Funny / Pee-wee's Playhouse

• Most of the Penny segment about manners is this, but what really stands out is the scene where the vacuum cleaner sucks everything up, including itself.
  • Another part that may count as this is Penny's tenth rule of manners: she mulls over what it is before deciding it's to curl your hair.
• Cowboy Curtis' song "More" when the secret word was More.
• Pee-wee getting married to a bowl of fruit salad. That is all.
• Pee-wee playing with his giant underpants in "Pee-wee Catches a Cold".
• There are actually two episodes where the salesman is scared off screaming when he comes at the door ("I'm going door-to-door to— AAAAGH!!!"). Once was when Roger the Monster answered the door, the other time was when Pee-Wee answered the door while his head was invisible.
• "The Restaurant" is one of the funniest episodes of the first season, and of the entire show for that matter. For one thing, there is the scene with Jambi:
  Jambi: What do you want?
  Pee-wee: Oh, come on, say it like a real genie!
  Jambi: Oh, all right. (ethereal voice) Your wish is my command, oh wise and powerful master! (normal voice) So what do you want?
  • Unfortunately, Pee-wee has trouble deciding what to wish for, and says, "I wish I knew what to wish for." Jambi grants him that wish, but not actually what he wished for. Pee-wee protests, so Jambi replays the whole scene on Magic Screen to show Pee-wee his mistake.
    Pee-wee: What a gyp! You tricked me! I want another wish!
    Jambi: You know the rules, Pee-wee: only one wish per show!
    Pee-wee: (a barrage of "Big 'NO!'"s)
  • The restaurant scene itself is pretty funny: Captain Carl asks for a steak with baked potato and a salad (the house dressing is liver and noodles) and a pink lemonade, but he learns to his dismay that the only thing that the restaurant has is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — costing a steep $2.00, yet!
  • Also, the scene with Dixie and the King of Cartoons. Dixie's cab has a flat, so she had to walk up the hill.
    Pee-wee: I didn't hear your horn honk.
    Dixie: (irritably) All right, if it'll make you happy, honk, honk!
    • It leads to this:
      Pee-wee: So where's the King of Cartoons?
      Dixie: (calling toward the door) Hey, Your Majesty! ...STEP ON IT!
      (realizing her mistake, she plays her fanfare on the trumpet)
• In To Tell the Tooth, Pee-wee has a huge toothache after munching on a corn on the cob. He decides to make a wish on Jambi that the toothache is not so painful, but he has forgotten that Jambi is not there; he is vacationing at Mount Rushmore.
  Pee-wee: (pounding on Jambi's box while in pain) HELP! JAMBI, HELP! JAMBI!
  (Jambi's box opens, revealing an answering machine)
  Jambi's answering machine: Hi, I'm not here to grant your wish right now. So leave your name and wish after the beep, and I'll be back to grant them just as soon as I can. (BEEP!)
  (Jambi's box closes; Pee-wee looks shocked)
  • During the closing credits when flies his Scooter over Mount Rushmore before hitting road, Jambi appears at the end.
• In Sick, Did Somebody Say Sick?, when Jambi tries to grant Pee-Wee a wish to Paris, France, nothing happens:
  Pee-wee Herman: Weird! Paris looks a lot like a playhouse. And that Frenchman looks exactly like Globey.
  Globey: That's because I am Globey and you are still in the playhouse.
  • It reveals later that Jambi had a disease called "Meka-Leka-Hi-Meka-Hidy-Itis".
    Pee-wee: Oh no! Not Meka-Leka-Hi-Meka-Hidy-Itis! Say it's anything but Meka-Leka-Hi-Meka-Hidy-Itis! (beat; dumbfounded) ...What's Meka-Leka-Hi-Meka-Hidy-Itis?
    Dr. Jinga-Janga: Well, in layman's terms, he is suffering from genie burnout.
  • Also, the first part of the episode when Randy takes over the entire show, topped off with him forcing everybody to bark like a dog whenever anyone says the secret word. The funniest part to that is that even when Pee Wee takes over, it sticks for the rest of the episode.
• In "Mystery", Pee-wee's personal items keep disappearing, one by one. All the while, Pee-wee is asked what happened to them and he says simply, "I don't know! It's a mystery!" Cue a creepy man playing a suspenseful organ note at the end of the playhouse! At one point, Pee-wee says, "It's a mystery!", but the organist has fallen asleep and thus doesn't respond. Pee-wee has to walk up in his face and yell, "MYSTERY!" The organist is startled awake and plays his organ note.
  • To wit: the items gone missing include his suits, his cereal bowl and spoon, his photo album, and his connect-the-dot dots, in that order. Finally, he decides to take action to catch the culprit.
    (A long-distance shot of the playhouse is shown with Pee-wee sitting on Chairry)
    Pee-wee: (jumping up from Chairry in pure fury) THAT DOES IT! I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!
    (Pee-wee walks up to the camera slowly)
    Pee-wee: They can take the suit off your back. They can take your cereal bowl and spoon. They can even take your album of photo memories.
    (By now, Pee-wee has walked up so close to the camera that his face covers the screen)
    Pee-wee: But when they mess with your dots... they go too far!
