Synopsis: The Trash Heap freezes in the cold weather after Mokey forgets to knit her a tarpaulin. So the Fraggles plan to thaw her out with hot soup.

Original air date: January 28, 1985
You guys, it’s cold outside. Like, really cold. As I’m writing this, the air in New York is frigid enough to make my skin hurt. Schools in the Midwest are getting canceled because it’s too cold to let the kiddies go outside. Snow is falling in Texas, and Floridians got their first snowfall in over 30 years. So yeah, it’s cold.
But as difficult as it is to deal with winter, it’s pretty exciting to see in a Muppet production. Winter for the Muppets means cute knitted outfits, holiday celebrations, and lots of fake snow. I truly don’t know what it is about that fake snow, but I love seeing it. Nothing about it looks natural – it’s like they balled up cotton and cellophane and spread it around on every surface. But I always appreciate the effort it takes to transform a set we’re intimately familiar with just to show the passing of the seasons.
In “Blanket of Snow, Blanket of Woe,” winter has come. Mokey, always the people-pleaser, made a bunch of promises to everyone but didn’t follow through on any of them. She didn’t cover Lanford with a blanket overnight, she didn’t fix Red’s ice skates, she didn’t get frozen radishes for Boober, and most importantly, she forgot to make a new tarpaulin for the Trash Heap. No real reason is given for Mokey’s uncharacteristic inattentiveness, but honestly, I get it. Sometimes you’ve just got so much on your to-do list, you don’t get around to doing any of them.

Now, this could’ve been an episode all about Mokey overextending herself and making too many promises to everyone beside herself, but that storyline is mostly abandoned only 8 minutes in. It’s replaced with a side quest for Mokey to figure out how to thaw out the frozen solid Trash Heap.
The side quest in question leads them into the Gorgs’ kitchen where Ma is conveniently cooking a cauldron of her Good Time Goombah Soup, which the Fraggles basically poison so it’ll get thrown away in the compost pile, thus defrosting Marjory and saving the day. Hooray for soup!
This episode is a little unfocused (or uncommitted) to a singular theme. It’s sort of about Mokey’s inability to commit to her promises, it’s sort of about owning up to mistakes, it’s sort of about gastric terrorism. But I think it’s really about what it’s really like to be cold. Not just regular cold, but the kind of cold you feel in your bones. It’s the cold that keeps you from wanting to move your body, or even go outside. It’s the cold that proves dangerous for anyone who has no choice but to sleep outside. It’s the cold that can only be fought by warming yourself from the inside, preferably with something tasty.
Specifically for Fraggle Rock, the cold is rare. Just a few weeks ago, we saw them celebrate their version of the winter solstice, the Festival of the Lights, but I can only think of a couple of other examples of Fraggles in winter. Hey, I’ll take any excuse to see Fraggles (and Doozers and Gorgs and Philo and Gunge) in cute hand-made winter clothes.

Strongest Moment: In the Gorg kitchen, Junior has made his own hand-carved salt and pepper shakers, which happen to look exactly like Mokey and Gobo. It’s a great bit of prop work, and the scene where Ma Gorg reaches for the salt shaker while Mokey tries to bounce into her hand instead is fantastic.
Weakest Moment: For all the wintery excitement the Fraggles are having, the show seems to be having trouble matching the energy with the Doc and Sprocket bookends and the Traveling Matt postcards, neither are really worth mentioning. It’s a recurring issue with this era of the show, but doubly disappointing with neither have anything notable to add.
MVF (Most Valuable Fraggle): Mokey takes center stage, and she earns her MVF status, if only for her remarkable impression of a pepper shaker.
Musical Highlight: “Goodtime Goombah Soup” is a fun number for the Gorgs, which I recall seeing over and over again in “The Secrets of the Muppets” when Jim explains how the Gorg puppets work.
Coolest Puppetry Effect: During the song “Blanket of Snow,” Philo and Gunge do a little ice skating, and we get to see their little feet glide along the ice.

Darkest Moment: Philo and Gunge seem to think that the Trash Heap is dead (or near-death) in her frozen state. It seems to suggest that if she’s frozen for too long, she won’t come out of it.
Fraggle Lore: Ma Gorg says that everything she learned came from her mother, Queen Esmerelda. Pa Gorg has mentioned his royal heritage in other episodes, so does this mean they’re siblings? Or perhaps (and preferably) the union of two royal nations? Or maybe all Gorgs are kings and queens? The mystery of how the Gorg monarchy functions continues.
One More Thing…: I’m not really sure why they chose to call it “Goombah soup,” since that word had been used as a derogatory term for Italian-Americans well before the filming of this episode. It feels wrong even writing that word out in this review.
Okay, One More Thing…: The least believable moment is when Junior Gorg slips on the ice, because we know that his shoes canonically feature cleats on the soles. Then again, the most believable thing is that Junior would still find a way to slip despite the fact that he has cleats on his shoes.

Click here to cosplay as a salt shaker on the ToughPigs Discord!
by Joe Hennes – Joe@ToughPigs.com