Transcript: Fraggle Talk: Back to the Rock – “Colder Boulders”

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Fraggle Talk: Back to the Rock – Episode 21: Colder Boulders

[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]

JOE: Today, we are talking about season 2, episode 8, “Colder Boulders,” in which Red Fraggle single-handedly creates a domino effect of ecological disasters.

This week, we’re excited to welcome back two fabulous Fraggle performers. First up, they are the puppeteer who brings characters like Turbo Doozer, Balsam, and the inexplicable fan favorite, Coop to life. It’s Ali Eisner! Hello, Ali!

ALI EISNER: Hello, Joe! Nice to see you again. Thanks for having me.

JOE: Of course, what a thrill to have you here. And our second guest needs no introduction, but she’s going to get one anyway. The originator of Red Fraggle, the performer behind Icy Joe, and the keeper of the Encyclopedia Fragglia, it’s Karen Prell. Hello, Karen!

KAREN: Hello, hello, Joe. Ali! It’s so good to see you! Woohoo!

ALI: Miss you, Karen! I miss you!

KAREN: Oh, we had so many amazing adventures on this specific episode. I can’t wait to talk about it.

JOE: It’s going to be great. So excited. I was just telling you before we got started recording how important it was to me to have the two of you here together. I feel like when we recorded season one of this podcast, each of you were singing such high praises of the other. It was just so important to get you here to get to geek out together. So thank you both for being here for this episode.

KAREN: Oh, yeah, thank you! Thank you!

JOE: First of all, how long has it been since you two have literally seen each other in person? I don’t actually have an idea of when you wrapped. So has it been a while?

KAREN: Was it February of last year?

ALI: Is that when we finished? Is that when we finished? We text every once in a while, but…

KAREN: Yeah, yeah.

ALI: In person, I think that was the last time. We’ve tried to get some group stuff happening together to play…Oh, no! Karen, we played some Fraggle games online. Didn’t we? At some point?

KAREN: Oh, yeah, we had kind of an online reunion thing at some point. And we’re doing quizzes or playing some games or something.

ALI: Yeah.

KAREN: That’s right. Gosh, I can’t even remember when that was.

ALI: I think that was last year.

JOE: Wow.

ALI: It was kind of fun, Joe. It was, the questions were more tailored to say, like, out of the people you worked with here, which Fraggle, who would do this or that? And it was kind of fun because it was like a little family trying to, you know, (laughing) call each other out for the weird interests.

[Karen laughs]

JOE: Oh, that’s nice. Who set up the game? Like, who wrote the questions?

KAREN: You did, didn’t you?

ALI: It’s actually, it’s this company called Steam, I guess, and they have this game called You Don’t Know Jack or, I guess.

JOE: Oh, yeah. Oh, the Jackbox games. I love it.

ALI: (in normal voice) It’s Jackbox games. So it’s kind of tailored to help you get, you know, layered personality questions about the people you’re playing with.

JOE: I know exactly what games you’re talking about.

ALI: Yeah.

JOE: Yeah, those personality games. I love them. They’re so much fun.

KAREN: And it’s so fun to get a group of people together. I’ve played them with groups of people in person, but also online now that they’ve got working like that. So you could be all over the planet and laughing and having a good time together. It’s really great.

JOE: Oh, that’s the best. And I’m just glad that the Fraggle folks are all… that that relationship is so important to all of you that you’re like, well, we still need some of this when we can’t all be in Calgary together.

KAREN: Yeah, yeah.

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: It was definitely quite a family bond.

JOE: Speaking of bonds, the two of you essentially teamed up to perform Red Fraggle. I know Karen, Red is mostly your character, but Ali, correct me if I’m wrong, you were helping with, like, the right hands or performing Red when Karen is busy with Icy Joe or anything like that.

Can you talk a little bit about how that partnership has evolved since the end of season one and into season two of Back to the Rock.

ALI: Me? [laughs]

JOE: Either one of you. This question’s for both of you.

KAREN: I think we’ve, we really expanded on what we were doing as a team this time around. It’s like we took it to the next level with Ali doing a lot of pretty featured Red stand in work and some crazy, crazy assisting on the “Seal It Up” song. Oh my gosh, that was so insane.

We were shooting late at night. We were running up and down the studio, working up a sweat for all those gymnastics and all that choreography you were doing with the hands and the pointing and everything.

It was just, that was so much fun. And so, you know, we kind of built on our shorthand from the first season and were able to just kind of, you know, do a few check in notes. Do this to that. Okay. Go. [laughs] And then just, just run with it and see what happens. And it was so much fun. It came together so well.

ALI: Yeah, forget intermittent fasting. All you have to do is record “Seal It Up” with Karen.

KAREN: Yes.

[Joe laughs]

ALI: And then I think I lost about 15 pounds during the…Karen was such a rock star. There was so much, we did it in such a short period time and Karen was just so on her game as she always is. And it was just so precise and there was a million fast moves just constantly.

[Karen laughs]

ALI: I remember telling Joe, Karen, how hard you were making me laugh. (laughing) Because every once in a while, (in normal voice) you’d look at me and you’d go, “Woo!,” like, or whatever. And then you would take Red off. And there was like legit steam coming out of her butt sleeve.

[Joe and Ali laugh]

KAREN: I was holding her by her puppet sleeve and fanning the top as like smoke was coming out after these days. She was getting so… I was sweating on the outside and Red was sweating on the inside. [laughs]

[Joe laughs]

ALI: As Joe, I’m sure you know that like with puppets hey like, especially too when you have your own character that you’re using a lot of times, and I can’t say this because like my main-y guy is a Doozer. But those suckers get real sweaty and hot in there.

JOE: Do they have a way of like cleaning them from the inside? There must be.

KAREN: They have ways of refreshing them. And we do have several different versions of the characters. So, if one just needs to kind of, you know, cool down and get refreshed, we’ve got another one. And we also use those if we have like big rigging changes or costume changes and then it’s easy to pick up another one and keep going.

But yeah, that song, we were shooting. It was one of those things. It was a very special camera setup and environment setup and lighting setup. And it was one of those things that once it was all together, it took a while. And then then we went a bit late shooting this and it was just like, “Just go. Just shoot it. Just get it. Get it going, get it going.”

And Johnny came up with this amazing choreography for the song. All the head banging. So he walked us through it. And Ali and I were basically, we were just kind of running up and down this runway and the background fraggles were doing their head banging and we just did that over and over and over for probably a couple hours. [laughs]

ALI: It was so much fun.

JOE: Yeah, that would do it. Yeah, that would cause the sweat coming down.

KAREN: Yeah. Cause we had to finish it. It wasn’t like, “Oh, we’lll finish it tomorrow.” It’s like, “No, we got to finish it tonight.” Okay.

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: And, what a blast. What a blast.

ALI: Ended up looking so rad. It was so funny.

KAREN: All that energy. It was just kind of perfect. It matched…Our energy performing it matched the energy of what the (laughing) Fraggles were doing pretty much.

JOE: Sure. Ali, as someone who performs, sometimes performs someone else’s character, how often do you put your hand in that Red puppet and it’s just damp? And you’re like, “Well, I have to, I gotta keep moving. There’s no stopping.”

ALI: Karen is like… I mean, Karen, you know this too, it’s like, sometimes you work with puppeteers who don’t wear deodorant and sometimes you (laughing) work with puppeteers (in normal voice) who only shower once a week.

JOE: Not naming names.

[Karen laughs]

ALI: Karen is an extremely hygenic person. And she smells great. And I never put Red in where I was like, “Oh God.”

[Joe laughs]

ALI: I thought you were going to say, I thought where you were going with that that you put on Red Fraggle and you’re like, “Holy —. Oh my God, I have Red Fraggle on my hand.” Like, I don’t care if it was sopping wet. I just couldn’t believe Red Fraggle was on my hand.

No, but Karen, Karen, it wasn’t too sweaty at all. And they also have… it’s a caring set, you know, like physically in terms of everything from how they took care of things COVID-wise, but also there was hand sanitizer everywhere too. So when you, because a lot of these puppets, especially the gaggles, you share. So people were always sanitizing beforehand and stuff like that. And Karen is very, very thoughtful. Always very thoughtful.

KAREN: Co-puppeteering is a context sport.

ALI: Yeah. That’s right.

KAREN: You’re working armpit to armpit. So yeah, you try to think about the team. [laughs]

JOE: Yeah, for sure.

KAREN: But usually like for “Seal It Up,” that was just all me puppeteering the puppet, but other scenes where you’ve stepped into to do Red, it hasn’t been in the middle of an all out work out. So, then, you know, the puppet is in pretty good shape.

ALI: Oh, yeah, always kind of cooled down. And even when she, you know, there’s a couple of times here in there, Karen would go, “She’s really hot inside right now. [laughs] I’ll pre-warn you.” But no, she was never hot and gross. We call Red, Red’s a Cadillac. Man, that is a beautiful puppet. She’s built so beautifully. It’s almost like, is there a cooling system in this? Is there an internal fan? Like she’s so beautiful. She’s so beautiful.

KAREN: [laughs] I keep saying she’s a Stradivarius. She’s a beautifully made musical instrument made by Rollie Krewson, who made the original Red Fraggle and then made these current Red Fraggles that we’re using. And, you know, I just don’t have to think about how to make the puppet do what I do. Just I think about it and it just happens. It just really fits well and moves well and of course, beautiful, beautiful design by Michael Frith with the colors and the hair. It’s just an amazing toy and musical instrument to keep having fun with and I’m just thrilled to be able to share that with Ali and have them have the fun of being Red.

And Ali, you do such a great job with doing the stand in stuff for Red. When we start talking about that long scene with Icy Joe and Red. That was Ali doing a lot of the, in the wide two-shots, that was Ali doing a lot of the featured Red stuff and then later on in dubbing, you know, I was adding in Red’s voice afterwards. And it’s just really, really seamless. So thank you Ali so much we’re doing such a great job.

ALI: My god. Karen, thank you for letting me put her on my hand. That day was, I know it sounds really silly to people listening or to even Karen, but that was a pretty special day and moment for me to be able to do that scene and I just I love Red so much. She feels like a friend and she feels like Karen.

When she’s moving around. And it was really meaningful to me and so those compliments mean the world to me. So thank you very much and Karen, being next to you, around you, I’m learning so much constantly, we all are from your and Johnny’s [Tartaglia] experience. It’s quite a gift. It’s quite a gift.

