Synopsis: Wembley dedicates his life to scaring Boober, who’s three steps ahead of him the whole way.
Original air date: March 25, 1985
With April Fools Day fast approaching, there’s no better time to enjoy this episode of Fraggle Rock filled with pranks, scares, and goofs!
The pranking theme is showcased early on as Doc is pranked by Ned Schimmelfinney: despite Sprocket’s warning yelps, Doc opens his front door and a bucket of what looks to be styrofoam beads falls on his head. Truly an effective prank! This part is not very interesting, I’ll be honest. Doc always feels like a weak point in the episodes for me unless he’s directly fiddling with the Fraggles.
We sweep in to The Rock, accompanied by some classic Wembley grunting and scatting as he makes his way to visit his friend Boober. His excitement doesn’t last long as Boober pops out of a pile of laundry and scares Wembley out of his gourd! Boober is out testing baloobiuses, because apparently when a Fraggle is scared, their baloobius flares up which means Fraggles cannot be scared to death!
I’ve always loved Wembley’s eye mech and expressions, and this scene is full to the brim with some great examples of that! Wembley rolls his eyes and scrunches his nose as Boober tries to explain the purpose of his scaring, but Wembley isn’t having it. He swears revenge, but unfortunately, Wembley is not as good at scaring as Boober is. He tries so hard throughout the entire episode! He even goes to the Trash Heap for advice!
Marj gives him the good advice of “you seek revenge, you take the consequences”, which he promptly disregards as Philo and Gunge tell him to try and scare Boober back. The two, um, rats? Worms? Ratworms? Whatever they are, they tell Wembley to say “boo!” and use fake snakes and spiders to get his lick back. They even do it in a song! A pretty good one at that! Makin’ Fraggles shake their behinds, more like!
Here we come upon my favorite part of the entire episode: during this banger, Wembley becomes surrounded by various vague monsters. Among these monsters is a fuzzy brown guy with a big mouth, sharp teeth, and yellow eyes. This episode came out in 1985. You can’t tell me that’s not an homage to Fizzgig from The Dark Crystal! I won’t hear otherwise!
The song ends, and we see Wembley prepping to prank Boober… unsuccessfully. Boober is behind him the whole time and hears everything. Later, before Boober departs to Soap Rock Cave, he says to Wembley: “It’s all in the timing.” and gives him a little kiss on his nose. If you’ve ever been on Tumblr or Twitter around Fraggle Rock fans, you will surely have seen a gif of this floating around. The Classic Woober Kiss, in this episode! What a pleasant surprise!
Wembley returns to Boober’s room and scats as he sets up a whole gamut of pranks: a bucket of pebbles to fall on Boober’s head (that’s one I’ve never heard of…), scary masks that pop up, flying snakes in the cupboard, and fake spiders in Boober’s bed. This part was kind of boring to me. I think it should’ve been a little shorter, and maybe not a song. But Wembley’s scatting is always fun, at least.
Wembley reports to Philo and Gunge about his epic prank set up only to find that they had just played the flying snake prank on Marj, and she did not like it. She almost “blew up”. He rushes back to The Rock, scaring all his other friends in the process, only to find all his pranks triggered already (Boober had seen them coming, of course), and Boober nowhere to be seen. Sweet, sweet, genuine Wembley cries and cries, horrified that he has blown up his best friend. It’s actually pretty sad, despite Wembley’s funny little sobs! It makes you wanna give the little guy a hug!
Red, Mokey, and Gobo appear with Philo and Gunge in tow, admonishing Wembley for supposedly sending them around to scare them. Of course, that isn’t true, and the rat-worm-whatevers apologize to Wembley for tricking him.
Thankfully, they’ve all got nice, reactive baloobiuses, so nobody blew up. Boober, too, apologizes for taking his baloobius testing too far.
All in all, a very cute episode! Lots of Fraggle screaming, which I probably could’ve done without, but otherwise a good time. This is like Feel Bad For Wembley: The Episode! Poor, poor, poor Wembley.
Strongest Moment: I don’t know if you’d call it the strongest per se, but Wembley convinced that he had blown himself up as well as Boober was my favorite part of the episode. It showed Wembley’s genuine, good-natured ways in a silly manner.
Weakest Moment: The prank-set-up montage to “Very Scary (If This Don’t Getcha)” felt very much like a space filler.
MVF (Most Valuable Fraggle): Poor, sweet Wembley. He tried his best. Special Mention to Boober, the expert of being scared. This was a good episode for him too.
Most Classic Moment: The Woober Kiss™!
Musical Highlight: Scare Them Boo was so, so fun.
Fraggle Lore: Baloobius lore! Fraggle baloobiuses fluff up when they’re scared and prevent them from dying of fright! Very neat!
One More Thing…: FIZZGIG CAMEOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! LETS GOOOOOOO DARK CRYSTAL FOREEVEERRRRRRRR!!!!!!!
by Moomin
Click here to kiss Wembley on the ToughPigs Discord!
