Part One: First Drafts
Feb 25 - March 1, 2002
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Ladies and gentlemen, frogs and pigs -- welcome to the first week of My Week with The Muppet Show, a ridiculously ambitious media-crit endurance test.
Here's the idea: I'm going to watch every episode of The Muppet Show, in production order, and write a commentary for every single one.
I'm doing five episodes a week, every couple of weeks, until either the supply of Muppet Shows gives out or my brain explodes. It's probably going to take me more than a year to do the whole thing, so feel free to visit the Tough Pigs Forum and place your bets on how long you think I can last. So far, the smart money's on the middle of season three -- let's say, somewhere around Helen Reddy -- but the field is still wide open.
So, it's time to raise the curtain. On your mark. Get set. Go.
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Puppets, with a point of view
Monday, Feb 25
"Thank you, thank you!" Kermit nods to the cheering audience."Hey, listen, it's another great show, folks."
Another one? We haven't even had a first one yet. It's about ten seconds into the first episode with Juliet Prowse, and already they're acting like they've been doing this forever.
Which makes sense, since this wasn't intended to actually air as the first episode. The producers recorded the first two Muppet Show episodes as pilots, so they could try out the format. They recorded the episodes with Juliet Prowse and Connie Stevens in late January and early February, 1976, and then there was a production break until May. The first two episodes were testing the format, kicking the tires a bit, and the production break allowed them to make some early changes. When the show actually aired, they led off with some later episodes, making sure that they premiered with the more polished stuff.
So here, for the first recorded episode, we've got Kermit pretending that it's later in the season. We've got Scooter already in place backstage, even though his official "introduction" is in episode 6. And we've got Mahna Mahna.
Kermit introduces the opening number, "Mahna Mahna" -- and the crowd goes wild. Henson starts off on home turf, with a hit sketch that they'd donebefore on a dozen variety shows. It's like Madonna coming out on stage and doing"Papa Don't Preach" -- it's familiar, it's safe, and she knows you'regonna dig it. Basically, if you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you like. And there's good reason why Mahna Mahna was Henson's sure-fire hit: it's just really, really good. Even twenty-five years later, it still makes me laugh, and it still amazes me.
The thing that's cool about Mahna Mahna is that moment of "planned accident," which was the major theme of The Muppet Show right from the very first sketch. Mahna Mahna and the Snowths are singing this simple little tune -- Mahna Mahna, doo doo, da doo doo -- and then MM busts out with a groovy little scat riff. This annoys the button-down Snowths, and they rein him in with a disapproving glare. This happens for a couple more choruses -- and finally MM takes off, scatting as he bolts out through the stage door. The Snowths are nonplussed. Then Kermit gets a phone call, and he brings the phone out to the Snowths for the final, unexpected "Mahna Mahna."
Of course, all this riffing and messing around is rehearsed, and more than rehearsed; they've performed it on TV a dozen times. But they're playing it like it's an unexpected surprise, as if none of this was planned out in advance. It's a trick that the Muppets are going to keep playing for the next twenty-five years, and it gives the show an amazing vitality.
The Snowths are acting like they've rehearsed this number, and it isn't going the way they rehearsed it... so they're annoyed, and confused. They aren't just singing pink dolls -- they have attitudes, and expectations, and feelings. They're characters. There's this little break in what they thought was going to happen -- and, all of a sudden, the puppets have a point of view.
The Muppet Show changes a lot over its five-year run. Characters develop in unexpected ways. They start telling longer, more complex stories. The girl pig becomes a superstar. But the one thing that's in place right from the first moment is this commitment to giving each puppet a real character, with a recognizable interior life. That's the magic right there that transforms The Muppet Show from a foolish, risky adventure into a full-blown, bona-fide TV phenomenon.
Hey, did someone say... Phenomenon? Doo doo, da doo doo...
Aw, go ahead. You know the rest.
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Big Time
Tuesday, Feb 26
Today I'm watching the Connie Stevens episode, the second Muppet Show episode taped -- and I have to assume that, at this point in the production, the Sesame Question is looming pretty large over Henson and the producers. They've got a funny show, with a flexible format that allows for a lot of invention. They've got good characters, and a lot of talent. But there's this big question hanging over the whole enterprise, which is: Are people really going to watch a weekly prime-time puppet show? Are all the adults going to think it's Sesame Street and just change the channel?
After all, the Sesame Question was the problem that kept all of the American networks from buying the show. As Henson was working on these first episodes, he must have been thinking a lot about how to strike the right tone with the show. He can't afford to alienate the kid audience; he may need to count on the kids turning on the sets. But the show needs to be sophisticated enough to attract the adult prime-time audience.
And so, therefore, they kick off the second episode with a naked, gyrating, tattooed pig.
The opening number is "Lydia the Tattooed Lady," sung by Kermit as a scantily-clad lady pig shakes her money-maker for all the world to see. When Kermit finishes the song, he exits stage right with Lydia -- to find Miss Piggy standing in the wings, glowering at them. "Piggy!" Kermit gulps. "Have you met Lydia?" Piggy is not amused. "No," she says, "have you met my left fist?" Hm? BAM! Piggy socks Kermit in the face, then gives a satisfied nod and spits on her fist.
Well, you won't see that on PBS! Sex and violence, and we're only three minutes in.
That being said, the storyline for the episode does have a foot in Sesame territory. You see, Gonzo has this ratty old teddy bear, and Hilda is telling him to throw it away: "That bear is the worst thing I've ever seen in this theater! Why not get rid of him?" Fozzie overhears -- and, of course, he thinks that they're talking about him. He's crushed -- and it's even worse when he hears Kermit and Scooter making fun of the bear too. The story is pretty much kid-tested mother-approved stuff; you could imagine the exact same misunderstanding with Elmo and Baby Bear, without skipping a beat. And besides -- Gonzo has a teddy bear? Gonzo is an artist, performing in a show, but he refuses to part with his raggedy teddy bear. A year later on the show, and it would be unthinkable to portray Gonzo in that kind of child-like way... but right now, it's like the producers can't quite decide whether the Muppet characters are supposed to be adults or children.
And then, for the closing number, Kermit introduces two friends from Sesame Street... Ernie and Bert.
It's an interesting moment in the show's history. As I wrote in the last entry, the producers made these two episodes to try out the new format. This is the last scene of the second episode -- basically batting clean-up for the two test episodes. You would think that they would use this spot in the show to showcase the new characters, maybe do a big number for Fozzie. Instead, they're bringing on two of the stars from Sesame Street, the very thing that Henson is trying to make the audience forget about.
Bert, for one, is feeling uncomfortable about the whole thing. He's worried about being on stage, especially when Ernie pulls Bert's nose off. "Yeah, see what I mean?" Bert says. "That old loose nose joke is funny on Sesame Street, but this is Big Time, Ernie. They're expecting an act or something." But Ernie has a plan -- he pulls Bert off camera and gives him a quick change. Then Ernie does a big introduction: "Here he is now -- that suave, sophisticated showman -- my ol' buddy, Bert." Bert walks out on stage, dressed in a tuxedo, with a top hat and a cane. Ernie grins: "Well, Bert? What do you say?"
Bert takes a deep breath, and he starts to sing. "Some enCHANted EVE-ninnnnnng... you may see a stranger..." Sets fly in, and Connie Stevens appears at the top of a flight of stairs. "You may see a stranger, across a crowded room..." She flies down the stairs, and into his arms. Bert croons, and they fly into a romantic dance routine.
At the end of the number, Connie dashes away, and Bert is left alone. The moment fades, and he realizes what he's done. He calls weakly to Ernie: "Did I just make a complete fool of myself?" Ernie pats his buddy on the shoulder. "Absolutely, Bert!" Bert groans and shakes his head, asking Ernie to take him home.
And there you have it. The Muppet Show stakes out its territory. This ain't Sesame Street. This is Big Time.
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Comedy Tonight
Wednesday, Feb 27
So far, I've been hitting the "first few episodes" theme pretty hard in this column. Pretty soon, I'm going to have to find something else to talk about besides how the Muppet Show producers figured out the tone of the show. But it's only episode 3, the Joel Grey episode, so I think maybe I can squeak by with one more "manifesto of Muppet sensibility."
The opening number is "Comedy Tonight," from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It's a bouncy, sarcastic song, performed here by monsters and murderers. Seriously. The curtain opens to show the courtyard of a creepy abandoned house, with high walls on both sides, kind of a like a prison yard right outside the Addams Family house. It's shot through a dark blue filter, casting everything in a spooky twilight. Muppet monsters trade lines: "Something familiar, something peculiar. Something for everyone, a Comedy Tonight! Something appealing, something appalling. Something for everyone, a Comedy Tonight!"
