Pop Culture Retrospective Episode #4 - Today's Special: An early Nickelodeon TV show from the 1980s and a true Canadian treasure!

Show #4 - Today’s Special

Introduction:

Before we get into today’s show, a dramatic reading….

Today’s Special, it’s for everyone

Today’s Special, come and join in the fun

With Magic Everywhere

A World for us to Share

And friendly faces hoping that you’ll want to meet us there for today’s Special

It’s about to appear, it’s about to appear

Today’s Special, shout it loud and clear

Today’s Special

Not a ton of choices for what to watch on tv for kids

Brick orange carpet we watched the show on Nickelodeon 

Can’t remember if it was during an episode when I secretly cut my sister’s hair and she ended up with a mullet for several years 

• Show ran from 1981-1987
  • 7 seasons/121 episodes 
  • Produced by TV Ontario, but was also shown in the US on Nickelodeon
  • TV Ontario is essentially the Canadian equivalent to PBS
• Show revolves around a department store where 2 of the 4 main characters work.  
  • Jodie - Works at the department store.  She’s a woman who appears to be in her 30s, she does the window displays at the store.  Each night after the store closes, she pulls Jeff out of the window and takes him to the children’s department and that’s when the episode adventure starts! 
    • Played by Nerene Virgin
      • First acting credit was in a long running TV Ontario show called Polka Dot Door.  That show ran for 22 years and was an educational show for children - one of the main characters was Polkaroo which is a combination of polka dot and kangaroo.  
  • Jeff - Mannequin at the store who comes to life when someone puts on his magic hat.  
  • The magic hat origins are quite extensive, but we’ll touch on that momentarily.  Since he spent so many years as a mannequin, he has to learn a lot about the world around him from his friends at the store.   
    • Jeff Hyslop His-slop played Jeff the mannequin
      • An accomplished actor and dancer, he was in a Canadian Production of Phantom of the Opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, Anee of Green Gables, and the Music Man and many others.
  • Sam- An older character, a puppet, who is the store’s security guard
    • He has probably the most detailed backstory of a puppet. Sam was born in 1919.  He is a retired member of the merchant marines.  Sadly, he is a widower.  He has a cat named Penolope.  He drives a Ford Motel T car named Gertrude. 
    • Sam has a computer called TXL which appeared to be an old knob tv on top of an apple IIE keyboard.. He uses it to sometimes look up information/monitor the store. 
    • Most of the time he is wearing a green army looking jacket, a matching hat and a red bow tie.  He is forgetful and sometimes his computer gets irritated with him.
    • Sam was played by Bob Dermer who you will soon learn, is absolutely a Canadian treasure! He got his start in TV in 1976 with a series called Readalong.  This show of course involved puppets which are now housed at the Canadian Museum of History.  The woman who designed these puppets also designed puppets for another Canadian sensation show- Under the Umbrella Tree which will certainly be the topic of a future show!
  • Muffy the mouse- also a puppet, she lives in the store, she speaks in rhymes and often causes mischief.
    • Her puppeteer was Nina Keough, a third generation puppeteer.  She had worked for TVO and CBC television.  You can tell the family connection to puppeteering as she has several baby pictures posted on her personal website where she is looking at a marionette puppet
    • She apprenticed at age 11 with her parents at CBC-TV
  • Other characters on the show throughout it’s run, but these 4 characters were in all of the episodes 

In a 2-part episode called “Our Story,” we learn how the foursome meet:

• Sam meets Jodie in a park one day.  Sam had just retired from the merchant marines.  He packs his bags, leaves the ship with his cat, Penelope and heads to a nearby park.  While sitting on a bench contemplating what he will do next, he runs into Jodie. They commensurate about both being at crossroads in their lives.   Jodie is very distraught because she has applied for a bunch of jobs, but hasn’t gotten any. They end up looking through a newspaper together and Jodie sees a job opening for a window designer at a department store.  She is very discouraged but Sam tells her to go ahead and apply.  She then goes to the store and ends up with the job.  She comes back and tells Sam the good news.  She then goes on to say that the store is also looking to hire a night watchmen and she’d like Sam to apply for the job.  They both end up working at the same department store. 
• Muffy ends up at the store as well, soon after Jodie and Sam begin working there.  She was living inside of someone’s house, but they decided to move, so she hops on her mouse-sized moped and heads out in the rain in search of somewhere to live.  She somehow speeds into the department store and gets passed Sam at the door.  She rides into the store and ends up in the bedding department.  She crashes into a bed and lands on the comforter which oddly enough is the SAME EXACT Laura Ashely comforter that my sister had on her bed growing up.  It was white with pink flowers and green ivy running along it.   
• Jeff becomes a character in the show due to the talents of Waldo the Magnificent magician extraordinaire.  He is walking on a sidewalk singing about how great he is.  Looks up magic hat spell, suddenly finds one on top of a fire hydrant.  Says hocus pocus alomogocus and the hat flies off of the fire hydrant.  He chases the hat for several blocks.  The hat flies into what appears to be some kind of storage area where various mannequin parts can be found i.e. busts.  Hat flies onto a mannequin who coincidentally is wearing a vest that matches the pattern on the mannequin.  Jeff comes to life momentarily before he is grabbed and taken out of the storage area and to the department store.  He rides there in a red van, there are various shots of the van driving with Waldo trying to catch it.  The shots of the red, dodge van, reminded me a lot of the intro to Who’s the Boss.  Turns out, that Jeff was going to have a brand new life around the bend as well! Jeff ends up in the children’s department with Jodie, Sam and Muffy.  Waldo eventually ends up there as well and explains everything.  He casts an additional spell so that Jeff can be more human like.  He also explains that if Jeff ever leaves the store, he will return to being a mannequin.  Waldo also said that Jeff would need to remain a mannequin during the day, but at night he could spend time with the other 3 characters.  He then goes on a dancing and singing spree reciting the magic words that make him come alive around the store to showboat his excitement about his new found special ability.  Jeff is clearly a very good dancer and singer.  

Shows introduction breakdown - so memorable, it’s almost 2 minutes long!

• Starts with Jeff in the department store window at night in his classic plaid vest with matching hat
• Jodie, clad in a brown and orange pant suit, pulls him out of the display window, grabs Jeff out of the window.  As she is lowering him to the ground, she smiles enthusiastically at him, like a mother pulling her child out of a baby swing.
• Next, we see Sam checking the windows and doors with his gloved hand to ensure everything is locked and secure.  “Well I guess that’s all locked up tight now, as it should be.  Duh duh duh”
• Sam then runs into Jodie who has yanked Jeff out of the display, he asks Jodie if she needs some help carrying the mannequin, but she assures him that she’s got it
• The 3 all go up the escalator to the Children’s department, Jeff is still a mannequin on the escalator facing backwards which is kind of an eerie shot 
• We then see Sam behind the pastel/baravarian back entrance to the children’s department.  The back entrance is a facade of a little house with a purple roof and purple saloon doors and some toys on display.
• Sam gives the all clear and they head in, Jodie rests Jeff up against the counter
• Muffy the mouse, with her blond, curly hair (puppet tupet), maroon scarf and green bracelet pops up and says hocus pocus alamogocus
• Jeff then comes to life and whoa it looks like he is going to fall over, but wait no, he spins around like the amazing dancer that he is and jumps into the air with excitement
• He and Jody then grab hands (will they or won’t they be a couple?, chemistry), they run under the Today’s Special Sign, then with really low budget special effects they run off into the night sky, jump into the air at the same time and freeze
• Then, all of a sudden there is an animated picture of them with a night sky backdrop.  They look down and across at each other, like the BB intro
• Animated Muffy pulls off Jeff’s hat for some unknown reason (she’s sort of a pest in the show), tosses it into the sky and it now has a hole in it that’s never explained
• Then, out of nowhere, mother goose comes across the screen flying on a goose with a rainbow trailing behind it. 
• Muffy then jumps out of Sam’s computer which he seems caught off guard by and then the TS logo appears and the show begins! 

Today’s Special is:

• Circus
• Opera
• Sleep
• Snow

General show format

• Each episode tended to follow a relatively similar pattern
  • The first few minutes the topic that was just said is presented.  For example for the Today’s Special sleep episode we learn that Jeff doesn’t sleep and the episode is focused on the characters offering their advice on how to get Jeff to sleep.  Usually there were musical numbers mixed in, seemingly out of nowhere, kind of like a stage show.  In one episode, Jeff is learning to juggle and no one wants to watch him do it so he randomly bursts out into a sad song about it.  
  • In many episodes, there is a several minute dance break where Jeff shows off his impressive dancing skills i.e. around Christmas trees, other mannequins. 
  • Sometimes there would be a child reading a book, like reading rainbow 
  • Education excerpts i.e. in the hat episode, you see a picture of 4 hats and one of them is different and the narrator asks you to point to the one that is different. “Look at this picture of 4 hats, which one is different?  Can you point to the one that is different?”
  • Also often had live action clips i.e. showing a farm and how the animals sleep or Jodie and Sam visiting a radio station and learning how the recording works.  
  • Or narrator describing something that a mime is doing- “my, my, it sure is a busy night for cleaning, first Max and now the Mime lady.  I see a rag and a spray cleaner.  What do you suppose she is cleaning?  A window?  It might be a window?  I’m sure it’s a window.” Mime grabs a ladder and hits the imaginary window.  Whoops, it was a window!” 
  • Nursery rhymes narrated by Muffy.  
  • Narrator would sometimes recap the show 

