Chas Andres' Blog

A journey into the psychedelic world of Lidsville

By Chas R. Andres

I’ve never taken hallucinogenic drugs, stayed awake for 48 hours straight, or been hit over the head with a comically oversized mallet. Thus, I’m reasonably sure that everything I’ve experienced in my life has been more or less grounded in reality.

Perhaps that is why I was so baffled the first time I saw Lidsville.

To be fair, my first exposure to the television program wasn’t exactly a sober one. It was around midnight on a Saturday night, and I was drinking rum from a Sprite bottle in the basement of a restaurant in LA’s Chinatown.

I was attending one of the only hip, truly underground events I know about – a secret karaoke party that materializes in the same location every couple of months. The clientele is halfex-Emerson College students and two thirds hipsters despite the organizers being neither. The guy who seems most in charge is a pencil thin white dude with the rock n roll energy of Arnel Pineda and a sincere love of deep cuts from Tears for Fears.

The karaoke lyrics are projected onto the wall from an ancient laptop so that everyone in the audience can drunkenly sing along.

What usually makes the experience surreal, though, are the things that get played on the second projector that is set up in the corner.

This projector has the sound muted, and its image is usually distorted as if the device was simply turned to one side once the singing began. The programs they show range from the truly bizarre to the bizarrely mundane.

It’s not the ideal way to become familiar with a new television series.

Without sound or a clear picture, all I knew of Lidsville when I first saw it was that the basic concept terrified me on an existential level.

In every episode, a credit sequence showed a young boy sneaking backstage after a magic show to steal the magician’s hat. When he picked it up, the hat grew to enormous size.

The boy then climbed onto the brim of the hat and was knocked inside by some sort of supernatural earthquake. He then ends up in a world populated by an evil wizard and a town filled with anthropomorphic hats.

It wasn’t long before I began ignoring the karaoke and focusing on the sheer terror of this boy’s predicament. Had he been banished to some kind of personal hell, an eternity with talking hats as punishment for his attempted theft? Could he ever escape? If not, at what point would one of the hats begin looking like an attractive mate?

Oddly enough, I wasn’t the only one who had a hypnotic reaction to the show. My friend Kyle, a wiry teetotaler with a self deprecating sense of humor and a love of bad television, was hooked as well. We spent the rest of the evening speculating about the world of Lidsville and shouting “don’t go in the hat, you dumb shit!” every time a new episode started.

After several hours of this, we performed a duet of She Blinded me With Science and left.

That was almost two years ago and it really should have been the end of it.

One Saturday night last month, however, I found myself sitting next to Kyle once again. We were on a couch belonging to another mutual friend, Mike, who had agreed to come along on our insane journey for reasons I still can’t comprehend.

We had decided to watch the entirety of Lidsville – every single episode – in one sitting.

Seventeen episodes. Seven full hours. No stopping. No breaks.

For your sake, I decided to keep a running diary of the entire experience. This way, no one else will ever have to watch Lidsville again.

9:10 – It’s go time! Kyle paces excitedly on my left while Mike makes the last adjustments to the Playstation media server. We’ve just finished a pizza, we’re armed with full glasses of soda, and I am legitimately excited.

I wish I could say that we had been planning our trip to Lidsville for a long time, but it actually came about rather suddenly. A few weeks ago, Kyle was flipping channels on Sunday morning and came across an episode airing on PBS. After he described it to me in detail, I knew I had to finally sit down and watch the whole series.

As luck would have it, neither of us had any plans for the coming weekend.

Mike’s fiancée Amy was having her bachelorette party inLas Vegas, and my long-term girlfriend Emma was there with her. Facing the prospect of our first weekend alone in a very long time, neither Mike or I really knew what to do with ourselves.

Lidsville gave us a plan. We could go mad.

9:13 – The credit sequence is even more baffling when you can hear what’s going on.

The kid (whose name, we’ve learned, is Mark) is thoroughly confused by how the stage magician can do so many awesome tricks with his magic top hat. He sneaks into his dressing room after the show and picks up the hat, which immediately grows to immense size. He falls in (a process that takes a full thirty seconds of the show’s 22 minute running time) and ends up in a horrible vortex of puppets and monsters.

All of a sudden, the spooky music stops and we see Mark line-dancing with a bunch of hat people. A bright and cheerful song kicks in, letting us know that “Lidsville is the koo-koo-kookiest,” and, “if you have a chance to go there, you’ll be glad you did.”

Um, wasn’t this place a horrible hellscape just moments ago?

9:15 – The first episode starts just moments after Mark crash lands in Lidsville. He is immediately kidnapped by four hats who have decided he’s a spy. One of the hats is a pirate hat with a hook for a nose. Another is an executioner’s hood with a giant axe. A third is a 20’s gangster hat with a cigar. The fourth is a vampire hat.

I didn’t know vampires wore hats.

9:16 – The evil hats (at least, I assume these are the bad guys based on what they’re wearing.) drag Mark to a giant top hat.

Inside is Charles Nelson Reilly wearing green body paint and a smaller top hat.

His name, we’re told, is HooDoo.

9:17 – To be clear, this man wears a hat, has a hat for a house, lives in a town populated by hats, and the entire world is inside a hat.

9:18 – The show has a laugh track, but the editors didn’t spend much time thinking about where to place the yuks. Gales of laughter crop up after lines that clearly aren’t jokes. At least, I assume they’re not jokes.

9:19 – Lidsville was created by Sid and Marty Krofft in 1971. It was their follow-up to 1969’s wildly successful H.R. Pufnstuf, a similar show about a kid trapped in a horrifying world of puppets. Three years later, they would go on to make Land of the Lost, the program they are perhaps best known for.

Both Krofft brothers have long denied the use of drugs during the creation of their shows. In a 2005 interview with USA Today, Marty Krofft said, “No drugs involved. You can’t do drugs when you’re making shows. Maybe after, but not during. We’re bizarre, that’s all.”

That makes it even more terrifying. No sober person should have been able to dream up the visuals currently on the screen.

9:21 – The inside of HooDoo’s hat house is the most disconcerting set yet.

Everything inside is anthropomorphic, including the books, playing cards, posters, a skull, a stuffed alligator head, and a mannequin that’s been sawed in half and placed inside one of those stage magic trick boxes.

I already have doubts that I am going to make it sixteen more episodes.

9:22 – “I’m not a spy! I don’t even know of any hat people!” shouts Mark. I’m not sure I believe him…

We are introduced to HooDoo’s pet genie, whose name is Weenie. None of us are sure if Weenie is male or female. We learn that HooDoo has a ring, and anyone who wears the ring controls the genie. I wonder where this plot is going…

9:23 – Yup. HooDoo takes off his ring and places it on a table in order to operate his ‘weather bureau,’ a cabinet with a drawer for each kind of weather. He picks ‘snow,’ presumably to torture the hats in Lidsville by freezing them to death in a blizzard.

9:24 – HooDoo’s plan fails. It snows inside his home instead. All of his minions bump into each other and fall down for about three full minutes. Mark grabs the ring and escapes with Weenie.

9:26 – Mark and Weenie have two full minutes in which to run for the fucking hills. Instead, they sit around while Weenie attempts to come up with the magic words to allow them to escape.

It’s becoming clear that Weenie is a pretty shitty genie.

9:27 – HooDoo finally breaks free of his stumbling minions and chases after Mark and Weenie, who remembers the magic words just in time. We are treated to HooDoo direct-addressing the camera with the line, “Well, that’s snow business.”

It’s going to be a long night.

9:28 – Weenie’s spell has teleported them to a branch over theShampooRiver. “If we fall,” Weenie tells Mark, “we’ll be suds to death!”

Is that even a pun?

9:29 – Mark and Weenie are saved by a propeller beanie named Twirly. He takes them to downtown Lidsville where they meet the rest of the ‘good hats.’

9:30 – It hasn’t even been a minute, and we’ve already met at least three racist hats: An Asian chef’s hat who mixes up his L’s and R’s, and Indian chief headdress who speaks-um like this, and a French beret who lives in the sewer.

Non-racist hats we’ve met: A British pith helmet, a triangular party hat, a nurse hat,  a stovepipe hat with sideburns, a fire hat who is also a fire hydrant, a football helmet, a straw farmer’s hat, an admiral’s hat, and a cowboy hat.

9:31 – Mark argues with the hats about where he’s from. “There’s no real world outside of Ridsville!” exclaims the racist chef hat.

“Oh GOD – Imagine if there WASN’T!?” responds Mike.

9:32 – It occurs to us that all of Lidsville’s décor is just hats hung on trees.

9:33 –  We have met one more good hat – a grandma hat that rides a motorcycle. She makes lewd remarks at the other hats.

9:34 – SOMEONE ACTUALLY WATCHED THIS PILOT AND PICKED IT UP TO SERIES.

Meanwhile, the hats are marching to war. The Pith Helmet, whose name is Colonel Poom, has a cannon.

9:36 – HooDoo has shown up in a flying hat. He strafes the down with some kind of lasers that shoot out of his fingers. The Lidsvillians respond with a barrage of fresh fruit, most of which lands in HooDoo’s flying hat. What happened to their cannon!?

9:37 – The cannon makes an appearance at last. The ball shoots up and sort of drops into the flying hat. HooDoo flips out, throws the steering wheel overboard, and then shouts “Abandon HAAAT!”

He jumps, ending up in the shampoo river.

I thought that was supposed to be lethal. I guess that’s only true for Mark.

9:38 – One episode down, sixteen to go.

9:39 – Kyle has brought cupcakes, but they are Smurf themed cupcakes. He cackles as Mike remarks that there is no end to our terror.

9:41 –Come on, Mark! Don’t go in the hat this time!

9:43 – An ancient map reveals the secrets of Lidsville, including a ladder to the heavens. “A ladder means UP!” shouts Weenie, ever the helpful genie.

9:44 – We’re back in HooDoo’s lair, and good God is that man pissed. He sees Mark on his “evil eye,” an eyeball shaped TV set that is forever surveilling downtown Lidsville. When he finds out Mark wants to escape, HooDoo vows to stop him. Uh, why? Because he pissed him off that one time?

9:46 – The bad hats are on the prowl. “If we don’t catch those guys, HooDoo will rub us out!” says Mr. Big, the gangster hat. “Shall I start rubbing?” Replies HooDoo, who has just appeared next to them.

Mike is horrified. He doesn’t want to see HooDoo rub ANYTHING.

9:47 – The bad hats get the jump on Mark and Weenie. They have a rumble that would have been far more one-sided had the executioner’s hood not dropped his axe at the beginning of the fight and neglected to pick it up until the good guys had escaped.

9:49 – The good hats have escaped…into the dreaded hair forest. We are told that no one survives the hair forest.

After the shampoo river debacle, I remain skeptical.

9:51 – HooDoo has apparently had it with the Lidsvillians too. He tells everyone to “keep this under your hats” because he is planning a “haberdashery homicide” with something called Big Daddy.

9:52 – Weenie and Mark escape the hair forest using the power of love or something.

9:55 – Why does the stovepipe hat sing opera? What does Lincoln have to do with the opera?

WHY DOES THIS SHOW NEED AN OPERA HAT??

9:56 – Notable missing hats: A police hat, Viking helmet, London guard’s helmet, baseball cap, soldier’s helmet, Yachting cap, Australian wide-brimmed hat with corks, sombrero, fez, South American fruit hat, crown, tam, turban, yarmulke, coonskin cap, wreath of laurels, Santa hat, space helmet, shower cap, wedding veil…god, I could probably continue, couldn’t I?

Out of that list, I would most like to see a pompous king’s crown or a top hat wearing a monocle.

I am also struck by the fact that this show could have had WAY more racist hats. While most of them would have made me cry, some sort of jive-talking pimp hat that talked like Franklin on Arrested Development would have been pretty aces. Or maybe that’s just the Smurf-flavored cupcake talking…

9:57 – Big Daddy is just a really big HooDoo. He has arrived in town 30 feet tall and is going to stomp all the hats into dust. Seems like he has this one in the bag.

9:58 – Weenie is looking for the ladder with his spyglass.

“Look, master!” he shouts. “I can almost see downtown Lidsville from here. Hey, I see the hat people!”

After a few seconds, he continues. “It looks like there’s a giant, too!”

HOW WAS THAT NOT THE FIRST THING HE NOTICED!?

9:59: Back in town, Big Daddy stomps around in place a lot. He doesn’t squash a single hat – not even one of the shitty ones.

Mark shows up and launches an arrow at Big Daddy. The giant deflates, and HooDoo crawls out of the wreckage. Apparently Big Daddy was some kind of robot …balloon.

 10:00: “Hey, look! It’s HooDoo! He was inside the giant!”

Everyone laughs as though they had been expecting someone else to be piloting a giant robot HooDoo balloon.

10:01: Two down, five to go.

I remark to Mike that in baseball terms, we’re entering the top of the second inning. “I can’t think about that,” he tells me. “It’s like the size of the universe. If you think about it too long, you’ll go insane!”

Kyle is nonplussed. His biggest issue at the moment is that the hats all live in houses shaped like themselves. “What if we all lived in houses shaped like people?” Kyle rants. “This show does NOT stand up to scrutiny.”

10:03: Back to Mark sneaking backstage at the magic show. Why does the magician’s hat grow? Why would this ever be necessary?

Is this original hat what’s powering Lidsville? Is Lidsville powering the hat? Does the stage magician know about Lidsville? We never see him there…

10:07: HooDoo is angry at the Lidsvillians for not paying their taxes. Is he an elected official, then? Does he provide government services for the hats? Does he pay the fire hat’s salary? I get the sense that there is a larger world here than we’ve seen so far.

10:10: At this point, every single episode has contained the same joke: HooDoo gets angry and calls up his minions on the “hot hatline.” It’s a red telephone plugged into a bright red cowboy hat that is roasting on a bed of molten coals. In every episode, HooDoo picks up the receiver and burns himself before making the call.

10:11: After several failed attempts at summoning a rocket ship, (he did manage to turn the football hat’s feet into rockets), Weenie has conjured a flying carpet! Will Mark get to escape his twisted fate?

10:12: Dogfight! HooDoo on his flying hat vs. Mark bucking around on an uncontrollable flying carpet.

“There’s only one way to stop a carpet!” HooDoo muses, summoning a giant vacuum cleaner. Uh, wouldn’t that just CLEAN the carpet?

10:14: The giant, flying vacuum cleaner sucks Mark right up. It doesn’t touch the carpet. Okay, then.

10:15: Mike is curled up in a ball on the couch, moaning. We ask him what is wrong.

“What if the vampire hat could turn YOU into a vampire hat by drinking your blood?” he says.

We have no good answer to ameliorate his fears.

10:17: The hats have a two part plan to rescue Mark:

1) Rah-rah, the football helmet, will run into the top hat and grab him.

2) The beanie will fly above HooDoo and drop water on him because he hates to get his hat wet.

“Well slosh my teabag!” exclaims Colonel Poom, “what a plan!”

10:18: Mike, still losing it, demands to be called Big Daddy HooDoo for the rest of the evening. Kyle refuses. I am undecided.

10:19: The motorcycle grandmother hat has a catchphrase: calling everyone ‘honey.’

Sounds innocuous enough, right? Well the way she pronounces it, ‘hoooooo-NEY,’ is just excruciating. It’s like the worst, scratchiest accent you’ve ever heard.

The worst bit is that you KNOW a long, drawn out ‘hoooooo-NEY’ is coming every time she rides on screen. Every. Single. Time. She never doesn’t say it.

It’s only episode 3, and I’ve started to develop a pavlovian tic every time I hear a motorcycle engine.

10:20: HooDoo makes her motorcycle disappear, so she demands that Weenie makes her a motorcycle.

Her request is crystal clear, but we all know where this is going. With a wave of her arms, Weenie turns the motorcycle hat grandma into a twisted visage of chrome and wrinkles.

10:21: Mike’s response: “There is no other genie which is as bad.”

10:22: While Weenie rides an old lady hatcycle toward HooDoo’s hideout, the bad hats ponder what to do with their captured prisoner. The pirate suggests having Mark walk the plank.

HooDoo agrees. “Everyone to the roof of that hat!”

10:23: Yeah, there’s actually a plank up here.

Weenie ends up saving Mark in the nick of time. HooDoo, five feet away from the plank, bumbles onto it and falls off.

Yet again, everything lethal to Mark is survivable by the wizard.

“I’d like to see them kill off one of the hats as a midseason shocker,” says Mike. And with that, we’re on to episode four.

10:25: Don’t go in the hat.

10:26: Ah, shit. This one STARTS with the goddamned opera hat. That doesn’t bode well…

10:27: Just as Kyle notes that Mark wears the same clothes in every episode, Weenie summons a handgun to shoot HooDoo in the fucking head. The episode has gotten WAY more promising.

10:28: Nope. A ‘bang’ flag comes out.

10:30: The racist chef’s hat has a better plan for HooDoo: pour pepper on him and ‘sneeze him out of the sky.’

After a lengthy debate on the merits of this scheme, the Lidsvillians agree to give it a shot.

10:31: HooDoo is leaving the Lidsville crew alone for once and focuses on making a fire. Unfortunately, he quickly decides that the fire is terrible because it needs more color.

I feel for him – normal fire DOES need more color! Does this sound like the ravings of a man who needs to be sneezed out of the sky?

10:33: Weenie, pissed off that the town gave up on his ‘shoot HooDoo in the fucking head with a gun’ plan, has packed up his possessions into a hobo bindle and run away from home. “No one ever tries my plans!” he laments in a sad running away song.

Kyle makes a salient point: they’ve tried his plan EVERY time! Even THIS time! And it fucking failed! Now whose fault is that?

Also, he’s a GENIE! He has a MASTER! Genies can’t just run away from home like petulant children!

The show explains this by having Weenie wear a massive set of earmuffs. Apparently if he can’t hear anyone calling for him, he doesn’t have to do their bidding.

10:35: Time for a test run of the catapult! It’s a rousing success…until the chef hat informs them that they only had enough pepper for one shot. And they used that up in testing the catapult.

10:36: HooDoo arrives in town. Now would be a good time to ask for those taxes he apparently cares about…

10:37: Rah-rah, the football helmet, reminds HooDoo about the taxes.

The villain of this series had to be REMINDED ABOUT HIS MOTIVE.

By the football helmet. A character who punctuates the beginning and end of everything he says with the phrase ‘D’urrrrr.”

Anyway, HooDoo shrinks Nursey (the nurse hat) and Scorchey (the fire hat) and puts them in his pocket. If the hats don’t pay their taxes AND give him back their genie within the hour, he’ll kill them.