The number moves fast, with a visual gag every couple of lines. One monster ducks as a knife sticks into the wall. Scary-looking criminal types poke their heads out of the windows, and then Crazy Harry pushes down a plunger and blows one of them up. Monsters pursue a little girl. One monster shoots a revolver at one of the criminal guys, narrowly missing shooting him in the head. "Nothing of fate! Nothing of state!" they sing, as a monster carries the little girl away. "Weighty affairs will just have to wait." WAIT! cries the little girl. More monsters get blown up. The number ends with the monsters, the criminals, and the captured little girl, all singing together.
Now, I was five years old when The Muppet Show started, and I remember this number. This scene had pretty much everything that should have scared me out of my wits -- darkness, monsters, kidnappers, explosions, guns and knives. I should have had nightmares for weeks about this... but I loved it. There's something so fun and exciting about it, and it moves so fast, that you almost don't notice how amazingly dark and weird it all is. It's like the Muppets are exploring the boundaries of their new show, and discovering that they can do just about anything. Even death and danger become a joke.
The next big number is Joel Grey singing "Cabaret." They cut out the prostitution jokes, but still -- all the Muppets are in a bar, drinking and watching the dancing girls.
Kidnapping, knife throwing, raucous nightlife. Is there anything these puppets can't do?
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A big wind-up plot device
Thursday, Feb 28
Well -- yes, actually. There is something that these puppets can't do yet, at least in the Ruth Buzzi episode: they can't quite figure out how to tell a story.
Scooter's got a big crate backstage, which he tells Kermit is a gift from his uncle. They open the crate -- and find a mechanical wind-up Kermit, who's there to take the bona fide frog's place as host. Kermit is nonplussed. Kermit and the robot do a cute "mirror act" backstage, and the robot taunts Kermit that Scooter's uncle wants him around.
But then it's time for some music. Wayne and Wanda sing "Row Row Row," as their boat sinks. Then Ruth Buzzi, in medieval clothes, serves food to Sweetums, who apparently is her violent monster husband. She sings "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You," and they have a comic dance routine. She ends up smacking Sweetums around, and finally hits him over the head with a chair. "That my kind of woman!" Sweetums sighs. Then Rowlf sings "I Never Harmed an Onion."
Fozzie does his stand-up act, with Statler and Waldorf heckling. Fozzie announces, "You're in for a real treat!" Waldorf: "You mean you're finished?" Fozzie: "Who's doing this show? You or me?" Statler: "Well, we're getting all the laughs!"
This is all really funny stuff. But wasn't there a mechanical Kermit around here somewhere?
The individual parts of this episode are all really great. It's fun to watch, and the episode moves quickly from one piece to the next. But I definitely get the feeling that it's a lot of individual scenes stitched together, rather than a coherent whole.
In the next sketch, Ruth Buzzi plays a prisoner of war, being interrogated by a Frackle and a Whatnot. The Frackle threatens her: "Give us the information, or we have ways of making you talk!" She starts chattering away, giving them all the information they need, but then she goes on, telling them everything she knows... including the marital status of each of the commanding officers, their hobbies, their personal problems... "We have ways of making you stop talking!" the Frackle cries. It's a funny piece, with a strong punchline. But it doesn't really feel connected to anything. Kermit hasn't introduced it; we haven't seen anything backstage that leads up to it.
This episode actually has a sort of Monty Python feel to it. There aren't really any connections between the sketches, and there doesn't have to be an explanation for why Ruth transforms from a medieval wife to a prisoner of war to an exercise guru. It seems like the producers haven't quite figured out how to tie everything together yet.
Back to the robot Kermit, who is apparently lurking around backstage. Miss Piggy flirts with the real Kermit, who dismisses her and goes onstage to do an introduction. She sweeps into her dressing room, crying, "Oh! How I long to hear my love whisper... sweet passion..." And there, in the dressing room, is Kermit. "Hiya, good looking! How about you and me getting together and making steam heat, huh, snugglebunnies?" Piggy is stunned. This is the wind-up Kermit, of course, and he puts the moves on the pig. He whispers "sweet nothings" in her ear. She's ecstatic -- but as he goes on, she gets more and more disgusted by what he's whispering. The real Kermit comes back in just in time to get karate-chopped -- and then Piggy sees the second Kermit, and she faints. It's a great scene -- and, by the way, the first significant backstage-romance scene between Kermit and Piggy.
