Television Review: THE LETTER PEOPLE, EPISODE 23- MEET MR. G (1974, Thomas McDonough)

I've decided to skip ahead a bit in this ongoing retrospective to THE LETTER PEOPLE: EPISODE 23, which contains the 18th letter person to be introduced- Mr. G. One of my all-time favorites, Mr. G and his gooey gum have been series regulars in my nightmares to this very day, and I, for one, am proud to call him 'friend.' The sleazy announcer, as always, does his best to make the letter at hand sound as unsavory as possible (...meet Mister Geeeieeee....), and we're off–

Episode 23: Meet Mr. G.
Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 15 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Written by Gayle Waxman, puppets and sets by King Hall.


We begin with a quandary– Gordon the Green Grocer discovers that all of his good green grapes are gone (grabbed by some ghoulish galoot), and he is reassured by a trembling Mr. M who's wearing a goofy sideways ballcap for no apparent reason. (Perhaps he's trying to cover up that terrifying toupée?)

Mr. M desired said grapes for some kind of a creepy solo picnic, and he does his best to make Gordon the Green Grocer feel better, but Gordon is inconsolable. As the trembling continues, it becomes unclear if Gordon is simply frightened or suffering from a bout of the DTs. Regardless, Mr. M is assuredly not the ideal companion in such a situation.

Mr. M- the apotheosis of restraint.

Thankfully, the snooty Miss U appears to relieve the tension, but none of the three can make heads or tails of how best to recover the purloined grapes. Suddenly- an eerie, dissonant jingle reverberates from beyond the wilds of Letter People Land. An ominous portent of things to come, delivered by xylophone, bass, and guitar... It's Mr. G.

(sung)
I'm grouchy.
My gorgeous gooey gum is getting stuck all over the place.
Gooey, gummy, I am Mr. G.
Golly, my gooey gum got stuck on the garden gate.
(errrrrrrsssssssshhhhhwinnnnkkkkkk.....POP!!!)
Good, now I can go again.
Goodness, gracious, I am Mr. G.
Oh grasshoppers, my gooey gum just got stuck in the green grass.
(errrrrrrsssssssshhhhhwinnnnkkkkkk.....POP!!!)
Good, now I can go again.
Great Scott, grapefruit, I am Mr. G.
Oh goose feathers, my gooey gum just got stuck in the garbage can by the garage.
(errrrrrrsssssssshhhhhwinnnnkkkkkk.....POP!!!)
Good, now I can go again.
Gooey, gummy, goodness, gracious, Great Scott, grapefruit, gee.
I got stuck again.
(errrrrrrsssssssshhhhhwinnnnkkkkkk.....POP!!!)
I'm Mr. G,
I've got gooey gum all over me.

Now you can watch it all here, but it's really quite unnverving, so I must warn you in advance. Mr. G is kind of a purple, hunched-over ghost whose hands- like many a letter person's- seem to work independently of his brain, flitting here and there, playing with random fabric, or swooping up to accentuate words that aren't actually being said.

Atop Mr. G's head is a crown constructed from a bounty of gum. One large piece in particular, however, resembles the hilt of a black switchblade- no, Mr. G is not to be trifled with. What lies behind those googly, vigorous eyes? Benevolence? Malevolence? It's not immediately clear. His teeth are equally off-putting, cut from the same cloth as Mr. T's ginormous chompers- and lolling about within his gaping maw, like a rigid tongue, is yet another (still packaged) stick of gum. To top it off, Mr. G is generously garnished from head to toe with gooey, pre-masticated gum, which means he has a frightening proclivity toward getting stuck on anything and anyone who crosses his path.

Furthermore, his singing voice resembles that of a nefarious English professor, yet his speaking voice is straightfoward and heroic. This juxtaposition of deliberate, measured villainy and all-American straight talk makes his mere presence all the more disquieting. Not to mention his propensity for the phrase, "Oh, Grasshoppers!"

So Mr. G, Miss U, Mr. M, and Gordon get to gabbing about the glorious green grapes which are, for lack of a better word, gone. There's a lot of talk about this gallivanting ghost who loves all things "G" and lives in a greasy old garage- he's the culprit. Now I assumed at first that Mr. G was somehow the actual culprit because HE IS A GHOST WHO LOVES ALL THINGS "G." Is that such a ridiculous conclusion to draw? I don't think so. But I have to tell you that he's not the thief... It's another G-luvin' ghost named 'Godfrey.' Of course, this begs the question of whether or not Mr. G is in fact intended to be a ghost or if he is simply some regular dude who happens to look like a ghost because he has lathered, bedaubed, and encrusted himself in several layers of chewed-up gum and saliva, which is actually way scarier than a ghost, conceptually, so I'll keep pretending that he's a ghost, even if he's not. You may debate this in the comments section.


Anyway, the gang heads out to Godfrey the Ghost's greasy, grubby, grimy garage in the hopes of getting back the good green grapes. Godfrey sounds a lot like "(Gol-ly, Golly!") Jim Nabors, in yet another one of the Letter People's many celebrity references.

Mr. G proves himself to easily be the most headstrong, assertive letter person, and he commences to tell the ghost what's what. This scene in Godfrey's garage goes on for, oh, about ten minutes (you can watch most of it here), and for every excruciating second of its duration, a theremin is in the background going absolutely hog wild so that we'll have that patented 'ghostly atmosphere.' It's nearly unendurable. Anyway, G begins to negotiate. For starters, to foster a sense of goodwill, he hands over upper and lower case version of his own letter-

"Godfrey, here's a little gift. You can hang them on your wall and give your garage a little class." I'm not sure where Mr. G keeps those letters, but that's probably one of the least disturbing unanswered questions pertaining to Mr. G.

Gordon the Grocer tries his hand at compromise, and offers to pawn off his own Grandmother. Despite the prospect of trading a few grapes for a captive, live human being, Godfrey decides to turn down his generous offer.

Sorry, Granny- you are expendable.

"Well, Granny," explains a defeated Gordon, "I guess we won't be needing you."

So what did we learn today, kiddies? Well- we learned some shit about the alphabet, the letter G specifically, and we learned that grapes can be more valuable than human lives- specifically, the human lives of useless old people.

It must also be noted that Granny has no lines, and, like Mr. M, shivers uncontrollably for the entirety of her performance, which really makes the whole affair kind of depressing.

There's a great moment in puppeteering when Godfrey the Ghost feeds himself an actual grape, then (as he does not have an actual esophagus) surreptitiously tries to pull it back out of his mouth so that the audience won't notice.

Nice try, Godfrey, but I totally noticed.

I guess my question is- why even feed him a real grape? Why not just pretend via sleight of hand? Well, folks, this is the Letter People. We got real puppets doing real things- live with it.


After a failed attempt to placate Godfrey with a guitar,

they play the 'catching game,' and the reason why Mr. G, Miss U, and Mr. M have been called together becomes all too apparent– they are needed to spell "G-U-M." ...Which they do.

Guhhh-Uhhhh-Mmmm.

Gordon declares, "this ghost is a real gasbag," and Godfrey is gifted with Gwendolyn the Goldfish, with whom he promptly falls in love.

Then he gives the grapes back. At this point, you're so happy to just close the book on the Godfrey storyline that you're completely willing to forgive the whole 'falls in love with a fish' plot development. Finally, Mr. M greedily intones two words which will haunt you for years to come: "PICNIC TIME!"

PICNIC TIME

Then there's a cartoon about a Gorilla named Gort that frankly made me kind of uncomfortable. It feels tacked on, and it cheapens the entire story arc which we've just witnessed.


Still- four stars. Until we meet again...


A compilation of prior Letter people reviews can be found here.

Television Review: THE LETTER PEOPLE, EPISODE 2- MEET MR. T (1974, Thomas McDonough)

Well, a tenacious reader reminded me a few days ago that at one point in time, I had promised to eventually review each episode of the Letter People series. Being as the first and last installment of that series premiered over one year ago, I've decided that it's time to continue. It's important for me to show the world that Sean Gill is not a liar, particularly when said lies involve defunct 1970's low-budge' puppet theater of the absurd. You can read the review of Episode 1 and an introduction to the series itself HERE. So, without, further ado, I present to you now– THE LETTER PEOPLE: EPISODE 2- MEET MR. T:

Episode 2: Meet Mr. T.
Stars: 3.5 of 5.
Running Time: 15 minutes.


