Here's Where You Can Watch Pee-Wee's Playhouse

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In the opening of the 1986 Saturday morning children's show "Pee-wee's Playhouse," a stop-motion animated beaver casually chewed through a tree somewhere out in the middle of the woods. On the tree was an arrow pointing to the location of Pee-wee's Playhouse, located somewhere deep within the fauna-infested biome. The tree falls, and the arrow points up to the sky. Pee-wee's Playhouse is now symbolically located above. It is a state of mind. The camera pushes through the woods while Mark Mothersbaugh-composed music — evoking the Exotica-inflected strains of Martin Denny or Les Baxter — serenades the audience. The camera pans up a cliffside and there, like Shelley's Ozymandias, stands the Playhouse, a curious, multi-leveled edifice that escaped from the skull of a sugared-up five-year-old child, fully formed. The benevolent lord of this manor, Pee-Wee, appears briefly to chuckle — either wisely amused or fecklessly unconcerned — at the surreal wonders you are about to witness. A voice whispers. The world smiles.

Then chaos breaks out. The door to the Playhouse opens, Pee-wee enters, and the id is unleashed. A squeaky voice (Cyndi Lauper doing her best Mae Questel imitation) croons that this is a place for action, activity, and overstimulation. This is a place of madness. Beautiful, beautiful madness. The world crinkles and warps, sandpapering the brain. Our deity, Pee-wee, will bestow laws, secret words, magical wishes, and a childlike understanding of the universe. Thirty minutes later, one exits, unsure of what they witnessed, but knowing it was a taste of the Truth.

For five seasons, "Pee-wee's Playhouse" dominated Saturday morning. After it went off the air, screenings were rare. It wasn't until 1996 that the series finally hit VHS. 

In the age of streaming, the wonders of the Playhouse can now be found again.