KAREN: Yeah, it’s so exciting just to have this really inspiring next generation of puppeteers working with us and inspiring us and you know just seeing what new things they bring to what we’ve been developing and nurturing for decades. And just to know that all the characters and all the concepts are in such good hands. So it’s a really, really joyful sharing experience.

ALI: You rock. Joe, can I tell you just something too that was making me laugh rewatching this episode?

JOE: Yes.

ALI: About Karen. [laughs]

JOE: Yes, please.

KAREN: Uh oh.

ALI: Red is the meat of this show, right? And so she’s heavy in every episode but like the episodes with Icy are such Karen episodes because there’s so much Icy and so much Karen. (laughing) And I just start laughing when I see Red and Icy talking to each other, because they’re both these just like weird parts of Karen. Like these eccentric parts of Karen that are like having a conversation with each other.

[Karen laughs]

ALI: (in normal voice) And the part that made me laugh I think the hardest in that episode where the two of them are connecting is in that long scene when Red jumps into Icy’s arms and gives her a hug at the end and she’s like, “Oh thank you Icy.” And Icy’s just like, “Oh God. Get–” [laughs]

JOE: Yeah, Icy doesn’t know what to do with her hands.

KAREN: (in voice of Icy Joe) Still new to hugs. What’s going on? Oh, what is this thing? I think I like it maybe. But I’m not sure.

ALI: Yeah.

[All laugh]

ALI: It’s awesome watching Karen’s characters play off each other.

JOE: Ah. It’s so good.

ALI: It’s very, very, very silly.

JOE: This is exactly why I needed to have the two of you on this episode. Okay, we’ll talk more about that scene in a moment.

KAREN: (in normal voice)Yes.

JOE: Let’s get into the meat of this episode. We open on Fraggle Rock, where the show takes place. The gusties are back. They’re blowing people’s hats off their heads. They’re blow drying Boober’s socks. Which he’s at first excited about but then the sock flies out of his hand and he says, “Well, serves me right for celebrating.” Classic Boober.

And Red is getting ready for a big dive off a little rock that’s hanging over the Fraggle pond. And each time she tries to jump off, the gusties push her right back on. And my favorite part about this is when Red goes, “Oh well, I guess I’ll stop for today.” And like trying to trick the wind and  jump and it doesn’t work again.

[Ali laughs]

JOE: So I have to assume that this whole thing is done on the green screen or blue screen in the cube, as people have been calling it. Was there anything special about the choreography of having Red jump, not jump, get blown around?

KAREN: It was tricky. It was tricky. Well, first of all, we had in addition to everybody wearing blue and a blue screen behind us, we had a version of her jumping rock that was painted blue. And then they lined that up at the position of where you would see the visible rock on screen.

JOE: Right.

KAREN: So that gave us kind of a good idea of the geography that Red’s feet would be planting on and how far she could run before she was off the edge of it and where all the edges were. And but that meant everybody had to kind of reach around this rock to perform everything. And we tried to prepare in advance and figure out what, as that scene escalates, how her movements and reactions escalate.

And you rehearse as much as you can and we even had that blue rock kind of set aside while they were shooting other stuff. I called together team Red on the rock and… I can’t remember what did you do on that Ali?

ALI: Oh goodness. There was I think we had Ingy [Ingrid Hansen] on feet. And then maybe I was on hands but I kind of remember maybe Kira [Hall] in there too.

KAREN: Let’s see. At one point, and AT certain times we might shoot different angles and it’s like a whole other set of whoever’s available.

ALI: Yeah.

KAREN: So I think at one point Ben [Durocher] was doing the hands. Like he was out in front for one part of it with super long rods so all of her gesturing is Ben in blue reaching up around. He’s got the long arms.

ALI: Yes. Yes.

KAREN: Reaching up around the rock and doing her arm gestures. And maybe it was either you or Kira on the tail in back. So we just had all this stuff and so we rehearsed. We figured out the beats and I think for most of the takes we tried to do it all the way through and then a few times who had the kind of stop and reset per beat just to get things a little bit more clean. And then there would just be a lot of choices in editing.

And it was kind of tricky because just trying to get the weight of the wind looking right with what we were doing with Red’s body. But also in post, they would take her image and they would be able to manipulate that and kind of push her farther than we would be able to reach with the puppet. So it was like this whole juggling act of what was in camera, what was done in post, and all the puppeteers.

But it came together well. But it was one of those challenging old school things that I’m glad that we are still doing on this show.

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: Just the nice thing about digital enhancements is it can just help so much more with removing shadows and faces of the people wearing blue and removing all the rods and armwires. So you just have the pure puppet performance there.

JOE: It’s great because like another show would have just CGI’d it. Like you would have just animate the character. We gotta move on. We’ll do it after the shoot’s over. But the fact that you all take the time to just not only think of, okay how do we make sure that Red’s on the rock correctly and let’s get… I’m picturing like 10-foot arm rods. I don’t know what Ben was actually holding but that’s what’s in my head.

KAREN: They were pretty long. So if you think for some of her arm gestures, like when you see her full figure and the camera was way back there’s like long arm rods.

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: If he was doing that for closer shots, then it’d be different arm rods and maybe different people. So yeah, it’s just fun having those problems to solve and having an awesome group of people to to work together to to solve them.

JOE: Yeah. And how would you have done something like this on the original Fraggle Rock? Like when you know you don’t have the same technological capabilities.

KAREN: Well we did similar things on Fraggle Rock. So the characters just, cause what we shot, the composite image was composited live on the original Fraggle Rock, 40 years ago. You know, still shooting against blue. But the characters would be more restricted. There was no post of, oh, grabbing the image and manipulating it.

And also any shadows, any arm rods, you couldn’t have someone with their face uncovered off to the side and get that cleaned up in post. Like everybody had the full masks on. And if you were doing something and saw like a really bad shadow or or someone’s mask slipped and you saw a bit of skin floating in the air, then you’d have to stop and do it again.

We did what we could forty years ago.

JOE: Yeah, of course.

KAREN: And we were able to do some pretty amazing things.

JOE: Oh yeah.

KAREN: But now we’re able to just take that idea and push it even even more. It’s quite a relief to kind of take away some of the things that we used to worry about and concentrate more on the still complicated full body performance part of the fun problem.

JOE: Yeah, right. Yes. Very much a fun problem. Ali, were you going to say something earlier? Did I interrupt you?

ALI: Oh yeah. The team Red that Karen is talking about like Ben that day, yeah I think he was on the super long rods and he did such a great job. And Ben is such a great puppeteer. As you know, like the longer the rods,the squirrelier it is (laughing) to kind of get very (in normal voice) precise. And the shorter the rods the easier they are to control.

But, yeah, kind of a rotating cast of fun people helping Red always doing your diving and all herr amazing fun dance and exercise stuff. But the great thing is that we’re all learning all of Karen and Red’s favorite moves and favorite dances.

So when we get in there, we’re more familiar every time with what Red’s tastes, you know, what her likes and dislikes are in terms of the moves she wants to make. And Karen’s really great at directing us and practicing enough times to kind of try to get it as beautiful looking together as possible as a unit. So, yeah, those moments are really fun.

JOE: And you make a good point too, where the characters– I’m saying this as someone who’s not, I’m not a performer. I’m not a puppeteer. But the characters do have a certain way that they move. You know, like Red does not move the same way as Wembley or Mokey or Boober. And to learn… like it’s one of those like what do I do with my hands? What do I do with my hips? And Karen, you know this innately because you are Red. You created this character.

But for someone like Ali, you would need to like try to figure out not just how do I see they move and replicate it with my own arms, but how do I think the way you think so that I can do that without just imitating you. That’s got to be difficult.

ALI: It’s like, for me anyway, I like to have it less of a thinking thing and more of a feeling thing. How does Red feel when she says this? Would she just put her hands on her hips at this moment when she’s really proud or confident or a little bit pissed off at Gobo or whoever? Or just getting super confident.

[Karen laughs]

ALI: But yeah the more time that I spend with Karen and Red and the more I feel them throughout the time working together, the more it comes together, for sure.

KAREN: Mmhmm.

JOE: That’s great.

ALI: Karen is Red Fraggle through and through. And it’s always really great, Karen’s really great at after I’ve had her on or whatever to come up and go, “That was really awesome. I love it. Do that just like that again.” Or comes up and says, “Okay when you walk in this time, how about, you know…”

So she’s a great communicator and so she’ll tell you what she wants and what she needs. If she feels like it can grow slightly in a different direction because it’s her and her character so very, very supportive. So yeah. That’s like the dream scenario when you’re doing somebody else’s character. Because otherwise, without any feedback or guidance, you want to make sure you’re doing justice to Karen. [laughs] So, yeah, it’s always great getting that feedback.

KAREN: Well and you know just working together and giving that feedback is just a way to do justice to and show respect for everybody’s contribution. Everybody’s worked at this whole magical experience that we’re creating together. And just trying to get it the best it can be under sometimes, you know, challenging circumstances.

ALI: Yeah.

KAREN: And to celebrate when it really comes together and really works.

ALI: Mmhmm. Cause sometimes you don’t have control. Like when you’re spraying a bunch of…In one scene I remember once we had to spray a bunch of, what was it? It was like shaving cream or something.

KAREN: Oooh.

[Crosstalk]

KAREN: I think it was season one. Uncle Matt brought back whipped cream and they had this rig to spray it and…

[Ali laughs]

KAREN: Oh my gosh. We kept trying a few things and then we realized, okay that is just not going to work. And we tried. We finally got something. But it was one of those fun like, “I don’t have any idea how this is going to work. Let’s figure out something.”

[Joe laughs]

ALI: But the outtakes were great. The outtakes were great.

KAREN: Oh yeah. And you just have fun with it and they got enough to tell the story. But you know, in between just whipped cream spraying everywhere and we’re all just laughing ourselves silly. It’s like, “This is so ridiculous. What are we doing?”

JOE: Are you sure you’re all working and not just playing everyday? [laughs]

[Karen laughs]

ALI: Joe, it’s like we’re the opposite. It’s like Red’s really, “Dah, dah, dah dah! Dah, dah, dah, dah!” And then just like out of the whipped cream thing it just goes like [blows raspberry].

[Joe laughs]

ALI: It was hardly anything. Just like dribbles of spit. Like nothing.

