I’m not sure where and when I first heard of Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared. I suppose I must have filed it under those Internet memes I could safely ignore. However, last summer, a bit less than a month after the last episode was released, I finally watched it. I’m not sure about the last time I discovered any media that managed to be so horrifying, hilarious, and utterly bizarre, and combine the three so perfectly.

Basically, the premise is that three characters named Red Guy, Yellow Guy, and Duck Guy live in what seems, at first glance, like a typical kid’s puppet show, where puppets teach the three Guys about a variety of topics through a catchy song, and somehow, it all goes spectacularly and horrifyingly wrong. And, of course, it’s not actually for kids, unless they’ve been sufficiently conditioned to how messed up the world can be, like, maybe the sort of kid trying to convince their mother to check out the new book about Jonestown from the library, even knowing how it ends (and yes, I saw this happen.) And yet, in the span of six episodes totaling just over 30 minutes, it still managed to create a mythology that fans continue to debate the meaning of. There are loads of Youtube videos analysing the many ambiguities of the series, some of which go on for over an hour.

Given that the whole series is A) So short, and B) on Youtube, I’ve decided, in commemoration of the first June 19 since the series ended, I’ve decided to take on the whole series, and put the Youtube video of each one in, so you can follow along.

Episode 1: Creativity.

The first film was made as a short for Channel 4, and opens on some lingering shots of the scenery, including several potentially dangerous items, like a knife rack, a stove, or a cactus. And then, a sketchbook opens and starts singing “What’s your favorite idea? Mine is being creative.” Well, that might seem like a decent idea for a kid’s show lesson. Hell, if George Pal and eight Tony Randalls can pull off a movie about a similar subject, it’s certainly good enough to teach to kids. However, things start going all pear-shaped when Yellow Guy starts to take the initiative, and the Sketchbook immediately shoots it down.

You see, one of the relatively few major themes the This is It team have truly expounded upon is what this short really means, presumably because this was before they started to create a whole mythos around it: the first short is about how the media seems to encourage people to be creative, but really, it’s a pretense for wanting them to be a certain way. And this isn’t just limited to the media: sometimes, teachers in creative disciplines decide the best way to teach about painting, writing, or what have you, is to follow an absurdly rigid structure. Like teaching people to appreciate the pointillism of Georges Seurat by demanding they paint some picture using only tiny dots and not explaining why he did it; or having a fiction writing curriculum that follows a very strict path, and if sometimes, the techniques seem stifling for a student, then too bad for them.

Indeed, it seems that, for much of the video, the Sketchbook seems to be picking on Yellow Guy. The first time, telling him to slow down after he starts to paint a picture of a clown, may be understandable for several reasons, but the next time shows how absurd the Sketchbook’s ideas can be. Apparently, “Green is not a creative colour.” Somehow, the one colour with the most shades, tints, and tones in the whole colour wheel is not creative. Given that, in future episodes, Yellow Guy is as dumb as a bag of hammers, while being a bit more intelligent here (though he still has his Eccles voice), it seems possible that the events of this episode may have traumatised him. I recently watched a film called Prisoners, and, in it, one of the characters is mentally handicapped, but, by the end, it is VERY heavily implied that a deeply traumatic childhood left him with the mind of a ten-year-old. I won’t say more because that would give away too much, but I suspect something similar may have happened with Yellow Guy.

And, of course, in the end, the Sketchbook explicitly disavows the whole lesson after the three Guys went on what fans have called The Creativity Explosion. This should make the themes simple enough, although it seems at first people took it at face value: “Be creative, but not too much, because that could make you insane.” But still, it became popular. The video became viral and it even got screenings at Banksy’s Dismaland theme park. So, as you may guess, there was a lot of demand for a sequel. And we got it.

Episode 2: Time

About three years after the first short was aired on Channel 4, This is It completed a sequel to the original short. And as good (and popular) as the first one was, it really seems like the creative team is really starting to hit their stride. Things have become more sophisticated (Yellow Guy in particular looks a bit more Muppet-like), and the series officially starts to develop a mythos. As a matter of fact, we can see several crucial pieces of information introduced that give hints (later becoming more blatant) to what’s really going on.

One crucial thing that makes its first appearance is the first appearance of Roy, Yellow Guy’s dad. Yellow Guy claims to be friends with him, but things get a bit more sinister when we see his face, including the sky darkening, and the song giving way to foreboding noises. The This is It team has never properly explained what his deal is, and have put several conflicting details about his true nature. Apparently, he saved the Guys from a kidnapping during the big Kickstarter campaign to fund the last four episodes, and he’s apparently friends with his son, but his sinister appearance, his appearance later in the episode watching porn, and a quote from an interview with the DHMIS gang (the only time he’s ever spoken) has him saying: “My silly boy has allowed his eyes to grow arrogant and rude, for this I will take him on a trip to punish land.” A bit more on this later.

