Pee-wee's Playhouse
11 tonight
Cartoon Network
Now 15 years after Paul Reubens' madcap “kids” show went off the air, the CN is giving Pee-wee's Playhouse new life as part of its Adult Swim lineup. And the premiere episode, “Ice Cream Soup,” features an actual adult swim! Poofy-haired Miss Yvonne (Lynne Marie Stewart) declines Pee-wee's offer to go swimming—until she spies a hunky, shirtless lifeguard flexing next to the Playhouse pool. She then rips off her poofy purple dress to reveal an identically colored early '60s style swimsuit. Like we initially hinted, a “kids” show this really isn't. The great thing about this first episode is it established all the the recurring characters, including Miss Yvonne and actors who'd go on to greater fame (Laurence Fishburne as Cowboy Curtis, Phil Hartman as Capt. Carl), and one who brought some level of fame with him (Blacula's William Marshall as the King of Cartoons). You probably remember Reubens more these days for his 1991 indecent exposure bust in Florida (we prefer to remember him more for his great turn in the vastly underrated film Blow), so you've probably forgotten that Pee-wee's Playhouse actually racked up Emmys for CBS once upon a time, and it turned its star into a worldwide sensation. As CN begins airing all 45 original episodes, we get to discover why it was so great all over again.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.