Transcript: Fraggle Talk: Back to the Rock – “This for That”

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Fraggle Talk: Back to the Rock – Episode 20: This for That

[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.

[Music ends]

Today we are talking about season 2, episode 7, “This for That,” in which the Fraggles learn the value of a dollar.

This week we’ve got two truly priceless guests. Our first guest is the brilliant director of eight episodes of Back to the Rock, including this one. It’s Jordan Canning. Hello, Jordan.

JORDAN CANNING: Hello.

JOE: Great to have you here.

JORDAN: Thank you. Great to be here.

JOE: And our second guest is a co-creator of the original Fraggle Rock, as well as a writer and producer on Back to the Rock. It is such a joy to welcome Jocelyn Stevenson back to the podcast. Hi, Jocelyn.

JOCELYN STEVENSON: Hello, really nice to be here.

JOE: It’s so good to have you both here. I’m really excited to jump into this episode with the both of you, which, Jocelyn you wrote, Jordan, you directed. And you just told me before we got started that you’ve never met. How is that possible?

JORDAN: Well, I’m in Canada. I was in Calgary during the shoot, but I think the writers’ room, Jocelyn, where were you guys? Were you all over the place?

JOCELYN: I’m in London, UK.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: I mean, so even in the writers’ room, that always went every evening for me from 6 till 9. And after that, I really was braindead. So, yeah, I was in, I’m in the UK. Though, when we did the original series, you know, I would fly over. Lived in Toronto. This is just, this is different. And it’s too bad. Because, you know, it was really fun to have that kind of collaboration. But I completely understand how just in this world now, It’s just not possible.

JOE: So, does that mean that, so Jocelyn, in this case, you wrote a script, you went through several drafts, I assume, and then you just kind of handed it over to Jordan? And there’s no real overlap or no real conversation between the writer and the director in this case?

JOCELYN: No.

JOE: Wow.

JOCELYN: I mean, I bet we both would have loved it, too. It just wasn’t worked into the schedule. Matt [Fussfeld] and Alex [Cuthbertson] kind of took that on. And also, for me, this time, too, I was writing and I’d never written in an American writers’ room like that. And that was really interesting how much everybody contributes to the scripts, you know.

But I think all the writers, because none of them really, I know Charley Feldman, they went up for their episode. Because it wasn’t part of the budget, and it wasn’t part of the schedule, the writers couldn’t go, and you learned so much, just being on the set this time, too. Whoa, blew my mind. Jordan, I don’t know how you did it. What a thing. It’s gigantic.

JORDAN: It was big. It was a big set. It was a big set. A big set. Yeah. Matt and Alex are there on set or one or the other is usually there on set. So, I mean, we shot the first season during COVID. And so, they were really keeping the number of people kind of contained as they could. Yeah.

JOCELYN: So I handed the script over to Matt and Alex.

JOE: Right.

JOCELYN: Who had been involved in it anyway. So, you know, it wasn’t. And yeah, but Jordan and I didn’t even know Jordan was directing it until I knew Jordan was directing it. You know what I mean?

JOE: Sure.

JOCELYN: In the old days, we would have got a big table read, and everybody in and the whole thing, but you know, we just couldn’t do it that way this time.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: Maybe for season three, you’ll come up to Calgary. Jordan, a lot of folks on this podcast that we’ve been recording, have been crediting you as one of the big driving forces of the voice and the look of season two of Back to the Rock, specifically, because you’ve directed so many episodes on the front half.

Can you talk a bit about the work that you personally put into this season as a whole?

JORDAN: Yeah. I mean, I was working on season one, you know, it’s like, as you can imagine, just the best job in the world with the greatest people and the most creative, joyful work environment you can ever imagine. And so I was so thrilled to come back for season two and to come back as the producing director and to get to do the opening episode.

And so I did one, three, six, and seven, I think so. One is the big, you know, sort of setting the stage for season two and then three. I mean, I know we’re really talking about seven today.

JOE: No, we’re talking about all of them.

JORDAN: Learned so much from season one. That’s the first time I’d worked with puppets and it was also it was first season. So we were all learning a lot. A lot of us who worked on the show had never worked with puppets either. Hadn’t shot them. Hadn’t been in sets designed for puppeteers.

And so part of it was, yeah, was was bringing what we learned from season one in terms of what really worked. You know, kind of what is the best way to shoot the puppets? What’s the best sort of, what are the things that puppets do really well that we can highlight and do more of? And what are the things that kind of like maybe didn’t work so well or tricky for puppets to do? And maybe we kind of like do less of those. [laughs]

So, you know, one of the things specifically, it’s tricky obviously when you think about puppets. There’s certain shot sizes, frames that you can’t do because if you widened out you’d see a bunch of people’s heads. And so, you know, that limits you sometimes in terms of your coverage but what I really took note of from some of my favorite episodes of season one was like puppets look great on a wide lens up close.

So that was something that I really took into season two was like, “Okay, I know it’s very tempting to be like, okay, we have our A camera’s doing a kind of wider shot of all of them and then you just throw a long lens on B-cam and that’s how you get your tighter stuff.”

It’s just not as good. Doesn’t look as juicy as when you come up close to the puppet. You put a wider lens on. You get that same sort of tighter shot, but you can see so much more of the environment. You see so much more of what the puppet does best.

So that was definitely like a kind of cinematic creative thing that we brought into season two that I think carried through the rest of the season and it looks fabulous I think. Yeah.

JOE:  I think that you hit the nail on the head there, that it feels cinematic. Not that the first season didn’t, but this season is definitely more specifically, blatantly cinematic in a lot of those ways. Especially with the way that you all have used these like enormous sets, these gorgeous backdrops. And you want to have such a good focus on them because they’re so beautiful. And like you said, like the characters can be so small at the bottom of the screen.

JORDAN: Exactly, big wide shots are kind of, unless you have a lot of great ways to layer and have different heights of puppets in the frame, it’s a bummer because you just have these little guys at the bottom that you see the big set, but you got to find the balance between feeling the set and the environment, but also making sure the puppets are… they’re the main chorus, right?

JOE: Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of updating to the second season, Jocelyn, you were obviously such a huge influence on the original Fraggle Rock as well as the launch of Back to the Rock. Now that the groundwork has been set for what Back to the Rock is, how did you feel about starting to sort of change up little things for season two?

JOCELYN: I was sort of designated the essence checker, which is what it was called in the writers room. So it was kind of self-designated, but also agreed by Alex and Matt. I loved everything people but if something didn’t quite fit, I had the ability to say, “You guys, doesn’t quite start, doesn’t quite fit.”

So there was that, but that didn’t happen very…Everybody knows and loves Fraggle Rock. The thing actually that happened after finishing the first season, I was in the writers room for three weeks and I wrote one episode. And then the second season they asked me to be in the room for the entire 20 weeks, which was really, really great.

I was so pleased that they did because instead of just thinking, “Oh, who’s that old bag in the corner telling us we can’t do this and that.” [laughs] It also meant I could work on every script.

JOE: Great.

JOCELYN: And so that made a difference to me. But at the end of season two, when we finished the writing, I remember thinking, “Oh my God.” We did things in these last two seasons that we, that Jerry [Juhl], Jim [Henson], Michael Frith, me and Duncan [Kenworthy], the original sort of Fraggle Five, when we were first developing the show, we never, ever would have dreamed of these things, but they’re all Fraggle Rock.

So the thing that I really came away feeling was, “My God, it’s so flexible, this world.” So there’s so much possibility in it, which we felt at the time, but then I think this group is just this, you know, the new version, Back to the Rock, has just taken it into all those areas. We just couldn’t even dream about them. So did that answer your question?

JOE: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, talking about, you were just mentioning your role as the essence checker and to be able to also say that you can do almost anything in Fraggle Rock, which feels like you made your job really easy there. Of like, I’m making sure you can only do things…

JOCELYN: No, it’s just that there would be little character things.

JOE: Yeah.

JOCELYN: Like, you know, that wouldn’t happen. Or it would be a lot of what I did too, was just structure. Because we used three-act structure always in Fraggle Rock. And Matt and Alex are comedy writers, and they did American, you know, they did The New Girl. So that’s live action. As to what Jordan was saying, you know, you constantly wanted to sort of say, you know, you guys, guys, guys, puppets don’t sit on sofas and have conversations.

JOE: Right.

JOCELYN: You have to keep them moving. There has to be something, to her point, about how to write for puppets. It’s important that the episodes are somebody’s story. And we used when–It was Jerry Juhl who first introduced our four questions, which I introduced them to, right?

Whose story is it? What is their goal? Ie, what do they want to do? What is the risk? Ie, what happens if they don’t do it? And what do they learn?

So and that’s like the basis for almost every story in a three-act structure. And so I would be pulling people back into that. That was also my role going, “Wait, wait, wait, wait. We’ve been vamping on a Mokey joke now for the last hour and it’s hilarious.” The people in the room are hilarious. I love all of them. Such talented writers. It was so much fun. But this is Wembley’s story. And we haven’t seen him for two scenes.

JOE: Right.

JOCELYN: It would be that kind of thing that I would contribute. And that’s why I thought they’ll never ask me back. [laughs]

JOE: [laughs] You kept them on track though. That’s important.

JOCELYN: They could go as far as they wanted and I was in the room to say, “You know what? It’s almost there, but it’s just not quite. It’s not really Fraggley.” You know, I could do that. Which was useful, I guess.

JOE: Sure. You had to be bad cop a little bit to kind of keep them from going, like, you gotta say no a few times to make sure that everything keeps staying concise and fraggley.

JOCELYN: They were always so gorgeous because they’d just go, “Oh, yeah, you’re right.”