10:39: The hats find Weenie and rush to HooDoo’s top hat, where he immediately asks his genie to summon him some colored fire powder. Apparently, all of his actions today were sparked by his need for colored fire.

I’m almost impressed by that plot twist. If only I thought it were deliberate…

10:41: HooDoo freezes time. This is apparently a power of his, even though he hasn’t done it up until now. When he unfreezes time, he announces that he will throw all the hats onto the fire.

This could have been accomplished quite easily when time was frozen…

10:45: HooDoo has an anthropomorphic rabbit man named Raunchy Rabbit as an assistant. This is particularly troubling to Mike, who rocks back and forth repeating “Raunchy and Mister Big ARE NOT GOOD NAMES!”

10:46: The old “make HooDoo cast a spell and put a mirror in front of the spell really quickly” plan works, causing HooDoo to turn himself into a frog.

The episode ends without him turning back. Multi-episode arc time? Of course not.

10:47: “My favorite moment of that episode was….uh….uggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” says Mike.

Four down, thirteen to go.

10:50: Don’t go into the hat, Mark! Save yourself!

10:52: The Indian had has-um an old Indian trail map that leads to, ‘the real world.’ Does this mean that the hats know they DON’T live in the real world? At the beginning of the first episode, they made it clear that they had never heard of a world other than Lidsville…but now they’ve come to terms with the fact that they’re essentially fictional characters? Buzz Lightyear might have something to say about this.

10:53: “I frip my rid!” exclaims the racist chef hat.

10:54: The hats’ new anti-HooDoo weapon is a giant bow and arrow. Instead of trusting it to Colonel Poom, who probably has some sort of military experience, the hats put Rah Rah in charge.

10:55: Rah Rah manages to weakly throw the bow in the general direction of HooDoo while holding onto the arrow. Good work, hats!

10:56: HooDoo has decided to evict all of the hats and kick them out of their homes! “That’s not legal,” deadpans the cowboy hat. Uh….and HooDoo zapping you with lightning every day WAS somehow legal? Also, since when does Lidsville have of governing body of laws?

10:57: Mark and Weenie have somehow ended up back in the hair forest. “How could you possibly let yourself wander back in there a second time???” shouts Kyle.

10:58: Back in Lidsville, HooDoo is putting all the houses up for rent. Who else lives in Lidsville? Who could he possibly be trying to rent to?

Weenie is so angry about this, he lets loose with the following insult: “May a crazed water buffalo run amok in his bathtub.”

11:00: The hats have all set up camp in the peroxide swamp. “It’s a bad show,” laments Colonel Poom.

I heartily agree.

11:01: “What if some famous magician that HooDoo has never heard of comes up and challenges him to a duel?” Mark announces.

I guess this is their plan.

11:02: The absolute funniest moment of the night happens when the party hat turns around – totally unmotivated – and blows her party whistle nose right in the face of one of the other hats. Words cannot describe how bizarrely funny this moment is.

Or maybe at the two hour mark the mania is setting in…

11:04: Mark’s magician costume is even more flamboyant than Charles Nelson Reilly’s. Their wizard duel mostly consists of standing around and threatening to turn each other into animals.

11:05: Mark, under the alias of, “The Great Wizzo,” unleashes his greatest trick: making a mountain disappear. He does this by waving his wand at a mountain that Colonel Poom BLOWS UP WITH DYNAMITE.

11:06: Mark/Wizzo threatens to turn all the bad hats into turtles. HooDoo counters with the old, “what’s so bad about being a turtle?” argument.

11:07: Weenie and Raunchy Rabbit have a battle of wits. It’s shocking that I don’t actually know which one of them is stupider. It’s like watching two broken clocks straining to tick.

11:08: Weenie has had enough. He launches fireworks at HooDoo’s house. This accomplishes nothing.

11:10: “HooDoo is going to blow his crumpet!” shouts Colonel Poom. Because all British people substitute ‘crumpet’ for whatever other word they feel like.

11:11: Weenie attempts to outrun a firework in the sky. He doesn’t and it hits him in the ass. Then the episode ends.

11:13: We remind Mike that the words “it’s only Lidsville” exited his lips the previous evening, when seven hours of bad TV didn’t seem like such an obstacle. He responds by actively trying to fall asleep.

11:14: DON’T GO INTO THE HAT MARK! SAVE US!

11:15: The episode begins with the following lines: “Yeah! Taxation without Representation! We should stand up and fight just like our ancestor George Washington’s Hat!”

This makes me believe that the hats know that they should have been paying HooDoo’s taxes the whole time. Who’s the REAL monster, ‘good’ hats?

11:16: Party hat is drunk again. Party hat is always drunk.

11:17: HooDoo wears a referee’s tuxedo in this episode. Is that even a thing?

11:20: It’s an election episode! Everyone is running for mayor with their own sign. HooDoo sees this as an opportunity and makes Mr. Big, the gangster hat, run as well.

11:22: We see an amazing camera bobble as Mark attempts to organize the election. “Fuck off Mark!,” shouts Kyle. “You’re neither a hat NOR a citizen of Lidsville! What rights do you have?”

11:24: Mark decides to run the election by utilizing the time-honored “show of hands” method. Democracy in action!

11:27: HooDoo rigs the election so that none of the hats raise their hands for their candidate and everyone raises their hands when Mr. Big is nominated. Even though HooDoo basically admits to this and every single person knows what happened, they all decide that the election is binding and allow Mr. Big to be the mayor.

This is probably the most brilliant piece of satire in the entire series.

11:30: Mr. Big’s first piece of legislation: a freeway tax. The hats are pissed they have to pay this despite not having paid any taxes for five straight episodes now.

Also, why is this kids show mostly about taxes?

11:32: Why does Mr. Big want a freeway? He doesn’t own a car. None of the hats own a car.

11:35: “Now normally, I’m not against genocide…” remarks Kyle.

11:39: DON’T GO INTO THE HAT.

11:40: The hats have built a rocket ship this time.

11:41: HooDoo flies his hat, which we’ve learned is called the hatamaran, into a lightning storm. He immediately gets hit by lightning.