• In Camping Out, Pee-wee is about to go camping with Cowboy Curtis and Mrs. Renee agrees to housesit in his absence. He addresses the Playhouse residents before leaving:
  Pee-wee: I want everybody in bed by 7:30!
  Playhouse residents: (disappointed) Awww!
  Pee-wee: Okay, midnight.
  Playhouse residents: Yay!
• The premiere episode for season 2, Open House, starts off normally, with the outside view of the playhouse. But as the actual theme song begins inside the playhouse, Pee-wee notices it in a mess.
  Cyndi Lauper: Come on in... (song winds down and stops)
  Pee-wee: Oh, ha-ha! I just totally forgot, we are going to remodel the playhouse. Ha-ha! (winks)
• The library scene in Love that Story. Pee-wee shushes and silences everyone, completely forgetting that even the librarian has to keep quiet at all times.
• In the opening to Store, Pee-wee decides to guess the secret word, resulting in some Wild Mass Guessing from everyone. Conky hints that the word rhymes with "door" (which, incidentally, was the secret word in the first-ever episode Ice Cream Soup), and they continue their Wild Mass Guessing from there:
  Pee-wee: Let's see, uh... what rhymes with "door"? "Chore"!
  Conky: No.
  Pee-wee: "Bore"!
  Conky: No.
  Clocky: "Four"?
  Conky: No, Clocky.
  Floory: "Floor"?
  Conky: No, more!
  Pee-wee: "Floor", "gore", "war"?
  Purple fish: "Shore"?
  Cool Cat: "Roar"?
  Pterri: "Soar"?
  Chairry: "Snore"?
  Globey: "Core"?
  Mrs. Rene: "Gabor"!
  Conky: No, no, "more"!
  Pee-wee: "Lore"! "Tore"! "Pour"!
  Conky: No! No! "More"!
  Pee-wee: I can't think of any more!
  Conky: No, Pee-wee, look!
  (the word "more" is dispensed from Conky and Pee-wee takes it; he laughs)
  Pee-wee: Today's secret word is "more"!
  Mrs. Rene: I was just gonna guess that!
  Pee-wee: I'm so sure, Mrs. Rene.
• The over-the-top way Pee-wee calls out to Floory to try out the secret word in "Tango Time".
• The Christmas Episode, aptly titled "Pee-Wee's Christmas Special," is bursting with these moments.
  • The opening features an original song...performed by UCLA students dressed as the United States Marine Corps Choir. Who then break into a ridiculously over the top dance number. There are also two soul-singing women doing backup vocals behind Pee-Wee. Crazy Is Cool is the only way to describe it.
  • Pee-Wee, having forgotten to get decorations, decides to have Jambi magically whip some up with his daily wish, but was hoping to save the request for something extra-special. Cue the following conversation:
    Pee-Wee: I was kind of hoping you could give me an extra one!
    (The lighting dims, leaving Jambi dramatically illuminated)
    Jambi: (in a deadly serious tone) An extra wish? YOU WANT AN EXTRA WISH? WHADDYA THINK THIS IS, CHRISTMAS?
    Pee-Wee: ...yeah.
    Jambi: ...oh. Oh, right.
  • At one point, the special features Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon teaching Pee-Wee to create homemade Christmas cards out of everyday objects, like toothbrushes and potatoes. When they start joking around, Pee-Wee tells them he expects five hundred of each of them by sundown. The rest of the special makes it a Running Gag of the two being unable to do anything fun until they finish. At one point, Pee-Wee even gives them bread and water—i.e., prison food—when they complain. At the 2011 San Diego Comic Con, Herman remarked that he was pretty mean to them in the special but in reality he was just following the script; he wasn't mean to them in real life.
  • Another Running Gag: Dinah Shore calls Pee-Wee and wants to sing him "a little song". She begins to sing "The Twelve Days of Christmas," and Pee-Wee quickly gets bored. He slips out and puts up a dummy dressed in a suit and badly made Pee-Wee mask in his place. Somehow, Dinah never notices, and spends the entire special singing an extended version of the song; at one point, when Pee-Wee checks in, she's on the 500th Day of Christmas. It all culminates with Shore singing the 12th verse over the closing credits...then finally realizing that Pee-Wee hasn't been responding at all.
  • Reba's adult humor response when Pee-Wee hears sleigh bells on the roof: "You've been drinking too much eggnog?"
  • At one point, Mrs. Renee shows up and explains to Pee-Wee that she doesn't celebrate Christmas, as she's Jewish. After briefly going over some Hanukkah traditions, she turns to the audience and announces that it's now time for "the Hanukkah portion of our show." Menorahs and dreidels abruptly drop from the ceiling, and everyone sings "The Dreidel Song," which is accompanied by the lyrics appearing on screen: "If you don't know the words, just follow the bouncing Jambi head!" It's exactly what it sounds like.
  • Ricardo surprises Pee-Wee with a pinata to explain Mexican Christmas traditions, then blindfolds Pee-Wee to let him play with it. As Charro sings "Feliz Navidad," Pee-Wee flails around in the background swinging a giant stick and nearly breaking everything.
  • Randy's cynical explanation of the holiday: "Christmas? Bah, humbug! Christmas is just a commercial exploitation for Big Business trying to capitalize on consumer guilt!"

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