JOE: Yeah. Yeah, that’s called tough love. [laughs]

JOCELYN: It’s called collaboration, come on. [laughs]

JOE: Yes. Yes. All of the above. Jordan, by my count, you directed five episodes this season.

JORDAN: Yeah. No, I did…

JOE: Do you have a favorite? No?

JORDAN: No, I did five total. I did two last year. Is that right?

JOE: No, I think you did eight total. Again just from my count.

JORDAN: Oh my God, did I?

JOE: Wait, should we look this up before I actually asked my question so I don’t get numbers wrong?

JOCELYN: I so know that feeling.

JORDAN: Maybe seven. You’re going to have to look it up because you said that in the intro and I was like, “I thought it was only five.” But you’re right. I did two blocks. I did, I think I did five in season two.

JOE: Okay, so you did, so season one, you did “Flutterflies,” “Craggle Lagoon,” and “Giggle Gaggle.” That’s three. This season–

JORDAN: Oh my god, you’re right. I did eight. I did eight. You’re right.

JOE: You did “Great Wind,” “Mokey and Lanford,” “Repeatee Birds,” “Mezzo: Live in Concert,” and “This for That.”

JORDAN: I love this show. I’m so happy I did eight. [laughs]

JOE: It just flies by! [laughs]

JORDAN: Honestly, you said eight and I was like, “That can’t be right. Surely I didn’t do that many.” But yes, eight. Yeah, eight amazing episodes. I loved every one of them. I love all of my children equally.

JOE: Does that mean, does that mean that they didn’t pay you for some of them?

JORDAN: No, no, they paid me. They paid me.

JOE: [laughs] Okay, good. That’s maybe the most important thing. Okay, so that said, with all these episodes that you’ve directed, do you have a favorite?

JORDAN: Oh God. Okay, should we keep it to season two or of all of them?

JOE: Let’s keep it to season two.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: But if you do want to talk about something from season one, I’m not going to stop you.

JORDAN: Well, there’s so many elements of each one that I love. There’s musical numbers in one that…My favorite musical number probably of this season is “Radishes vs. Strawberries.”

JOE: Totally. Yeah.

JORDAN: It was so much fun to do. But I also love, you know, “It Takes Two,” the Mokey-Lanford duet. I love that one so much. And then just rewatching “This for That,” I was like, “This is a solid one too.”

They’re all such great episodes. There’s amazing themes in them. “There’s such great character moments. There’s such fun songs. But, God, a favorite…Probably, probably “When Mokey met Lanford,” just because I love Lanford so much and you know, just getting to spend time with him is really fun.

JOE: I agree. And especially on this rewatch of mine that I’m doing for this podcast, I’m finding so much more to love about Lanford just because Ingrid Hansen is such a goofball.

JORDAN: Oh my god. Ingrid’s a genius.

JOE: And she puts so much of herself into it. She really is.

JORDAN: She sent me a birthday voice memo singing “Happy Birthday” as Lanford. 

[Joe laughs]

JORDAN: I will keep that forever.

JOE: I love it. Jocelyn, one more question for you. Since you only wrote one episode solo for this season, did you assign it to yourself?

JOCELYN: No, no.

JOE: Or did someone else kind of say like, Jocelyn seems like a you episode?

JOCELYN: I can’t honestly remember. No, I think they all had in their heads who would do…Honestly, that’s a very good question. I can’t remember how it happened because it wasn’t the usual, you pitch an idea that you have and then you get to write that show. Everything was so collaborative in the writers’ room.

And it’s interesting because the other, in season one, I did was both times were Mokey stories and both episodes that I did.

JORDAN: Which one did you do in season one, Jocelyn?

JOCELYN: It was the one with the… Echo Cave.

JOE: The Echo Chamber.

JORDAN: Oh, okay. Echo Chamber. That’s a great one.

JOCELYN: I knew you’d ask me that. I suddenly went, “You know you’re not going to remember.” You know that voice in your head. Yeah, the echo, that was a great episode.

JOE: Yeah.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: And Mokey is hilarious and it was really fun working with Donna [Kimball]. Again, I didn’t get to meet her, to work with her.

JORDAN: Donna’s a dream. Yeah.

JOCELYN: Yeah. And I just, because in the original series, Red was my Fraggle. Red was my Fraggle because Karen and I sort of developed her together. Again, that thing where writer working with a performer was really fun. But then Boober, it was Sidebottom, discovering the side of Boober that he keeps on the bottom. I worked with Dave on that and that was really fun. 

And then so I really didn’t have, I really hadn’t done a lot of Mokey. And so it was really fun to do, because she can be hilariously serious. And I love that.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: Yes. And for this episode, this big idea when you say…Somebody, I can’t remember who it was. Somebody in the writers’ room suggested, “Can we try to tackle capitalism?” And we all went, “Well, that’s an interesting idea for kids.” But Fraggle Rock is all about big ideas.

And yeah, and as we got to talking about it and this character, Pryce…haha, right? Yeah, and it all started to, yeah. I can’t remember if I said, I want to do that episode or whether, I think Matt and Alex might have just decided that that was the one I should do.

JOE: They were like, “Oh, you seem anti-capitalistic.” [laughs]

[Jocelyn laughs]

JORDAN: You can take that on. [laughs]

JOE:  Yeah, exactly.

JOCELYN: It’s like, “No, you know how we trust you to be able to break this down for kids.”

JOE: Right.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: And it is a complicated topic. And I mean, we’re going to have to jump into this episode just to like, kind of break it open a little bit. But it is such a, like you said, it’s a huge topic. I wouldn’t have known where to even start to talk about it without getting into some sort of problematic or overly confusing territory.

JOCELYN: As I’m remembering now whether I can’t remember whether I hit on it or honestly, but the idea of just “this for that” to me just opened the whole thing up because it was so simple.

JOE: Yeah.

JOCELYN: And you can get that. And so that’s where it started. And yeah, once that idea was there, then we can work with that.

JOE: Yeah. And thankfully, you don’t have to get into the whole like how does currency work? And how many radishes per thing?

JOCELYN: Because what is currency? But this is what it’s about.

JOE: Totally. Yes.

JOCELYN: And it’s, yeah, it’s arbitrary. That’s what so, you know, and in the end, Mokey, something’s bothering her about this whole thing. I mean, if we go through the episode, but there’s that moment when, I can’t remember the character, but he was getting a ride from…Is it glizzzard…

JOE: Grizzard.

JORDAN: The grizzard.

JOCELYN: Grizzard. See, I don’t know some of the new characters anymore. I don’t know some of the new characters, yes. Grizzard’s back. And he lost his hat.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: And Mokey said, “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll pick it up for you.” “No, I can’t accept it because I don’t have a strawberry to give you for picking up my hat.”

And that to me was…And you did it beautifully, Jordan. This moment when she’s like, “Wait a minute.” And so that was like a pivotal moment where something about this is really bothering me, basically is what was happening with Mokey.

And then yeah, she goes to the Trash Heap, but the Trash Heap doesn’t give her the answer. The Trash Heap gives her the way to think about it.

Because that’s the other thing, you know, we don’t want to give you, your main character has to figure it out for themselves. And yeah, I was pleased with how all that worked out. Watching it again I was really pleased with how it all worked out.

JOE: You should be. It’s a great episode.

JORDAN: It is.

JOE: And I think you are both really successful in conveying this, again, very complicated message.

JOCELYN: Yeah, no, it’s solid. And it was brilliantly directed. Brilliantly directed.

JORDAN: Brilliantly written.

JOE: Brilliantly watched by me. [laughs]

JORDAN: Yes.

JOCELYN: Excellent. Okay. So now, sorry, we’ll stop. And you can.

JOE: No, it’s okay. This is all good stuff.

JOCELYN: Reign us in.

JOE: Let’s talk about this episode. We open as Wrench and Turbo Doozer are like being belayed down from the ceiling. Kind of Mission Impossible-style. They’re searching for gusties. One of them, I can never remember which one is Wrench and which one’s Turbo. But one of them has this like great device on their back that… they’re not just holding on to the rope. It’s like coming out of this backpack thing.

JOCELYN: Gosh, Doozers.

JOE: It’s got a propeller on it and like, a green light bulb and like, whatever. I mean, there’s no comment on it. It’s just a cool Doozer thing. And I love, I love seeing that stuff. It looks so good.

JORDAN: Yeah. I mean, the Doozer stuff this season too, I think we really, we went, we leaned into it. Those Doozers are, man, they can be really tricky to work with, but they’re so fun when they work. An the little miniatures and the little tools and the little details that the creature shop puts into it are just like unparalleled.

So yeah, we had, I think there’s a little spinning, you know, propeller on it and we incorporated some of those kind of, there’s like a specific vehicle. I don’t know if it’s in this episode or not. I know we have the gusty sucker in this episode, but there’s also like, there’s a, one of the vehicles that they drive, maybe in six, that was a sort of retrofitted version of the Doozer vehicles, but we added a whole bunch of whirligigs onto it to make it feel more like this is for finding winds.

You know, it’s just fun to take the kind of base of something and then, you know, put a bunch of silliness on top of it.

JOE: Yeah. Absolutely.

JOCELYN: Two things I wanted to say. One is it’s a long way away from the days when we first were doing the Doozers and there would be a moment when the remote control didn’t work and a Doozer would just walk off the end of it.

[Joe laughs]

JORDAN: Well, there’s versions of that that still happen. They might not walk off anything but…

JOCELYN: Yeah, and that was a lot of money that you’re losing if your Doozer falls on the floor. 

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: But the other thing I wanted to say just about starting with that scene is the other challenge for us was we had all these big arcs that were going on, there was, you know, the gusties and all this stuff going on and things going on with the fraggles and the relationship between the fraggles and the gorgs.

And you kind of had to touch in on those every episode. That was challenging to keep it.

