I hadn’t seen Fat
Albert And The Cosby Kids in decades, and yet I never forgot the show’s
theme song. It has often been stuck in my head (and many of my friends have
heard me sing it). What a pleasure it is to hear the song again, and of course
to see revisit the show. This show totally holds up, and folks with kids should
definitely show it to them. During the opening sequence, Bill Cosby, hanging
out in a junkyard, says, “This is Bill
Cosby coming at you with music and fun. And if you’re not careful, you may
learn something before it’s done.” Indeed.
Fat Albert And The
Cosby Kids: The Complete Series is actually three complete series. The
first is Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids,
which ran from 1972 to 1976. The second is The
New Fat Albert Show, which ran from 1979 into the early 1980s. And the last
is The Adventures Of Fat Albert And The
Cosby Kids, which aired in the mid-1980s. That’s a total of one hundred ten
episodes, on fifteen discs (that’s approximately thirty-nine hours of Fat
Albert).
While all three shows are very similar, with basically
the same characters, the same structure, and with lessons for children, there
are some differences.
Fat Albert And The
Cosby Kids
The first series, Fat
Albert And The Cosby Kids, features songs performed by the gang at the end
of each episode (except for the first episode, when the song comes earlier).
The songs have to do with the lessons learned by the kids in each episode. For
example, in the second episode – “The Runt” – the gang sings, “Don’t look down at a small guy.” (And
yeah, this is back when a “gang” just meant a group of friends.)
This series – like the other two – mixes in live segments
of Bill Cosby with the animated show of the kids. Bill comments on the action,
makes little jokes, and directly addresses those watching (presumably mostly
children). For example, in the first episode (“Lying”), Bill says, “One of the bad things about telling lies is
people begin believing only half of what you say, and you never know what half.”
In the episode “The Tomboy,” he tells the audience: “What you like to do, you should do it. If you dig it, do it. It’s not a
sissy for a man to knit or cook, and it’s not wrong for a girl to like tough
sports.”
The show doesn’t avoid more serious subject matters. Like
in “The Shuttered Window,” a character named Monty dies, and his niece has
trouble adjusting. The gang performs a more serious song at the end of that
episode, and it is one of the show’s best songs.
The show is fairly loose, and while it might seem odd for
an animated series to have continuity errors, this actually becomes part of the
show’s charm. At times, a character will be in two places at once. And Rudy has
two different guitars, and either one could be in his hands at any given
moment. In the episode “Four Eyes,” the character Heywood plays right field,
but in the song he plays left field.
The New Fat Albert
Show
The second series, The
New Fat Albert Show, sees a couple of changes – the introduction of Brown
Hornet cartoons and the lack of musical numbers at the end of episodes. Also,
in Bill’s introduction he says, “You may
learn something before we’re done” rather than “before it’s done.” Though interestingly, many of the episodes of
this series have the opening sequence from The
Adventures Of Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids.
The Brown Hornet cartoons are an example of a show within
a show, as the gang sits down in front of the television to watch the cartoon. The
cartoon is a serial, and at the beginning of each episode the Brown Hornet gets
out of a sticky situation. What is great is that the voice over tells us he
used his super powers to escape, but we never see how. Yet at the end of a
given Brown Hornet episode he finds himself in another impossible predicament,
and the voice over asks if he will survive, and “If so, how?” The lessons learned in the Brown Hornet cartoon apply
to the gang’s story for any given episode. (By the way, in the third episode of
Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids, Fat
Albert mentions The Brown Hornet as being his favorite show.) There is one episode without a Brown Hornet cartoon, because the gang’s
television set has been stolen.
Bill Cosby still comments on the action, and on the
lessons. In “The Dancer” he says, “Let
others find happiness in their own way rather than in your way.” He also
jokes, as in “The Mainstream,” “The
trouble with Rudy is he stops to think, then forgets to start again.”
There are some funny bits in these episodes. For example,
in the series opener, “In My Merry Busmobile,” there is the line “Man, you’re so short, when you sit on the
ground your feet dangle.” (By the way, that episode also has a reference to
the destruction of the ozone layer.) And I love in “Spare The Rod” the joke of
the villain wearing a mask that looks exactly like her face.
This series tackles some serious subjects such as child
abuse (in “Spare The Rod”), divorce (in “Sweet Sorrow”) and alcoholism (in
“Watch That First Step”). One episode that is particularly interesting is “Poll
Time,” in which a black kid and a white kid are running for class president.
Each uses his race as his platform rather than addressing any issues. They are
both full of crap, and neither has anything real to say. (This feels to me at least partially like a
wonderful rip on our inadequate two-party system.) This episode also has the
funny line, “A fan letter poured in.”
The Adventures Of
Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids
The third series sort of combines elements from the other
two. Some episodes have Brown Hornet cartoons; others don’t. Most episodes
don’t have songs, but some do. In the introduction to this series, Bill Cosby
goes back to “You may learn something
before it’s done.”
In the first episode, “Have A Heart,” there is a Brown
Hornet cartoon, and for once we do see how he got out of his last predicament.
The Brown Hornet also has the funny line, “All
in an episode’s work.” That episode, by the way, is about being prepared
and taking CPR classes.
This series actually has the animated gang go visit Bill
Cosby in the episode “Cosby’s Classics.” This episode features Bill Cosby
telling the kids the tale of Paul Bunyan, and it has a pro-library message.
Again, the series is not afraid to tackle serious
subjects, such as child abduction (in “Sinister Stranger”) and teen pregnancy
(in “Teenage Mom”).
Bonus Feature
This DVD collection has one bonus feature, Hey, Hey, Hey… It’s The Story Of Fat Albert.
This is a forty-minute making-of special with an interview with Bill Cosby. It
mentions the origins of the Fat Albert character in Bill Cosby’s comedy
routine, “Buck Buck.” Cosby says, regarding Fat Albert, that he wanted
inflections he’d never heard before in children’s cartoons. He also talks about
how the catch phrase “Hey, hey, hey” is related to The Temptations. Cosby talks
about each of the other characters a bit too.
This feature also includes interviews with writers,
storyboard artists, and with Gordon Berry, the educational consultant.
Fat Albert And The
Cosby Kids: The Complete Series was released on June 25, 2013
through Shout! Factory.
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