Did you by any chance parent constrained? I just started playing with this not so long ago and am starting to get the hang of it.

You probably didn't parent constrained, but I find that when you use parent constrain, it holds the joint locked down unless you do point constrain before it or something. You have to play around with your outliner to set it's heirarchy.

As for scrunching, it might be skin weights. You need to paint weights and I'm telling you it's a pain in the bung hole. But like Mike and the other guys said, it takes awhile to learn and I'm glad I kept at it because I'm getting it now.