Cookabunga!

"Cookabunga!" is a no-budget-and-it-shows public access TV cooking show for kids. Its mission is to teach kids how to cook without burning their homes down and how to eat healthy. The host of the show is a bewildered and jaded down-on-his-luck stand-up comic-- who knows nothing about cooking but took the gig in desperation. His sidekicks are two oven mitts named Sal and Al Dente and the show's band of fruits and veggies perform in a fruit basket for a live audience of kids (the Peanut Gallery). A pilot was shot starring veteran stand-up comic Heywood Banks called “Pirate Cookies.” It is loosely based on real female pirate Anne Bonny's “famous” lost 300-year-old cookie recipe which was said to have put the “jolly” in the Jolly Roger. When she buried it along with Bob the talking coconut, pirates lost their favorite snack and their will to be naughty. Piracy quickly became as legendary as Anne Bonny’s pirate cookies-- until the Cookabunga! cast uses its shoe box time machine to go back into time to retrieve the lost pirate cookie recipe. Part of the humor (and pathos) comes from an earnest producer and crew who, inspired by "MacGyver," their patron saint of making something out of nothing, manage to scrape together a show each week using their wits and ingenuity, much like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland did with their neighborhood musicals. Although the truth behind the scenes, ie. puppets aren't real, kids!, is never revealed, there is an ongoing conversation between the puppets with the host on and off camera as he confronts his adult shortcomings and dreams of something... better.