11:42: Raunchy Rabbit has HooDoo’s powers now thanks to the lightning. I’ve been waiting almost three hours for a Raunchy-centric episode…

11:43: HooDoo invokes Occam’s razor by deciding to get a finger transplant in order to get his powers back. Yeah, that’s clearly the easiest way to do that.

He’s also kind of given up on getting revenge on Mark at this point in the series.

11:44: The hats stuff the rocket ship with dynamite. Because that’s how rockets work.

11:46: HooDoo tells the good hats that he lost his powers. I don’t know why. He just sort of volunteers the information.

11:47: HooDoo shares a tender moment with a spider.

11:48: The hats completely give up on the whole ‘rocket ship’ plan in order to mess around with HooDoo for no real reason.

11:50: HooDoo has a plan to get Raunchy to zap the lightning drawer in the weather bureau and get the powers to switch back.

It involves a girl rabbit.

11:51: Oh shit!! HooDoo is going to be the girl rabbit!!

He puts on a latex mask and an oddly specific form-fitting costume. It is absolutely horrifying.

“THIS IS WORSE THAN A CLOWN!” shouts Kyle.

“THIS IS NOT WHAT HAPPENS IN A JUST WORLD!” Mike adds.

11:54: Mr. Big thinks that the girl rabbit is hot. That’s like…eight creepy fetishes in one.

11:55: “Out of all the things happening on the screen right now, I don’t like any of them,” says Mike.

11:56: Things have taken a turn for the worse. HooDoo’s costume has changed for no apparent reason, and now his rabbit face is done up with makeup instead of a mask.

“MAKE IT STOP! IT’S IN THE LIGHT NOW AND I CAN’T UNSEE IT!” Mike laments.

11:57:  “Moonlight turns me on” HooDoo croons, finally getting Raunchy to zap the lightning drawer.

12:00: Back in town, HooDoo destroys the rocket. “What did they build that rocket ship out of?” Kyle asks.

“Hats,” I reply.

It is now Sunday morning.

12:01: DON’T GO HAT.

12:02: HooDoo is lovelorn to start this episode. He’s a Romeo without a Juliet.

12:03: Mike has lost it. “Oh god,” he raves, “imagine if the hats turned around and started talking RIGHT AT US?”

12:04: The ‘good hats’ are planning to steal the hatamaran in this episode.

12:05: It didn’t work. Mark gets kidnapped. Again. At least things in Lidsville move reasonably quickly.

12:06: HooDoo gets a mail order girlfriend! Her name is, uh, Gladys Glamourpuss. She must come from the Pussy Galore school of ‘how on earth did this name get past the network censors!?’

Also, the premise of this episode implies that everything bad in Lidsville would be solved if HooDoo got laid.

12:08: Gladys appears to be played by the same androgynous whatever that plays Weenie. Also her real name is Witchiepoo. Apparently she’s the villain from H.R. Pufnstuf.

12:09: HooDoo tells her that he’d rather date an Aardvark. Oh snap.

12:10: Witchiepoo wears the exact same makeup as HooDoo. Kyle astutely points out that both shows have the same villain, but only one of them has a vagina.

12:11: Highlight of the past hour: the hats stick a cardboard moon up into HooDoo’s window in order to prove some obtuse point about sleep or something.

“A moon? In the middle of the day??” HooDoo exclaims with surprise.

At this moment, this is the funniest thing I have ever heard.

12:12: The two villains are actually in love right now. It’s super creepy.

12:14: RAUNCY RABBIT JUST KISSED WITCHIEPOO. WHY???

12:15: A FUCKING SONG. A FUCKING LOVE SONG.

12:16: HooDoo, now in love, is on an even bigger rampage. He’s destroyed the statue of George Washington’s Hat that stands in downtown Lidsville just because he’s happy.

The good hats go to the French Beret for a lesson on love in the hopes they can find a way to get HooDoo out of it or something.

12:17: “I played a leading lady in the young boy’s follies!” announces Mark. His plan, it seems, is to dress like a woman and seduce his enemy.

Mind you, there are only two human characters in the entire show. This is now the second straight episode where one of them has dressed as a woman.

12:18: Mike is slightly turned on.

12:19: Mark is rubbing all up on HooDoo. “I’ll be waiting for you under the yum yum tree,” he announces before slinking out of HooDoo’s horrid hat house.

“WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?” Kyle shouts. “WAIT – DON’T TELL ME!”

12:24: HAT NO NO HAT NO FALL MARK NO NEW EPISODE. DON’T DO IT YOU ASSSHOOOOLEEEEE!!!!!!

12:25: LIDSVILE IS THE LIVING END.

12:26: Weenie casts a spell that makes Rah Rah’s spine snap in two. This is funny for some reason.

12:27: Colonel Poom, in his proper British accent, calls Weenie an ‘old bean.’ This somehow makes Weenie summon an old bean.

Colonel Poom thinks that this turn of events is delightful.

12:28: The racist chef hat gets some serious screen time. “I WILL NOT ROOK AT THAT YOU MOTHERFUCKING LACIST HAT!” Kyle shouts at him.

12:29: The old bean is growing into a beanstalk. Whoop de fuck.

12:30: Some stuff happened, but I don’t really know what. The TV was drowned out by Kyle and Mike debating which is a worse name: Glamourpuss, or Raunchy Rabbit.

The debate ended n a tie.

12:31: We’re back on the taxes again. HooDoo is broke.

12:32: Party hat is drunk again. Party hat is always drunk.

12:33: Weenie and Mark climb the beanstalk. Halfway up, the genie asks him if he’s seen any giants yet. Mark has to think pretty hard about the answer.

This seems absurd, but Kyle points out that Weenie has a point. Mark had a very hard time spotting the giant in downtown Lidsville last time.

12:34: HooDoo turns Mark into a butterfly. Seems like he should have tried this sooner.

12:35: “Here comes that mean vampire!!” shouts Nursey, master of the obvious.

12:36: HooDoo ransoms the lives of Weenie and Mark for all the hats’ money. I take issue with this plan for two roughly equal reasons:

• Why would HooDoo give his genie back? Weenie may be the worst genie there is, but eventually he will find a way to make an infinite amount of money, right?

• What do you BUY In Lidsville? There’s only hats! And everyone has a job based on what hat they are! Their currency is probably ALSO hats!

12:37: “There’s only one real world and YOU ARE IN IT!” HooDoo shouts at Mark. “That’s LIDSVILLE!”