Also, there’s scenes where Tony the Timepiece hooks the Guys up to a computer and shows them things for reasons that aren’t really explained very well (as is his wont; “Time is important and I am a clock” indeed). In the end, this turns out to be a vital piece of foreshadowing of why the Guys are even in this situation. And, finally, Tony starts to set up the pattern for the rest of the Teachers. The Sketchbook seems normal enough, and seems willing to teach and know when to stop the lesson. However, Tony seems to teach very little about Time, and when Duck Guy upstages him by starting to explain time as a human construct (in a very Kantian way), he completely loses his mind and decides to teach them how real time can be in the most gruesome way possible. And things only go downhill for the Guys from here.

And, of course, the short ended up doing well, and, after a kidnapping and a successful Kickstarter campaign, the This Is It team got sufficient funds to make the remaining four episodes.

Episode 3: Love

This one’s a bit of a breather episode. It’s a bit lighter than the previous short (admittedly, this isn’t saying much), and it’s a lot less plot-heavy than the episode that comes next.

This time, we start with the three Guys on a Chicken Picnic, eating what appear to be uncooked chicken parts and eggs that may or may not actually be boiled. Yellow Guy gets upset when he sees Duck Guy swat at a butterfly, and runs off and meets with another butterfly, named Shringold in the supplementary materials, who I suspect may be one of the most sinister teachers of the show: he seems nice enough, singing a song about love in a voice that reminds me a bit of Neil Tennant, transporting him to some sort of childlike paradise where everybody loves each other, and then his group shows its true colours, and he still maintains a sort of serenity that’s terrifying when juxtaposed with what’s happening, and, while exactly what he’s planning to do (or has done) with him is left unclear, it can’t be good.

While most of the songs of the series are good (at least until they go bad, something that’s certainly intentional), I have to single this one out for praise. It all seems to flow naturally, even with the interlude where Red Guy and Duck Guy debate the merits of saving their friend or eating the rest of the Chicken Picnic, and even when they interrupt it with a song about “Michael, the Ugliest Boy in Town” that, despite being a completely different song, still fits in perfectly. And it’s still hilarious:

This is the story of Michael, the ugliest boy in town. Ugly and weak so they called him a freak so he lived on his own underground. He lived on his own underground. He Lived on his own underground. You see? Everyone has a special one! Even Michael!

And things get all the more strange when they get into how much they love love, specifically the boy-girl kind, even though everyone in it is male. And then they reveal their King: Malcolm. Malcolm is the only character in the series who is actually given a proper name within the videos; this may be important. It should be noted that there was an Ammonite God named Malkam (etymologically no relation to the modern “Malcolm”,) known for being turned into statues and being offered sacrifices, particularly children. He’s better known (particularly to fans of Allen Ginsberg, John Milton, and Watchmen) as Moloch. That said, research as to whether gravel would be considered a worthy sacrifice to Malkam has not been forthcoming. Or it could be that the band thought Malcolm was just not that threatening a name and thought it would be funny.

And, well, at least they throw Yellow Guy a bone and have it all be a dream (but what about that caterpillar in the last boiled egg? Doesn’t that mean Shringold-) No! It was a dream! And perhaps this all being a dream makes it even more brilliant; it shows a sort of “evil world” that’s supposed to scare them into accepting their lot in the “real world” to make them think “at least I’m safe here.”

At least this one seems relatively light and fluffy. The next episode will not be so lucky.

Episode 4: Computers

Well, at this point, it seems like This is It knows what the viewer expects from Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. Fortunately, they decide they’re going to mess with what the viewer expects. For instance, that globe in the preview image? Well, the episode opens with them wondering what the biggest thing in the world is, then looking towards the globe, which starts to sprout a face, and just as someone strums a chord, a computer that wasn’t even in the room with them (and isn’t even the one they own) starts coming in and singing about itself. Neat trick, that.

It starts singing about how awesome it is and then offers them to take them on a journey and asks them a bunch of random questions, and then Red Guy makes the simple mistake of trying to get it to answer that question from the beginning. It then freaks out, and perhaps as a direct result of that, it sends them into the digital world. To be fair, it seems like it was going to do that anyway, but perhaps Red Guy’s misstep may have made everything a lot worse. Eventually, things in the digital realm devolve into a simple loop, with Yellow Guy opening a door, Duck Guy showing off his style (and increasingly uncanny CGI model) and them dancing, which may or may not have been part of the plan.

However, somehow, Red Guy escapes (with the real him). And we really get a glimpse into what’s going on. The prevailing theory about the situation is that the three Guys are stuck in some sort of computer simulation where they are forced to learn these bizarre lessons. It’s never explained who exactly is behind this, but it seems implied that Roy may be behind it all, although that’s not clear. And, in the end, when he learns the truth, his head explodes. And it turns into confetti. An accurate representation of what “Really” happened to him or some sort of visual metaphor for his escaping from the Platonic Cave he’s been living in. Wait for the next episode!

Episode 5: Food.

