Warming Up to the New "Electric Company"

Back in the days before You Tube and widespread DVDification of classic television shows, “The Electric Company” was my 1970’s-nostalgia white whale. I loved my “Rhoda” re-runs on Nick and Nite and retro talk-show performances by the likes of John Lennon or Jefferson Airplane on VH1, but my beloved “Electric Company” was nowhere to be found. Even my fellow pop culture geeks seemed woefully indifferent to the series, although occasionally I’d find someone who’d fondly remember Paul the Gorilla or that “C + AT = CAT” soft shoe silhouette sketch.

Why did I miss that show so much? There was the childhood nostalgia factor, yes, but mostly it was just plain fun. They had an excellent ensemble that included Morgan Freeman, Rita Moreno, and a group of refreshingly non-cloying kids performing jubilant educational numbers in a variety of genres; not to mention the Schoolhouse Rockish animated pieces about double L’s and the -tion suffix. And that groovy 1970’s fashion . . . what more could you want?

So, when PBS launched an updated version of “The Electric Company” earlier this year, my whole family gathered around the TV set like it was the moon landing or something. But about ten minutes in, Little Girl had wandered off to other pursuits and The Boy was begging us to change the channel. We complied. It was pretty clear that the show was too advanced and talky for the kids. No surprises there. And, while I wasn’t expecting afros or retro-groovy music or anything, I was still a little disappointed by how far off the mark it seemed from the “Electric Company” of my youth.

The production was just a little too slick; the performers were just a little too cool. The cheese factor of the original show appeared to be missing. It was more like one of those tweeny Disney sitcoms, which, I suppose, was exactly what its producers intended. I couldn’t help but remember the Poochie episode from “The Simpsons,” when Bart and Lisa’s favorite cartoon show adds a synthetically edgy new character in an attempt to improve its ratings. (It’s worth noting that in the DVD commentary for that episode, they discuss how young children love that Poochie character unironically and wish he were still on “The Simpsons.”)

I would have been content to shrug it off, change the channel, and never give the new “Electric Company” another thought. But this month our local PBS station went and shoved it into the weekdays-at-5:30-right-after-“Curious-George”-so-mom-can-make-dinner-in-relative-peace slot, replacing The Boy’s beloved “Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman.” The Boy was disappointed, but he was most insistent about giving “The Electric Company” another try. So, we did.

This time around, both kids are really enjoying the show. Little Girl is only two-and-a-half, but she sings along with the theme song (and keeps singing it straight through the first few scenes), while The Boy loves the high-tech wordalicious high-jinks. From the beginning, I had to grudgingly acknowledge that at least it’s edu-ma-cational. The new show is up on the latest literacy research, and since he’s been watching it The Boy’s interest in reading words has noticeably peaked. Suddenly he gets that groups of letters make different sounds and has started recognizing them in printed words that happen to cross his path. (Maybe they’re working on this in kindergarten already, but it’s only the third week.)

Initially this new version looked so different from the original, I wondered why they even bothered slapping the old title on it. But the more you watch it, and especially when you look at clips from the original show, you can see how they really tried to infuse the old spirit of the original “Electric Company.”

While the original show featured superhero shorts like Spiderman and the amazing Letterman (with embarrassingly un-PC turbaned villain The Spellbinder, who I believe has gone on to work with Glenn Beck), the new “Electric Company” brings the superhero/villain paradigm to the forefront. Among the multi-culti, word-loving cool kids, there are heroes and “pranksters,” battling each other with their mad word skillz in a high school context. Kind of like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” with phonics. The opening theme song is still preceded with that Rita-Moreno style shout of “Hey You Guys!” Except now, “Hey You Guys” is like the Bat Signal, summoning the superheroes to brainstorm solutions to the pranksters’ latest spelling-related mischief.

Some of the plotlines seem incongruously tweenish, considering the show’s audience is supposed to be children who are first learning to read. On a recent episode, for example, mean girl prankster Francine spreads false rumors about hero Hector on her blog. I’m sure my kids will need to learn about mean friends, e-harassment, and blogs someday, but this seems a little soon. I’d suggest that the original “Electric Company” was more innocent, but you can’t really argue that there’s anything innocent about Morgan Freeman dressed as Dracula taking a bath in a casket.

One thing I definitely miss about the old show is the variety of musical and theatrical genres. Maybe my reluctance to embrace the new show’s hip-hop context says more about my age and relative momishness, but I think there’s more to it than that. When the original “Electric Company” did parodies of American Bandstand, vaudeville, film noir, Tarzan movies, and Shaft, I’m sure the joke was entirely lost on us kids. Still, those references somehow managed to fill in the missing zeitgeist, giving us a rudimentary working knowledge of pop culture history that might have otherwise eluded us. And, okay, working familiarity with vaudeville is less important than learning to read. But still.

Bottom line? I still like the old one better. But there’s a lot of value in the new one, too. I might not personally care for the new show’s “Poochie” treatment, but I have to acknowledge it’s important for educational shows to be relevant and appealing to their audience. Since I already know how to read, it shouldn’t really matter which version of the show I prefer, should it? Might as well step aside and let the edu-tainment commence. At least the new show still has Paul the Gorilla and the silhouette bit.

You be the judge:

Classic “Silent E” song:

New “Silent E” song: