Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
The Fraggles are not what you’d call driven go-getters. They’d make terrible lawyers or investigative journalists or ambitious mid-level managers—and not just because they’re typically less than two feet tall.
But you gotta hand it to them: They know how to have fun and sing a nice earworm.
Not that the Fraggles would ever venture into the world of business anyway. Most of them live in a place called Fraggle Rock, where they wile away their time singing, dancing and playing games. Only Uncle Traveling Matt—the Fraggles’ most legendary explorer—dares leave the cozy confines of the Rock to venture into “Outer Space,” aka, the real world. There, Traveling Matt studies the “Silly Creatures” (us) and sends missives back to the Fraggles via his go-between nephew, Gobo. And sometimes he even ships back a Silly Creature artifact or two—like a dazzling “crystal cloak” (which looks a lot like bubble wrap).
What Traveling Matt doesn’t realize is that the Fraggles and those Silly Creatures from Outer Space are more dependent on each other than you’d think. In fact, the Fraggles need all the creatures that inhabit Fraggle Rock. For instance, the Gorgs (a family of hairy giants that don’t like Fraggles one little bit) grow radishes. Those radishes are used by the Rock’s industrious Doozers (tiny blue folks who often wear hard hats) as building materials. And those delicate buildings are every Fraggle’s favorite food.
Do the Doozers mind that the Fraggles are perpetually eating their buildings? No way! It just gives the Doozers opportunity to build more. And all that free food gives the Fraggles loads of opportunity to sing and play and maybe learn a thing or two about life. Not bad work if you can get it.
Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock is a reboot of Jim Henson’s beloved 1980s HBO show, Fraggle Rock (as you might’ve guessed). The plot (such as it is) is pretty much the same, as are the characters. While the main Silly Person we see is now a young grad student instead of a grizzled old inventor, she’s still called Doc, she still has a dog named Sprocket, and the Fraggles’ world is still found through an undetected (by Doc, at least) hole in the wall.
Like the original, the reboot aims to teach some light lessons: Be kind to other people, for instance, and don’t force them to do things they really don’t want to do. Some can lean a bit holistic, which makes sense, given that the theme of interdependence undergirds the show’s entire premise. And one main character, the blue-haired Mokey, is a tiny hippie who’d surely open her own Zen-tinged yoga studio if she was a little more ambitious.
But Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, primarily embraces one ethos: clean, zany, Muppety fun.
Jim Henson himself called the original Fraggle Rock “a lot of silliness.” Apple TV+’s version has no greater ambition than to bring that silliness to a new generation—while again charming an older one.
Uncle Traveling Matt prepares to dive into “Outer Space” again, and he invites his young nephew, Gobo, to go with him. Alas, Gobo has a frightening run-in with a space creature (aka a dog), which puts his courage in doubt. He decides to retrieve Traveling Matt’s backpack from the terrifying “Crevice of Solitude” to prove he’d be a worthy traveling companion.
A Fraggle falls from a high precipice (though is uninjured), and several go on a wild water ride. The Fraggles also visit Marjory, the “all-knowing trash heap,” who gives Gobo some good advice about “digging deeper.” (They’re also given a piece of moldy, stinky cheese.) A Gorg couple (Gorgs are giant-like creatures) talks about thumping Fraggles, and their son (Junior) tries to do just that while wearing some heavy boots. He grabs the blue-haired, Zen-inflected Mokey Fraggle for a minute, but she escapes after saying that she’ll “be the noodle.”
Mokey also rambles on about the “the void” and “rebirth.” A belly flop leads to the destruction of a Doozer building. The Doozers decide to “work extra hard and rebuild the whole thing.”
The Doozers build a spectacularly high building. And while Fraggles are typically in the habit of eating the Doozers’ works, adventurous Red Fraggle insists they keep this one around for a while: It’s a great place to jump from and into the pool of water below. But when Red and the other Fraggles design a game around these spectacular high jumps, Red’s reluctant teammate—Wembley—literally freezes in place. Red goes on quest to unfreeze Wembley so they can win the contest.
Fraggles do jump from seriously high heights, and Red herself is chucked in a well by a rather regretful Gorg. (It terrifies her, and she understands Wembley’s reluctance much better.) A dog gets pinched by a crab, though the two later become friends. Red searches for bad-smelling “stinkleberries” in the hopes the stench might get Wembley unfrozen.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
An elf mage contemplates on connection and regret as she watches her human friends grow old and pass away.
