

JOE: Sure.

MATT: I don’t think she gets as much freedom like literally to play as much as she could in those scenes, because she’s just struggling.

ALEX: Yeah, Marjory isn’t as goofy a character in that way too. There is like you know, Marjory can be goofy.

MATT: Right.

ALEX: But there is always kind of like the weight of wisdom there.

MATT: That’s a tough puppet to operate.

ALEX: That’s a tough puppet.

MATT: Ingrid [Hansen] and Kira [Hall], I think.

JOE: They’ve explained it to me of like how that puppet works.

MATT: I’ve watched it and I don’t understand. Yeah.

JOE: And I still can’t picture it. Yeah. No idea.

MATT: Fraggle promise, you’ll see it.

JOE: Okay.

ALEX: And you still won’t get it.

MATT: You still won’t get it. I don’t really, yeah.

JOE: I’m sure you’re right.

ALEX: We’ve been around a lot but they could not adequately, yeah.

MATT: I guess we could ask to get in it, maybe. But that feels like out of bounds. I don’t know.

ALEX: I mean they’re definitely inside of it.

MATT: Yeah yeah yeah.

ALEX: And they fold themselves down on the ground when Marjory returns into the earth. It’s just incredibly physical. I mean, all of the puppets are so physical but Marjory’s physical in a very unusual way.

JOE: Yeah, I bet. I’m sure. Yeah. So we get in our second song here. The song’s called “A-OK”

ALEX: Yeah.

JOE: As the Fraggles are getting to Whistling Hollow. Whistling Hollow’s made up of all these upward facing wind pipes. Kind of looks like…

ALEX: Like a pan flute kind of thing.

JOE: Yeah, like a pan flute. Like an organ or something. The inkspots are back. They’re dancing with these multicolored umbrellas.

MATT: Yeah.

JOE: Like the “Singing in the Rain” thing. And during the song we see two older Fraggle Rock puppets, Mudwell the Mudbunny and Aretha.

MATT: Yeah.

JOE: They’re kind of mentioned in song. I’m sorry I didn’t write down the exact lyric but something about like scary monsters and they are two slightly scary-looking puppets. Now is this the kind of thing where you guys would write that into the script? Or is it just like just find two characters that look a little scary and someone would just pull something out that looks Fraggle-y?

ALEX: I mean that’s the perfect example of like that’s just like on the ground collaboration between all of us, and Johnny in particular, and the shop. There’s a conversation between Johnny as puppet captain and the creature shop, which is unbelievable and kind of robust.

MATT: Scotty’s kind of a historian too, right? Was Scotty involved in the first one? He just is a wealth of information about Henson history.

ALEX: But they have so many characters there to play with. So there’s always a creature shop walk-through that’s part of the production meeting process for every episode. So you do what’s called a concept meeting where you kind of talk in big picture, alright, let’s all get our heads collectively into these zones. Here are things we need to figure out. Then once you know what you’re trying to figure out, then we break into departments and do walk-throughs.

So maybe, walking through the set where can we put this? What do we need built? Is there anything we can reuse? And they’re like all right, what are these musical numbers? What are the characters you want to see in them? Then we’re breaking down the lyrics and looking at it, like you said, that wasn’t necessarily something we put in the script but when you’re looking at the lyrics of the song you’re like, “Oh well, let’s do something fun for this moment.” And you’re in the shop and you’re looking around, “Oh perfect moment to bring out this old character.”

And so there’s just a lot of actual physical interaction with the world of the show which is always there on set. So whether it’s on camera or not, everything is always there. We just have everything and then new things that we’re constantly building. So there’s an ability to be really nimble and actually physically walk through the universe of Fraggle Rock and pull things into moments as they are appropriate.

MATT: But I’m going to put my money that only Johnny would really know how to like land the significance of those specific characters.

ALEX: Yeah, but Jordan got really, Jordan Canning, who Matt was mentioning earlier, who was our producing director this season. And she directed this episode specifically and many of the other amazing episodes this season but she was creative consultant, director, producer for the entire season. She got really into pulling specific Fraggles for specific moments. I think she just liked it so much. She just has such like a fun, infectious joy with it. So I think she and Johnny together were really active in making sure that the scenes were populated with really cool Fraggles from the original.

JOE: Nice. Yeah. In Outer Space, Doc has this new huge industrial fan and she blows wind through. 

ALEX: It’s from the one dude at the college. I forget his name but the guy hooked her up with the biggest fan that they had.

JOE: It was Jerry.