But then, unfortunately, we don't see the robot Kermit again until the very end of the episode. He's on stage for the closing, thanking the special guest star, "Booth Ruzzi (click) Booth Ruzzi (click) Booth Ruzzi..." The real Kermit arrives, pushes the wind-up frog offstage, and closes the show.
It's a shame that the producers used the robot frog idea so early in the season, because it seems like he's wasted here. Later on in the series, a mechanical Kermit would have been integrated into the entire episode, and there would have been more of a story. The robot certainly would have been "onstage" for more than just a couple of lines. I can imagine a big closing production number where the robot Kermit appears in the real Kermit's place, and messes everything up.
But at this point in the show, onstage and backstage are still very separate. There's a big funny wind-up plot device running around backstage... but onstage, everything is going on as normal. This is the last major piece of the format that they need to figure out. Once that robot can cross the boundary from backstage to onstage... then the show can really start clicking.
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First contact
Friday, March 1
So -- five episodes in, The Muppet Show isn't big with the plots yet. But nobody's perfect. In the Rita Moreno episode, the backstage story is phone gags. The phone rings, Fozzie picks it up, and smoke comes out. Who is it? asks the frog. The fire department, answers the bear. And that pretty much keeps happening through the whole episode.
But who needs a storyline when you have this kind of comic energy? This episode has the first appearance of Veteranarian's Hospital, the continuing story of an orthopedic surgeon who's gone to the dogs. Doctor Bob comes out swinging. "I'm sorry I'm late, Doctor Bob," Nurse Janice says, "I was operating in the other room!" "I know," says Doctor Bob. "It's the talk of the hospital!" (Rim shot.) Fozzie is the patient, and he's understandably nervous -- but Nurse Janice assures him that Doctor Bob is the only one who can save him. "She's right," says Doctor Bob. "I saved over five hundred last year." What, patients? "No, dollars!" (Rim shot.) "Of course, I also lost over a hundred pounds." What, in weight? "No, in England!" (Rim shot.) Nurse Piggy pipes up: "Doctor Bob, you should be ashamed of yourself! You call yourself a doctor, Doctor Bob?" Doctor Bob chuckles, "I'd never call myself a doctor. They never come when you call anyway!" (Rim shot.)
There's more. Fozzie answers the phone, and coins pour out. Who was it? "Las Vegas." At the dance, Animal dances with a girl, who says, "I hear you come from a broken home." "Yeah!" Animal growls. "I broke it myself!"
Then Kermit does an introduction: "Right now, friends, I am proud to present a group of performers that I personally discovered in the waiting room of a bus station in Toledo, Ohio... They weren't performing there, they were just waiting..."
I mean, they're just showing off at this point, aren't they? These are top-drawer comedy gags, one after the other. Set up and punchline, set up and punchline -- Don't try this at home, kids. These are comedy professionals, doing a demonstration lap on a closed course. That bus station gag, it's just a perfect little comedy gem, just sitting there and waiting to be adored. The fact that the act Kermit is introducing happens to be Marvin Suggs and His Amazing Muppaphone -- a creative, lunatic bit of Muppetry featuring a mallet-wielding egotist playing "Lady of Spain" by smacking tuned furballs -- it's more than funny at this point. It's awe-inspiring.
The show ends with Rita Moreno singing "Fever," backed by Floyd on bass and Animal at his drum kit -- except every time she tries to do a sexy move, Animal throws her off with a loud drum riff. Frustrated, the guest star walks over and gives Animal a talking-to in angry Spanish. As she moves back to center stage, Animal growls, mocking her. She whirls around to glare at him -- but he's looking away innocently.
This, by the way, is the first episode of The Muppet Show that I remember. It was the fall of 1976. I was five and a half years old. The Rita Moreno episode was the first episode that aired on the New York station that I watched. And I have a vivid memory -- possibly my single earliest childhood memory -- of watching the Rita Moreno episode, and then sitting in the big red swivel chair in my living room and spinning around and around, humming "Fever" to myself. It was just so perfect. I was going to love this for the whole rest of my life.
On that night in 1976, I sat down and wrote a letter to Animal, asking him for his autograph. A couple months later, I got a big envelope from Henson Associates in the mail, with an 8 by 10 black and white photo of Animal at his drum set, with "ANIMAL" scrawled over the bass drum.
I still have it, of course. I'm looking at it right now.
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My Week with The Muppet Show Contents