Click here for part 1! Now, let’s return to the dregs and vestiges…
Episode #9 – Elliott Gould, musical guest Anne Murray
The Show: Saturday Night has been away for the holiday break, and if the response to the cold open (the Dead String Quartet, in which four cast members play corpses holding instruments, culminating in Chevy Chase’s corpse falling down) is any indication, the audience is very excited to have the show back. The show is now very sure of itself.
There’s a running gag throughout the episode where Gilda Radner keeps interrupting Elliott Gould to talk about their date last night. He’s flustered when she introduces him to her parents, but by the end of the episode they’re getting married. Saturday Night Live doesn’t do running “backstage” stories like this often, but The Muppet Show would go on to perfect them.
There’s also a Killer Bees sketch that breaks the fourth wall when the director keeps messing up the shots and they have to stop the show while producer Lorne Michaels storms into the control room to fire the director. Kinda like when Kermit would shut down an untalented performer or fire Piggy!
Meanwhile, on Gortch…: Scred and Peuta, who are having an affair, are reading The Joy of Sex. “Well, what’ll it be tonight, your horniness?” Scred asks. “Shall we wrap ourselves in linguini, or shall I just play with your mooglies?” Peuta says their affair can’t go on any longer, and Scred goes to confess to Ploobis, but Ploobis demonstrates the violent things he would do if he found the guy who’s messing with Peuta.
Scred goes to The Mighty Favog, who asks him if the topic is “Business, sports, or personal?” When Scred says “sexual,” Favog exclaims “All RIGHT!” which gets a laugh. I went into this re-watch thinking that Scred was the MVP of “Gortch,” but now I’m inclined to let him share it with The Mighty Favog. To answer Scred’s plea, Favog tells Scred to find self-fulfillment on page 12 of The Joy of Sex.
So far, the Gortch Muppets have done jokes about drunkenness, drugs, adultery, and masturbation. No wonder they didn’t last longer on the show — the writers would have run out of naughty topics for them to cover!
Episode #10 – Buck Henry, musical guests Bill Withers and Toni Basil
The Show: There’s another “Samurai” sketch, as well as the first incarnation of Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as the Blues Brothers. I’ve occasionally heard people ask why the Blues Brothers numbers on the show were so popular… Were they supposed to be funny? I confess that I don’t have an answer to that, but they made many more appearances, so they must have caught on. (I’ll also confess that I find them entertaining and I saw Blues Brothers 2000 in the theater. Whoops, I confessed too much.)
There’s also a sketch called Citizen Kane II, which includes multiple sets and which is in black and white. It might just be the most ambitious thing they’ve done so far, especially considering they were recycling sets within the same episode just a few weeks ago.
Meanwhile, on Gortch…: Scred has ordered a marital aid (or “extramarital aid”) from a magazine called Bound and Gagged. He and Peuta are free to fool around because Ploobis is away, and I can only assume this means Jim Henson was also unavailable.
When Scred presses the devices against Peuta, lights flash and a siren blares. They drop behind the set and moan and scream. It’s the same pattern: Jerry Nelson and Alice Tweedie are putting everything they have into this stupid sketch, but they can’t save it.
We often talk about how the best Muppet productions can include subtle innuendo and jokes that appeal to adults without becoming vulgar. This is… not that. The only interesting thing about this sketch is that the Muppet people agreed to do it. Were the SNL writers just amusing themselves by making the Muppets do the adultiest things they could think of from week to week?
Episode #11 – Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, musical guest Neil Sedaka
The Show: I usually think of Saturday Night having really hip musical guests in these early days, but Neil Sedaka is about as unhip as you can get! These days, the musical guests are all generally popular with cool young people… or at least I assume as much because I only ever recognize about half of them.
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore do three different sketches where it’s just the two of them, with no cast members onstage. Did the cast get mad about this?
Meanwhile, on Gortch…: We don’t actually make it to Gortch. About two-thirds of the way through the show, Gilda Radner is about to introduce Neil Sedaka (it’s surprising how frequently somebody other than the host introduces the musical guests this season) when Scred shows up wearing a Muppet-sized bee costume, prepared to perform in a Killer Bees sketch. He’s indignant that nobody told him the Bees aren’t on the show this week, but he demonstrates how he would be just as good at hosting Weekend Update.
Gilda lets Scred introduce Neil Sedaka as a consolation prize. So there’s only one Muppet in this episode, and he’s onscreen for about a minute. But Gilda Radner seems to get a kick out of interacting with a wacky Muppet — it’s no surprise that she would guest-star on The Muppet Show a few years later.
By this point, it’s obvious the Muppets aren’t working out on the show, and the Muppet people know they have their own show to work on over in England. I can only assume that the only reason they keep showing up is to fulfill a contract they had to appear in a certain number of episodes.
This episode also marks a shift in the way the Muppets are presented. From now on, they’ll no longer be getting up to questionable hijinks on their own planet, they’ll be meandering through they show in sketches that acknowledge the fact that they don’t belong there. And… it kind of works better?
I wonder if America’s TV viewers noticed that there are no Gortch Muppets at all in the next three episodes, hosted by Dick Cavett, Peter Boyle, and Desi Arnaz. Boy, can you imagine if the Muppets had shared the screen with Desi Arnaz? Gilda Radner spends most of that episode dressed as Lucille Ball from I Love Lucy, and I bet they would have slapped a red wig on Scred too.
Episode #15 – Jill Clayburgh, musical guests Leon Redbone & The Idlers
The Show: This one has a long sketch with multiple locations, in which Clayburgh plays a teacher who makes a futile attempt to help a rebellious high school student (John Belushi) improve himself. It’s not very funny, but it’s surprisingly ambitious storytelling.
The second of the two musical guests, The Idlers, are an a cappella choir from the United States Coast Guard Academy. Definitely not the kind of guest you’d expect to see on modern SNL!
William Wegman appears with one of his Weimaraners in a filmed segment. He would later direct his dogs in several segments for Sesame Street. Elsewhere in the show, there’s the debut of the hapless clay character Mr. Bill, and it sure seems to me that he gets bigger laughs than the Muppets usually do. So for the record: Muppets screwing, no; little clay fellow getting squished by a human hand, yes.
Meanwhile, on Gortch…: Clayburgh explains that the Muppets aren’t here because they’re at the Grammys. Muppet Wiki reveals that there were THREE different Sesame Street albums nominated for Grammys that year — and Bert and Ernie performed “I Refuse to Sing Along” from the Sing-Along album. It really is odd to think of Jim and Frank bouncing between playing their gross Gortch characters and their loveable Sesame Street Muppets.
In their absence, Chevy Chase uses his hands as puppets to perform a sketch called “Paying the Milkman” on the Gortch set. It’s about an affair between a milkman and a housewife. It’s pretty funny — and his lip-sync isn’t bad!
Episode #16 – Anthony Perkins, musical guest Betty Carter
The Show: For the first time ever, the Not Ready for Prime Time Players each get their own individual photo in the opening credits. It’s a sign that they’re all becoming TV stars in their own right — and they’ve all started to show off their talents, playing a wide range of characters. It feels kind of anticlimactic when Don Pardo gets around to announcing that Jim Henson’s Muppets will also be on the show.
Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella character has made several appearances by this point, and she’s back again, getting all worked up over another word she misheard on the news. She’s funny, but as I watched these episodes in close proximity it was really obvious how much it’s all the same joke every time. Would it be an insult to Radner if I said Emily Litella is kind of like The Muppet Show’s Talking Houses?
Meanwhile, Jane Curtin, who was stuck playing a string of wives and talk show hosts in the first several episodes of the season, is now getting more chances to show off her versatility, including a sketch in this show where Gilda Radner plays a housewife and Curtin plays an employee from a dominatrix cleaning service. She’ll eventually get to play even weirder characters, including one of the Coneheads. I don’t have a Muppet Show equivalent for that. I just wanted to mention it.
Meanwhile, on Gortch…: Perkins is about to make an introduction when Ploobis and Scred pop up. He asks who they are, Ploobis says they’re the Muppets, and the audience applauds. What?! After all these sketches playing to silence, they get applause? Ploobis turns to look at the camera, appropriately surprised that anyone would applaud for him.
They explain that they’ve been in England making a TV show (hey, we know what show THAT is!), and the crew destroyed their set while they were gone. They want Perkins to get them a spot on tonight’s show, but he manages to stall them… until several minutes later when Scred shows up and interrupts a sketch, demonstrating how he could play Emily Litella mishearing the phrase “English muffin” as “English Muppet.”
Weirdly, the audience genuinely seems to like the Muppets more now that they’ve been “cancelled” and they’re pathetically trying to earn back their place on the show.
In the closing “goodnights,” which feature the whole cast, Scred dances with Gilda Radner, which is very charming. Ploobis grabs John Belushi, either pleading with him or threatening him. I would love to know how Belushi felt about this apparently unscripted interaction, considering he was the guy who reportedly called them the “mucking Fuppets.” At the very end of the credits, the camera reveals The Mighty Favog perched on an audience seat. I hope he enjoyed the show!
The episode hosted by White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen has no Muppets. It does, however, include two prerecorded cameos by President Gerald Ford, who was running for re-election, demonstrating how Saturday Night was already influencing the way people talked about politicians. And the musical guest is rocker Patti Smith, a decidedly subversive pairing for a host who works for the president.
It’s also the first time Don Pardo calls the show Saturday Night instead of NBC’s Saturday Night. They still haven’t picked up the “Live,” but they’ll get there.
Episode #18 – Raquel Welch, musical guests Phoebe Snow & John Sebastian
The Show: Raquel Welch isn’t generally talked about as a singer, but she sings two songs here. A few years later she sang three songs on The Muppet Show!
Gilda Radner briefly plays “Baba Wawa” (a spoof of Barbara Walters), Chevy Chase plays Gerald Ford, and John Belushi plays Joe Cocker. It occurs to me that this is something The Muppet Show doesn’t have in common with SNL… The Muppet Show didn’t really do parodies of real people. Which is just as well, because some of the guest stars already date the show somewhat.
Meanwhile, on Gortch…: They seem to have figured out now that the Muppets work best when they’re interacting with humans. This week, Ploobis and Scred have had to sneak into the studio, and when they discover Welch, they hit on her (and touch her a lot). “We Muppets are very lovable,” says Ploobis. “Until you’ve made it with a Muppet…” She’s amused, but points out that they don’t exist below the waist so they’re all talk. Could this be the first time this turn of phrase has been used regarding Muppet anatomy and sex?
Later, Ploobis and Scred find the Mighty Favog. His advice to them: “Forget it, pack it in, quit.” He tells them they’re just puppets, so they should just let themselves get put in a trunk. So they do. The other Gortch characters are already in the trunk as Ploobis and Scred get inside and close the lid.
Wow, this one is sad. Not only have the Muppets denied their existence as real live creatures, they’ve resigned themselves to rotting away in a trunk! This is even more surprising when you learn from Muppet Wiki that this sketch was written by Jim Henson. I guess he was really ready to close this chapter and move on.
Episode #19 – Madeline Kahn, musical guest Carly Simon
The Show: Chevy Chase doesn’t make a mockery of Republican president Gerald Ford in the cold open. He makes a mockery of Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan. And to think, people complain about the show doing political stuff today.
When Carly Simon performs, Kahn informs us that it’s prerecorded. These days, the musical guests are often accused of lip-syncing their songs, but we never get an on-air announcement to that effect. This was a different time.
Halfway through the show, Madeline Kahn sings “I Feel Pretty” as the Bride of Frankenstein, accompanied by the house band, which totally feels like a Muppet Show number, but feels nothing like a modern SNL segment.
Kahn doesn’t interact with the Muppets here, sadly, but she would go on to be a fantastic guest star on The Muppet Show and cameo star in The Muppet Movie anyway.
Meanwhile, on Gortch…: They’re back! Chevy Chase is backstage when Scred pops out of the trunk and asks him if Chase could pull some strings with Lorne Michaels to get the Muppets back on the show. Chevy says no, there’s no chance now the show is a hit.
And there you have it. They’re declaring right here on the air: The show you’re watching, Saturday Night, is officially a big hit, and they no longer need help from the likes of the Muppets to get viewers to tune in. It’s a good thing Jim Henson got the deal for The Muppet Show when he did, because it would have been a sadder story if the Muppets flopped on SNL and didn’t have the biggest hit TV show in the world right around the corner.
A few weeks earlier, Lorne Michaels had made an on-air offer for the Beatles to reunite live on the show for the princely sum of $3,000. Scred tries to negotiate: If he gets the Beatles on the show, will Chase get the Muppets back on the show? The biggest laugh in this sketch happens when The Mighty Favog claims he knows the Beatles, then says “I AM the Walrus!” In general, the audience enjoys this one.