JOE: Fantastic.

KAREN: [laughs] I can’t remember if they enhance it. And this is something where it’s good to fix it in post. I can’t remember if they added something in post just to be a bit of a stronger spray.

JOE: I feel like they had to because like the whole, I mean I’m going off my now fuzzy memory of season one, because the characters are just being like doused with whipped cream. Like I remember Gobo ends up with the mustache and the goatee.

KAREN: Yeah. He had the full mustache and everything.

JOE: Yeah, like no regular whipped cream can is going to spray enough to justify.

KAREN: And of course that was not actually whipped cream. It was a Fraggle-safe something that they had to…

JOE: Of sure. Fraggle Foam we’ll call it.

KAREN: Yes. Yes.

JOE: I don’t know if that’s what they call it. I just made that up. But it’s alliterative so it must be right. Right?

KAREN: [laughs] Sure.

JOE: [laughs] Let’s go on with this episode. We check in with the Doozers. The Architect is saying that a Doozer, who shall not be named, accidentally released the wind that they were storing. And immediately Wrench was like, “It’s me!” And Turbo’s like, “I helped!”

Okay, so let’s talk for a second about Wrench and Turbo. I love them. I’ve been saying to some of the other equally important people on this podcast, can we get a Wrench and Turbo episode in season three?

ALI: Oooh.

JOE: I want that so badly.

ALI: Really cool. Andy and I joke that [laughs]. We make jokes about like spin-off episodes that they’re like Laverne and Shirley.

JOE: Yes.

[Karen laughs]

ALI: You know what I mean? Living together in some crappy basement apartment. Just Odd Couple. And he just cries at everything all the time. [laughs]

JOE: That’s so good. I would actually love that if you got a spin-off episode with these characters, but the genre of the episode was completely different from Fraggle Rock. Or like you go into a three camera sitcom or something just completely bonkers and off the wall. I would like that. I’m just putting that out into the universe.

ALI: Turbo can be The Fonz.

JOE: Oh, Turbo’s The Fonz?

[All laugh]

JOE: Yeah. Turbo’s like the new like, “Oh, okay. This is the spin off.” We’re like telling the audience, this is the spin-off character that you will all love. And if you don’t, then something is obviously wrong with everybody involved.

ALI: Thanks for saying that about them. Andy and I have a really great time doing those two characters, but the cool thing about season two is that so many new Doozer characters were created. And you know, like Aymee [Garcia] and Dan [Garza] got to do these two super nerdy, funny…What were they called again, Karen? It was like…

JOE: Was that Research and Development?

ALI: Research and Development.

KAREN: It was Jordan [Lockhart]. It was Jordan and Aymee.

ALI: Jordan and Aymee! I’m so sorry. Jordan Lockhart and Aymee. Super funny and then Kira did Measure Doozer.

JOE: Yep.

ALI: Like there were so many funny Doozers written into the second season and so yeah, the Doozers are just hilarious.

KAREN: I love Wrench and Turbo. They take the Dumb and Dumber thing to joyful heights. I love Turbo’s joy at whatever is happening. And you know, all the joyful misunderstanding and just the glee with what they’re doing. It’s just so entertaining. And I have to say, it’s not in this episode. I can’t remember which. It is season two, but I can’t remember. I think it’s after a few episodes after this one.

Well, I guess not to spoil anything, there’s kind of a Doozer industrial accident and Turbo gets splashed with something and lets out this incredible scream. I can’t remember if I watched you shooting it. You know, it’s a comic accident, of course, comic accident. And it is, like one of the most incredibly silly, entertaining screams I think in the history of old and new Fraggle Rock. It is just so, so fun, that scream you let out when all this stuff splashes on you.

It was just amazing.

ALI: Thanks, Karen.

KAREN: Every time those two show up, you know things are going to go wrong. And you know it’s going to be so funny and entertaining. And I love just how you and Andy grab it and run with it. And just make these little snippets so entertaining.

JOE: And that’s why they need to have their own episode. They’re like this. Morgenstern and Guildencrantz-type of like, what are they doing in the background to completely ruin whatever’s happening in like the quote unquote main story.

And it’s just like, just follow them. Let them knock down some dominoes. Let the chaos happen. And then they could just be gleeful about the whole thing because I think that’s really what makes the characters for me is like they’re so happy to be complete mess ups, you know.

[Karen laughs]

ALI: They’re just through and through just two dingleberries.

[Joe and Karen laugh]

ALI: They’re just total dorks. Total dorks. I remember that day. That was so fun. And kudos again to the, they’re so on point always, the props team and all the special effects folks. I think we had it was like down to the wire for shooting. We seriously had like four minutes or something, five minutes to get that one take where they were in these white outfits and they were wearing little face masks. And then the red goo poured all over them and it just it worked perfectly.

KAREN: Oh yeah and it was like because it was such a major reset. They pretty much, there was limited time for, maybe they did two takes and then that was kind of it because they just had to kind of shut down the whole set and replace everything. [laughs] But you got it. It was awesome.

JOE: You got it. That’s all that matters. You get the shot.

ALI: It was cool.

JOE: The Architect Doozer tells the rest of the Doozers that the strawberries have taken over the Gorgs’ garden. There are no more radishes but before the Fraggles find out, let’s help them get more radishes down here and let’s build a delivery system. It’s going to be a whole lot of work. And of course all the Doozers celebrate.

It’s great. I have no notes about this. I just love the Doozers loving work.

ALI: Can we just say how awesome Architect is, please?

JOE: Oh, of course.

KAREN: Architect and Cotterpin awesome double act. Especially between takes. You probably heard that Johnny and Donna [Kimball] they just go off. Oh my gosh.

ALI: Their improv, Donna Kimball and Johnny Tartaglia’s improv in between takes as those two characters are bonkers. Like I cry. I’m crying. And then the in between stuff they kind of build up this energy and by the time that they shoot it’s so loose and it feels so good that their moments. They’re such a good duo. They’re such a great duo. Yeah.

KAREN: Yeah.

JOE: Yeah, again like spin off, right? Like can we just get more of that? Also I would love to see these outtakes. I know that they’re completely anachronistic like they’re talking about movie stars and stuff. But, let’s see it.

ALI: Johnny, he does this thing with Donna, he does this thing in between, it’s always Architect saying, (imitates Architect voice) “Cotterpin, did I ever tell you about the time…” (in normal voice) It always starts with, “Did I ever tell you about the time…” And then it’s just like, “I was on a yacht with Tina Yothers?” [laughs] He’ll just spout nonsense for 15 minutes.

JOE: That’s so good.

KAREN: Or one time he was Erik Estrada’s pool boy.

[All laugh]

KAREN: Just like so whenever Johnny starts saying that, everybody’s like, “Okay, buckle up. We’re gonna have a good one.” And then Donna’s the straight one and just goes with it.

ALI: Yep.

KAREN: And John just lets loose and it’s just so wonderful for everybody’s spirit especially when we’re in the middle of just a long, because shooting the Doozers is challenging. The shop and everybody works really hard to get them doing amazing things but Doozer shoots are challenging. So when we got Architect and Donna or if we have Wrench and Turbo, we know we’re going to have fun to keep us going through all that.

JOE: Yeah, for sure. I don’t want to add to John Tartaglia’s workload because he’s already such a busy guy, but I would love it if you wrote the autobiography of Architect Doozer and just like get it all down in one place.

[Karen and Ali laugh]

JOE: Just the insanity of the life that he must have led. Maybe someday.

[Karen laughs]

ALI: I just like in my heart of hearts, in my minds of mind, my dream come true is the back’s like I just hope that he is gayer than Christmas, that Doozer.

[Joe and Karen laugh]

ALI: Architect Doozer, he is just so fabulous to me. I just, yeah, I hope he’s queer but anyway.

JOE: The episode where he talks about like his haircut and then he gets a wig, like that’s where it’s starting to come out. He’s just so like vain in a very specific way, not to say that straight people don’t get vain about those things as well but it might explain a couple things.

[Karen laughs]

JOE: Anyway Red Fraggle, remember her? She’s trying to ignore the gusties. It blows her right off of her hammock into Mokey’s bed. Mokey asks if they’re swapping beds and if so are they swapping personalities too. And she does a little impression of Red. She goes, “I love winning. Whoo hoo hoo!”

I thought that was very cute. I would love to see more of the fraggles doing impressions of each other. I think that would be fun for me to see.

KAREN: Yeah, yeah. All these little, you know, in shows that don’t heavily focus on Mokey, Donna finds these beautiful little moments just to have fun and she’s like a precision surgeon. She just kind of finds the right vocal and physical way to address things and just make them shine and sparkle. I’m just so impressed with what she’s doing with Mokey.

JOE: Me too. Absolutely.

ALI: Oh my god. Mokey is such a star. She has just elevated everything. And I think I remember you guys just writing in a bunch of articles how Mokey’s such an MVP and she’s just so realized. Mokey is such a realized character. She’s really amazing.

KAREN: Mmhmm.

JOE: It’s especially impressive because Mokey was such a realized character on the original show when she was performed by Kathy Mullen.

ALI: Yes.

KAREN: Oh yeah, beautifully. Beautifully.

JOE: Beautifully. Yeah. I mean, I love Mokey from the original series and it’s hard for any of the performers to be picking up someone else’s character but Mokey had, for understandable reasons, had to go through so many important changes to kind of update her for Back to the Rock. And Donna Kimball not only handles that so well, but she embodies that character with so much real life, that what we’re talking about right now, about her being so fully realized, is she’s not a carbon copy. She’s not a “well, we had to change a few things and so she’s a little false to who she really is.”

It’s no, absolutely not. Like she is a fully formed character and I love, love, love watching her in a different way than I did Kathy Mullen’s Mokey.

KAREN: Yes. Yes.

ALI: It’s really cool because it’s like you know, yes, definitely. Both Mokeys are fully realized but it’s really cool. It’s more that Mokey, just like people, they grow and they change and they blossom and they become more of who they are. And so that’s the way that I see Mokey now. You know?

JOE: Yes, yes.

ALI: Yeah.

JOE: I love that. So Red is deciding to solve this problem of these gusties. She’s going to seal off the great hall. And so this is where we get the song that we mentioned before, “Seal It Up.” It’s like this head-bangy pop song, kind of rock song. My favorite part about it is there’s this Fraggle way at the top that’s playing the drums. And it’s just adding so much energy.

