In
Lidsville’s
(1971-1973) “Weenie, Weenie, Where’s Our Genie?,” the people of Lidsville
attempt to devise a defense against Hoo-Doo (Charles Nelson Reilly). During
planning, Mark (Butch Patrick) casually discard’s Weenie’s (Billie Hayes)
advice, making the genie feel useless and unloved.
Weenie
runs away, and puts on ear-muffs so he cannot be summoned by his master. Mark and the other denizens go in search of
the genie, but Hoo-Doo also wants the “indispensable” Weenie back in his
possession.
Mark
apologizes for his actions, and peace is restored in the land of hats.
Weenie
is one of the weirder characters that appears on Lidsville. The genie is
a “he,” but performed by a “she” (Billie Hayes), in the long tradition of
spritely characters like Peter Pan.
Here, Weenie sure is sensitive, getting his
nose out of joint because Mark doesn’t think he can help stop Hoo-Doo. Mark isn’t exactly rude, but I suppose Weenie
feels useless. However, in fairness to
Mark, Weenie is something of a bumbler, at least so far in the continuity. Immediately after the genie fails to
create an anti-aircraft gun (creating, instead, a tricycle), he asks for other
ideas. That’s not exactly an attack on
the genie, though Weenie interprets it at that way.
The
rest of the episode is about Mark attempting to apologize and make things right,
which is a fine subject for a Saturday morning TV series aimed at kids. Even if offense wasn’t given on purpose, it
was apparently still given. There’s never anything wrong with apologizing, or
letting someone know that you didn’t mean to hurt his or her feelings.
Intriguingly,
Hoo Doo seems to have greater patience than Mark does for Weenie’s bumbling.
Then again, Hoo-Doo isn’t exactly a font of competence and good planning,
either. At episode’s end, thanks to Weenie, Hoo-Doo has been transformed into a
frog. That’s this episode’s weekly
humiliation for the villainous character.
In
terms of a defense, the people of Lidsville don’t really come up with one. They
build a slingshot to shoot pepper at Hoo-Doo, but then run out of pepper,
instantly. Like the other ideas that
appear in the weekly installments, this notion is gone and forgotten by the
next installment.
Next week: "Let's Hear it For Whizzo."
Billie Hayes was also Witchiepoo on Sid and Marty Krofft's H.R. Pufnstuf.
ReplyDeleteSGB
I never did catch Lidsville when I was a kid. Now that I have seen Charles Nelson Riley as HooDoo I think I can see where Trace Beaulieu got a lot of his Doctor Clayton Forrester shtick from!
ReplyDeleteOddly enough they never seemed to play HR Pufnstuf in my area when I was a kid either so I missed that one too. Land Of The Lost is the one that really sticks in my memory though I never did manage to see the complete series back then. I suspect I also never managed to see more than a couple of episodes in order at that time too so it really lodged in my memory as being very mysterious. It certainly was a to watch it from beginning to end when I finally got the DVD set.