This week is Beauregard Week, according to the Muppets’ big 70th anniversary campaign. What a wonderful reason to celebrate everyone’s favorite dummy janitor. Although Beau is most certainly a fan favorite, there’s still so much we don’t know about him. Like, pretty much everything.
For decades, fans have been asking, “What is Gonzo?” Is he an alien, a Frackle, or something like a turkey? Whether you think there’s a definitive answer or not, there’s a joy in the act of wondering. Gonzo is an unsolvable mystery, and it’s fun to participate in this fruitless debate.
But there are other Muppets out there who don’t get the same dignity as Gonzo for us to wonder about their species of origin. Scooter, for example, could be a human, or perhaps some sort of bird, or even a literal gopher (to accompany his job as a gofer). But for some reason, most of us don’t seem to care all that much about Scooter’s background. He’s predominantly a “kid” who’s breaking into the business, and his backstory is enough to keep the plot moving forward. No need to delve into questions about his lineage.
Beauregard falls somewhere in between. He’s definitely not a human – probably some sort of animal, yet an indistinguishable one (unlike Animal, who is proudly indistinguishable). We’ve gotten plenty of teases throughout the years – though not as many as Gonzo – that other characters have guesses as to what he is, and yet we rarely ask ourselves this question straight-out.
Therefore, I ask you now: What is Beauregard? I’ll get you started with a few options.
Notably, Beauregard was created after Dave Goelz performed Wendell Porcupine in Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas. He must’ve liked this dimwitted simpleton and thought he could fit in at the Muppet Theater well enough, so Beauregard was born out of his personality. So maybe Beau is part porcupine? Could his origins lie in not just the voice and the persona, but the DNA as well?
Beauregard took center stage in the Joan Baez episode of The Muppet Show in a story that sees him become an honorary rat. Sure, it’s just a way for the Muppet rats to take advantage of his good nature and ability to reach refrigerator shelves, but perhaps they saw something in him that was more rat-like than anyone else. Is Beau a giant rat? A Borat, if you will.
Back in 2009, Beauregard co-starred in a series of online videos with Bobo the Bear, and I gotta say, it got me asking a lot of questions. Mainly, how did we never notice that their names were so similar? Considering that there are several different species of bear, perhaps Beau and Bobo have some connection down their family tree. Even looking at the two of them, Beau is about half of a Bobo, size-wise, and as we all know, half of Bobo is Bo. That’s just math.
One strange detail about Beauregard that almost never comes up is his immense strength. Apparently he’s real good at lifting, as evidenced by that one photo we’ve all seen of him holding an anvil under one arm. I did some research on “strong rodents” to see if he could attribute his strength to his species. While the beaver is often considered the strongest rodent due to its powerful bite, that’s not exactly the sort of strength Beau possesses. Instead, we’ll look to the largest rodent: the capybara. And honestly, to look at a capybara, you can totally see how Beauregard might be somehow related to them. Give a capybara a flannel shirt and a mop, and I promise it’ll look mighty familiar.
Finally, in the classic “Sam’s Song” bit from The Muppet Show, Sam the Eagle refers to him as “a lump playing harmonica.” And while he is certainly lump-like, I think we can safely say that he is not a lump. Not because “lump” isn’t a species, but because Sam the Eagle is almost never right.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter what Beauregard is, as long as he keeps the Muppet Theater clean and gets his taxi cab to its destination without too many crashes. And yet, that won’t stop me from wondering… what the heck is he???
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by Joe Hennes – [email protected]