MATT: Wasn’t it Jerry?

ALEX: Oh yeah, of course, Jerry.

MATT: Jerry doesn’t play.

JOE: Was it a reference to Jerry Juhl, Jerry Nelson? Or was it just Jerry?

ALEX: I think it was a reference to both now that you remind me. I think, yeah. None of the names are ever random so I think that’s right.

JOE: Nice. Good. I’m glad to hear that. So, yeah, she blows wind through Fraggle Rock again. Gobo’s like, “It’s all fine. It’s not a bigly digly.” But then once the winds start up Gobo is thrown around like a rag doll which is always fun to see Fraggles thrown around like rag dolls.

MATT: That was honestly, yeah you build the scene out from there. Like how do we get a scene where they’re being thrown back. Yeah and also one of my favorite lines, I think. “Gobo, I think you and I differ on what is and is not a bigly digly.” From Red.

JOE: [laughs] Yes. So after the wind storm, Wembley asks Gobo once again if it’s all gonna be okay and Gobo admits he doesn’t know. And Wembley actually feels a lot better now that he knows that he’s not alone. All the Fraggles grab onto the moss like Wembley did before and they ride it out like a parachute.

ALEX: Right and we love that moment. Because that’s the moment where Wembley’s like you know, maybe we’re not gonna fight it. It’s a little bit of the introduction of what will become kind of a season-long metaphor is, not go where the wind blows you, as Wembley explains in the next episode but there is a little bit of acceptance and a little bit of rolling with it that allows for some more freedom within the situation.

So that was the kind of first version of that that we played with in this episode where Wembley says, “Maybe we don’t fight it.” And they just hold on and all of a sudden it becomes like a parachute or like a little hot air balloon that carries them off.

JOE: Yeah. It’s a ride now.

ALEX: It’s a ride now. Exactly.

JOE: It’s not a bug. It’s a feature.

ALEX: Yeah, exactly.

JOE: So, once they make it back to Fraggle Rock, Gobo tells Traveling Matt he can’t go with him into Outer Space. There’s something weird happening and he’s got to stick around to figure out what to do with his friends. So Matt says, “Cool,” as we established.

[Matt and Alex laugh]

JOE: No big deal. He’ll just take someone else. Someone calm. Someone serious.

ALEX: Yeah, who could that be?

JOE: Who could it be?

ALEX: Yeah.

JOE: It’s Pogey.

ALEX: It’s Pogey. I love Pogey’s backpack, by the way. They created such a great camping backpack for Pogey with just all kinds of stuff strapped on there. [laughs]

MATT: I share the discord message board too of like, oh man, it would have been nice to see Pogey in Outer Space.

JOE: That’s what I was gonna bring up.

MATT: I know that never even…that is a version of like breaking the rules that we did not feel comfortable with doing yet but totally agree.

ALEX: I know. It may have been worth it just for the joke. I think it’s like you know we’re obviously building toward a moment where there’s gonna be a much sort of bigger interaction between fraggles and Outer Space. And like we have a loose plan for what we want that to be, what we’re building toward. And we just weren’t on balance. We weren’t ready to do it.
We weren’t ready, Joe. We weren’t ready, you know!

JOE: Well, here’s the thing, you’re right. It would have broken some rules that would have felt really unnatural to have like a Traveling Matt postcard and Pogey is also there. Like that would have felt like a Poochy moment of like, we’ve got this breakout character and we want them to always be there. And you know give Traveling Matt a sidekick. We don’t need any that.

ALEX: Yes.

MATT: Right.

JOE: Now, I would have liked, not to say I’m at the of the caliber of the rest of your writers, but if I were in the writer’s room, I would have at least pitched like they make it as far as Doc’s workshop and then Pogey does something so unforgivably stupid that we have to send them back immediately.

ALEX: No, totally. That’s really fun and you know, like you said, it’s like we have these conversations and we made a choice. And we decided to lean into the kind of false ending and the flip joke of the first package. You know what I mean?

JOE: Totally. Yep.

ALEX: The downside obviously, if you see them out in the world, out in Outer Space, then you know that they’re gonna get sent back. So, I guess part of it was like okay, part of the fun is just the surprise of seeing Pogey pop back out of that package. But you know, your point is good. And I totally get it.

MATT: Well, I also feel like there’s I mean there’s no reason that we can’t have season three Pogey talking about their time, when I was in Outer Space.

ALEX: There was a moment.

