Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Bugaloos: "Our Home is Our Hassle" (September 26, 1970)

In “Our Home is Our Hassle,” Peter Platter announces from his uptown station a contest for best original song…with a money prize attached. Benita Bizarre (Martha Raye) desperately wants to win it, but needs a song.

She soon overhears the Bugaloos singing in Tranquility Forest. In particular, it’s a song about Sparky (Billy Barty) finding his inner courage and not being afraid to be alone. Benita realizes that she can also draw inspiration from Tranquility Forest and plans a field trip. Unfortunately, she and her minions are polluters and litterers.

There, in the forest, Benita also zaps the Bugaloos and plots her original song, “Nature Girl.”  

After being "un-zapped," the Bugaloos pretend to be ghosts so as to force Benita scurrying from the forest and back to her high-rise juke box.

Once more, Benita Bizarre is absolutely covetous of the Bugaloos and their talent, in this episode of the Sid and Marty Krofft live-action Saturday morning series of the 1970’s. 

Specifically, she believes that the forest will inspire her in the same way it inspires the Bugaloos. What she can’t understand is that even if inspired by the natural world, she can’t replicate the talent of the original singers.

The plot of “Our Home is Our Hassle” is very much in keeping with the first two episodes. Benita launches a crazy scheme against the Bugaloos, and the Bugaloos soundly defeat that plan.

There are two new “props” in this episode.

The first is the “bug” zapper, a weapon which can immobilize the Bugaloos. The zapper knocks them out, and only by setting it to reverse can they be awakened.  The bug zapper prop re-appears throughout the series, in future episodes.

The second prop is the full-scale “Buggy,” a decked out Bugaloo car.

One new, and soon to be recurring plot element is that Bugaloos hatch an inventive plot, using disguises, to carry the day. An upcoming episode has them dress as domestics (“Courage, Come Home,”) while “Lady You Don’t Look Eighty” puts them in old age-make up. Here, in “Our Home is Our Hassle,” the Bugaloos over their aces and hair in white pancake make-up, don sheets, and pretend to be ghosts haunting Tranquility Forest.

Oddly, in this “white” form, they resemble nothing so much as the albino Family of mutants in the 1971 film The Omega Man.

The song of the week involves Sparky’s courage. The Bugaloos sing “Sparky…won’t you light your light shine on!”  The topic of Sparky’s courage also recurs, and re-appears in “The Love Bugaloos.”

Here's the song, "Sparky:"

Next week: “Courage Come Home.”