KAREN: Oh yeah.

JOE: And also I’m sure you guys feel this a lot when there’s a lot of fraggles on the screen, but they’re all on the same level there’s all this empty space on the top two-thirds of the screen and to give us something to focus on that’s up there really kind of fills it in. Who is performing that drumming Fraggle? Do you know?

KAREN: Is it Andy and Aymee?

ALI: There’s a couple of different, they’ve changed it up a couple of times, but thankfully we have a couple of drummers in the Calgary crew. So I know that there was a few combinations. I know once there was Aymee and, oh goodness. I think it was Aymee. Could it have been Dean [Bareham] or DerRic [Starlight]?

KAREN: Oh.

ALI: And then I think Andy did another drumming guy in another scene when we were walking.

KAREN: Oh, yes.

ALI: Yeah, that was a different thing but yeah, that drumming guy up above, oh my gosh, it’s now slipping my mind but we all we all loved it so much that we all clapped after. [Clapping sounds]

KAREN: Oh yeah. Yup.

JOE: That’s great. Yeah, it’s like a real rock show. 

KAREN: Oh yeah.

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: Yeah. And of course, this whole song comes about from Red’s go to response to something is “There’s a problem. I have to control it and I will not consult with anyone else. [laughs] And go into it 150%.” She gets people to do what she wants. Jump in. Do the song. Let’s seal up the great hall. But as far as like insulting, “Hey, would it be a good… should we?” You know, it’s like, no. That’s not Red’s go to. She gets there eventually.

JOE: Sure. Of course.

KAREN: It’s always fun when she has this first hugely entertaining flawed response and of course, in this show it’s all about her flawed responses building and building and building and things getting worse and worse and worse. And then finally realizing that she’s got to approach things very differently and take others and the environment into account. And as usual her first response is to go big or go home.

And of course we got to demonstrate that with this awesome song. Yeah and all the, again another very tricky technical thing getting, you know, visually communicating that they’re blocking up all the tunnels into the great hall. So yeah, there was a lot to juggle to get all that to work and be clear to the audience.

JOE: Yeah. And it looks great. I mean, I’ve been trying to kind of note as I’m going through this series for the podcast when there’s these big musical numbers, how much behind the scenes work do I feel like there is. And some have new sets or the CG enhancements or new props are built or things flying around or whatever it is. And some of them feel like all the work is being done by the puppeteers because like in this one for example, it’s just a couple of prop pieces and a lot of choreography and some flashing lights and that’s it.

[Karen laughs]

JOE: And you have to convey not only the song and the message that the song is trying to put across, but this sense of energy. And like this is a big deal. We’re doing a big song for you with all this choreography, with all this like you know like all the movement that’s happening on the screen. And, I don’t know. I’m impressed by it. You know, I’m impressed by how you probably were given very little to work with in terms of props and direction and you’re just like, we got to make a look good. Here we go.

KAREN: Yeah and this is a situation, once it was together in the edit we realized we could use…Because it’s such kind of a hard cut right ino the song and all this stuff happening that could use for the audience, especially younger members of the audience, a little bit more clarification of Red’s intentions and what she’s doing. So there are a few times in post where I added a little bit more of Red, like when she finishes talking to Mokey and she’s running out to the great hall, as her back is to camera and she’s running out.

I can’t remember if she originally said anything or was just running out, but we added some dialogue to kind of explain things a little more. And even in the middle of the song, again when Red, up and down the runway, when her back is to camera, there’s just a little bit more explanation added to remind people what this was all about.

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: So that’s kind of a typical thing usually happens once you get it all together and you’ve done all you can shooting, but you realize that sometimes you just need a little bit more clarifying. Just find ways to just smoothly fit it in with what you shot. And so that helped pull it all together and make it into the big crazy experience that it is.

JOE: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So yes, Red successfully seals up the entire cave and the whole problem is fixed. The end. We did it. Congratulations everybody.

KAREN: And she keeps saying that. She keeps saying, “Problem solved.”

JOE: Problem solved! [Laughs]

KAREN: Every time. And of course it’s not and then she only makes it worse.

JOE: That’s true.

KAREN: Yeah, throughout the whole show, (in voice of Red) Problem solved!

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: Oh no.

JOE: Oh no. [laughs]

KAREN (in normal voice) But then it’s not an “oh no insight.” It’s an “oh no what else can I do to make it worse.” [laughs]

[Ali laughs]

JOE: Yeah, right.

KAREN: Again, jumping to her default gotta take control and do something even bigger to try to to force things to her will.

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: She keeps going in that direction. Yep.

JOE: Because things immediately start to get warm. Like, right away, it’s starting to get a little toasty. As a chef, Boober confirms, things are officially fully toasty. Bordering on “ugh.” [laughs]

[Ali laughs]

KAREN: Yes, and all of us, as we were chatting about the weather as of this July, we were all, “It’s been fully toasty weather.”

JOE: Oh, yeah.

KAREN: In all of our time zones these last few weeks. So, yeah, we’re feeling what Red was feeling. And hey, if we could go grab some colder boulders, we would. [laughs]

[Ali laughs]

JOE: Absolutely, but the truth is that we are, because we all have our air conditioners running non-stop and that is not great for the environment.

KAREN: That’s true.

JOE: But what can you do? I mean we gotta do something. That’s another metaphor for another day.

KAREN: That’s when I get out of my bike and I get the natural air conditioning when I’m out doing long bike rides. Yes.

ALI: Oh, no.

JOE: Oh, I’m glad that works for you. That sounds like I’d just gonna hotter. [laughs]

KAREN: [laughs] No, it’s great. Yeah.

ALI: I don’t know if you know this, Joe, but like Karen, when we’re there, Karen is kind of just like, “Hey everybody, we’re going biking!” This is the real Karen. Not Red. Like in real life. Like, Karen has gotten everybody to go biking. Like get outside. Like quite an outdoor guy.

JOE: How cold was it outside in Calgary in the winter?

KAREN: At times crazy, crazy freezing. Like, you know, go to get a coffee and get frostbite.

JOE: Yep.

KAREN: But in the times where it warmed up enough where you could safely bIcycle, there was an ebike rental place near where most of us were staying in Calgary, near the Bow River which goes through the city. And so I get a bunch of people together and we’d rent ebikes and ride along the Bow River, down south of the city. And there was a park and they had a coffee shop. And we’d stop there and then turn around and ride back to the city.

And a few times we had time on the weekend we’d, again when it was better weather, a bunch of us would get into cars and drive up to Banff and rent ebikes there. And then there’s awesome bike paths up into the mountains.

JOE: Wow.

KAREN: And with the ebike, you’re just biking along and just seeing the beautiful scenery and occasional creatures. Deer and bear and goats kind of off in the distance and things. But it’s a beautiful place to work. So whenever it wasn’t deathly cold outside, I was always getting out. It was a wonderful place to walk around when it wasn’t crazy cold and to explore on bikes and just see all the beautiful scenery. So it’s one of my favorite places to work, definitely.

JOE: I mean that sounds very much like Fraggle Rock, where you just kind of, you go for a little jog and it’s like, oh there’s an inkspot and there’s Aretha and some sort of weird cave creature and yeah.

ALI: I think like, speaking of inkspots and when it got so hot in that episode, one of my favorite things in rewatching this episode was just seeing all the stupid stuff that was going on in the background from all the other puppeteers with the leaves.

JOE: Oh yeah.

ALI: Fanning each other.

JOE: We’ll get to this because there’s, I noted a few of them and I’m curious if you noted some that I may have missed.

ALI: Okay.

JOE: But there’s a couple of really, really funny ones. I’ve been really trying hard to in this rewatch to pay attention to the inkspots and the Fraggle gaggle and like what is everyone doing back there when they think that no one’s watching?

KAREN: It carries on the tradition of way back in The Muppet Show where if you were in the background of the Muppet theater and you were up on the balcony, it was just like, you know, have fun upstage. To a point.

[Ali laughs]

JOE: [laughs] Right.

KAREN: If it takes attention away from Miss Piggy, then you’ve gone too far.

[Joe laughs]

KAREN: But, you know, have fun. Have their own lives and their own experiences happening. And I’m so glad we were able to continue that tradition here.

JOE: Me too. Because that fun really does…We could feel it like going from you to the camera to the screen to us. Even if you don’t notice exactly what all those background characters are doing, like that feeling, we still get it. That feeling of fun and inclusion. So I’m very grateful for that tradition.

ALI: Well like, usually too, we’d block stuff out and whatever’s happening as the main action in the front, they’ll have to go through it a bunch of times and hang out with the director and work things out. And so people in the background, as they’re in place, they have this extra time. And some people would just kind of do the same beautiful thing that they were doing and fan each other. And then some people (laughing) would use that time to work out some ridiculous bit.

[Karen laughs]

JOE: Yeah. Yeah.

ALI: (in normal voice) And actually one of my favorite things is, this is totally left turn, but making Karen laugh I think is some of our favorite thing to you. And if you give Jordan Lockhart a gaggle fraggle, Karen Prell is on the floor.

KAREN: Oh.

ALI: He is so funny with those things because he’s like, “Oh my god, all the pressure’s off.” And he’s so funny with those things. And Karen, I don’t know what happens there, but Karen [laughs] is like on the floor with him. So yeah, there was a lot of goofiness in this episode for sure back there.

KAREN: Uh-huh

JOE: Ah, that’s the best. I love it. So because things are getting so warm in Fraggle Rock, everyone is sweating, including Large Marvin. He says, “Even my sweat has sweat.” And the camera zooms in on a bead of sweat. And the bead of sweat speaks and talks about how hot it is. Okay, so how big is this thing in real life? I read on the wiki it was Frank Meschkuleit who was performing it, I believe. If that’s accurate.

ALI: Actually Karen, I wanted to ask you that. When I rewatched it, I was like, whose voice is that?

KAREN: Frank is Large Marvin but I thought the actual sweat was Dan Garza.

ALI: Was that Dan? Okay.

KAREN: I think so. I think so.

ALI: Okay. Okay.

KAREN: Yeah and of course they made like this giant maybe tennis ball-size sweat glob out of silicone or something that had maybe some monofill that you could pull to make the mouth move. So this small one, when you saw all of large Marvin’s face. And then they did this crash zoom and then cut to the bigger one on a giant field of pink fleece.