MATT: I mean it was a couple of days. Like they made it to the to the mailbox store before. It would be really funny to see like these insane glimpses of what Pogey was up to in Outer Space in those few days.

ALEX: Or a moment when the fraggles need to for whatever story thing, I won’t tip toward, but they need to understand Outer Space a little bit more because of a problem.

MATT: Yeah.

ALEX: Pogey can have a perspective on that. They should give a little, yeah, just a funny little story of being out there that we can see a glimpse of.

JOE: Or at the very least, again just spitballing ideas of things that are never going to happen because it’s already done and filmed and out on the air, but you know in the first episode of the original series when Matt goes into Outer Space for the very first time the first thing, all he does is he walks outside, he has a weird encounter with a fire hydrant and he’s like this is way too crazy, I’ll just tell Gobo I’m fine.

So like to do something like that where Pogey is like the craziest thing happened and literally you made it as far as the sidewalk.

MATT: Yeah.

ALEX: Right.

JOE: Before turning around and you’re like, “I had this crazy experience out in Outer Space.

[Crosstalk]

JOE: Right, exactly.

MATT: Yeah, yeah.

ALEX: Yeah, that’s funny.

JOE: So we get a little tease for what’s coming up in the rest of the season. The strawberry that Wembley dropped in the Gorg’s garden is starting to take root.

ALEX: That’s exactly how strawberries work by the way.

MATT: Oh man.

ALEX: You drop them in the soil and they immediately start to you know listen…

MATT: One of our ADs Emily Renner Wallace came up to me and was like, “I have to show you something. Like here’s a Wikipedia page about.”

ALEX: How strawberry seeds work.

MATT: I just remember being worried and like, “Oh boy, oh boy.” And it was a real emergency moment.

ALEX: You know, to that we say not in the Gorg’s garden.

MATT: Yes. Yes.

ALEX: There’s something going on in the gorg’s garden that allows the seed to be kind of like pulled from the rotten berry.

MATT: It’s like Lost. The island of Lost. Things don’t work the same.

ALEX: Exactly.

MATT:  Yeah, yeah.

JOE: Well and it’s not a strawberry. It’s a sweet radish. It’s a totally different thing.

ALEX: Exactly.

MATT: Totally, yeah. Yeah. There was like a little like, “Oh god, I don’t want to be teaching kids the wrong lesson here.”

ALEX: I think the part that is real obvious is that strawberries do grow like weeds. They do take over.

MATT: Yes.

ALEX: That part of it is real. It’s not exactly how they would take root in the garden but you know listen.

JOE: And aren’t strawberries the only fruit that have the seeds on the outside? So maybe they would take root a little bit faster.

ALEX: Yeah, exactly.

JOE: Because they don’t have to decompose first. I don’t know.

ALEX: There was residual Gorgamax that was already in the garden.

MATT: Yes.

JOE: Oh of course the Gorgamax. Yeah. The Doozers are starting to build wind turbines. That’s gonna take us through the season as well. Doc is keeping on with her research on wind power. And then as we just discussed, there’s a tag at the end where Gobo brings back his first package from Uncle Matt. The postcard just says, “Dear Nephew Gobo, It was a mistake.” And there’s Pogey back in Fraggle Rock.

ALEX: Up pops…

JOE: Yep. That brings us to the end of season two, episode one. Do you guys have any other reflections on this episode? Anything else that stood out to you that we maybe didn’t get to?

ALEX: You know, no. I think just talking it through, it’s just fun to remember all of the wild times of the writers’ room coming together, early conversations with the production designer, early conversations with everybody involved about sort of the ambition for the season. And I do think that you know, it’s fun to remember starting that journey and rewatching this episode definitely had that effect on me.

MATT: Remember Alex, I feel like the most LA moment of all time was Tyler Harron, the production designer, was in LA, I want to say for the Emmy’s, maybe it was something else.

ALEX: I think it was something else.

MATT: But we got together with him and we were at pool side. And we were like, yeah, you know, we’re thinking about doing like a wind theme season. And he was just immediately like, “Yeah, I see the…” He has a very deep voice. “I see that big turbine in the Gorg’s garden.” And just yeah it does bring back this memory.

ALEX: Yeah, it’s such a journey and there’s so many places that season got done. 

MATT: Really that thing truly of like everybody, like the bat signal this time it wasn’t like putting together the new team. It was like, oh we got it. We got the green light. Oh here we go. Like now we just got going before now. Now it’s really get going.

