Death in Fraggle Rock (Fraggle Rock “Gone But Not Forgotten” Review)
Originally posted to YouTube on Nov. 24, 2023.
Do puppets count as animation? I’m going to say they do. Animation, by its very definition, is taking inanimate objects and giving them the illusion that they’re living. Puppetry takes felt puppets and makes them look like they’re living and talking. Therefore, puppetry is a form of animation.
Also, it gives me an excuse to talk about Fraggle Rock. Because I really want to talk about Fraggle Rock.
(This is, uh, going to be another personal episode for me.)
So, Fraggle Rock. Of the three big Muppet franchises made by Jim Henson during his lifetime, including the Muppets and Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock is the most severely underrated. Both the Muppets and Sesame Street are still going strong to this day. Fraggle Rock, not so much.
Yes, I know they have a new series on Apple TV. But then, who has a subscription to Apple TV? Who’s even heard of Apple TV?
It’s a real shame that Fraggle Rock hasn’t remained as big as Jim Henson’s other properties, as it was a real ambitious show on his part. If Sesame Street focused on teaching children basic skills like reading and counting, Fraggle Rock focused on teaching them interpersonal skills like sharing, cooperation, and empathy.
Like I said, it was a real ambitious show for Jim Henson. He wanted to make a show that could, as he said, change the world and end the war.
Coincidentally, the show premiered in the Soviet Union in 1989, making it the first American children’s show to air there. A few months later, the Berlin Wall was torn down in East Germany, and a few years after that, the Soviet Union would collapse.
Did Fraggle Rock help end the Cold War? Eh, not really. But can you blame fans for claiming it did?
Fraggle Rock was a children’s show truly ahead of its time that touched on big topics like interpersonal relationships, environmentalism, and even death.
That’s the topic of the episode I’ll be discussing today. This is episode 7 of season 5, “Gone But Not Forgotten.”
Before we begin, a little side note. Normally, these episodes have a side plot involving Doc and his dog Sprocket. For the sake of time, I won’t be discussing that side plot. I want to focus on the meat and potatoes of this episode…or rather, the peaches and pepper potage.
This episode begins with Wembley Fraggle going on a camping trip all by himself. I’m sure this will lead to nothing bad happening.
(Oh, look, something bad happened!)
Wembley ends up falling down a hole where he’s rescued by Mudwell the Mudbunny, an extremely rare creature that no other Fraggle has seen before because his type is so rare. Mudwell nurses the injured Wembley back to health, and as he does so, he sings a little song to himself:
Feel the water flowing.
Feel it coming, feel it going,
In the river, in the rain or in the sky.One day it’s an ocean.
One day ice in motion.
One day it’s a tear drop in your eye.Once I wasn’t here,
And then I suddenly appeared,
And now I seem to be at home in earth and air.Just like water flowing,
I know where I’m going.
Look beneath your boots and I’ll be there.It’s just a dream away.
You’ve got to leave to stay.
We’ll meet again someday,
Just a dream away.
“Just a Dream Away” is a very sentimental song that does an excellent job of not only conveying the episode’s theme of death and rebirth and learning to accept loss, but also foreshadows Mudwell’s eventually fate.
If you really think about the lyrics, its a very deep message. When you think about it, life is quite the curious miracle.
We live in a universe that started billions of years ago from a literal big bang. Then, millions of years later, the debris from that explosion formed together to create our planet, which just so happened to become positioned in just the right place in our great big universe to sustain a breathable atmosphere and liquid water, thus allowing biological life to originate. That biological life started as simple cells then evolved into more complex biological lifeforms until that chain of evolutionary succession led to our human race.
And as for our own individual lives, each of us were born into this world with the gift of consciousness, allowing us the opportunity, if not the privilege, to better appreciate our world, our universe, through our external senses and process all that through our mental capabilities. But eventually, we’ll all be robbed of that gift of consciousness. Inevitably, we’re all fated to pass away and return to the dust we sprang forth from. When you get right down to it, that we have such a limited time frame to personally experience this world for ourselves is quite the miracle.
Whether you consider it an act of God or the result of scientific principles, our lives are a miracle. Our life is a miracle. And its up to all of us to use that miraculous gift to the best of our ability, and that’s best achieved by experiencing that gift with others through our connections and relations with one another.
But that’s an extremely existential digression.
Returning to the episode, Wembley quickly becomes good friends with Mudwell and discovers that they have quite a lot in common. They like the same music. They like the same food. They even like the same games.
To Wembley, this is a start of a beautiful friendship; unfortunately, as we soon learn, it won’t be a friendship that lasts long.