(sung)
"Tall--my teeth are so tall
Terrifically tall,
The tallest you'll see;
I'm called Mr. T.

(spoken word)
Mr. T--that's me - TALL TEETH.
Why, my tall teeth are so tall,
That it takes my toothbrush 222 turns
To take a trip
From the top of the tip,
To the tip of the top
Of each tooth,
And that's the tall truth!

And talk about toothpaste
From Tuesday to Tuesday,
I'll use 2,222 tubes of tasty toothpaste,
For each tremendous tooth,
And that's the tall truth, too!

(sung)
Tall -- my teeth are so tall,
Terrifically tall,
The tallest you'll see;
I'm called Mr. T."


Simply poetry. Yes...Mr. T. The lilting, singsongy voice. The delicate, almost melancholy demeanor. He's just a sweet 'ole cowpoke. The kind of father figure who you want tellin' you bedtime stories or feedin' ya beef jerky. A tall-tale-tellin' Texan who gallivants about while riding an adorable horse on a stick. All of this is is quite deliberate. A carefully concocted charade, painstakingly fashioned to cover up the simple fact that

HE IS
FUCKING
TERRIFYING.
Yeah, he's somehow the missing link between Gary Busey and a box of Wheaties, I suppose. Perhaps his Southwestern persona was inspired by the Boetticher Western THE TALL T, the Tag-line of which ("Taut! Torrid! Tremendous! T Is for Terror!") could easily be dialogue in this episode? Annnyway. So he sings this little ditty and proceeds to ride off into the sunset, but the perspective is contradictory and quite ambiguous. Some of the scenery floats back and forth as if it is meant to represent clouds, yet the foreground and background coloration of the cardboard setpieces remains identical, thus making it exceptionally difficult to tell what the hell we are looking at exactly. So allow me to revise my observation- Mr. T rides off behind the sunset at the song's conclusion.

Mr. M then pops up from below like the he mouth-breathing, toupee-wearing, skulking, oily perv that he is to make the glib remark

"Ohhhh, that was marvelous music, Mr. T...I'm MR. M."



The rest of this episode is a mixed bag. Clearly the makers were unsure of which direction to take the series, so we get a few irregularities (like some live-action children, which I'll get to in just a minute). Anyway, Mr. T imparts a tall tale about a fracas with Terrible Tough Tony that ends with Tony having the shit scared out of him

and a punchline involving Teflon Taffy that doesn'T sTick to his Tall Teeth, which is oh so very clever, except that it encourages kids to combine junk food with polytetrafluoroethylene. Ultimately, this is one of the reasons that I like this show so much. THE LETTER PEOPLE is not for the faint of heart. It's not going to kowtow to the least common denominator. So we're gonna talk about eating Teflon? So what. You can figure out which chemicals you can eat on your own time. Cause right now, we're here to watch a bunch of whacky puppets tell us some slightly relevant shit about phonics.

Anyway, then there's a weird live action segment, and a bunch of kids (wearing T-shirts cheaply adorned with the letter 'T') present a series of musical instruments, all beginning with the letter 'T' (i.e., tuba, trumpet, trombone, tom-tom drum, tamborine, etc., etc.) and form a terrible makeshift orchestra.



The resulting Tonal, Tremulating Timbre of the music is so egregiously Tone-deaf that the Tree from EVIL DEAD grimaces and escapes the scene, and I'm not quite sure what he was doing there anyway.


This is the only time that THE LETTER PEOPLE flirted with genuine live-action, and the resulting absurdity makes me wish that they'd given it another shot.

Then Mr. T goes to the dentist and engages in a lengthy, boring interaction with his DDS which is notable for one reason– the dentist's voice is a clear velvet-tongued impersonation of one Vincent Price.

This is one of many celebrity references which will occur on THE LETTER PEOPLE- entire episodes will later center on a Bogart-esque private eye named 'Nardo. Clearly, a lot of love, thought, and attention to detail were put into these. Apparently the same attention to detail did not go into the sets.