JORDAN: Yeah, there was a lot of serialized stories in the season.

JOCELYN: Yeah. Yeah.

JORDAN: There were in season one too, but this season, yeah, it had some really ambitious, big, overarching storylines that, yeah, like you said, you had to have them in every episode pretty much.

JOCELYN: Yeah, and you know, Alex would be up like madly drawing on the whiteboard, making sure we got it all in. And yeah, that was, it was challenging and all what’s going on with Doc and her career and how you make it all work. Yeah, that was fun.

JOE: And to that point, I feel like it must have been a challenge specifically for the Doozers because their throughline through this season is a little simpler than the others, especially the Fraggles, definitely the gorgs.

And I don’t know, just, I noticed that their storylines are kind of peppered in just a little bit. There’s a little, we’re looking for the gusties or we’re planting a seed for radishes. Not a full story most of the time, but just a little something, just don’t forget the Doozers are out there.

JORDAN: Don’t forget.

JOE: This’ll come back in two episodes. Mmhmm.

JORDAN: Yeah. And then bringing Cotterpin, once Cotterpin kind of joins forces with the Fraggles in the back half of the season, then you kind of have a more organic way of keeping the Doozer stuff and the Doozer technology alive throughout the main A B storylines and stuff.

JOCELYN: Jordan, it was your shot where the little periscope comes up. I love that shot.

JORDAN: [makes grinding sound effects] Yeah.

JOCELYN: I remember writing that was something that [laughs].

JORDAN: Oh, man, it took us a while to figure out how to do that too, because like we wanted to shoot it in the real garden, but the way the set goes, you know, it’s on a little bit of a decline. So we had a puppeteer like crammed… Oh, no, that was at first what we thought we were going to do. Then we smartened up and we made a separate little, almost like a little sandbox that we could shoot just the insert in so that a puppeteer didn’t have to climb underneath the floor of a very shallow set.

JOE: They would have done it though.

JORDAN: They would have done it. They would have. But yeah.

JOCELYN: The idea of it, it amused us so much in the writers’ room that when you actually shot this idea of this teeny little thing coming into these, that Matt and Alex actually sent me, they took footage of it when they were watching.

JORDAN: It was very fun to do that. Yeah, it’s exactly what, you know, when you write it. You’re like, “Yep, that’s going to be fun. That’s going to be cute.”

JOCELYN: That’ll be fun. I bet they won’t be able to do it but then…[laughs]

JORDAN: Then you can do it.

JOE: But that’s also one of those things that I think about a lot. I’m sure the two of you do too, and maybe not many other people in this world. Where, you know, the Fraggle Rock, especially the old show, was so much about the Fraggles and their relationship to the gorgs and their relationship to the Doozers, but we don’t see a lot of the relationship between the Doozers and the gorgs.

And we get these tastes of, you know, the Doozers are still harvesting radishes from the gorgs’ garden, and they’re interacting without knowing that they really exist for the most part. And so I love seeing these little things, like the periscope, like, in another episode, there’s like a laser beam that circles a strawberry and sucks it down.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: The scale was so hard to figure out. Just the scale was so hard to figure out in the old days. We just didn’t have the same technology that we just couldn’t. So we just had to be satisfied that the audience could see the connection. The audience could see that the Doozers were connected to the gorgs by their blah, blah, blah, blah, right?

But, yeah, to be able, oh, I can’t tell you how satisfying it was, Jordan, to be able to write that thing. A little Doozer periscope, I know it seems silly, but a Doozer periscope goes up into the gorgs’ garden. We never would have been able to do that. Now you can.

JOE: I feel like you all do that a lot as writers, where you’re like, “I have this idea. Jordan, now it’s your problem. You figure it out.”

[All laugh]

JORDAN: Oh yeah. Well, not just mine.

JOCELYN: But she would have been able, I would have been able to talk to her, you know?

JOE: Sure.

JOCELYN: We would’ve had going through the script with her, you know, red ink and saying, “No, what are you?” [laughs]

JORDAN: Yeah, this is too hard. We can’t do this. What if we do this? And I mean, that process does happen once I get the script. I just, I have to do it with, I do it with Matt and Alex instead of Jocelyn or whoever wrote the original draft of the script.

JOCELYN: I know.

JORDAN: But they’re also open to, I mean, I’ll say it a million times, like we learned so much season one of what worked and what was a nightmare to try to do. And, you know, so now I can go through a script, a Fraggle script or a puppet script and be like, “No, don’t try to do, don’t bother trying to do this. We can find something cooler and more achievable to do here than this, because it will take us three hours and it won’t look that great, even if we get it.” You know?

JOCELYN: That’s why I could never believe they allowed the flooping episode in series one, I mean the original series, where the Doozers were on pogo sticks.

JORDAN: I know, but that looked great.

JOCELYN: We shot that…

JOE: It did!

JOCELYN: …at four in the morning. And yeah, I have to confess, that was my idea. [laughs]

[Joe laughs]

JOCELYN: And people did not like me then as we were like, three in the morning. [laughs]

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: Anyway, yeah, you’re right, Joe. Writers, we think of all…

JOE: That’s how you make TV history.

JORDAN: Yeah. Well, I mean, how much we use the blue screen helps a lot, obviously, now, in the new iteration of the show. So a lot of things are more possible. Like in the first episode of the season when we have the big windstorm, we wanted to do all these crazy, you know, we wanted to have the Wizard of Oz sort of Doozers, you know, we had a Doozer rowing a boat and a granny in a rocking chair and it’s like, right, that’s not on a string.

That’s like we just shoot the elements on blue screen and then they get laid in and it looks great. It’s like a lot easier to kind of try some of those big silly things because they won’t eat into your day. It’s like actually quite an achievable, little fun visual joke to layer into an already great scene.

JOE: So now you know, Jocelyn, add more stuff like that into the scripts. They can handle it. [laughs]

JOCELYN: No, but now that I know Jordan, I’d be ringing her up saying, “What do you think about this?”

JORDAN: I love it.

JOE: Yeah, yeah. Do it. So, Wrench and Turbo, they find a cave full of wind. It’s the mother load. And, you know, actually, we were just talking about having Doozers on green screens. Is that how they’re being puppeteered here or they’re…

JORDAN: Uh-uh.

JOE: I don’t really have a concept of…

JORDAN: That’s all on the set.

JOE: So they’re all remote? They’re 100% remote? There’s no cables attached to them?

JORDAN: The head is always remote. The head and talking is always remote. They will be rod puppeteered for like hand movement. You know, later in the episode, you’ve got Cotterpin and you’ve got the four of them about to suck all the gusty suckers in. They’re sort of secured onto the surface of the set and then a puppeteer is underneath with two little rods, rodding their arms so that the arms can move.

And then another puppeteer is off to the side doing the head and mouth stuff. And then sometimes you just have them on a stick. And it’s just, that’s my favorite is just a Doozer on a stick. So if you want to have them walking in the background, just that.

JOE: Yeah, Doozer on a stick. Sounds delicious. [laughs]

JORDAN: Doozer on a stick. Yeah. If you put them in a vehicle or whatever, then they’re secured somewhere. But you never, sometimes you do a little bit of…You can sometimes…Don’t do a lot of like steps with the Doozer.

JOE: Yeah, watching their feet move. Yeah.

JORDAN: Yeah. They hop around. Yeah.

JOE: Right. [laughs] They just bounce.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: So in the Great Hall, we see four little Fraggles listening to the Storyteller tell a story. We’ve learned on this podcast that’s Peach Pit, Cantaloupe, Honeydew, and I believe the fourth one is Dickie, if I’m not mistaken. I don’t know. Everyone’s got a name.

JORDAN: I can’t remember what the last one is called.

JOE: I’m pulling all of this off the Muppet Wiki. Dickie doesn’t seem to fit the theme of the rest of them.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: As we said, we see a fraggle riding on the Grizzard’s back. And the Grizzard’s kind of going, (in slow voice) “I’m having the time of my life.” (in normal voice) He’s very low energy. And Mokey says she’s off to paint a mural of Lanford. Red sarcastically says she would love to help, but she told Pogey that she’d teach them a new swim stroke.

And then we see this amazing outfit on Pogey with like goggles and arm floaties and a swim cap and this rainbow swimsuit. It’s beautiful. That’s a wonderful bit of costuming for the costume team.

JORDAN: I will say in my director’s cut, and I know why they cut it, because we had to cut it for time. But I did manage to get one more shot of Pogey in that look of them dancing.

JOE: Yes.

JORDAN: Because that look was so good. And it deserved almost an entire episode worth of featuring it. But yes, incredible. I mean, Pogey’s amazing.

JOE: Yep.

JORDAN: That swim cap.

JOE: Love it. Love it. Gobo is busy writing a song for Wembley and it’s a doozy, which is the name of the song, “A Doozy.” And Boober’s making backwards soup, which apparently entails walking backward with the pot and falling. Falling is part of the soup recipe.

I love all of this. This feels so fraggley to me. It reminds me very much of like the first episode of the original Fraggle Rock series where we just see a gaggle of fraggles and everyone’s just doing their own thing. And this is just a normal day in Fraggle Rock.

JOCELYN: But we’re also setting everything up.

JOE: Yes.

JOCELYN: Because you see all of it later.

JOE: That’s right.

JOCELYN: Doing it for free. I just thought I’d point that out.

JOE: No, it’s important. It’s like foreshadowing. Is it foreshadowing? I guess it’s foreshadowing.

JOCELYN: Yeah, yeah. You could. I suppose. But it’s just setting, it’s just set up. You know, so that there’s a payoff later.

JOE: Yeah.