The next day, while Wembley eagerly awaits spending more time with his new friend, Mudwell arrives with a shocking shift in his attitude.
Feeling confused and dejected, Wembley returns home to Fraggle Rock and mopes. The other Fraggles soon learn what happened, and they encourage him to return to Mudwell and confront him about the way he acted.
When Wembley goes back to Mudwell and asks him why he pushed him away, Mudwell is forced to tell him the truth. Turns out Mudbunnies are so extremely rare because have an extremely short lifespan, and as Mudwell’s own short life was coming close to its end, he wanted to spare Wembley’s feelings when he eventually went away.
The time eventually comes. Mudwell bids his new friend a fond farewell and lays down to return to the mud from whence he came. Wembley watches as his new friend passes away before his very eyes.
Death is not an unfamiliar subject with the Muppets. A few years before this episode, in 1983, Will Lee, the actor who played Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street, passed away. Most other shows would have written his character out of the show or recast him with another actor. Instead, the Sesame Street crew decided to use his passing as an opportunity to teach their younger viewers about death. That decision led to the creation of the episode, “Farewell, Mr. Hooper”, which featured one of the most iconic moments of the series where Big Bird learns about death.
A few years later, in 1990, the Muppet crew would utilize their experience with discussing death in “The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson”, an hour-long TV special created in tribute to their beloved leader, who had tragically and unexpectedly passed away due to complications from pneumonia earlier that year.
But what makes this particular episode of Fraggle Rock special is the type of death it chooses to depict. When most other children’s media discuss death, it usually involves the death of a pet or an older relative, as those are the types of death young children more commonly experience.
Here, the episode tackles the death of a peer, the type of death which is less common but can feel just as devastating, if not more so. After all, both pets and older people are expected to pass away, what with animals having shorter lifespans and older people reaching the end of the own.
The death of a peer, on the other hand, especially of a young child, is much more unexpected and traumatic. After all, younger people aren’t supposed to die. They’re supposed to grow up and live long enough to die of old age. So their passing is especially tragic.
To my knowledge, I can only think of two other pieces of media that managed to tackle this subject: the 1991 movie My Girl and The Bridge to Terabithia, both the 1977 novel and its subsequent adaptations.
What makes this episode of Fraggle Rock so successful in tackling its subject matter is the heart-felled performance involving Mudwell the Mudbunny, which is due in part to the puppeteer behind the character, Richard Hunt.
Richard Hunt was the puppeteer behind many iconic Muppet characters, including Scooter, Statler, Janice, and Beaker. He was also a gay man living in a time when most LGBT people had to keep their sexual identity a secret from the mainstream public. He also lived during the AIDS epidemic, a time when many people in the LGBT community met their untimely demise, mostly due to prejudice and negligence from government officials.
Richard Hunt himself witnessed the deaths of many of his close friends, including his own boyfriend. Undoubtedly, that experience dealing with the loss of countless loved ones, all killed during the prime of their lives due to societal and systemic bigotry, was drawn upon in his performance of Mudwell.
By the way, a lot of this information I learned from this excellent video essay “Richard Hunt: The Gay Man Behind the Muppets” by Matt Baume. I highly recommend watching that video. Its very informative about Richard Hunt’s life and career, especially about this particular episode.
A few years later, in 1992, Richard Hunt would pass away due to complications with HIV. Like with Jim Henson, I truly believe his was also a talented soul who passed away far too soon.
As for Mudwell, while this episode was the first and last for his character, it would not be the last time for his puppet, as it would make a brief cameo in another episode, albeit as an obviously different mudbunny. His puppet would also be re-used in other Muppet projects like A Muppet’s Christmas Carol and Muppet’s Treasure Island.
Anyway, back in this episode, Wembley returns to Fraggle Rock to mourn his loss. The other Fraggles try to cheer him up with various coping methods: screaming into a blanket, performing poetry and interpretive dance, even receiving advice from an older, wiser Fraggle.
Gobo then tells Wembley a story about how he overcame a similar loss. A long time ago, he lost a pet crab which left behind its nest. He still keeps that nest to this day to help remember it.
Wembley returns to Mudwell’s resting place to discover that his body and the surrounding mud had dried away. From his body emerges a new creature, which Wembley quickly befriends. The two of them end up connecting over a little familiar song that Wembley remembers.
So, the episode ends with Wembley bonding with a new friend over the memory of his old friend, and thus he helps keep alive the memory of his old friend by learning to share it with others, and, by doing so, creating memories that those loved ones can share with others themselves.
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J.C. Alexandre 