Somewhere in the direction of Mike I can hear a quiet weeping sound.

12:38: Oh wow. Mark has convinced HooDoo that our world is real, and HooDoo decides to climb the beanstalk in order to ransom Mark to his parents.

Mark is sad about this plan even though it would eventually lead to his rescue.

I think he secretly wants to be a hat.

12:39: Hat money sighting! Their currency isn’t hats at all, it’s nickels with random numbers drawn on them in black sharpie.

12:42: HOLY SHIT! HooDoo has made it to the top of the beanstalk! AND IT ACTUALLY COMES UP THROUGH THE MAGIC HAT!

HE IS LOOKING OUT OF LIDSVILLE AND OUT OVER THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING!

12:43: Oh No! The beanstalk has been chopped down! GRAB ONTO THE HAT HOODOO!

12:45: The beanstalk, HooDoo still clinging to it, falls to the ground. But it knocks over HooDoo’s house in the process!

Could this be the beginning of a multi-episode arc? HooDoo’s house is destroyed. He knows about the real world and has designs on conquering it. Will hats be marching down the streets ofNew York Cityby the end of the next episode?

Saddle up, friends! Things have finally gotten interesting!

12:48: Jump into that hat, Mark! Go for it! I’ve got my second wind!

12:49: Lidsville is back to status quo. Our spirits are immediately crushed.

12:50: One of the true horrors of Lidsville is something I’ve yet to describe to you: the hat band.

Inside HooDoo’s top hat house, he has a tiny band of hat creatures that burst into song at random times throughout the episode. The songs are always exactly the same: the band picks a random word that was just said and sing it over the same incessant melody.

So, if the word was ‘rabbit,’ they’d sing, “rabbit rabbit rabbit, rabbit rabbit rabbit, rabbit rabbit rabbit yeeaahhhhhhhhhh.”

The hat band is so horrible that even HooDoo hates them.

I bring them up here because they’ve already shown up TWICE this episode, and we’re only a minute or so in. Between that and the fact that the events of the last episode have been ignored, this is the most depressing start to a Lidsville since the first one.

12:51: “Those hats are a cagy bunch,” HooDoo opines.

I’m not sure I’d call them cagey…though the ‘moon in the middle of the day’ plan was pretty savage.

12:52: “My word! What a strange looking female! She doesn’t look anything like a hat!” says Colonel Poom, upon seeing HooDoo cross-dress for the second time in three episodes.

12:53: Why is HooDoo hitting on Mark while wearing an old lady costume? Why does he even need to lure Mark into a trap if he can freeze time?

12:54: Hat band AGAIN. Fuck this episode.

12:55: FOURTH TIME HAT BAND! MY SPIRITS ARE FULLY BROKEN.

12:56: HooDoo has just made Mark a genie instead of Weenie! This can’t go well…

12:57: HOODOO IS READING PLAY HAT MAGAZINE.

First, there are only THREE female hats in Lidsville: Party hat, Nurse hat, and Grandma Motorcycle hat.

WHO WOULD WANT TO SEE THEM NAKED? AND WHAT DOES A NAKED HAT LOOK LIKE? HATS ARE BY DEFINITION CLOTHES THEMSLEVES.

Second, HooDoo is NOT a hat! Does a hat fetish explain his presence in Lidsville to begin with? Has it developed over time due to too much hanging around with hats? Or perhaps he’s just feigning interest because he thinks ‘Gay Wizard Weekly’ would seem MORE creepy?

If that’s true, HooDoo should just come out of the closet and accept who he is. There is nothing wrong with being a gay wizard. Sir Ian McKellen proves that and so much more.

There is, however, something truly wrong with being a hatophile.

12:58: HooDoo continues to read Play Hat magazine in front of his minions….he’s just sitting there reading it…

1:00: Weenie, fully human now, is wearing the costume of a Dickensian orphan. Oh shit, was he kidnapped by HooDoo a hundred and twenty years ago and turned into a genie?

1:01: The increasingly misnamed ‘good hats’ brew up a ‘deadly sleeping potion.’ Uh, a potion can only be ONE of those two things.

1:03: It takes Colonel Poom, the pith helmet, only about 12 seconds to accidently prick himself with the poison dart.

Kyle has decided that Colonel Poom is an Ass Hat.

1:04: HooDoo has been shot with the dart and Colonel Poom has made a full recovery. Clearly the potion is not deadly. Sigh.

1:07: The episode ends with someone dumping a pineapple on HooDoo. This is not a series first.

1:10: DON’T GO IN THE HAAAT……

1:12: This episode is about some guy called the Imperial Wizard. Isn’t that a rank in the KKK?

1:13: Raunchy is dressed as a maid. And he has a new voice. Did the old Raunchy quit? Or die?

1:15: The Imperial Wizard is coming to inspect HooDoo’s hat house, but it’s pretty messy. We are supposed to care about HooDoo’s house being clean. That is what the conflict in this episode is so far.

1:16: Weenie is sad because he didn’t get any mail.

1:17: Party hat is drunk at 8 AM.

It’s Weenie’s 1600^th birthday, though, so that’s a better excuses than he usually has.

1:18: They’re going to throw a party! Does Party hat finally get an episode all to herself?

1:19: Song time! “Happy 1600^th birthday to you…”

Opera hat nails the solos. And by that I mean I hate everything oh god why am I watching Lidsville right now…

1:20: The song ends with a creepy hat birthday hug. I tell Kyle that we need to make this happen for his next big day.

1:21: Everything I could find about Lidsville before we began made it seem like a fanciful but trippy show beloved by thousands who fondly remember it from their childhood.

I’ve recently gone back and watched some of the shows from MY childhood. All of the Disney Afternoon toons like Duck Tales and Chip ‘N Dale. All of the classic Nickelodeon  sitcoms and game shows. The younger stuff like Reading Rainbow and Sesame Street.

Guess what? All of it ranges from ‘boring and passable’ to ‘interesting and funny.’

Now, maybe I can’t possibly have the correct perspective because those are part of who I am and Lidsville was not.

Maybe it’s a generational thing, and the fact that I spent my teen years on AOL Instant Messenger instead of mescaline has something to do with it too.

But for the life of me, I cannot figure out why this show has become beloved. It should be spoken about with the same wary tone as trauma-inducing dream crushers like The Brave Little Toaster and All Dogs Go To Heaven.