JORDAN: Yeah. And because it was so nicely written that way of like, here’s, you know, here’s what it’s normally like. And then later we’re going to see when “this for that” sort of infiltrates and kind of changes a normal day in Fraggle Rock.

So how I conceived of that is it’s the same shot twice. You know, it’s a sort of Mokey leading us through the Great Hall and you sort of see all these things unfold. And I mean, we had a bit of coverage, but it plays out nicely in this one tracking master. And so that there’s a mirror to the way that both of those scenes play out. Yeah. to just, you know, hammer that at home even more.

JOCELYN: Yeah. Isn’t it wonderful when the direction just totally supports the writing. I love it.

JOE: Everyone’s working well together like fraggles.

JOCELYN: Yeah.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: So does that mean, did you film this scene and the scene that we’ll see later on, the mirror scene, back to back just to make sure that you had that continuity?

JORDAN: No, because honestly, the last thing you’re ever waiting for is the camera. Like we’re set up and ready to go. It’s not hard to change things around with the camera on Fraggle Rock. You’re like, redressing Red, changing all the hand props, all that stuff takes way longer. So no, we would have shot those on different days for sure.

JOE: Oh, interesting. Yeah.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: And all the radishes–I’m sorry. The strawberries that we’ll see.

JORDAN: The strawberries. All that stuff. Yeah.

JOE: Right. Right. Right. Right.

JORDAN: But it was moreso, it was just sort of conceived that way.

JOE: Sure. This is where we get our first check in with Doc and Sprocket. Doc is sorting through her email. Riveting. Could’ve been a whole episode of just throwing old emails into the trash bin.

She gets an email from a company that makes yachts. They are offering her a job. And this is such a highlight of the episode where Sprocket has a fantasy of him and Doc on a Yacht which I just love. And they’re wearing little captain’s hats.

JORDAN: Sprocket with a hat on is always a good day.

JOE: Always. Always. And he’s drinking something out of a coconut with a crazy straw. Great prop work.

JOCELYN: That was again, that was another writers group.

JORDAN: I think this, yeah. The straw has a little doggy bone sort of like, or is it that flourish on it.

JOCELYN: Does it? Of course it does!

JORDAN: Yeah.

[Joe laughs]

JOCELYN: This is Henson. I would be surprised if it didn’t.

JOE: Yeah. [laughs] My favorite detail here, though, is that, so Doc is steering the boat. And then when they snap out of the fantasy, her hands are still kind of in that same position, but she’s doing like pointer fingers.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: That’s such a cool little detail. I love that. That must have been on the day thing, right?

JORDAN: That cut work is great.

JOE: Like, is that just like, “You know what would be funny?”

JORDAN: It was about keeping them–I always wanted to keep them in the same position. Like, so that it could be that really fun sort of snap back to reality moment. But yes, I think the finger pointers was all her.

JOE: I love it. It’s good stuff. So Doc knows that if she takes this job, she’ll have to give up volunteering at the high school. And so she’s got a big decision to make. And I think we’ve all been in this position where there are opportunities in front of you and you have to make that big choice. So, Jocelyn, how in your eyes does this storyline kind of… not mirror, but like layer along with the “this for that” story?

JOCELYN: She has to figure out what she values. That’s where it comes around to being, because the episode’s not about choosing because you could think, okay, this is going to be an episode about making a choice or whatever.

No, it comes around when she, at the end, has to figure out what she values. Yeah, because it’s the bit after Mokey is trying to figure out. So now we’re looking at what do you value? And so yeah, I thought that the whole Doc thing and it really helps support that whole idea. Because, you know, unlike she’s not going for the money. You know, she knows she’d get paid. She’d get new boots. I mean, that scale was ridiculous.

JORDAN: Oh, yeah, the scale was really fun.

JOCELYN: It’s so funny. And yeah, then again, and even the thing, the diorama which was the wet sand, whatever they made for her, was ridiculous too. But, you know, oh, it really touched her. She didn’t want to give that up.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: And it also echoes the whole, you know, a show where you can say the more love you give, the more love you get. When I was able to write that line, because I thought that’s such a fraggle line. And then, you don’t want it to just feel heavy-handed and stuff and it didn’t really. You work up to that and the whole Doc thing. I didn’t think it felt it. Do you guys think it felt–?

JORDAN: No, it’s beautiful.

JOE: No.

JORDAN: It’s such a pure, it’s such a pure, important idea.

JOCELYN: Yeah, no. I mean, obviously, if Matt and Alex had thought it was heavy-handed, it wouldn’t have been in there. So, they obviously didn’t. And, yeah, the whole Doc thing really supports that. So, that’s how it layers in. You don’t get it right away. And then, as it comes around when she’s having to go, “Wait a minute. What do I value?”

JOE: Yeah. Yeah. Well, especially, you know, because the other side of it is also related to money. And, like, we’re not talking, we are a little bit like, “I could buy new shoes and I could quit the other job.”

But, you know, for kids who maybe don’t really understand what the larger ideals around money, you know, I think it worked really well for that of, you know, like, is it worth getting money for something that I don’t really feel strongly about and then vice versa is actually much more powerful. We’re going get into so much more of that in this episode. I love that theme.

We check in at the Gorgs’ garden. The strawberries are growing like hotcakes and they’re huge. Like, these props are big. Those are big strawberries.

JORDAN: Yeah, they were fun.

JOE: Yeah. [laughs] What is the consistency of them?

JOCELYN: Said with this completely deadpan face.

JORDAN: It’s different ones. There’s some that are sort of, I mean, they’re all sort of, like, a…

JOE: Yeah, where they made out of them.

JORDAN: Some of them are, like, a kind of hard, hollow… I don’t even know what they’re made of. Some sort of hard foam sort of thing, I guess.

JOE: Okay, yeah.

JORDAN: And then there’s also squishy foam ones for ones that had to be thrown around. There are squishy ones. But yeah, there’s different…There were different versions of them.

JOE: Yeah, that makes sense.

JORDAN: And different scales of them, too. Yeah.

JOE: Yeah. Well, especially the one that Pa’s holding in this episode, it’s like, I mean, it must have been, I don’t know, I’m holding out like a volleyball?

JORDAN: Yeah, they’re about…Yeah, about a volleyball size. Yeah.

JOE: Yeah.

JORDAN: And then you have ones that have to interact with the fraggles that are meant to be… The whole scale thing is a…

JOCELYN: It’s a nightmare.

JORDAN: You could do a TED talk on the… I couldn’t do it.

JOE: I’m sure.

JORDAN: But a production designer could. Yeah.

JOE: And it helps that the strawberries, specifically in this episode, are of all sizes. So you can have a giant one and a tiny one.

JORDAN: That was encouraged. That was sort of like, “Let’s have a few different sizes so that we aren’t too stuck on this scale thing because it gets tricky.” Like, the scale breaks down at certain points where you’re like, “Well, now it doesn’t really work.” But, yeah. So we had, yeah, a bit of variety in the strawberries helped.

JOE: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s a certain muppet logic that we kind of erase in our minds.

JORDAN: Oh, yeah.

JOE: The stuff that I always think about is, you know, when, let’s say like, there’s a fraggle on screen and a little inkspot comes up next to them. It’s like, well, that inkspot is maybe eight inches shorter by where their eye line is.

JORDAN: Never think about the floor.

JOE: But that means that, yeah.

JORDAN: Don’t think about the floor.

JOE: Their legs have to… Are they on stilts to get that high? It’s… Don’t worry about it. Just enjoy the fun.

JORDAN: Don’t worry about it. Yeah.

JOE: Just enjoy the funny puppets. They’re telling you a cute story. They’re singing you a song. Yeah.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: It’s just strawberries. Just radishes, don’t worry about it. Pa declares that they are BBO now. Big Berries Only.

JORDAN: I love that line. It’s so dumb.

JOE: [laughs] He is so dumb. I’m relishing in how dumb Pa Gorg is in this whole season.

JORDAN: Oh, yeah.

JOE: He’s so stupid. He orders Junior to dump all the tiny ones. And so Junior just like takes a wheelbarrow and chucks them all down a hole. Darn the environment. They’re just someone else’s problem now. And Mokey is down there. She’s painting her mural. And there’s an avalanche of strawberries coming toward her.

And I love this bit where she braces for the impact. And she’s like, “Oh, it wasn’t even close.”

JORDAN: Yeah. There’s like seven feet between them. Yeah.

JOE: Yep.

JORDAN: That was another great dumb joke. I love it. The dumber the better.

JOE: So good. Yeah. And again, Donna sells it as Mokey.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: But someone is not quite so lucky. She hears a voice, a British voice, asking for help. Because someone is buried under the strawberries and she pulls them out and it’s Pryce. There’s Pryce. Our new best friend.

JORDAN: Pryce.

JOE: He is voiced by Brett Goldstein, one of the stars of Ted Lasso. And is John Tartaglia doing the puppetry?

JORDAN: Yes.

JOE: I forgot to look it up, but he looked like Johnny’s mannerism. So I just assumed.

JORDAN: It’s John. Yeah.

JOCELYN: We call him Saint John, don’t we?

JOE: Saint John? [laughs]

JOCELYN: [laughs] I do.

JOE: He’s just that nice. I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised.

JOCELYN: He’s just done so much. He’s just such the engine and the force and the force of nature behind all of this. Anyway, go ahead.

JOE: Absolutely. Yeah.

JOCELYN: I had to sing my praises of Johnny Tartaglia.

JOE: As we do in every episode of this podcast.

JOCELYN: I’m sure you do.

JOE: Even the ones that he’s in people can’t shut up about how much we love John Tartaglia.

Pryce is so thankful, he offers Mokey his hat and then, when she doesn’t take that, he offers her this giant pile of berries, which I don’t know why he feels like he owns them and can give them away, but sure, why not.

