Remember The Electric Company-? The gloriously psychedelic kids' show with a mute Spider-Man and the voice of Gene Wilder (!) as Letterman who, if you recall, was "faster than a rolling O, stronger than silent E, able to leap capital T in a single bound," and dressed like an early 20th-century college footballer? The one with a stunning collection of the known and yet-to-be-known including Rita Moreno, Zero Mostel, Joan Rivers, Bill Cosby, and Morgan Freeman?
From 1971 to 1977, PBS broadcast 780 episodes of the literacy program that puts contemporary children's—and most adult—TV to shame. It didn't pander to its audience and reflected the unabashed leftist dreams of the time, from racial harmony (interracial couples) to feminism (a woman playing Tarzan) to coolness (hip slang and dance moves) to, um, "consciousness expansion," exemplified by the recurring word "groovy" shimmering across the screen to funky wah-wah pedals. Today we have white-demographic television and black-demographic television, but I cannot think of a single show that's as unpretentiously integrated as The Electric Company. While a sometimes-laughable relic of dated aesthetics, The Electric Company is also a sad reminder of how completely our vision of a liberal society has collapsed.
The Electric Company is also shockingly adult. Unlike the careful simulacra of urbanity in Sesame Street, the show feels gritty and honest. In one segment, a girl sits on a rock in a littered lot and dreams of flying over and away from her cramped, gray city. In one of my favorite bits, shots of individual words from around the city (grimy street signs, paint-chipped awnings, half-burnt-out marquees) are strung together for sing-along lyrics. The characters also fight—real, insult-strewn adult disagreements, usually about the correct pronunciation of a word. And the terrorists! In one episode, Spellbinder (Letterman's turbaned nemesis, in a departure from the racial harmony theme) attacks the subway system, stealing the "t" from "train" and flooding out the commuters. Gene Wilder, of course, saves the suits' day.
The Electric Company does not make good cover-to-cover watching. You know how to read now, and life was slower in those days. Get comfortable with the fast-forward button—but don't miss any of the wonderfully weird animation sequences. One, featuring dissonant music and a scratchily drawn bird yanking a worm to its agonizing death, is jaw-droppingly inappropriate. Wonder Showzen may make crude jokes but it has never climbed such viscerally disturbing heights.
The performances are great, from Cosby's droll—and, it turns out, barely rehearsed—quips and Moreno's goofy, she-must-be-stoned delivery to Freeman's cool-cat shtick as Easy Reader. Freeman is an unexpected and awkward gem on The Electric Company. Whether he's hepping some young cat to the trumpet or fucking up the dance moves in a song about soft "g" while wearing reflective shiny fringe, he exemplifies the earnest, innocent glory of early children's television, back before market research and target demography smoothed out the wonderfully rough edges.