1:23: I love that the hats are shocked whenever HooDoo comes to town. Even though he comes to town in every single episode.

1:24: The hot hatline makes a SECOND appearance this episode, including the whole production where HooDoo almost burns his face off. They really must have been scrabbling for running time.

1:25: Mark dresses up as the Imperial Wizard. To be fair, the whole “dress up to fool HooDoo” plan has worked very well so far, despite Mark being the only other human in the known universe.

1:30: Even though Mark has never seen the Imperial Wizard before, when the ACTUAL Wizard shows up at the end of the episode we learn that Mark’s costume and portrayal was dead on.

This fact bothers no one but Kyle.

But it REALLY bothers Kyle.

1:31: “Holy Carrot, what’s that?” Raunchy Rabbit asks HooDoo.

“HOLY CARROT INDEED, RAUNCHY RABBIT!!” Kyle shouts at the screen. I think he is still angry about the wizard costume.

1:33: HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTT NOOOOOOOO

MAAARRRKKKKK UNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

1:34: Weenie is hung over from his birthday party in the previous episode. This is actually a story arc.

1:35: The bad hats are angry that HooDoo is making them clean their slums. This is the other plot this episode I guess.

1:37: HooDoo turns Raunchy into a motorcycle. This is the second time on Lidsville that someone has been turned into a motorcycle.

1:38: HooDoo’s in town! Nursey warns the citizens by running in circles and shouting the word ‘alarm.’

1:39: Wow! Mark has stolen the hatamaran! But he won’t even think about escaping because Weenie is too hung over to travel.

Weenie’s bedroom is inside the magic ring that controls him and he is too ill to come out. So Mark decides it’s clearly time to shrink Nursey down and make her go into the ring to treat Weenie’s hangover.

1:42: The plan works!

“How did you get small enough to get into this ring?” Weenie asks.

“I have an in with women’s lib,” Nursey replies.

Is this some kind of sexist remark? None of us can figure out what it’s even supposed to mean. Nevertheless, we’re offended.

1:43: Mike wants death. And also death.

1:46: Nursey alludes to having a bikini. What do the hats look like under their clothes? How do they procreate? Kyle realizes that conversation is taking a dark turn and stops us before too much damage can be done.

1:49: Weenie has been saved!

1:50: The fucking party hat is ALREADY throwing another party. There’s a song and a montage where the film is sped up and everything.

Weenie is just going to get drunk all over again, dammit.

1:51: New plan! A party plan! The hats are going to shrink the hatamaran Or maybe HooDoo.

1:52: They shrunk HooDoo. He didn’t get all that small, though.

1:54: DON’T SHOUT ABOUT THE SHRINKING POTION ANTIDOTE IN FRONT OF HOO DOO YOU DUMB FUCKS!

1:55: Aaaand they spilled the antidote on HooDoo. That victory lasted about 35 seconds.

End of episode, too. Less than nothing happened in this one.

1:56: Fuck it, Mark SHOULD fall into the hat this time. He deserves Lidsville. Jump the fuck on in.

1:58: ANOTHER FUCKING PARTY.

1:59: It’s a party for the gross southern farmer hat’s pet pig. Let that sink in for a moment.

2:00: HooDoo crashes YET ANOTHER party. He shoots lightning at the cake and steals the pig.

Believe it or not, the overall quality of these episodes has taken a HUGE dive. At least in the earlier ones something would happen, even if it was horrifying. Now it’s just parties.

2:01: The hats have a plan: Use the fucking cannon (and where has THAT been lately!?) to blast a hole in HooDoo’s hat and get the pig back.

They were never this upset when Mark and Weenie got kidnapped.

2:02: Seriously – it’s revolution over this damned pig. They even have a drum and fife!

2:03: Whoa – Twirly sighting! How long as it been since we’ve even SEEN that guy, let alone seen him do something? He’s a fucking helicopter!

2:03: HOT HATINE SIGHTING

2:04: Another pearl of wisdom from Mike: “The executioner’s hat looks like a poop that has a butt in its mouth. I don’t like anything.”

2:05: HooDoo’s twin brother has just showed up. His name is Bruce HooDoo, and he’s a straight shootin’ southern gentleman in a crisp white suit.

2:09: Mike is still mad about that pepper bomb from a dozen episodes ago. “I really think that was the thing that would have stopped HooDoo for good!” he shouts.

2:17: Bruce gives the pig back to the good hats. HooDoo shows up and tells his brother never to darken his hatstep again. Then the episode ends.

I’m really sick of the word ‘hat.’

2:18: By all means, Mark. Go back in to the fucking hat, you intolerable motherfucker.

2:20: At this point, the good guys are barely even in the episodes. Mark hasn’t had a chance to cross dress for like two hours. The whole show has just become HooDoo monolguing for minutes at a time.

2:22: It’s a fucking amnesia episode. Goddamn it, HooDoo.

2:23: THE VERY LAST EPISODE WE JUST WATCHED had ‘polite HooDoo’ when his good guy brother showed up. Now he has amnesia and the bad hats have convinced him he’s a butler named Reginald.

IT’S THE EXACT SAME THING.

2:26: Kyle is making creepy faces at Mike. “I don’t want to slosh your teabag, Kyle,” he says, “I don’t want to slosh your teabag at all.”

2:28: The plan this episode is for all the girl hats to seduce the bad hats so that Mark can do…something to HooDoo? I don’t even know. Everyone is really mailing it in at this point.

2:31:  “Those be some good hat broads!” the Pirate hat exclaims. I disagree.

Also,  why haven’t the bad hats been interested in the female good hats before? It’s not like they don’t fight every single week.

2:32: Why are the bad hats so bad at walking? They fail to stay in a straight line and fall all over each other wherever they go.

2:35: ‘Avast ye wench, drop anchor!” the Pirate hat shouts while chasing the girl hats around and around a fountain. I cannot quite wrap my brain around his metaphor, but sure.

2:40: I attempt to convince Mike that one of the lyrics in the closing theme song goes, “I see people put on hats, and then they die up in ‘em….”

I’m beyond the point of knowing whether or not I actually believe this to be the correct lyric.

2:41: I am oddly calm about Mark falling into the hat. I may have gone through every stage of grief at this point…

2:43: ANOTHER FUCKING PARTY – this one is a benefit show for the old hat home.

