30 Years Ago: Pee Wee's Playhouse Ends

Today in 1990, the final episode of Paul Reuben' brilliant children's series aired

I misremembered this story. Perhaps you misremembered it too.

My faded memory of the demise of Pee Wee Herman goes something like this: In the early ’90s, Paul Reubens was arrested for masturbating in an adult movie theater in Sarasota. That event led CBS to cancel his acclaimed Saturday morning children’s show, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, the last episode of which aired 30 years ago today. Reubens pled no contest and was sentenced to 75 hours of community service, during which he produced two drug PSAs, including one memorable bit about crack:

Most of that memory is accurate, except one small detail: CBS did not cancel the show because of the Sarasota theater incident in 1991. The network had already cancelled the show, after its fifth season, in 1990. However, CBS did remove the series from syndication, so for a long while, owning bootleg copies of Pee Wee’s Playhouse on VHS was considered a prize possession.

Today, no one cares what Pee Wee did in a movie theater in Sarasota. All five seasons of his zany children’s show are streaming on Netflix.

---

MORE ANNIVERSARIES

• 1 Year Ago Today: The first known case of COVID-19 was identified as a 55-year-old man in Wuhan, China.

• 5 Years Ago Today: Actor Charlie Sheen revealed that he was HIV-positive. Many women soon sued him.

• 40 Years Ago Today: John Lennon & Yoko One released the album Double Fantasy, which contained “Watching the Wheels,” my personal favorite solo Lennon song. He would be shot and killed three weeks after its release. 

• 50 Years Ago Today: Lieutenant William Calley went on trial for the My Lai Massacre.

• 50 Years Ago Today: American inventor Douglas Engelbart received a patent for the first computer mouse.

• 60 Years Ago Today: Lhamo Dondrub, the current spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, was officially named the 14th Dalai Lama at the age of 15.

• 220 Years Ago Today: The U.S. Congress convened at the Capitol in Washington, D.C for the first time. Previous meetings were held at Congress Hall in Philadelphia.