don't hug me i'm scared, or DHMIS, is a series created by becky sloan, joe pelling, and baker terry. it tells the story of three puppets - descriptively red guy, yellow guy, and duck guy - as they go through The Horrors. it started out as one youtube video titled "Don't Hug me I'm Scared" in 2011, and that was supposed to be the end of it, but it grew popular enough that more were made. in total there are six episodes on youtube spanning from 2011 to 2016 between 3 and 8 minutes long (creativity, time, love, computer, healthy, dreams), and now a series on the UK's channel 4, which also has six episodes that are all about half an hour (jobs, death, family, friendship, transport, electricity). i'm autistic about these little puppets so i'm going to talk about them!!
the basic structure of the original webseries is that the puppets are hanging around, going about their day-to-day life (on june the 19th), when a "teacher" appears. this teacher is an object that should be inanimate, that sings a song to the puppets about the subject that they teach. this song takes up the majority of the episode, with the exception of "dreams". this seems fairly average for something like a children's show (which has inspired a lot of theories, but more on that later) except that dhmis is psychological horror/comedy so of course it's not as it seems and the lessons are actually horribly fucked up. tthe puppets are also seemingly tortured by yellow guy's dad, roy gribbleston, as he shows up a lot in both the webseries and the TV show in moments where he really shouldn't be, and because it's a very vague show there have been lots of theories surrounding roy. it's interesting to look through the youtube series especially for this kind of thing - there are lots and lots of tiny "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" moments where roy and other messed up things show up. one that comes to mind is in "healthy", when duck says "i don't wanna do this anymore" and knocks the camera over, we see roy over the corner of the set.
the TV show is a little different. there are still plenty of fucked up little easter eggs (most notably runes) but the format is drastically changed, which makes a lot of sense because even the longest dhmis webisode (8 minutes) couldn't have a song for the whole episode. the teachers are still a huge part of the show, but this time so are the main three! this is significant i think because in the original webseries the main focus was the teachers due to time (ha) constraints, and it was all about their songs and their lessons, however because we get half an hour now we get to actually see fully how the characters react to their world and all that's in it, and how they deal with the teachers and the trauma they're put through, during and after it's happening. it's also interesting to note that it's implied in a few instances that there's continuity between the webseries and the TV show - most obviously, there is always a calendar displayed, and in the webseries it always shows june 19th until the end of the last episode, when it flips to june 20th, which is on the calendar during the TV show; also there are a few very small references sprinkled in, for example yellow guy remembering and quoting a tiny snippet from dreams in the TV show. it's honestly SUCH a good show, the teachers are all top-tier and also it's very slightly less vague and gave us a lot to work with wrt theories!
things ive said about them
i've enjoyed dhmis since may 2021, however the special interest arrived with the 2022 show which i watched the day after it dropped on all4 (i was watching bbc ghosts on the day it dropped because they were on the same day because they were both delayed by queen lizzie kicking it so they came at the earliest possible date but that's beside the point) and then FELL IN LOVE WITH. i'll restate that the characters were i think what really sold it to me honestly, both the clump and the teachers get plenty of development so we can truly see how fucked up they are!! in all seriousness though i found myself connecting so much with these characters and the plot was interesting and i just. i love these autistic puppets bro heres everything [not quite] ive ever said about them
THE DHMIS 2022 THEME TUNE SOUNDS LIKE THE MIO MAO THEME TUNE
a silly little doodle of him,, if you recognise the doodle it did get a bit popular on tumblr for some godforsaken reason (much to my dismay)
i was looking through some of the concept art from the show (https://guy-field.com/Don-t-Hug-Me-I-m-Scared) and: i’m not sure what’s going on with the symbols but is this anything?-
in dreams, when all the different teachers are flashing past, we hear the traffic lights say “green is for go / but red it for not go / you can be crushed by a bus–”. when red is trying to work the car in transport yellow says “green is for go” so that would imply that maybe there is continuity from the webseries to the tv show, if he remembers that lesson?-
hold on so if red guy is showing more emotion in the tv series and becoming more aware that hes living in an actual nightmare. could that be a result of him pulling the plug in the webseries and seeing the nature of his reality?
i had a dream after watching the new show that duck had been allowed to say bitch in it and even though i know logically that of course that didn’t happen i still look out for it every time i watch the show because i just think that it should have happened [i did find out that i thought this not because of a dream but because as previously mentioned i'd watched the new series of bbc ghosts the day before and robin had been allowed to say bitch and they're both sort of feral so thats why i thought that]
i really don’t think that we as a fandom acknowledge the fact that, in death, red guy just… had a beak to put on stain? like he just had that???? and like even if lesley did give that to him (directly like with duck’s headphones or indirectly as in he just found it lying somewhere in the house), he just sort of accepted that??? i know it’s not supposed to be funny but the sheer implications from that scene i just-
damn i can't believe fluffybird (the ship red guy x duck guy) is canon [accompanied by image]
i can no longer buy a family pack of anything without thinking of these little freaks i adore this show
something something episode 5 theme song we know it’s foreshadowing the big/bigger boys but what i haven’t seen discussed is that yellow guy starts it with “i’m the one who had a dream”. and like yeah to an extent maybe it is just so it flows and rhymes nicely and doesn’t seem too out of place, but i find it quite fascinating. for one, this is another piece of evidence to support that he might remember the lessons from the original series, which is probably worth noting, but also it’s interesting to think that he sees that whole thing as a dream - all of the horrifying aspects of his reality are real to him except for the part that proves it all to be false, created for him. is that his way of coping with it, or is it lesley’s doing, so that he stays in that world, unaware?
i love dhmis because its like. you cant tell if the little details are funny little easter eggs or deep lore that will in the future change everything about it. and you know what i love that
the pilot
as i've said already, i think the dhmis TV adaptation is ABSOLUTELY PHENOMENAL, and i love it more than i even thought possible. however, there is an interesting bit of lore to that: the TV show was initially supposed to go in a VERY different direction.
in 2016, a pilot was produced with blink industries (who stayed with the project), conaco, and super deluxe for a new don't hug me i'm scared TV show. it was set in a town called clayhill, with the teacher being a key (the lesson being about security). it seemed to be a different format entirely to both the incarnations that we know and love today, from what we can gather it seemed to feel more like a film than a TV show.
something you might notice when i'm talking about this is that i'm using very tentative language. this is because, unfortunately, this pilot was only broadcast once at sundance film festival in 2019, and only 14 or so minutes of that are available to watch online. the only other source for clips other than this circulating video is a now-deleted trailer, called "wakey wakey", uploaded on the 13th of september 2018 and privated on the 24th may 2022 (presumably to prepare for the release of the actual new dhmis show).
as for the content of the pilot itself, i'm glad it was changed, honestly. i'm sure it would have been great anyway, but i think nothing could compare to the version we have now, and besides that becky, joe, and baker have said that the "claustrophobia" of the original series was sacrificed a lot (which is apparent, and explored a lot in episode 5 of the tv show we actually got), as well as its focus on government surveillance and current events meaning that it would become dated, in juxtaposition to the timelessness of the original shorts (which i can attest to, when i first watched them i was absolutely shocked that the first one was from 2011).
the plot seems interesting to me. i really do hope this pilot is released in full at some point, just to see fully what happens. i won't go into detail about it here, but a summary and transcript can be found here. beware morgan ..
there were also some easter eggs to this pilot in the final version, most notably shy imaginary older brother being a revamp of a character seen in the poster and clayhill being seen on the satnav in transport, with the satnav saying that it "doesn't exist anymore".