JORDAN: Hey, that’s capitalism, baby.

[Jocelyn laughs]

JOE: Yeah, sure. [laughs] A fraggle passes by, asks for a berry and Mokey, without thinking, just go ahead and gives them one. And Pryce is fascinated by this. He tells her you’ve got all these berries, that fraggle wanted one, but you also want help painting your mural. And Mokey says, “I also love listing true things,” which is a great line.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: Yes.

JOE: Pryce introduces this concept, “this for that,” to her. And that’s the name of the episode, by the way. And I also like the bit where he says, “Do you like songs?” And that line reading. God, that line reading.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: “Pryce. Pryce. Pryce. Pryce. Yeah. We like songs.” God. That’s so funny.

JORDAN: And you got Lanford going, “Ah, bah, bah, bah, bah.”

[All laugh]

JOE: Is that…I assume that you wrote that in the script, Jocelyn, but…

JOCELYN: What? That I wrote the…?

JOE: Yeah, we like songs. That bit, Or is that…

JOCELYN: Yeah.

JORDAN: That’s scripted.

JOCELYN: I could never take credit for it. The funny lines are often written by Alex or Matt or…Yes, I’m sure I did.

JOE: But is the intonation that…

JOCELYN: No, no. She did that.

JORDAN: That’s all Donna.

JOE: That’s gotta be Donna. Yeah.

JOCELYN: Oh, Yeah. Yeah. That’s totally Donna. And Lanford adding to it must have been improvised. I don’t remember adding, you know, who knows if he would have been given a line. No. That was just all them. Yes.

JOE: So good. So this is where we get our first song of the episode, “This for That.” And this is mostly Pryce singing as they kind of walk through the rock. They’re passing all sorts of creatures. I won’t list them, but it’s just such a beautiful menagerie of all the different puppet styles that we’ve seen in Fraggle Rock outside of the Fraggles.

And there’s one shot that I really like of two creatures. And one of them has a strawberry, one of them has a gourd and they toss them to each other.

JORDAN: Mm-hmm.

JOE: They kind of pass in the air. How did you do that?

JORDAN: Well, takes, there was at least four puppeteers dealing with that, because each of them had… the things were on sticks. I mean, the answer is generally something’s on a stick. But the strawberry and the, I can’t remember what the thing was called. If you’ve got a blah berry, I can’t remember what the other thing was called. It has a Fraggle name.

JOE: Oh, yeah. It’s like a donkleberry or something, right?

JORDAN: Yeah, I can’t remember what it is.

JOE: Did I make that up?

JORDAN: No, it’s something funny.

JOCELYN: Yeah, but it fits.

JORDAN: Something silly like that. So, you know, you had John and Donna dancing down the thing, getting to that, then you have the two puppeteers who are puppeteering the little fuzzy creatures. And then you had two more puppeteers who had, one had a strawberry and one had a donkleberry or whatever it is.

And so then they had to time it. So it was like puppeteers looked like they throw it, and then they had to go do the arc of it and go over there. So, yeah, it took a lot. It took a few takes to get that to work.

JOE: Yeah.

JORDAN: It was actually a lot more complicated than. It looks just so like easy-breezy.

JOE: Yeah, you just toss a couple berries.

JORDAN: It probably took seven or eight takes at that. Because, you know, sometimes they’d throw it, and then it wouldn’t quite look like the other one caught it, or the arc didn’t quite look real. So, yeah, it was fun though. I love that song.

I had a real sort of hope for the end shot. Got it as close as we could. I really sort of had this vision. Sort of weird mixed vision of like, I don’t know if you know that Bjork video. I can’t remember what it’s called, “Falling in Love.” That great one where she’s dancing around and like the mailbox dances with her.

Anyway, at the end of it, she essentially gets on to a crane and sort of like, rises up above, and you see everybody dancing from below. And I had this sort of fantasy of like, that’s how the song would end of like Pryce and her being sort of lifted up by this idea.

And then a sort of Muppet Show, you know, all the muppets in these little crevices and caves in the background and dancing behind them, sort of, intro to The Muppet Show sort of vibe. Got it as close as we could.

JOE: Yeah.

JORDAN: I’m one of the puppets back there. I’m back there.

JOE: Oh, no way.

JORDAN: Yeah, they let me go in there and do a little…

JOE: Which one is you? We gotta know.

JORDAN: His name is Rapscallion. He’s my favorite puppet.

JOE: [laughs] Great.

JORDAN: He’s one of the greatest… He actually, he appears, the puppet appears. He’s a Little Rago in episode six.

JOE: Oh, Little Rago.

JOCELYN: Gotcha.

JORDAN: Little Rago is the character, but the puppet’s name is Rapcallion. And I just love him. He’s a great size puppet. He’s like a perfect little guy to just have on your arm. So I snuck in there and did a little bit of duh, duh, duh. Very simple choreography. I was able to do it.

JOE: And this goes back to what we were talking about before of just like, filling the screen with all these characters and like…

JORDAN: Yeah, height. Height is really like the name of the game. That’s another thing we did this season when you were asking earlier about like changes, was we added in… This actually came out of doing the first Jamdolin episode, the Troubadours episode last season, season one. We had those sort of layered… When we had the band all set up, we called it like the bandstand.

And they were these sort of like rock face here and rock face here, which obviously makes it great for puppeteering because they can hide behind it. You can fill up the frame nicely.

And we learned from that and said, “Okay, well let’s have some rocks of different heights.” We had this rock that we called…What did we call it? I feel like we called it like, a coffin rock or something. But it was just like a kind of tall…

JOCELYN: That’s Fraggley. [laughs]

JORDAN: Yeah, I can’t remember why it was called that. But you see it a bunch actually in this season, just in the Great Hall, when people are walking through the Great Hall, you’ll see like two fraggles sitting on top of this tall rock.

JOE: Oh, yeah, I noticed it in this episode.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: Cause there are like two fraggles that are kind of canoodling at the beginning of the episode.

JORDAN: Just hanging, because it just fills up the frame.

JOE: Yeah.

JORDAN: You have the stairs. The stairs are really hard to puppeteer on because they’re stuck in a hole. It’s not that chill. At least behind one coffin rock, they can be hidden behind it and they can have a bit more flexibility there. So we built in more of those different height pieces that could just be sort of…”Oh, bring in, roll in one of these rock pieces.” And we used the band stand. I think they chopped the band stand up a bit into other pieces. But you really just need those foreground elements to help with puppeteering.

If you have a big empty space, you’re limited to those tiny little heads at the bottom of the frame. So, yeah.

JOE: Yeah. That’s great. I feel like if you all decide to do a Halloween episode, you should bring coffin rock into continuity. A little down at Coffin Rock. Make it creepy.

JORDAN: Oh we’ve talked about a Halloween episode. Yeah. We have a Halloween special ready to go I think.

JOE: Oooh. Ready to go.

JORDAN: I think those guys probably have it all laid out, but we’ll see if it ever gets to be made.

JOE: Oh, that’s exciting. That’s a good tease. That’s a good tease. Just in case there’s more coming. Hopefully.

JORDAN: I hope so. I hope so.

JOE: So, in the song, Pryce teaches Mokey all about trading goods for services or goods and services. And essentially introducing the concept of economics and socialism to her, which again, such a big topic. And like, well, well explained. I mean, I understood it at least. That’s all I can say. I’m not a child, but I got it.

After the song’s over, another fraggle, I think it’s Peach Pit, asks Mokey for a strawberry. And she says, OK, but as long as they help with the mural. And Peach Pit’s like, “Oh, that sounds like fun.” It works. We’re on our way to trading thises for thats.

And eventually, she gets a whole bunch of Fraggles to help out with the mural, including Gobo and Wembley, who aren’t helping for strawberries. They just find it fun. And this is where Gobo reads his Traveling Matt postcard.

JOCELYN: Oh, yeah.

JOE: Matt is in my hometown in New York.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: And I love this because whenever I see anything that’s filmed in New York, I’m always like, where are they? I’ve got to figure it out. And even before we see any real signage, I’m like, I know exactly where he is. I’ve passed that intersection many, many times. He’s like in Long Island City in Queens. And he’s watching a break dancer. And his eyes are immediately drawn to something valuable.

And just past that hatful of tips, it’s a shiny gum wrapper. And of course, Matt falls and does a breakdancing move. And everyone loves it. Gives him a bunch of cash as if it’s that easy to make money as a busker.

JOCELYN: They’re feeding his hat. They’re feeding his hat.

JOE: They’re feeding his hat. Yes, of course.

JOCELYN: That was the bit I liked about it. That he saw it as they were feeding his hat. He never knew the hat was hungry. But there you go. They fed his hat.

JOE: Thank goodness or else his hat would have been like chewing away at his scalp.

JOCELYN: Yeah.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: Somebody else comes and takes away that gum wrapper that he was so–

JORDAN: Somebody? That’s Alex.

JOE: Somebody.

JOCELYN: Was it Alex? I didn’t even notice that.

JORDAN: Yeah. Alex plays the–

JOCELYN: I’m going to have to go back and watch.

JORDAN: The guy cleaning up. The street cleaner guy. Yeah.

JOE: And personally speaking, I was so disappointed to find out that you all filmed in New York. And I’m like, I could have just hopped on the subway and I would have been there.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: I’m so mad I missed it.

JOCELYN: You should’ve made the trip, Joe. Honestly.

JOE: Ah, so disappointed. So angry at this episode of Fraggle Rock. [laughs]

JORDAN: [laughs] Glorifying Capitalism, shooting in New York.

JOE: Yeah. Everything wrong about– no, it’s nothing wrong. I love everything about this. But I love that Matt sends Gobo the cash that he earned. And then immediately Gobo just like tips it on the ground and shrugs. Like it is actually worthless.

