Pee Wee's Playhouse Returns to Television Courtesy of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim

Meka leka hi, meka hiney ho.

Watch Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network? Recently it was announced that, in part due to the high ratings its reruns receive on the late night segment, new episodes of Futurama will begin production. Could a similar resurrection be in the works for Pee Wee’s Playhouse?

Pee Wee Herman’s landmark 1980’s Saturday morning TV show joined the lineup of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim in mid-July. Pee Wee Herman, as portrayed by Paul Reubens, was a nerd extraordinaire, the successor to Andy Kaufman’s Foreign Man and the precursor to Jaleel White’s Steve Urkel. (In fact, the whole idea of the playhouse came from Andy Kaufman and Bob Zmuda, but Kaufman died before he could make it a reality and the story goes that Reubens got permission to do it while Kaufman was on his deathbed.) 

Pee Wee Herman first came to attention in the comedy club circuit in the early 80s before making a huge splash on the big screen first with Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and then, to a lesser extent, with Big Top Pee Wee. Following those successes, Pee Wee became a permanent fixture on Saturday morning TV. Even more importantly, Pee Wee’s Playhouse became one of the most taped shows of all time, his early morning weekend time slot making it a necessity for his college-aged fans to actually purchase a VCR.

Pee Wee’s Playhouse came to an abrupt end following Paul Reubens’ arrest for lewd behavior inside a porno theater in Florida. In all honesty, however, the nerdy alter ego and the not-ready-for-Saturday-morning actor who played him didn’t have all that much of a difference between them. Anyone who was lucky enough to see the original Pee Wee’s Playhouse performed on stage in Los Angeles, or to see the video edition that was a staple during HBO’s earlier and edgier days was hardly surprised to find that Paul Reubens had a somewhat darker side to him than most people imagined.