And here, we see the seams of the simulation starting to show: somehow, despite pictures of Red Guy being all around the kitchen and them knowing something’s wrong, they don’t pick up on his absence and may have forgotten about his existence. And, perhaps more importantly, the teachers’ songs have devolved spectacularly. The first four songs were catchy with good (or at least a propos) singing, but this time, everything’s wrong from the start. This time, the teachers are a jar of peanut butter who seems to only mutter, a spinach can who seems to be voiced by the worst auditionee for the Artful Dodger in the worst production of Oliver! ever, and T-Bone steak and fridge who can’t even be bothered to sing (the steak can’t even rhyme). This makes it the hardest episode to watch, and if it isn’t that, it’s Duck Guy getting turned into foie gras.

For the first time, they’ve figured out that something’s wrong, not just with their friend’s absence, but that the teachers have caused them nothing but trouble, and things aren’t helped by the fact that the things they have to teach make no bloody sense, everything from them considering white sauce and aspic healthier foods than vegetables and fruits, to their not being able to properly pronounce “Or-Gans.” Then it turns out their nonsense isn’t even self-consistent. Perhaps this could be a metaphor for the emergence of critical thinking in the developing mind.

Duck Guy in particular is terrified about it all, and even demands to not take part anymore. He ends up paying dearly for his insolence, in scenes I will not describe. If I wanted to analyse scenes of animal cruelty in British animation, I’d be doing a piece on Plague Dogs. Well, at least it’s all dark and poorly lit that we don’t see too much of the gruesomeness he’s subjected to.

But there’s still some hope. The song is interrupted twice by a phone ringing (a development that nobody seems to have anticipated,) and by the end, we see who was ringing it: Red Guy survived it all and is trying to help them. So far, he has failed and leaves to get on with its life. Or at least play “the log is in the bin” again. Fun fact: the team left the number for the phone booth in the final shot, and within seconds of the video being uploaded, it was already getting phone calls. For a while, the makers pretended to be characters from the show, then decided to leave the phone booth to its natural purpose.

Episode 6: Dreams

This last episode starts with Yellow Guy going to bed, and trying to fend off a lamp that wants to tell him about dreams. And that’s pretty much it. It sings even worse than the Healthy Band in the previous episodes, and its lyrical content is even more transparently horrifying. Yellow Boy is having none of it, but it’s not stopping the Lamp. And that’s pretty much it…

… And then the video cuts to Red Guy’s new life. He’s now working in a world full of Red Guys, who seem just like him, although a bit more bored. For what it’s worth, he seems to have taken the Creativity lesson to heart; he even sings the song in a karaoke bar (even taking out his pooh-poohing Sketchbook’s using its hair to express itself). Of course, he’s booed off, and it’s hilarious how low-key their objections are. And then, he sees Roy, and everything’s changed to a strange darkened room with a big supercomputer showing what’s going on with Yellow Guy. He tries to stop everything, but all he ends up doing is changing the teachers, including all the ones we’ve seen, then an increasingly insane assortment of other teachers (including a model of the solar system who proclaims “Planets Live inside the Moon” or a saxophone who wants to teach him how to buy a canoe, who’s become popular enough that there’s a petition asking the team to make a video starring him).

Then the Long Arm of Roy shows up, and reaches Red Guy and waves itself. Nobody’s sure exactly what this means. Is Roy showing him how to stop it before his son is completely broken? Is Roy making a threatening gesture? Is stopping it part of his evil plan? I don’t know and I’m not entirely sure the creators know, either. Either way, he pulls the plug, and it seems everything has rebooted.

And speaking of ambiguous situations, there’s a lot of speculations about what this means? For what it’s worth, the three Guys have reincarnated as the favourite colours they mentioned in Episode 1, the kitchen is now bare of all the potentially dangerous things the opening shots of the series lingered on, for the first time in the series, the calendar changes from June 19 to June 20, and there’s now a door. The Sketchbook starts its little spiel, but the derpy expression, combined with all the other details I brought up makes me wonder if everything’s going to repeat itself, but perhaps they’ll learn from their mistakes. This could be history repeating itself, the last time as tragedy, this time as farce.

June 19?

One particularly famous example of the curious details surrounding the series that may or may not have a special meaning is June 19. Until the end of Episode 6, every calendar is dated June 19. In addition, sometimes, the numbers 19 and 6 (or 1906) pop up. Making it all curiouser and curiouser is that sometimes, the date 19 June 1955 shows up. The closest thing I could get to an explanation is that that day’s the day the first advertising appeared on the BBC. I’m not sure about that, and, at this point, I’m inclined to think this might just be an inside joke for the team. I know I’ve written several stories where some cataclysmic event happened on October 28, due to an arrest of an internet celebrity happening on that day in 2011. It doesn’t even have much of a deeper meaning, and it’s possible it might or might not. Nobody knows, and I think that’s the beauty of it. Throw out some intriguing detail and have people arguing about its significance in perpetuum. At least they’ve still wrapped all those bizarre details into a clever bit of storytelling. Whatever it all means, I will say I’ve already written over 3000 words about this series and I suspect I could write 3000 more if I wasn’t pressed for time and this isn’t already as long as my retrospectives of Black Mirror Series 1 and 2. I’d tell you to go see it, but, given how popular it is, and that I’ve helpfully included all six episodes in this column, I guess you already have.