JORDAN: Yeah. Everyone agrees. Like it’s worthless. Yeah.

JOE: And even like every other episode or most every other episode, they use whatever Matt sends back in the plot. And this is the one where it’s like, “No. Why’d you waste the postage to send this to me?”

JORDAN: Yeah, it’s pretty good.

JOE: Pryce offers Gobo a strawberry in exchange for reading the postcard, which inspires Gobo to do other things to earn strawberries. And so now all the fraggles are in on this. Gobo is starting a songwriting business. And I love that he’s got a sign advertising for it with this beautiful hand-drawn strawberry, equal sign, picture of Gobo and his guitar. And he’s singing this song about Pogey, which I have to know who wrote the song?

JORDAN: It’s in the script– I mean, the script…

JOCELYN: I don’t know whether I wrote them. I know I got– I actually got lyrics, PRS lyric for but I think it was the doozy thing, which was…But I could have gotten it for Pogey. I don’t know. It was like, they get written in the room and sometimes I don’t know how it works.

JOE: Well, I also didn’t know if, like, is this one of those things where, like, you have to send it to, or you want to send it to Harvey Mason Jr’s people, or it’s just a little ditty just write it down.

JOCELYN: It’s just a throwaway.

JORDAN: I think John made up the tune.

JOCELYN: Yeah, John made up the, he just made up the– it was just a throwaway. Yeah.

JOE: Cute. That’s good. Wembley is selling magic tricks. He’s doing a magic trick for Large Marvin. And I love, I love the inkspots so much. And he pulls an inkspot out of a hat wearing bunny ears.

JOCELYN: Yeah. Of course.

JOE: And it’s such a good visual. I love it.

JORDAN: Oh, yeah. Inkspots are so flexible.

JOCELYN: They’re the best.

JORDAN: You put an inkspot in anything, and it’s going to make it better.

JOE: Yeah. That’s true for real life, too.

JOCELYN: That’s a great philosophy.

JOE: Not even on TV. Yeah, add an inkspot to your life. And God, your day’s going to get better. Definitely.

JOCELYN: It’s going to get better. [laughs]

RED: I love that Red asks Gobo, “What are you doing? Like, you’re exchanging strawberries for things that you already do for free.” And he just barely starts to explain what this for that is. And she’s like, “Got it. Okay, I’m selling dives. Two strawberries for one. Three gets your four, four gets you a dive, a swim to the end of the pond.” Like, she is in.

JORDAN: She’s in.

JOCELYN: She’s in.

JOE: Does not need any convincing.

JORDAN: No. Yeah, Gobo– I always– I always feel like Gobo’s like about to mansplain, to Gobo-splain to her.

JOCELYN: Yeah.

JOE: Right.

JORDAN: She’s like, Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, I get it. Relax.

[Joe laughs]

JORDAN: I’m going to take what you got and make five times more strawberries than you were. Yeah.

[All laugh]

JOE: Boober asks Mokey if he can help with her mural, because he needs to earn strawberries. He doesn’t want them for himself.

JOCELYN: Oh, because of the bubbles.

JOE: Yeah, he needs them to pay the Bubble Bubbies, so they’ll give him more soapstone. And we get the shot of the Bubble Bubbies. They’re like these birds, who when they talk, bubbles blow out of their mouth. I love these little cutaways of just like camera turns, we see a creature, camera turns back. We’ll never see them again.

JORDAN: Oh, yeah. I love a little whip pan. Yeah, and those bubble–We did some tests. We were like, I don’t know if we can do it with the real bubbles. We had like a tube and stuff. And then the real bubbles worked out great. We’re like, “Oh, God, maybe it has to be VFX bubbles. But no, the real bubbles were awesome.

Those birds are whacky.

JOE: That’s great.

JORDAN: Those puppets barely move. If you want them to talk and they’ll be like, [makes struggling sound]. That’s as much as you get. Open the mouth and that’s it.

JOE: I mean, they’re on screen for all of like two seconds. So like we didn’t notice.

JORDAN: Perfect for that. Yeah.

JOE: And we’re looking at the bubbles. So it doesn’t matter. Yeah. Perfect. The World’s Oldest Fraggle tells another fraggle he’ll reveal the secret of life for a strawberry.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: So he gives him a strawberry. And he says, “What’s the secret of life?” He goes, “I don’t know. Do you?

JOE AND JORDAN TOGETHER: “I’ll give you strawberry.” [laugh]

JOE: I just imagine this is how they’re spending their day. Just trading the same strawberry back and forth and back and back. That’s good stuff.

And again, like as we said before, we’re getting this mirror of that earlier scene. The Storyteller’s now telling stories to the little Fraggles in exchange for strawberries. The Fraggle has paid the Grizzard for a Grizzard ride. And as you explained, loses his hat. Doesn’t pay Mokey for it. So he just loses his hat, I guess.

JOCELYN: Can’t. No, can’t pay for it.

JOE: Excuse me. Thank you. Can’t pay Mokey for it.

JOCELYN: Can’t pay Mokey so he doesn’t let her help him. That was the twist for her.

JOE: Yeah, yeah.

JOCELYN: Because she just naturally wanted to help him with this hat. And no, he wouldn’t let her help him because he doesn’t have a strawberry to pay her. And so, I don’t know. That felt important to me. And I loved the way you shot it, again, Jordan. Because it was important.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: So, yeah. That was her moment, really, when she starts to really turn.

JORDAN: Yeah. Well, and then the great thing in the script where you have–you hear Barry Blueberry’s voiceover voice come in, pushing in on her and we think, “Wow, this is…” You know, you break in the fourth wall a little bit, and then Barry comes in. He’s just standing off camera slightly. And being like, “Hello, can I have my berry now?

[All laugh]

JOCELYN: He’s such a goof that character.

JORDAN: I love Barry.

JOE: And I love that it ends with him being like Barry wants his berry.

JORDAN: That was John. John improvised that.

JOE: I knew it was. [laughs]

JOCELYN: You think? [laughs] Yeah.

JORDAN: Shimmying out of frame.

JOE: Yeah, he’s shimmies out. [laughs] That also seems like the kind of thing where you’re like, like, “Is the camera still running?” Like, we’re just going to– “This is for the blooper reel. Oh, you liked it? Great. Put it in the show.”

JORDAN: It was great. It was perfect.

JOE: But also, like, it’s making me realize that if “this for that” had room for like, pro bono work then I think this whole episode would have gone completely differently. Of like, oh, you could do stuff for free. You just don’t have to do it for free. That’s complicated.

JOCELYN: Yeah, come on. We only could do so much.

JORDAN: We got half an hour.

JOE: Right, yeah. Right. So Mokey goes to the Trash Heap. Marjory is playing hide and seek with Philo and Gunge. Of course, she knows where they’re hiding. She is all-seeing, all-knowing. Easy. And yeah, this is where we kind of get that, like, she plants that seed of Marjory asking her what she values.

JOCELYN: What do you value. Yeah.

JOE: Yes. And what I like about this is, I know you already touched on this, but the idea that the Trash Heap doesn’t give answers. The Trash Heap pushes you in the right direction. And it’s such a welcome update from the old show where the Trash Heap kind of half the time was just kind of saying random stuff. Like, it was this pseudo magic and, you know, or she’s distracted. She’s actually talking to Philo and Gunge, not to the fraggles and things get misconstrued, but they still get to the same conclusion.

In Back to the Rock, the Trash Heap is actually wise. She is actually able to be like, mmm.

JOCELYN: She is actually all-knowing.

JOE: Yeah. And she knows that if she just gives Mokey the answer, that’s not going to help anybody. Like, that’s just regurgitating information. Mokey has to learn her lesson. And the Trash Heap knows how to push her to get to that point.

JOCELYN: Yeah, well, I mean, a brilliant example of that I thought was, is it in the next show? When she tells Gobo to dig deep.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: And, you know, I just saw that was brilliant how that played out too, where he takes it literally.

JORDAN: He takes it literally. Yeah.

JOE: Yeah, yeah, and you still get there. But maybe not the way, yeah.

JOCELYN: But yeah, the meaning wasn’t, yeah, she didn’t mean it literally. That’s exactly what you’re saying. She doesn’t just give the answer.

JOE: Yeah.

JOCELYN: She sends Mokey away to think.

JOE: Right. Yeah. Go sit in the corner. Go in your room. Have a think. Yeah.

This is where we get our next check in with Doc and Sprocket. Doc is still trying to decide what to do. They’ve already done the whole like, put things on a scale and see like does a shoe weigh the same as a clock? Which is interesting logic.

But she gets a package in the mail with a note from her high school students. And what I like here is the note is addressed to Miss Doc. And Doc is like, “Ha, that’s funny. They think that my last name is Doc. We’ll have to teach them otherwise.”

And I just love that little poke to be like, hey, remember, we don’t know Doc’s name.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: Yeah.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: And yeah, and as you said, there was their diorama of a sand…I didn’t write this down. It wasn’t a sand castle. It was like a sand…

JORDAN: It’s a wind…wind paddles on the beach.

JOCELYN: And water and all of it. Yeah. Some environment.

JOE: Great. Right.

JOCELYN: They were listening.

JORDAN: It is just a pile of sand.

JOE: Yeah. Now it’s just a pile of sand. [laughs]

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: Okay. So my guess here and Jordan, you can tell me if I’m right or wrong. There’s that kinetic sand stuff that you can buy that’s like just sand that you could play with that doesn’t actually get all over the place like sand.

JORDAN: You are correct.

JOE: That’s what it is? It’s just clean. That’s all.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: It’s clean sand.

JORDAN: It’s clean. And it looks great. Because you can get it in like pink and purple and blue and stuff, but they have just sand-colored and works great. Every time I watch it, I’m like kinetic sand stuff is great.