We end with a really bizarre cartoon where the singer isn't in synch with the music, and it's chock full of uncanny, freakish images like this one.

Yeah... I don't think I like this.

A fairly solid second episode- but there are some pretty mind-blowing ones to come. Three and a half stars.

-Sean Gill

Television Review: THE LETTER PEOPLE, EPISODE 1- MEET MR. M (1974, Elayne Reiss-Weimann & Rita Friedman)

Ah, the Letter People. Part educational tool for burgeoning readers. Part low-budget Lynchian puppet and variety show. Part blurry childhood nightmare. Part purveyor of cryptic social messages. It all adds up to something greater than a half-remembered dream and something less than a concrete piece of culture. Yet thanks to bootlegging, DVD-burning, and YouTubing, those who maintained disbelief for so many years can no longer deny that it did, in fact, exist. And now I have the singular opportunity to review select episodes of this truly whacky series for the thirsty masses. Before I begin, let's hash out an overview. Created in 1972 and first airing in 1974, there were episodes for all 26 letters of the alphabet, and the performance of songs accompanied most of them (Mr. R and Mr. X being notable exceptions, though their songs do exist, in audio-only format). There were extra episodes relating to words and sentences, sometimes taking the form of the game show-within-the-show entitled "The Catching Game," and sometimes taking the form of multi-episode adventures or mysteries. All of my reviews will refer to the original 70's series, as subsequently, in the 1990's, many of the characters were politically corrected. As it stands, most of the Letter People harbor bad habits, poor attitudes , and a penchant for junk food. Others, however, provide eccentricities and refreshing contrast, not only to their brethren, but in some cases, the social mores of the time. The 21 consonants of the alphabet are all male, the five vowels are female. All five of the Letter People women embody ridiculous female stereotypes, but possibly for satirical reasons. 

Episode 1: Meet Mr. M
Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 15 minutes.


Our first taste of the Letter People gives us a great deal of the essential qualities that will eventually become both familiar and lovable: a lasciviously-narrated introduction, emphasis on eating unhealthy foods, stock black backgrounds, low-budget puppets, and unskilled operation of said puppets.


It also gives us one of the most rockin' songs from Letter People Land, with an infectious bass line, sweet drum breaks, groovy Hammond organ refrains, a bumpin' guitar solo, and an echo effect. There's also some kickass graphic overlays and quick edits which officially confirm that this is the missing link between Sesame Street and the Monterey Pop festival.


Behold Mr. M: with his round, untrustworthy face; brown suit and nasty 70's tie; oddly-spaced eyeballs; creepy orange toupee; awkward arm movements; and proclivity toward munching whatever he can get his unhinged, toothless mouth on.

Furthermore, he a serious eating disorder, perhaps borne of self-loathing, which is ceaseless––from morning to midnight, from midnight to morning:

"I'm Mr. M, with a munchy mouth! My mouth must munch, munch, munch; my mouth has lunch, lunch, lunch! I munch from morning to midnight, midnight to morning; Munchy Mouth, I'm Mr. M! Meatballs, macaroni, mashed potatoes I adore! Marshmallows, maple syrup, melon, milk, there's room for more...for Mr. M with a Munchy Mouth. My mouth must munch, munch, munch; my mouth has lunch, lunch, lunch! I munch from morning to midnight, midnight to morning; Munchy Mouth, meet Mr. M! Milkshakes, marmalade, mayonnaise I adore! Muffins, mushrooms and molasses, more and more and more and more! I'm Mr. M, with a munchy mouth! My mouth must munch, munch, munch; my mouth has lunch, lunch, lunch! I munch from morning to midnight, midnight to morning; Munchy Mouth, I'm Mr. M, with a Munchy Mouth, I'm Mr. M! MUNCHING MOUTH! (fadeout with echo effect, perhaps to give the illusion that you are, in fact, entering his mouth at the finish of the song?) "

So it's the first Letter People episode. So much was said, yet so little. It's a more 'what you see is what you get episode,' in contrast to some which surreptitiously stretch the boundaries and limits of body and mind. Later we'll get into character interactions, complex sets, celebrity lookalikes, more rockin' songs, and the true face of terror.