ALEX: Yeah and it’s just fun to just remember how much everybody loves working on the show. You know it’s such an incredible crew in Calgary and so many talented people that come together. And I think, to a person, you just hear over and over again like how this is everybody’s favorite job and it’s our favorite job too. So it’s yeah, it’s really something special. I hope we get to do more of them. I feel like we will.

JOE: We hope so too. It’s actually very important to me that you get to do more Fraggle Rock. So fingers crossed.

MATT: Especially now that you’re coming to Calgary. Yeah.

JOE: Yeah, exactly. Well now that we’ve said it it’s not going to happen.

[Crosstalk]

MATT: No, you’re not coming , Joe. Forget it. You can’t come.

JOE: Ugh.

ALEX: Yeah. Yeah.

JOE: So much for Fraggle promises. Geez.

MATT: Yeah.

JOE: So Matt and Alex, as we’re wrapping up, an important question to ask both of you. How do you plan to make this world a little fragglier?

ALEX: It’s such a good question because I think it’s like everything we do in the show we try to sort of have it mirror actual kind of human interaction with the world. And I think being out in the world, finding the silliness of regular moments. I have pretty small kids and I think what I’m out in the world with my kids, trying to find the joy and silliness and how to make little chores into games, I think is like a little thing that you can actually spread a lot of joy.

And how you interact with people. I think that we live in times where people are very siloed into phones and other things but you forget that when you’re out in the world you actually like look at somebody or try to make somebody smile or try to have a moment that just has a little bit of levity and lightness, silliness to it.

That’s so Fraggly. It’s such a Fraggle idea that you can easily write off but it’s actually so meaningful because it can change the trajectory of your entire day. And I feel like just like try to remember that. Remember the playfulness of it that. You know I think so many adults and we in some ways live in unimaginative times, where people get so kind of like caught in their points of view and are unwilling to think of other perspectives where it’s really like be playful.

Think about things another way. Try to think about just the the world as an endless possibility for fun and delight and creativity and all that. That’s honestly something that’s like you see in small kids and I see in my small kids. And when I remember to do it myself I have more fun. People around me have more fun and it feels very, yeah, feels Fraggly.

MATT: Damn. Damn, that was good. That was good. That’s basically what I would say too, honestly. I mean, kindness and empathy and we’re just so lucky to work on a show about that but made by people who walk the walk from top to bottom. We’re just very grateful to be a part of that.

And I guess it kind of is a reminder that you can think of that episode with Doc doing the negative self-talk. It’s easy to negative self-talk to yourself and Fraggles are just such a great reminder. No, don’t do that. Treat yourself like a Fraggle. It’s a Fraggle Tuesday. It’s a Fraggle promise. Be kind. Be empathetic. Slow down. Make a game out of something, even like a chore. And yeah, just really find the joy in life in small moments and in the people that you love.

ALEX: Yeah.

MATT: Did I do it?

ALEX: Absolutely.

JOE: That was great.

ALEX: Loved it. Fired up.

JOE: Thank you, guys. Well listen, thank you both for joining me on this Fraggle Tuesday.

ALEX: Thank you!

JOE: It was such a joy to have both of you, Matt and Alex, here.

MATT: Likewise. Likewise.

JOE: And thank you again for all you’ve done to bring Fraggle Rock back into our lives.

ALEX: Right back at you. Thank you for all the love you breathe into the show and into the world of it.

MATT: You know who you are? You’re our, here’s a deep cut. You’re our Harry Knowles. Whatever happened to that guy? Remember that?

JOE: No.

MATT: Aintitcoolnews.com. You remember that?

JOE: Yes.

MATT: You were too young for that.

JOE: I remember. Yeah, no. I don’t know what happened to him. He doesn’t work for me, I’ll tell you that much.

MATT: He didn’t get invited to Calgary.

JOE: No, he didn’t.

ALEX: Nope.

JOE: No. No Fraggle promises for him.

MATT: Well, the point is we appreciate you very very much too. So thank you.

JOE: Thank you.

MATT: We really love talking about this stuff and yeah. Just really appreciate the opportunity.

JOE: Of course and here’s hoping we get to talk about it some more real soon.

ALEX: (in a high-pitched voice) Yeah.

MATT: Anytime, anytime, anytime.

[Fraggle Talk theme music plays]

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. The Fraggle Rock mark and logo, characters and elements are trademarks of the Jim Henson Company. All rights reserved. Transcriptions provided by Katilyn Miller. The Fraggle Rock theme song, written by Philip Balsman 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.

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Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time down at Fraggle Talk.

[Music ends]