JOCELYN: Yeah.

JOE: It is.

JOCELYN: It looks like sand. Yeah.

JOE: You ever gotten your hands in that stuff?

JORDAN: Yeah. It’s great.

JOE: Like it’s so satisfying.

JORDAN: Very satisfied. Yeah.

JOCELYN: Well, I know what I’m going to have to do after this.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: Yes. [laughs] So this helps Doc decide what she’s going to do. She’d rather have her students than this paycheck. And, okay. So then she takes the captain hat, which was previously as far as I know, only existed in Sprocket’s fantasy world.

JOCELYN: In the fantasy.

JORDAN: Yes.

JOE: Now it’s in the real world.

JOCELYN: I hadn’t thought of that. [laughs]

JOE: And she puts it on Sprocket.

JOCELYN: Yeah.

JOE: But it’s one of those puppetry things where like, there’s no way it’s that simple.

JORDAN: That’s a cut. There’s an edit.

JOE: There’s a cut?

JORDAN: I’m sure there’s an edit. Yeah. She laid it on him in one shot. And then you cut to another shot and he’s licking her and moving his head and the hat’s not falling off. So I’m sure they just did it in a, I assume, an edit.

JOE: Yeah.

JORDAN: Because otherwise, yeah, it would have just flown off his head.

JOE: Right. Yeah. Yeah. There’s nothing above the eyes there. His head just kind of ends.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: So the hat wouldn’t stay.

JORDAN: Definitely had to be pinned on. Yeah.

JOE: Yeah. I mean, just one of those things where like, it wasn’t until my third viewing that I had to think.

JORDAN: And you’re like, “Wait a second.”

JOE: How does Sprocket wear a hat? [laughs]

JORDAN: Yeah. I’ll tell you one more hat puppet thing real quick that for Uncle Traveling Matt in the first episode of season two where he comes back and we cut away to his thing we come back and his hat is covering his eyes.

He’s like, “It’s dark. I can’t see.”

JOE: Oh. Yeah.

JORDAN: And he has to go. He kind of moves his head and it slips back onto place. That was a whole rig. Because first of all, he doesn’t have a head to wear a hat on.

JOE: Right.

JORDAN: He’s just eyes under there. It’s not like a nice, big, easy cone head. So first of all, they had to find a way to push the hat forward to make it like cover his eyes, but then have a rig where they could sort of pull it back and it would flip slip back into place. I mean, they’re geniuses.

JOE: Yeah.

JORDAN: That’s something. Don’t put a hat on a puppet that needs to come off and on. That’s one of the things in the script, I’d be like, don’t do that. That’s going to take a while or it’s going to take someone building a whole rig which they did.

JOE: Don’t put a hat on a hat. Lessons for all of us.

JORDAN: Don’t put a hat on a hat. Don’t take a hat off a puppet and put it back on. The hat’s on or off. Yeah.

JOE: [laughs] Wow, learning so much about hats today. I didn’t, I wasn’t expecting that. Mokey calls all the Fraggles to the Great Hall. She wants to tell everyone about the most valuable thing in the world. I love that Red whispers to Wembley, “Bet it’s Lanford-related.” And she says, “Remember that mural of Lanford?” And Red says, “Told ya.” [laughs]

JORDAN: That’s a very good aside. Yeah.

JOE: I just want to give some props to Red Fraggle and to Karen Prell.

JOCELYN: Karen Prell!

JOE: She is so funny in this season.

JORDAN: Oh my god. Karen’s a genius.

JOE: An absolute genius. Every little bit out of Red’s mouth is just hysterical. I’m just so glad that she’s on this show. It would not be the same without her.

JOCELYN: No, she’s brilliant.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: And speaking of Karen, Mokey brings in Icy Joe.There’s Icy Joe, Karen’s other main character here, bringing in this big stone tablet with the mural painted on it and puts it down in the middle of the hall. It is now a communal table.

My question, and I’m going to have to really pay attention to the next few episodes here, do we see this table in future episodes?

JORDAN: No! That table isn’t going to stay there. Come on, this is Fraggle Rock. Things move around.

JOE: Well, I didn’t say, “stay there?” But if they’re ever at a table…

JORDAN: No.

JOE: No? Oh well.

JORDAN: That’s something special for this episode. And then it probably goes up to Icy Joe’s house. You know. [laughs]

JOE: Oh, yeah. The only Fraggle who can actually lift it. And she’s like, “I’m just going to take this home.”

JORDAN: Yeah exactly. She had to move it. No, I mean, all sorts of things move around. If you were to do side-by-side things of that Great Hall, you’d be like, “What the heck’s going on in here?” There’s rocks moving. The Fraggle horn moves, all sorts of stuff.

JOE: Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. But also, there are things that stick around.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: We were talking about in the “I’m Pogey” episode and Wembley decides that I want my hair worn like this. And we see that hair show up, the hairstyle show up a few times.

JORDAN: Oh, there’s throughlines. Oh, there’s amazing–

JOE: Yeah.

JORDAN: Character throughlines and story throughlines. But when you’re talking about, “OK, we got to make this set work for this completely different idea. We need to roll in the coffin rock. It wasn’t there last week. But it has to be here now.

[Jocelyn and Joe laugh]

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: That makes sense. Also, Fraggle Rock is magic. And I just assume that the rocks move all the time.

JORDAN: They do.

JOE: Which is why they need a Fraggle whose only job it is to explore and map out the rock because it is constantly changing. That’s my headcanon. It’s my own theory.

So Mokey tells everyone, just dump your strawberries on the table because sharing is what they have. And celebrating community is so much more satisfying than playing this “this for that” game. And we’re learning a little bit about communism here? Is that the lesson to be pulling out of this?

JORDAN: It’s about community.

JOCELYN: Community, not…

JOE: [laughs] Community. Excuse me. Community Not communism. Community.

[All laugh]

JOE: Yes, community is where it’s at. And also, we know. This is how Fraggle Rock has always worked. And it just works for them.

JOCELYN: Yes. Which is consequently what happens to Pryce. When he sees this. I’m sorry, you were about to go there.

JOE: No.

JOCELYN: Or you know that’s what–

JOE: Please, no, go ahead.

JOCELYN: No, just because he comes from a different part of the rock. And which I love that too. We don’t do that a lot. Yes, obviously, the minstrels and people, they come from different bits. But you don’t do that. But there’s this feeling that there’s this vast rock with–

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: We find out more about this kind of thing as the season goes on. But there’s other Fraggles, right? But yeah, this idea that that’s where he comes from, it’s just how they function. So that you can’t blame him. And you can’t call him–

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: Greedy capitalist or anything like that. It’s just how they work. And then he’s taking all of this back. And he’s going to, because he really likes this. And he got this without having to give her anything for this information or for this understanding. And plus her friendship, you know?

Wow. For nothing. That’s brilliant.

JOE: Yeah. So Pryce is going to introduce this idea of pro bono work to his community.

JOCELYN: Yeah, he’s going to go back.

JOE: There you go. I love it. [laughs] This is where we get our second song of the episode. It is “Time to Live As One.”

JOCELYN: Oh yeah. Legacy.

JOE: Which is from the original series episode, “Finger of Light.” And which is also sung by Mokey in that episode as well. I love this song. It’s such a beautiful song.

JORDAN: It is a beautiful song. Yeah.

JOE: Yeah.

JORDAN: And I like the updates we did to it. To be able to, because it’s quite a long song, and it’s a little–You come back to the chorus a couple of times. So to break it up with the little dialogue moments where she keeps explaining what’s going on. And then having Lanford sing a verse is also pretty, I mean, obviously, it’s always great when Lanford does anything.

So I think it’s– I love this song. And I love how it all came together. It’s a really beautiful moving number.

JOE: Speaking of Lanford, I had my subtitles on while watching this and when Lanford sings. 

JORDAN: What does it say?

JOE: It’s the real lyrics to the song, which is a little bit of a cheat. But now it makes me want to go back and see what they did in the “When Mokey met Lanford” episode when Lanford sings.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: Yeah. In their duet.

JORDAN: Because there were no lyrics for that.

JOE: No.

JORDAN: He just goes, “Rah, rah, rah.”

[Joe laughs]

JORDAN: Oh, I want to know what Lanford says. Maybe they put in weird dialogue for him. That’d be funny.

JOE: I’ll let you know for sure.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: And Mokey makes sure everyone knows that the value that we get by sharing is love. Love is the value. And I love this song. I got so much value out of this number. So it worked.

JOCELYN: There you go.

JOE: And I didn’t have to give anything. I just got to take the love and I’m sending it back through a whole podcast.

JOE: And oh, and this is also, by the way, the meaning of life that Mokey gives to the World’s Oldest Fraggle. The more, as you said–

JORDAN: Yeah, Jocelyn’s great line. Yeah, it’s beautiful.

JOE: Exactly.

JORDAN: And that’s a nod to the original–Well, the little like the ear…whatever that’s called, the sort of like ear horns. 

JOCELYN: Ear trumpet?

JORDAN: The ear trumpet and the little kiss on the cheek. That’s an homage to the original. That happened in the original too.

JOE: Oh, does it? I should look back at that. That happens during the “Time to Live as One” number in “Finger of Light?”

JORDAN: I think, yeah. Yeah.

JOE: Oh, cool.

JOCELYN: Yeah.

JOE: That’s very nice. We’ve noticed a few other of those moments in this Back to the Rock season.

JORDAN: I try to do them because why wouldn’t you? There’s already– there’s such great moments already. And then it just feels like you’re honoring all the great stuff that the original show did. And yeah, bringing it in. It’s also nostalgia’s fun.

JOE: Yeah.