JOE: A very large Marvin. Great.

KAREN: Yes, a very large Marvin. [laughs] It’s one of those bizarre things in the script that’s like, “What? Really?” And then they did it. It was like, oh my god. It’s perfect.

JOE: I love it. I love when you all take the time to build an entire character and it’s like, “This will be on screen for four seconds and we will never use it again.” And it’s a bead of sweat or like a vomiting rainbow or whatever that was.

[Karen laughs]

ALI: Wasn’t Icy Joe–

JOE: No, it was– I’m sorry, it was a radish. It was a radish that vomited rainbows. Excuse me.

KAREN: Mokey’s dream radish. Yes.

JOE: Yes. Excuse me. I need to clarify that before I got an angry letter.

ALI: I think that Icy Joe called Large Marvin, Marge Larvin. Or something.

KAREN: No. Large Larva!

[Ali laughs]

KAREN: It was one of the, I think it was the first season, and so Icy Joe became one of the people on the…

JOE: Yeah, the council.

KAREN: The council and, not during an actual take, but in between takes, of course people are doing, and for some reason it was like, (in voice of Icy Joe) Heya, Large Larva. (laughing) And so everybody enjoyed that.

JOE: She’s still learning everybody’s names. That makes sense.

KAREN: (in voice of Icy Joe) That sounded correct to me, you know. (in normal voice) Yep. [laughs]

JOE: We check in with the gorgs. The gorgamax has been working perfectly. There’s no more radishes, only strawberries and they’re growing like crazy. But Pa is so lazy he doesn’t even want to sit up to grab a strawberry. He’s telling Junior Gorg to build a machine that will feed the radishes directly to him. We will catch up with that in a little bit, but we’re setting that up here.

And we also get a check in with Doc and Sprocket. Sprocket gets a package from a company called Woof Woof Yum. It’s a subscription service that delivers dog treats from around the world. But you know it’s a whole lot of packaging for one little biscuit. And later on, Doc is going to tell him all about how it went from different locations all over the planet with the planes and the trucks and the trains and etc etc. So it’s actually really bad for the environment that he signed up for it.

And it seems like this is a message against a certain worldwide delivery service that, I don’t know, maybe it’s named after a river somewhere. I’ll let everyone kind of figure that one out themselves.

KAREN: Well, you know, it also applies kind of in general to the price of everything we desire. And just having some awareness of what it really means to get these things that you’d like but almost take for granted. So I really love it. At the end, Doc’s little lesson that she presents to Sprocket about that.

And poor Sprocket is so sad.

JOE: So sad! Poor little guy.

KAREN: It’s just good to have awareness. As far as what the final answer is, that’s kind of a bigger question. But it’s similar to Red just thinking kind of of the bigger picture of the consequences of your desires on others and on the environment. Definitely.

JOE: That’s right. And it’s true. We can’t control Woof Woof Yum. They’re still going to make their product and ship it around the world. But we can still have control over our own footprint. And I think Doc and Sprocket in these moments, that comes across really well because it’s not quite as big as the colder boulders problem. Or, excuse me, the gusties problem here because this is a real thing that the fraggles are dealing with for an entire season. And they gotta figure out how to control these gusties and now the heat and all the other problems that are going on.

This is just a dog biscuit. It’s not a big deal but, you know, we can still have control over it and make good decisions based on what we know.

ALI: It was such excellent writing, too, just with such humor but making such a point. You know like how giant the box was and when he opened it, giant box and the bone was tiny, tiny, tiny.

JOE: [laughs] Yeah.

ALI: Just excess, excess and not thinking and wanting and it just was such excellent writing.

KAREN: Mmhmm.

JOE: It’s true. Yeah. So the Great Hall is starting to get very steamy. The Grizzard is there. They love it. They’re in the pond like it’s a sauna. This is where we see that inkspot with the fan with the leaf, with the fan. And there’s another one that seems to be serving the Grizzard like some sort of milkshake or some fancy drink with whip on top. Adorable.

KAREN: Radish smoothies or something. Yep.

JOE: Yeah. Also I have to wonder, is this something that was in the script so that the props people knew to make it or is it something like on the day they would go like, “Oh you know what would be funny? If we whipped this thing together really quick. Just go, go, go. Make a smoothie.”

KAREN: I can’t remember. Sometimes the people in props are on like the Doozer team. Sometimes made just a very general scenario is in the script and if they have the time and if they have an exciting idea that’s doable within the time they might just whip up something like that and bring it out. And we’re like, yes!

JOE: Love that.

KAREN: So yeah, I can’t remember if that was in the script, but I’m really glad they were able to do that.

JOE: What a fun job that you all have.

[Karen laughs]

JOE: Because It’s just like someone would just say, “Hey you know what would be funny? Let’s make a Fraggle milkshake.” And then someone goes, “I’d love to do that. I’ll just do that in my spare time. Because it’s either that or I could play Candy Crush on my phone. And I’d rather work because Fraggle Rock is such a fun show to work on.” Wonderful.

ALI: It’s really cool. They just become so much of the humor and comedy of the team, these folks that just will think of something last minute that is so absolutely hilarious.

JOE: Yeah.

ALI: Also Kanja [Chen] kills it as Grizzard. I love it.

KAREN: Mmhmm. [laughs]

ALI: He’s so silly.

JOE: Just that attitude of like, it’s kind of like Pat from old SNL that like, “Oooh. I’m just gonna. Aaaah.” I can’t do impressions. I don’t know. There’s just something, like are they disgusted? Are they happy to be here? I can’t tell but okay. Sure.

KAREN: Who knows? Who knows? [laughs]

JOE: So Red vows she’s going to find a way to cool the rock down. So she stumbles on Icy Joe’s cave. Icy Joe’s in there trying to make her walking stick move with her mind. Nothing’s happening. She’s still working on it. And her cave is cold because she has a colder boulder which is this glowing rock that keeps everything cold. And it’s such a cool looking visual because it really is glowing.

I mean, again, props to the props people for this cool thing.

KAREN: Yeah and I think most of the time the frosty, not-steam, but you know the clouds of cool moisture coming off of it were practical.

JOE: Whoa.

KAREN: They had a tube going up and so they had lights and they had a tube like going up through the bottom. And all that was practical. It’s just a few times that if they really needed to emphasize something they might add a little bit in post. But yeah, that was the real thing there. Mmhmm.

JOE: That’s cool. That’s cool. It didn’t even occur to me that it could have been real.

KAREN: Yeah, yeah.

JOE: Well done. She, Icy Joe, says that she learned about the colder boulders when she was frozen for hundreds of years. She says, “You know, I was awake the whole time. That does something to a Fraggle.”

[Ali laughs]

KAREN: I know that so…That’s terrifying.

JOE: Terrifying.

KAREN: And I’ve asked myself, what would she have been thinking about there and I don’t even want to go there. Only Icy Joe knows what she was thinking about. [laughs]

JOE: I mean, when we met Icy Joe in season one, it was not clear, it seemed deliberately, does she act like this because she’s been frozen for hundreds of years? Or does she act like this because she was a curmudgeon back then and she’s a curmudgeon now. And getting this confirmation of being awake that whole time. It’s like, “Oh, so she was tortured. Okay, got it. She’s been driven insane.” And that’s fun. It is very funny. Don’t get me wrong.

KAREN: There’s, you know they hinted at it. They just dropped a hint for the audience to do with it what they will without anything specific being part of the story. But definitely it’s fun having the curmudgeonly side, but also I love kind of her joyful innocence.

JOE: Mmhmm.

KAREN: Like the fact that she thinks she can make her walking stick walk. And even though when she was first introduced it was about her being angry. It was just kind of something that felt like it just wouldn’t be fun to sustain. So start to hint at things that she could take wonder in. And although I think she was getting really fed up during her introduction song back in season one. And I think that was just because she was hangry.

JOE: Yeah, right.

KAREN: Because you know, she hadn’t eaten in 400 years and she said she wasn’t hungry but, you know, she just wasn’t thinking straight because she was like really hangry. And when she finally got the radishes she wanted, she kind of calmed down a bit.

But I definitely like continuing with her when she’s in these different situations. And she’ll be in with the crowd. She has no idea what’s going on. It’s all new to her. Just paying attention and being confused and soaking it all in. It’s like she’s just trying to to make up lost time and not understanding things doesn’t stop her.

Yeah, I just like having fun, when she finds things to be passionate about or excited about.

JOE: Sure.

KAREN: And her speech that she gives to Red about the ecosystem it’s like, because she is a Fraggle, an ancient Fraggle. Generally, you know, they do try to do what’s right for the ecosystem but that part of her brain hadn’t quite, was just finishing thawing out while she was doing that speech.

JOE: Right.

KAREN: So she finally got there. (In voice of Icy Joe) Oh, ecosystem! Oh yes. That’s what it was. (In normal voice) And she’s so excited about it. (In voice of Icy Joe) Oh, where’d you go.

JOE: I did love that moment because so much of Fraggle Rock as a whole, like the old Fraggle, the new Fraggle Rock, the Fraggle franchise as a whole, is about ecosystems. So when she starts to kind of explain to Red like, you know, everything in the environment is in harmony, everything’s connected. There’s the Icy and there’s the Joe.

And it’s like yes, we get like…You’re so close to…It’s almost like she’s trying to remember the words to the Fraggle Rock theme song. We’e like, yes, it’s what Fraggle Rock is all about. You’re so close to it. And then yes, like you said. She goes “ecosystem” and Red’s already gone.

KAREN: (in normal voice) Yes, so just to make her speech rather than just a, you know, Doc’s speech is pretty straight forward lesson. But Icy Joe being Icy Joe. She would do it in a roundabout way with the way her brain works. It’s like, (in voice of Icy Joe) I knew there’s this important thing. Hang on a minute. Let me dig through and see if I can figure it out.

(in normal voice) You know so, it’s just fun to go through that journey with her. She’s trying to access the frozen memories. [laughs]

JOE: Yeah. I just love that Icy Joe’s continued as a character on the show because she easily could have been a one-off character for that one episode. We never see her again.

KAREN: Yeah.

JOE: But she adds something to the dynamic of Fraggle Rock that no one else does. Especially because, you know, there’s only so many adult characters. It’s like Matt, Storyteller, World’s Oldest Fraggle. It’s like they’re all completely aloof in some way like with the exception of maybe Jamdolin. Like they all, it’s like you can’t trust any of their knowledge no matter how old they are. And so for her to be someone who, like she could easily have been a character to say like, “Well, I’ve been around for 400 years. I could tell you everything.”

And it’s like well, no because maybe you don’t remember things or maybe things worked different back then or maybe your brain is half-frozen. And all these things kind of make it so that not only are they unreliable, but they’re adding this level of fun to any kind of Fraggle Rock problem which I just adore.

ALI: Icy Joe is incredibly funny.

JOE: She really is.

ALI:I love that they made Icy Joe female. Personally, I think it was a really big deal. Maybe other people haven’t thought of it but usually when you see a character that kind of big and like they’re usually male characters.

JOE: Sure.

ALI: So I thought it was fantastic that Icy Joe is a woman.

JOE: And I think we talked about this in the first season of podcast that we did Karen, but the fact that Icy Joe looks so different from the rest of the Fraggles, that she really towers over everyone else, it’s just visually so great. And again, to Ali’s point, that having that be a female character. Because again, usually it’s the Behemoth guy or it’s Large Marvin. It’s like this big dude. And instead making it a female character makes Icy Joe feel so unique, not just in Fraggle Rock but in kids media altogether.

KAREN: Yeah, yeah. I’ve just enjoyed exploring that kind of character which you don’t usually see. And finding something in myself that identifies with her bizarre physicality and worldview. And being able to do more with her this season has been fun. But I have to give a shout out to Ben Durocher, who of course Icy Joe is another example of it takes a village.

And so whenever I’m performing her, I’ve got my six-inch Frankenstein shoes on. And the body is…it’s heavier than a regular Fraggle. And also very just cumbersome and stiff. So I usually have someone behind me, usually Andrew Cooper, holding there’s like a handle under her cloak, holding up her body, so I can be free to move her head without her body weight pulling on, not only her neck and her face, but pulling on my arm and that leaves my other hand free so I can perform her eyes myself which I enjoy doing.

And then usually Ingrid doing both hands or sometimes if she needs her hands really spread out Ingrid and Ben doing her hands. But we had a lot more happening in this episode, especially when we had Red and Icy Joe together where Icy Joe had to be a lot more mobile. Or extended acting scenes where if there was more emphasis on Red, having someone else do Icy Joe. So I looked for someone who was tall enough especially for being like mobile and running around which happens like later, after this episode.

Someone who didn’t have to wear tall shoes and who could, if they really have to, hold up the whole body just with their hand. And so auditioned a few people and Ben became Icy Joe’s stunt stand-in and performance stand-in, like Ali for Red. And so there are scenes where I’m in Red and Ben is in Icy Joe for some of the talking and I dub it afterwards.

So there’s a little, just depending on what the emphasis was on the performing, I’d be jumping back and forth. Jumping in and out of my tall shoes.

[Joe laughs]

KAREN: And of course Ben can just walk up and put his hand up and his hand is taller than me wearing my Frankenstein shoes and having my hand up.

JOE: What must it be like to be tall? I always wondered.

[Karen laughs]

JOE: I would love to be tall.

ALI: Beats me, man. Beats me.

KAREN: But he’s he does such a great job with Icy Joe’s performance and sometimes if there’s like group scenes and Red is doing some foreground stuff and Icy Joe is back there, maybe has a few lines, just to keep things going rather than stop and change and change my shoes and blah, blah, blah, it’s like Ben, just keep going. Do the lines. I’ll dub it afterwards.

JOE: Right.

KAREN: Because I know he’ll be able to do a great job. And then I’ll just stay in Red so we can kind of keep shooting, moving. And just like with Ali doing Red, I know Icy Joe’s in good hands with Ben. And that definitely came in handy with a later episode where Icy Joe is literally running across the length of the great hall at speed and I knew even attempting to do that with my village around me, wearing my Frankenstein shoes, that would be an industrial accident. [laughs]

JOE: Yeah, that’s a broken ankle right there. Yeah.

KAREN: Yeah. So Ben was able to take over doing that and doing a brilliant job. So yeah, these scenes with Red and Icy Joe, there’s just a lot of swapping back and forth. But it all looks seamless.

JOE: It does.

KAREN: And I’m just so pleased with how it turned out. Yeah.

JOE: It really does. So back in the great hall, Boober is trying to deliver soup to the Fraggles. It started out as gazpacho but now it’s a hot tomato bisque. I thought that very funny. Mokey says she’s gonna go back to her cave to do an ice meditation, a thing that she really hopes is real. And Red is there with a colder boulder and she’s dressed in her cute little winter clothes. And that’s it. They did it. Problem solved.

KAREN: Problem solved.

JOE: Problem solved. So Red and Mokey and Lanford are all now nice and cool but what about everyone else? And Red says, “Oh well everyone could just come in here when they want to cool down. Problem solved again. And then we get this great shot of like dozens of fraggles all crammed into their cave. I feel like we get a lot of group shots like this in this season. I feel like that’s happened a few times already.

How many performers do you think are stuffed in this one shot?

KAREN: Oh, everybody.

ALI: It was bonkers. It was bonkers funny. We were, no jokes, smashed up against each other, laughing.

KAREN: Oh yeah.

ALI: And there was a lot of people double-fisting gaggle Fraggles.

JOE: Sure.

KAREN: A few people, yeah. And yeah and of course the Fraggles are all tight together but when you attach a human being, with a much bigger body underneath each of those, then, yeah, we were even more smashed underneath. [laughs]

JOE: Yeah! Did anyone get a photo of everyone just on top of each other down there?

KAREN: Sometimes someone grabs a photo underneath of stuff but if everybody’s busy…because usually when there’s something like that, everybody’s busy. The shop people making sure all the smashed together puppets are looking good and the monitor people are in there making sure everybody’s got a monitor they can see. So it’s pretty chaotic.

JOE: Right.

KAREN: So I can’t remember. I know we got, because the Doozer setups, like if it’s in their Doozer thing, it’s kind of a long time in between those setups where our Doozers are just on poles in the set. So we’re underneath hanging out and we got a lot of video and pictures underneath the Doozer stuff. But maybe if we do more we need to get more video when we’re smashed together like that, what it looks like underneath.

JOE: Yeah, really.

KAREN: Because yeah, contact sport.

JOE: Yeah. And like a game of Twister I’m sure also.

KAREN: Yes.

JOE: Of like well, I have to put my arm here and put your leg in there and let me just turn around sideways and however you can fit dozens of performers.

ALI: I liked how that scene started with Gobo going, “Ow. You’re on my…” You know, just like how something–

JOE: Oh, his tail kind of moves up into Mokey’s mouth.

KAREN: His tail going in Mokey’s mouth and Donna just went with it. Of course they kept it because it was just so funny.

JOE: Oh I was wondering if that was real or not. Oh that’s funny.

KAREN: Oh yeah. Yeah it was just like, it just happened. It’s like, cool. Yep.

JOE: Yep and it works. Well and again I was trying to look at the Fraggles in the background to see what was happening. And everyone’s definitely doing something. It was hard to pay attention to everyone at once. But there was two Fraggles that seemed to be kind of just like caressing each other’s faces. Like they’re each reaching out and holding the face of the one next to them and staring into each other’s eyes.

[Karen laughs]

JOE: [Stutters beginning his sentence because he’s laughing] There was definitely some story going on that we’re not privy to with these two Fraggles.

KAREN: I have no idea.

JOE: It was great.

ALI: Intimacy. Intimacy.

JOE: That’s right, yes. Everyone got very close, very quickly. So Red has a new idea. Mokey says, “Oh, you’re gonna obviously go unseal the great hall.” And Red, what a great performance this is. “Oh, Mokey Mokey Mokey Mokey Mokey Mokey. No.” [laughs] Something better!

KAREN: Yeah. Great writing! Great, awesome writing. Yeah. Yeah.

JOE: It is, but you sold it. It got a great laugh out of me.

ALI: Karen, you played it so well. I think that there are Mokeys than that even, as well. There were like, it was about nine Mokeys.

[All laugh]

JOE: Red is gonna bring in more colder boulders. She’s gonna fill Fraggle Rock with colder boulders. What a great idea. Problem solved, again. You know. She did it.

KAREN: Problem solved. Again, doesn’t tell anybody what she’s gonna do.

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: She’s like, I got this. Boom. And she’s out. Yep.

JOE: Yep. But Boober knows. Ever the meteorologist, Boober. He points out that we all know what happens when cold air meets warm air over a body of water. And the Rock fills with fog. Boober obviously knew because one of his hobbies besides cooking and laundry is thermodynamics.

[Karen laughs]

JOE: There’s so much to unpack there in Fraggle lore of how he even knows what that word is. Let’s not dwell too much on it.

ALI: Wait, what was his line? He was just like, “What? A fraggle can’t have other–”

JOE: Can’t have hobbies besides cooking and laundry? [laughs] Oh, it’s so good. I just love it. It makes me laugh. Nobody can see anything through the fog. That’s exactly what happens when, Karen you are also a glasses wearer, when you are in air conditioning and you walk outside and then boom. Your glasses fog up immediately.

KAREN: Mmhmm. Boom. Yep. Mmhmm.

JOE: Yep.

KAREN: I can’t remember. I don’t know if they actually had much on set because the continuity would have been a nightmare. So I think most of that they had to do in post just for consistency.

JOE: Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.

KAREN: Because otherwise they’d be just chasing how foggy it was and it would just be so tough. It was the kind of thing if we were doing 40 years ago, we would have to do it for real with some smoke and try to keep it consistent. And it would be really tough.

JOE: Yeah. Especially if you fill up a room with fake fog, like use a smoke machine or something like that, it’s all going to sink to the ground. So when you’re filming six feet in the air, then you have to really fill a big room with a lot of fog for a really long time. That just doesn’t seem possible.

KAREN: Yes, and that was at some production meetings that was mentioned too, that if you tried to do it practically yeah, it would all be at our feet and the puppets would not have smoke around them. So yes, yeah.

JOE: Actually, you know what it makes me think of, and Karen, you may have been present for this, is the scene in Muppet Christmas Carol when the Ghost of Christmas Future takes Scrooge off and there’s a wall of smoke that I believe Brian Henson’s talked about how they basically filled a room with smoke and covered it with a curtain. And then for the shot, they just open the curtain and it kind of comes in like a wall of smoke against Scrooge and Ghost of Christmas Future.