“This is old hat you guys,” says Kyle, clearly still in mid-season form.

Mike just looks over and flips off Kyle silently.

2:44: How many midgets did they need to hire to make this show??

2:45: HOLY SHIT THE HAT BAND IS BACK. I HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT THEM AND NOW I HATE THEM TWICE AS MUCH.

2:47: The good hats hand out flyers for the benefit show. They make a point to walk up the mountain to HooDoo’s house (which is the only thing up there, mind you) in order to hand him the flyer to a show THAT HE ISN’T INVITED TO. No wonder he hates them.

2:48: HOO DOO HAS SUMMONED THE HAT BAND TO DOWNTOWN LIDSVILLE. THIS IS A NEW LOW!

2:49: HooDoo BEGS to be a part of the benefit show. C’mon guys, he clearly belongs on stage! Let the man perform!

2:50: HooDoo, rightfully pissed, turns all the hats into old people. WHY DOES HE HAVE THIS POWER!?

2:51: Gristled, old Party hat’s nose is all unfurled now…it looks like a piece of limp beef jerky. Mike is about to vomit.

2:53: The bad hats announce that they are building a road to PANTSVILLE.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?

LIDSVILLE IS JUST THE TIP OF OUR NIGHTMARES.

2:54: Mike says he wouldn’t mind living in Brasville.

2:55: “That old HooDoo really FFFFFFFFFFFsocked it to us,” Mark says.

2:56: “I have WILD idea,” Mark says.

“You’re going to dress up as…?” I mumble at the screen.

“We’re gonna need a lot of costumes,” he finishes.

2:58: So HooDoo, having felt bad for them or something, has turned the hats young again. But instead of being happy, these little shits have decided to dress up like old people so they can demand that HooDoo pay them ‘social hat security’ and ‘haticare.’

No, I am not making that up.

3:00: In an attempt to de-age the hats, HooDoo AGAIN falls for the old ‘Mark wheels a large mirror in front of HooDoo’s spell’ plan again. Now he’s a baby. Which is just a foot tall HooDoo with a pacifier.

Seems like the end of yet another horrible episode.

3:01: Nope. It’s sng time, apparently.

3:02:Tex is rapping. This is ten years before rap.

“Hats hats…famous hats. Abraham Lincoln in his top hat,” goes the song. Um, how on Earth do the hats know about Lincoln!? The Krofft brothers did NOT think this mythology through.

3:03: Only two episodes left! And this one is called ‘The Great Brain Robbery!’ We’re predicting Mark and HooDoo having a brain switch. Regardless, we’re pumped. This is a can’t-miss title.

3:04: JUMP INTO THAT FUCKING HAT MARK! GREAT BRRRRAAAAIINNNNN ROBBERY!!!!!!!!

3:06: ALARM! ALARM! HooDoo is in town!!

3:07: Have the good hats figured out a new anti-aircraft plan for the hatamaran? Nope, they’re just throwing fruit again. Reusing footage from the pilot, in fact.

3:08: IT IS SUPER EFFECTIVE. HO-NEY.

3:09: HooDoo has a new plan: a brainwashing machine. Well, there you go.

3:10: Mark and Weenie attempt yet another escape on yet another flying carpet. While doing so, they sing a song about friendship for no goddamned reason.

3:12: HooDoo summons a magic flute that is actually a recorder.

Kyle poses a serious question: if the magic flute makes creatures follow you, isn’t that the worst possible thing to have in Lidsville? Would you want to be followed by ANY of those things?

3:13: Hats go into the machine and come out angry. This isn’t really a brain robbery…

Also, why does a wizard need to invent a machine?

3:20: The Imperial Wizard shows up and tells HooDoo to destroy the brainwashing machine. So he declares war on the Imperial Wizard.

3:24: The Good guys switch the machine to ‘adorable’ and send HooDoo and all the bad hats through. This means they dance around and say the word ‘adorable’  a lot. The end.

3:26: LAST TIME INTO THE HAT, MARK

3:28: It starts straight off with the hat band. This show will not go quietly.

3:30: And another party! This one for HooDoo. His mother, Mommy HooDoo is here for the celebration. Even she hates the hat band.

3:31: The plot of this episode is that HooDoo’s mom is worried that HooDoo is turning good. This plot blows.

3:32: Mike sees someone walk across the screen who wasn’t there. Our first sleep-deprivation hallucination? Good thing we’re on the last episode.

3:33: OH NO!

IT’S A FUCKING CLIP SHOW.

WE’RE GETTING CLIPS.

MOTHERFUCKER.

3:35: It’s Raunchy Rabbit as a bike again. WHAAARGH.

Raunchy Rabbit rubs his foot for good luck.

“STOP SAYING RUBBING!” Mike shouts.

3:37: Another clip. Mark’s walking the plank off the top of the hat again. God damn is this an unsatisfying end to the series.

3:38: …and we finally get our first shot of the good hats and Mark this episode. They’re doing jumping jacks in the center of town. Mark is basically a hat at this point.

3:39: Wow, it took Mark WAY too long to figure out who HooDoo’s mother was. Even though she’s just HooDoo but an old woman.

3:40: FUCKING MOMMY HOODOO HAS A SONG

SHE’S NOT EVEN TRYING TO SING

SHE’S JUST TALKING NEXT TO A PIANO.

3:42: Why are Mark and the hats going to all the trouble to convince Mommy HooDoo that HooDoo is a bad guy!? Why do they care!?

3:33: CLIPS! Now it’s a big daddy clip….

3:34: Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

3:36: “Well, this is ONE mothers day we won’t forget,” Mommy HooDoo direct addresses at the camera. Uh…wasn’t it HooDoo’s birthday!? You know what? It doesn’t matter.

3:47: IT’S OVER! WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looking back on this sick, sad night from a journalistic perspective, I’m not entirely sure what we accomplished.

“I’m going to look at this experience like going to boot camp,” Mike told me a few hours before we began. “It’s going to be terrible. And I’ll never want to do it a second time. But it’ll be kind of cool if we actually make it through the whole thing.”

In combat, it doesn’t take long for your comrades to become your brothers. And while our loved ones were out bonding in some seedy part of Vegas, the three of us bonded as only three nerdy, television obsessed men can.

Trial by fire.