JORDAN: The fans see it. And they go, “I recognize that. That’s great.”

JOE: Yeah, that picture of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at his TV. We go like, I see that. I recognize it.

JORDAN: Yeah. Yeah.

JOE: The song ends with this beautiful overhead shot of the Fraggles now around their new communal table with the painting of Lanford on it. And it’s such a beautiful image, not just to see all the Fraggles together looking up at the camera. But just one of those, I don’t know how you would have done this on the old show to get that overhead view without getting 15 puppeteers in the shot.

JORDAN: Well, you do, I mean, all the puppeteers were in the shot. That was a full CGI paint out. In the original– when you look down on the rushes, you would see the floor, the set floor. You’d see gear. You’d see people’s bodies. But then that was one of our big VFX shots for that one was to paint everybody out, put a floor in.

JOE: Nice.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: So that’s actually an overhead shot. Like you have the camera straight above?

JORDAN: Yeah, big tall, crane shot. Yeah.

JOE: Cool.

JOE: Yeah. Because I guess you could have cheated that by having everyone just kind of hold the puppet sideways as if they’re looking up. But that would’ve been harder?

JORDAN: You’re still going to see the puppeteers. Yeah.

JOE: Well, yeah.

JORDAN: There’s no real way to hide the puppeteers either way.

JOE: I was thinking more of like, you have to reposition a camera to be above.

JORDAN: Everything’s on a crane.

JOE: Oh, yeah. Sure.

JORDAN: That’s what I’m talking about. Like everything that’s on the crane is really quite fast to sort of get big. That’s what one of the other cool things about the show is like there are some really epic shots because we live on a crane for most of it. Getting up the– some of the shots where you follow the repeatee bird up through the hole into the gorg’s garden.

JOE: Yeah.

JORDAN: Those are actually quite achievable when you’re just sitting on a crane all the time.

JOE: Right. Yeah. No, that makes sense. The things that I don’t think about because I’m not a director. Hmm. Go figure.

JOCELYN: We just didn’t have the studio space when we’d done the original.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOCELYN: I mean, you couldn’t have done that. No. Just since studio was way too… it wasn’t tall enough.

JOE: Sure. Yeah. Pryce says he’s learned a lot. He’s going to take these lessons back to his community, as we said. And I love this moment here where he kind of heads off and then a few seconds later, he goes back the other way going, “I have no idea where I’m going.” And back again. “I arrived in an avalanche. Don’t mind me.”

JORDAN: That was all, that was all on set. I don’t think that was scripted originally.

JOCELYN: Oh, no.

JORDAN: Matt and Alex pitched it. They were like, “Let’s have him come back.” And then we played around with it and had him, yeah, keep coming back. It was great.

JOE: That’s so good.

JORDAN: It was also just a way that after such a really, it’s such an earnest, sweet song. That was part of the idea of adding the Lanford verse too just to take just a little bit of the kind of like really sweet, sweet sting off of it.

JOCELYN: Keep it from being–You didn’t want it to be kumbaya. I get that.

JORDAN: Exactly. So adding that little, as she’s trying to sort of wrap, she just keeps trying to wrap up the theme in a nice way. (laughing) And he keeps interrupting her. It’s so great. (in normal voice) “OK. Yeah, yeah, I’ll show you the way.”

JOE: Right, yeah. [laughs] The line I arrived in an avalanche, gets me.

JORDAN: I arrived in an avalanche. I have no idea where I’m going.

JOE: Geez louise. It’s so good. So this is where we get that shot, that beautiful shot that we talked about at the beginning of this episode of the periscope kind of popping out through the gorg’s Garden to confirm that there are no more radishes. It’s only strawberries.

The Architect tells everyone, OK, we’re going to go investigate this problem. And let’s just keep the gusties for now. And Turbo and Wrench mishear that and think he said, “Release the gusties for now.” And they release them and the winds are all blowing around the Doozer dome.

And there’s a great shot of, I think, three Doozers, their helmets get blown off and their hair just goes straight up like troll dolls.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: It’s wonderful. I didn’t realize that Doozers would grow their hair that long.

JORDAN: Hey, Doozers have all sorts of different hairs. Yeah.

JOE: That’s true. Hiding them under those helmets.

JORDAN: Some are bald. Some have have a lot of hair. Yeah.

JOE: Yeah. Yeah. And there’s one Doozer who, I love that he just comes into frame, he’s got a big mustache. And he’s just panicking. His arms are flailing.

JORDAN: It’s always great when you’re doing stuff with puppets and then you just have one come in really close to frame and do something dumb. It’s very satisfying. Yeah.

JOE: It really is. It really is. And that’s where our episode ends. We’re going to end on a note of, a beautiful note of community and then utter Doozer panic.

JORDAN: Chaos.

JOE: Yes.

JOCELYN: Yeah.

JOE: Exactly.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: So Jordan, Jocelyn, there’s a question that we like to ask all of our guests when they come onto this podcast. How do you plan to make the world a little fragglier?

JORDAN: Thinking of this episode and thinking of kind of Doc’s journey in this episode and I think over the years, I have had a tendency to work all the time, to kind of take job after job after job. And sort of try to fill up all my time with work.

And at a certain point, as I’ve gotten older and as I’ve gotten to work on such great shows as like, Fraggle Rock, there’s a sense of how important balance is in your life and finding time to do things that you love and spend time with people you love and do things that fill you up that aren’t just about your bank account or security or whatever.

So I took up pottery. And I am trying to just spend more time traveling to visit my friends and family. I’m in Newfoundland right now. And not being so worried about, “Oh, I don’t have work for a couple of months.” And knowing that that time will get filled up with things that I love and appreciate and will remember and cherish for the rest of my life and not just, you know, think about like, well, that was four weeks in my life. And I got a paycheck out of it.

So I don’t know if that answers the question, but just trying to remember that life is about more than work and money.

JOE: Right. And working for yacht-making companies.

JORDAN: Yeah. And saving, you know, if you leave some time open and it leaves your life open for amazing things to come in it, like, you know, an amazing show like Fraggle Rock. Or, you know, amazing conversations with people about Fraggle Rock.

JOE: Yeah, I love that. Jocelyn, how about you? How do you plan to make the world a little fragglier?

JOCELYN: Well, “Fraggle Rock” was based on a huge idea. You know, Jim Henson saying to us, I want you to create a series that’ll help stop war and this idea of, and all the episodes have big ideas behind them. So this idea of having a big idea, what I’m taking into my next project. My third act heart project is which I want to call it.

The big idea is water, and how water connects us all. And interestingly, that was a big part of Fraggle Rock actually, too. But I discovered this world, The Waterubas, there’s 81 of them, and they came to the planet four billion years ago on the same asteroid. And this is the first of two books.

JOE: This is a book that you’ve written, I should say. You’re holding up the books for us, but yes, yes.

JOCELYN: This is a book I’ve written. It’s coming out in a month.

JORDAN: Wow. Impressed.

JOCELYN: So I’m letting you know. Yes, and very exciting. And the illustrations, also helping me conceive of what The Waterubas, so that was done, I worked with Brian Froud. My old friend Brian Froud.

JORDAN: Wow.

JOCELYN: Who everybody watching this podcast will know who Brian Froud is.

JOE: Absolutely, yes. Yes, we all know Brian Froud, yes. [laughs]

JOCELYN: Because he was intrigued by the idea of these creatures, these characters, they aren’t creatures who live in water, they are water.

JOE: Aah.

JOCELYN: You could have a glass of water, and suddenly one of them would appear out of the water. Anyway, what happens, the story’s basically about this human girl who for all sorts of plot reasons, which I won’t go into ’cause this is a hard thing to pitch. She finds that she’s going to science camp and she needs to take something with her, and it turns out there’s a piece of the asteroid in her grandmother’s cupboard. It’s always been there, since she was born, and she ends up touching it, and she can turn into water.

She turns into water. Because what I wanted was a human child that could turn into water. So one of my log lines is Earth from water’s point of view. And also because I’ve worked with the Muppets for most of my career when starting out my career, it’s also goofiness in the service of truth.

So you learn a lot about water, but yeah. So that’s what I’m working. That’s me trying to do, another sort of make the world more fraggley.

JOE: I love that. The Waterubas.  You say it’s coming out in September, book one.

JOCELYN: Joe, you’re on my list to email you when it’s happening.

JOE: Oh, yes, please do. Yeah, we can all spread the word once it’s out.

JOCELYN: Yeah, that would be great because the PR part of it is not what I do. I had to learn how to write a novel for 9 to 12 year olds. I didn’t know how to do that. I’ve been writing scripts my entire career. It’s been so much fun. So yes, that’s my next contribution, I guess.

JOE: That’s wonderful ’cause you have so many fans that are listening to this podcast who follow the Muppet and the Fraggle world. And I think a lot of people are just excited to see more from you creatively.

JOCELYN: I’d love that to happen. And then people to tell me what they think and all that. I’m really looking forward to getting it out there! 

JOE: Yeah. Fantastic, that’s so exciting.

JOCELYN: Thank you. Thank you for letting me talk to you about it.

JOE: Of course, of course. This is the “this for that.” This is the, I want everyone to hear about what you’re working on because you are so generous to come here on this podcast. But also for both of you, for all the work that you did on Back to the Rock. And it just, the show is so wonderful. And I’m so happy to help spread the word about it however I can because I want everyone to know that Back to the Rock is such a valued addition to the Fraggle Rock franchise.

And I just want more of it. I want everyone to see it. I want everyone to enjoy it. And I want a third season. Yeah.

JORDAN: Us too.

JOCELYN: Just Joe, thank you for loving it so much.

JORDAN: Yeah.

JOE: You make it easy. You really do.

JOCELYN: That’s just great. Thank you.

[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]