Fun facts

• The show was actually incredibly popular, ran for 7 seasons
  • They did a tour, think in just CA, and it was called “Today’s Special Live” - they did autograph signing! You can see it online, pretty high quality and it appears as if the theatre was packed.  You can tell the kids excitement when they see the characters and they strongly participate when encouraged to do so.  Waldo the Magnificent even did it! The cast can definitely sing and dance
    • They performed the theme song all together
• One a Gemini award in 1988, which is the equivalent to our Emmys
• The show was set in a department store that was based off of an actual department store called Simpson’s, which could be found in Ontario.  Many scenes were actually filmed there after hours.  
• Pretty sure Sam is the only puppet in history to suffer from severe hat hair. 
• All of the character’s outfits stay the same, except for Jodie who has I believe 3 different incarnations of her pants suit, two are long sleeved and one is short sleeved.   
• Sharon, Lois and Bram made several appearances on the show- The Elephant Show/Skid da marinki..
• There was a Today’s Special Album released on both record and cassette tape.  It was nominated for a Juno award, but lost.  Nina attended the Junos that year and she sat next to KD Lang and right behind Tina Turner! In addition to the TS album, there was also TS sweatshirts and puzzles for sale. 
• The first year of the show the cast and crew got TS watches.  The last year they got silk baseball jackets with TS logo on the back. 
• America’s obsession with Mannequins - 1987 saw the release of Mannequin starring Andrew McCarthy and Kim Catrall which won an academy award for best song as it should have for the song “Nothing Can Stop Us Now” by Starship. Mannequin 2 was released in 1991, but not nearly as good.  

After the show:

• Nerene Virgin:
  • Other acting credits include:  Garbage Pail Kids, Night Heat and a movie - Murder in Space.  She has a pretty extensive list on her LinkedIn page.  She is the great niece of an escaped slave Thomas John Holland who came to Maryland via the Underground Railroad. Perhaps inspired by that-Following TS, she has become a notable writer about African Americans in Canadian and US History.  Later she would work in broadcasting and she serves on the board of directors for Phoenix Place which serves women and children who have survived domestic violence.
• Jeff his-slop:  Starred in Magic of Aladdin in 1989.  He’s also done theatre workshops for children and was also involved with the production of the Producers.  He has also produced his own stage shows.  He is still often recognized, at least in Canada.  He looks pretty much the same, just as white hair and a stronger Canadian accent! 
• Bob Dermer:  went on to a continued, successful career in puppetering/voice over work.  He was the voice of Grumpy Bear in Care Bears - future show.  He was almost killed in a car accident and sustained many injuries including losing one of his eyes.  Some pictures show him with an eye patch. He was unable to work for some time.  Made a cameo in Santa Clause in 1994.  He retired from his storied career in 2001.  
• Nina Keough:  continued work in television/puppeteering following the show.  In 2000 she decided to shift to part time so she could “jiggle the dollies” whatever that means.  
  • She has a website and one section is called “I can be bought”
    • She does workshops on building puppets
    • She does adult shows and roasts via puppets
    • She performs standup with her puppets, she has one puppet that looks like an elderly woman who is a therapist and is holding a fabric cigarette
    • You can also purchase her art work on her site
    • She has done several interviews lately, PSA with Muffy, and live streaming

I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the Canadian Classic, Today’s Special.  A TV show that epitomizes me and my sister’s childhood.  What I thought was going to be a cheesy look back, which it kind of was of course, ended up being so wonderfully nostalgic that I am glad I bumped it up on my list of things to research.

You can watch pretty much all episodes on YouTube, TV Ontario has a YouTube page

You can also find many interviews with the cast from over the years on YouTube as well 

There is also a Today’s Special FB page where I learned a lot of information 

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I hope you will join me for my next show where we will be discussing Nintendo!