Chevy Chase seems happy enough to be doing this scene with the Muppets, and when Danny Horn transcribed these sketches in the early days of Tough Pigs, he learned that Chase wrote this sketch. I suppose Chase had less reason to be resentful of their screen time than other cast members — in every single episode of this season, Chase is guaranteed the opening pratfall and the Weekend Update spot.
There are five more episodes in the season, but the Muppets don’t appear in any of them, and then the season is over. But THEN…
Season 2, Episode #1 – Lily Tomlin, musical guest James Taylor
The Show: They’ve come a long way, but parts of the show remain charmingly messy, including a long, shaggy cold open in which an arrogant Lily Tomlin arrives late in a limo and travels through 30 Rockefeller Center to the studio while Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner try to hurry her up. There are moments where actors are talking over each other and you can barely tell what’s going on. This doesn’t remind me of The Muppet Show — it reminds me of the early “let’s get it in one take” seasons of Sesame Street!
This episode includes a presidential debate sketch, which is the father of many (too many?) future SNL debate sketches to come. (It’s the one where Chevy Chase’s Gerald Ford says “It was my impression that there would be no math…”)
Meanwhile, on Gortch…: The Gortch Muppets wake up in a storage room. Each Muppet (except the Mighty Favog) pops out of a filing cabinet, which makes me wonder exactly where the puppeteers are positioned. Lily Tomlin finds them and they lament the fact that they won’t be seen on The Muppet Show because it’s a family show.
Lily Tomlin tries to cheer them up by leading them all in a rendition of “I Whistle a Happy Tune,” but the Muppets can’t whistle. The audience cracks up at The Mighty Favog squishing and contorting his face. Eventually they give up, Scred asks Tomlin “Is that it?” and Tomlin blows him off and wanders off the set to go talk to James Taylor.
But that’s not quite it, because at the very end of the episode, Lily Tomlin teaches everyone watching the show how to do “The Antler Dance,” which is a very silly, whimsical dance that involves hopping around with your fingers spread out on your head. As she continues the song, the cast and the audience joins in, and eventually Ploobis and Scred appear in the crowd with antlers on, dancing along.
I also caught sight of a man who resembles Frank Oz bopping around during the Antler Dance. He’s in the proximity of Ploobis, and I assume it would be impractical for The Mighty Favog to dance, so I’d like to think it’s Frank, anyway.
On Saturday Night Live, which — especially in this early period — is often said to be an edgy, anti-establishment project, it’s surprising to see something that could almost be a summer camp song. It’s even more surprising when you learn that, according to this article on Medium, “The Antler Dance” was written by Michael O’Donoghue, one of SNL’s most twisted writers. He was the one who hung up a Big Bird doll by its neck in the writers’ room.
But you know what? It’s a variety show, so there should be room for a variety of material. And if this was going to be the last time the Muppets ever did anything onstage in Studio 8H, it’s perfectly fitting that they’re there to do something very silly.
So what conclusions have I drawn from watching all this stuff? Well, the “Land of Gortch” sketches were rarely well-received, and I can’t honestly say they deserve to be remembered more fondly. The character designs are great and the Muppet performers never put in a half-hearted effort, but the fact that the sketches could only be written by writers who hated doing it meant that “Gortch” was as doomed as a Glig from day one.
Would it have gone better if Jim Henson could have used his own writers? I’m inclined to say yes. It’s too bad we never got to see what would happen if Jerry Juhl wrote a “Gortch” installment, or any number of other contemporary Muppet collaborators like Marshall Brickman, Jon Stone, or Norman Stiles. Or Chris Cerf, who had worked with several of the SNL folks on The National Lampoon!
I don’t know what the ownership arrangements for these characters was like, but it would have been fascinating to see “The Land of Gortch” Muppets pop up somewhere else. But they’re so weird-looking and raggedy compared to the rest of the Muppets that I don’t think they would have fit in on The Muppet Show.
Alas, poor residents of Gortch. They didn’t belong on Saturday Night Live, and they don’t belong anywhere else. But I’m glad they existed, if only as a strange and intriguing footnote in the 50-year history of SNL and the 70-year history of the Muppets.
And so, farwell, Ploobis, Scred, Peuta, Vazh, Wisss, and The Mighty Favog. In your honor, I’ve decided to conclude this article without a good punchline, much like most of your sketches.
Huge thanks again to Muppet Wiki for images! Click here to do The Antler Dance on the Tough Pigs Discord!
by Ryan Roe – Ryan@ToughPigs.com