And it’s a great visual, but it’s also the kind of thing where like you got one shot to do this because you are filling a room with smoke.

KAREN: Yes.

JOE: That’s a lot. Yeah.

KAREN: Yeah, and it’s the kind of thing that it would be, these days, doing it practically would just be kind of crazy budget and schedule wise.

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: It’s like, oh my gosh, please, please take care of it and post. Yeah.

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: But you know, yeah, at that the time, back for that movie so much still, there were some computer options, but there was still a lot that had to be practical. But these days, yeah, I’m so glad that we did not have to worry about that. And the effect, it just works so well the way they have it rolling in and reacting and then just kind of the glow with everything. They did a really good job making it look like fog and not smoke literally.

JOE: Oh, sure. Yeah. That’s a good point.

KAREN: But like moist fog. Just having that glow in there.

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: Just made it look just right. Mmhmm.

JOE: Yeah, you’re absolutely right.

ALI: I really like how the Fraggle five also kind of did a very similar thing as they’re looking around they played it puppetry-wise where all their hands up in front of them, kind of just feel to not bump into anybody else.

KAREN: Yep.

ALI: As they’re looking. And such a funny gag where Pogey pops up and just calls his own name.

KAREN: Yes. [laughs]

[Ali laughs]

JOE: Yeah, everyone’s calling everyone else. “Mokey. Wembley.” And they’re like, “Pogey.” 

ALI: Yeah.

JOE: Love it. Any chance for Pogey to say their own name. They’ll take it.

KAREN: Oh yeah. Yep.

JOE: Love it. So Red goes to Icy Joe for help and Icy Joe tells her that she didn’t move the colder boulders. This is where the colder boulder was. That’s where she found it. And she picked this cave because the boulder was always here and Red assumed that she picked this cave because it was far away from all the fraggles that annoy her. But it turns out that was just a perk.

KAREN: Yes. [laughs]

JOE: And so yeah, so she knows that you can’t just mess with a delicate ecosystem. So now Red knows what she has to do and she runs off. Again, like you said, she does not tell anyone what her plan is. She’s just gone.

KAREN: Yes. [Laughs]

JOE: But Joe goes back to trying to make her walking stick move with her mind. And she tries just asking nicely. She goes, please.

KAREN: “Please!” Yes.

JOE: And it starts to move!

KAREN: (In voice of Icy Joe) And it works!

JOE: It starts to move.

KAREN: It works. I moved it with my mind. (in normal voice) Yes, and that was supposed to, originally, so the gag was always that the inkspots would move it. But initially, it was intended that oh, she would see the inkspots and get disappointed. And I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to keep her in that joyful state.

And just be so thrilled and full of excitement and satisfaction and excited about this new power she found with her brain. And just leave her there and rather than oh, seeing them and reacting and being disappointed. So I just wanted it to end on an up note and a silly, deluded note for Icy Joe. Because after 400 years in solitary, she needs a little…

JOE: She needs a win.

KAREN: …something to lift her spirit. So I’m glad we were able to end it like that. Yep.

JOE: I love it. And it’s so much funnier this way to have a character who is like, well, we know as the audience like it’s so stupid. You obviously didn’t make it move with your mind. But she is in. She is sold on it. She did it.

KAREN: Yep.

JOE: Now she’s got telekinetic powers. She’s going to be a superhero. She’s going to save the world. Big things coming for Icy Joe.

KAREN: Oh, yes. Yes. [laughs]

JOE: This is where we get our second song of the episode. It’s the song “Lost and Found”. Karen, I’m going to test your encyclopedic knowledge of Fraggle Rock here. Do you remember what episode in the original series this is from?

KAREN: Oh my gosh. Let’s see. It was the Boober’s hat. 

JOE: Yes. Well done.

KAREN: Boober’s hat.

JOE: Yes. It’s the episode called “You Can’t Do That Without a Hat.”

KAREN: That’s right. And I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about this, but it is a huge Fraggle blooper, original Fraggle blooper.

JOE: Ooh. Tell me more.

KAREN: The original “Lost and Found” song. So the whole episode, the whole episode, is about Boober not having his hat. He’s going around with just his hair. No hat. And so we shot this song. You know, long complicated song. It was another late night shoot where you know, we’re shooting, shooting, shooting. Oh, good. We got that. In the edit, and every once in a while, I’d come and sit in on edits and just, you know, see how it worked. Not as a co producer, but just but just as a fan of the production. And in the edit, they realized this whole song about Boober not having his hat, Boober was wearing his hat!

ALI: Oh god.

JOE: Oh, no!

ALI: Oh god. Oh god.

KAREN: Because we shoot it out of order and it’s chaos and everybody’s used to seeing Boober with this hat on. And we sung the song and it’s Boober looking the way everybody knows Boober looks and who knows what order we shot in and whatever. Didn’t discover it until the edit. It’s like, no way. No way. We’d moved on to the next show. That was back when we shot it one week. We edited it the next week. You know, in two weeks, the show was done. It’s locked. And it’s like, [groans] can’t do anything. And just the last shot of the song, they finish the song. And again, shot out of order, Boober does not have his hat on and it’s like, “Here, Boober, here’s your hat.”

JOE: Oh, no. Is that how it is in the final episode? Is that the one that was released?

KAREN: Yeah!

JOE: Wow, I’ll have to go back and look.

KAREN: And there you go. Nobody caught it.

JOE: Never noticed.

KAREN: Because the fraggles believe in it and selling it and the song is selling it. And every time I tell someone that story, people are like, “I never noticed.”

JOE: Now, what’s funny about this, too, is earlier in this season there was, I don’t know, I’m trying to remember which episode it was. One of the episodes, Boober’s wearing a different hat because he’s– Oh, it’s the one where he’s got a chef’s hat on. He’s doing a whole like radish festival for everybody and later in the episode, he’s wearing like a party hat. And then there’s a couple scenes where he’s not wearing his hat.

And so I asked the question, is this the first episode in which Boober never wears his trademark brown hat? And, you know, of course, we don’t remember off the tops of our heads, but we kind of realized like, I think it is the first time. And, you know, Jurgen checked his notes and he’s like, yeah, it says here in the notes, “no hat.” Like, we deliberately did not have him wearing his hat. 

And that was something that I noticed. In that episode, I noticed. “Oh, interesting. He’s not wearing his hat.” But in the original Fraggle Rock didn’t occur to me. And the song’s about his hat. The episode was about him not having his hat.

KAREN: You know, the shop people were amazing on the original. And they were working so hard and everybody was on top of things, but shooting late and again, shooting practically. And it’s all going to work in camera and crowds of people and shooting out of order. It’s just, it just happened. It’s not anybody’s fault. And the awesome thing is nobody caught it and it didn’t affect people’s enjoyment of the show or the song.

JOE: Yep.

KAREN: And now, you know, 40 years have passed, we can kind of let people in on that. But yeah, Jurgen, he’s the man with the plan. He’s got his lists with the props and the state of hair, costumes, everything. And, as well as our props because we got a lot of people just on top of that because we are shooting, the way we’re shooting in blocks now, we’re shooting, what, two, three, four episodes at a time, out of order. Like everything in the great hall for three or four episodes. And so they got to stay on top of that. So I’m not aware of anything in this season.

JOE: Nothing I’ve noticed so far. So you’re all doing good.

KAREN: Yeah, yeah.

JOE: Yeah. And if I don’t notice, then it doesn’t matter. It’s fine.

KAREN: Of course, this version of his song was not about that at all, but that’s just kind of my, that’s why I remember that song because it was a big, [gasps] There’s nothing we can do. [laughs]

JOE: Yep. It’s too late.

KAREN: There’s nothing we can do. We have to move on. Aaah.

KAREN: Talk about letting it go. Yeah.

ALI: Never noticed it. None of us noticed.

KAREN: See? See? It worked.

JOE: Great.

KAREN: We sold the idea. Just hope the idea works and everybody goes with it. And they did. So, there you go.

JOE: Wow. Incredible. So, in this version of You Can’t– Excuse me, of the “Lost and Found” song, everyone’s working together to clean up the colder boulders. They’re doing like a fireman drill. Like everyone’s passing them one person to the next. They’re reopening the cave. The gusties are coming back in.

The best visual to me about this is that Boober and some of the other fraggles are using their tail glows to help them see. And it’s just such a cool visual just to see those little spots of color from the tails and a great reminder about a great episode from the first season and a great reminder that we as the audience now know, that you all as the producers didn’t forget that this is a part of Boober’s character and a part of Fraggle lore, that there are these glowing tails. 

KAREN: Yeah.

JOE: And Red admits that she might just have to be a little bit uncomfortable with these gusties to avoid messing with the ecosystem. Like that’s a fair trade off. But they worked up quite a sweat moving all these boulders. So they’re going to go cool off in the pond. But who’s in the pond? It’s Grizzard.

KAREN: Yes.

JOE: And Grizzard has been in the pond the entire time and they’re all wrinkly. How did you pull off this wrinkly Grizzard?

KAREN: I think they made, because the Grizzard was from 40 years ago.

JOE: Sure.

KAREN: So I think they made, I think they made two new ones. One, that could go in the water and then one with the wrinkled body just for that gag.

JOE: Wow.

KAREN: Just that one time gag of being in the water. Of course, now that we have a water Grizzard and then they can go in the water every once in a while. But, yeah, the wrinkly one was just so, so hilarious. Again, that was one thing, it was just like a gag in this script. It was like really? How’s that going to… oh my God. It’s awesome.

JOE: It looks great. Yep.

KAREN: You know, when they showed up with the final thing. It was just, you know, that’s how much people are just excited about these fun ideas and these creatively challenging concepts. Do we got time to do this? Let’s go for it. Boom. And they just jump in there. [laughs]

JOE: Yeah. Ali, did you notice the inkspots in the background of this scene?

ALI: Oh, yeah. Actually, rewatching this, what kind of blew my mind most, because I remembered on set, was the awesome choreography of all those moments of the passing of the colder boulders.

JOE: Yeah.

ALI: It was really cool choreography. We had, you know, the puppeteers on each puppet, moving from side to side, but also other puppeteers holding the boulders on rods to help pass it from hand to hand. It was just, it was a lot of choreography going on. And I mean, any song where I get to see Gobol play the guitar, I’m a happy guy.

JOE: Oh yeah.

[Karen laughs]

ALI: I don’t care what it is, I love watching Gobo play his guitar. It just makes me so happy. And he’s so cute and funny at the beginning of it. How he just swoops in with his guitar.

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: Yes.

ALI: Yeah, there was a lot of choreography in that tune.

JOE: Yeah. Thank you for mentioning.

KAREN: And so those boulders had, they had their lights. They had tubes with the smoke. So there was a line of several people with all the wired up boulders. They were just going down the row. And we were just standing there with, and we had assistants that were operating both hands. So that, you know, as someone passed on a boulder, you’d wrap your hands around it, pass it on. And so the main puppeteers, we were just doing the heads. Our assistants were doing the boulders and then the boulder people. So it was like this big line of choreography trying to get all the passing to work. Again, really tricky to do practically. But I’m so glad we did.

JOE: Yeah. No, it looks great. And yeah, again, like it’s the kind of thing where we as the audience do not think about how much work it takes to pull off something that looks so simple. But when you need two people on each fraggle, one person on each boulder, going to the beats, the choreography, not stepping on feet, you know, not knocking into people, all looking at monitors. I can’t wrap my brain around it. I don’t know how you guys do it.

[Karen laughs]

ALI: When it works it feels so good.

JOE: Oh, I bet.

KAREN: Yeah.

JOE: I bet it does.

KAREN:  Yeah.

JOE: How does it feel when it doesn’t work? [laughs]

ALI: It’s mostly funny. When you see just like, it passes really well and it passes really when. And then one is just floating. One boulder is just floating in the air.

JOE: Yeah, there it goes. That was the weightless colder boulder.

ALI: That’s right.

JOE: You didn’t know that one of them was actually filled with helium.

ALI: That one was being controlled by Icy Joe’s mind. That boulder.

JOE: That’s right.

KAREN: Yes. Yes.

JOE: I love it.

KAREN: (in voice of Icy Joe) Controlling it with my mind. Ooh.

JOE: Yeah, it’s continuity now. Yeah, we’re calling it, that she really does have TK powers. It’s done. So did you notice the inkspots that were behind the Grizzard in the Grizzard scene?

ALI: Oh my God. Were they just being ridiculous again?

JOE: They were. I was hoping…

ALI: I don’t remember.

JOE: I was hoping that you might have actually known what they were doing. Okay. So there’s two inkspots back there.

ALI: Okay.

JOE: And I’m sure there’s like story that we didn’t get on screen because they’re, the puppeteers, whoever it is, is just having a good time. So the first shot is they’re both holding little cups and they kind of clink them together like they’re going “cheers.” And then the camera cuts away and then the camera comes back. And one of them is lying on his back. And I can’t tell if he’s like on the rock or he’s supposed to be floating in the water. If the water line even goes up that high.

I’m gonna leave it up to everyone else to decide what was in that beverage or what they were doing. But it’s like there’s a whole story going on back there with those inkspots.

KAREN: [laughs] (in normal voice) I missed that. I’ll have to go back and look what’s going on back there. [laughs] Oh my gosh.

JOE: I just love it.

ALI: I would pay to watch them do dishes. Like I don’t care what they do.

JOE: Yes, absolutely. The inkspots are my favorite. And this is the gift to me of now on my like third rewatch of this season. And it’s like, okay, I know what the Fraggle Five are doing. I know what’s happening in the foreground. I don’t need to stare at that. I can look. What’s happening up there. What’s in the corner? What’s that guy doing? Who’s that weird looking fraggle?

And I can kind of start to put things together. Or at least like put myself in the shoes of the puppeteers who are back there being like, “No one’s ever going to see this. But let’s have a little bit of fun.”

KAREN: Mmhmm.

JOE: I love it. I love it.

KAREN: Yep.

ALI: Actually, there’s one, I mean, I think you would find this fascinating as a puppet nerd, but out of, they’re the original puppets, the inkspots. And there’s one inkspot that inside the palette, there’s actually like a break. It’s broken inside the top palette.

JOE: Oh.

ALI: But in any other world, you’re going to go, oh my god. It’s broken. Whatever. I got to get it fixed. But what’s really cool is because it’s broken on top, you can bend it in this weird way to get this very goofy expression.

KAREN: Oooh.

ALI: This one special, this one broken, I guess, inkspot can do something that the others can’t.

JOE: Ooooh.

KAREN: Aaah.

JOE: I’ll have to look for that one. I love it.

ALI: Yeah we would always try to get that one.

JOE: That’s fun.

KAREN: Oh, yeah, they refurbished them but they tried to retain as much of the original as possible. But we’re just using them more and more. They’re just so fun and so handy. And so they just get a lot of use. So just even, you know, newer parts, just the fact that they’re used so much and people are having so much fun with them, things like that can happen. But hey, if it adds to it, you know, great! Have fun with it.

JOE: Yeah, really.

ALI: Karen, who built the inkspots?

KAREN: Oh, gosh, that’s a good question. Because they were built for the Begoony show. And they performed an Ink Spots style song. That’s where they got their kind of, their production name. And I cannot remember. They were the kind of thing that might have been such a last minute idea that they might have been built in Toronto rather than built in New York and then sent to Toronto.

So might have been just a little bit of everybody. I do remember seeing the awesome Michael Frith drawings of what they’d look like. As far as like one main puppet builder in charge of that. I don’t know. I don’t know. Be good to find out.

JOE: I’m checking the wiki to see if it had any information and no. Just what you said, Michael Frith design. But yeah, but no builder listed.

KAREN: Yeah.

JOE: Well, that’s a mystery. We’ll get to the bottom of it.

ALI: Yeah, to the end of that being built by a whole bunch of people. That’s kind of cool.

JOE: Yeah.

KAREN: Yeah. Yeah.

JOE: We will end this episode pretty much with a Junior Gorg and Ma. They’ve built this elaborate machine for Pa Gorg. And it’s like sending the strawberries down from the top of the tower and through this whole mechanism and then shooting them at Pa so that he doesn’t have to sit up to pick a strawberry. And of course everything goes to pot. It does not work at all. And it would just be easier to not have to deal with all that.

And what’s interesting to me about this, first of all, a great set piece that the I don’t know if it’s the props people or who, that built this like windmill-looking thing for the strawberries. But earlier in the episode we see the Doozers with something kind of similar where it will help them, you know, they pick the strawberries and then it packages them and sets it up for distribution and all that other stuff.

And it seems like we’ve got two examples in this episode of elaborate machines that are in a way making life easier. One of which is a great idea and one of them is an absolutely terrible idea. I don’t know if that was deliberate or not. Or if I’m just looking too far into it because that’s everything that the Doozers do is an elaborate machine that makes life easier.

KAREN: Yeah, yeah.

JOE: Any thoughts on that?

KAREN: Well, certainly the Gorg version was like a Gorg-sized representation of what Red was doing is building upon supposedly solving a problem and taking control of the situation. Although Pa’s solution is to have Ma and Junior do the actual work. At least Red, when she has an idea, she gets out and does it herself. And her problem being that she didn’t tell anybody else about it. And so she gets everybody to help her.

Yeah, the Gorg’s just, it was so amazing. It was this giant, practical thing with the wheel and the pulleys and everything. It’s just amazing. Another example of just how excited the prop and the set and the Doozer people are, just about bringing these things to life. Making them practical because with so many of these folks, they really get to do things that they may not normally do in their work.

So they just get to have fun. And it’s a challenge and it’s sometimes tricky making it all work. But they just take great joy and satisfaction. And doing a beautiful job building it to work well but represent something that is in the context of the story of the show a bad idea that does not work well. [laughs]

JOE: Sure yeah. Yeah.

[Ali laughs]

KAREN: Yep. Yeah.

JOE: Well that brings us to the end of this episode of Back to the Rock. Before we go, I have an important question to ask each of you. How do you, Ali and Karen, plan to make this world a little fragglier?

ALI: First things that come to mind for me are just keeping grounded inside of the idea of kindness and respect towards everybody around me. And I think staying inclusive and trying to be positive. And shining your light and trying to instill that in whatever work comes my way in future and what the things that I’m putting myself into now.

And those were the themes of Jim Henson’s creations growing up that got me through a lot of hard things in my life. And I’m so grateful for that space growing up. So I think it’s to carry all those ideas with me that brought me through. And to keep putting them into things that I make for kids.

And I guess to keep playing. Keep playing.

KAREN: Yes.

JOE: Very important. Yeah. 

KAREN: Oh, Ali, that’s beautifully said. Thank you so much for that.

ALI: Thank you, Karen.

KAREN: Oh gosh. Well, there are definitely big needs. But trying to listen and understand where the people are coming from. What their needs are. Making them think and feel. And just understand that we’re all connected. We’re all in this together. So just trying to keep that in mind with interactions with people. And trying, through things like working on Fraggle Rock, just to keep reminding people of that. And inspiring the next generation to realize it’s an important message to sing and shouting and singing from the rooftops and be willing to deal with tough challenges trying to be open and understanding and respectful.

And just being aware of that precious, precious connection we all have to each other. It’s hard work. It can be scary but it’s worth doing.

JOE: Beautiful.

ALI: Karen, you’re the best. [laughs] You are a hero, my friend.

JOE: Thank you both. Ali Eisner, Karen Prell for being here. It was such a joy to get to spend this time with you. It was such a joy to really delve into all things Fraggle Rock with you. And thank you for all that you put into this really remarkable, beautiful show.

It’s so important for so many different reasons. And I think we’re all feeling it right now. That everyone needs to see it. Everyone needs to feel it. Everyone needs to learn from it. And you’re both bringing something really special and unique to it. That Fraggle Rock would not be Fraggle Rock without each of you. So thank you so much for everything and thank you for being here.

ALI: Thank you.

KAREN: Thank you, Joe. Thank you for this awesome opportunity to share this, to talk about this with Ali. Just this shared experience and to relive it and celebrate it all over again. So I really, really appreciate it so much.

JOE: Of course.

ALI: Thank you ToughPigs.

KAREN: Thank you!

ALI: Thank you, ToughPigs for creating ways to get to know puppeteers better and celebrate all the work of Jim Henson and all the people following in his footsteps.

JOE: That’s what we do. That’s what we’re here for.

ALI: Right on.

KAREN: Woohoo! [laughs]

[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]