Hey Cinderella!

Featherstone and King Goshposh

Featherstone and King Goshposh

Meanwhile, over at the castle, King Goshposh is suffering from a frightful case of boredom and, when throwing feathers at a dart board starts to lose its novelty, decides to throw a party–namely a masquerade ball–to amuse himself and, while he’s at it, marry off his reluctant son, Arthur (the human Robin Cook, who, in retrospect, was one of my first crushes when I watched this as a kid), off to a princess, completely steamrolling over the lad’s protests that all of the princesses he knows are stuck-up. And in a nifty inversion of what some see as a problematic women-as-objects aspect to classic fairy tales, Goshposh splits no hairs about the fact that, at this party, the “door prize will be you!,” meaning Arthur.

 

A frustrated Arthur recedes to the royal garden, dressed in gardening clothes, where his good buddy, Kermit (who lives in the well there) commiserates with him about this sorry state of affairs. You can tell this is before Kermit’s self-affirmation in “Bein’ Green,” because at one point he says to Arthur, “I know I’m a frog. You don’t have to keep reminding me,” though this might also have been meant as a knowing gag regarding the fact that he had only just become one. Well, moments later, who should appear but Cinderella, who has found the perfect muddy garden to get dirty in–which, humorously, happens to be just across the street from her house?! Meaning the castle is right across the street from her house, too. And she has no problem getting into the grounds, because plot necessity!

 

Well, the second that Cinderella and Arthur lock eyes, it’s love at first sight. Tchaikovsky’s love theme from Romeo and Juliet plays and everything! But, in classically Muppety fashion, Kermit undercuts the passion with a “Yeesh!” which is the first Kermit “Yeesh!” or “Sheesh!” I’ve noticed encountering so far. I wonder if it is actually his first! Anyway, Cinderella’s first assumption is that Arthur is a gardener, not a prince, and when Kermit tries to correct her, Arthur shuts him up. It’s so refreshing to meet a girl who isn’t interested in him for his title, he doesn’t want to risk ruining it.

 

Cinderella and Arthur

Cinderella and Arthur

At the same time, he wants Cinderella to come to the king’s party, so he leaves her there for a moment, rushes off to his father, and inadvertently (again, I said, not very bright) manages to convince the king to invite the entire kingdom because it means he’ll get more presents (the king loves presents). Everyone in the kingdom, that is, except Kermit. Or in his own words, “Every last person in the kingdom but not that frog,” even having Featherstone add a “P.S. No frogs” to the end of every invitation.

 

And so Arthur returns and reports the good news to Cinderella and breaks the bad news to Kermit. And this whole scenario, including the nature of the party, proves to be extremely intelligent for numerous reasons. For one, it establishes a relationship between Cinderella and the Prince before the ball begins, so there’s no question that they like each other for their personalities, not because each one thinks the other is royalty. Secondly, it sets up a reason that they wouldn’t recognize each other from earlier–namely, the masks they have to wear. Again, masquerade ball. But from there, Cinderella even cleverly realizes beforehand that this will be a problem. How will they know who they are when they get to the party?

 

So Arthur steps aside to ask advice from Kermit again, and Kermit suggests that they each wear one of the geraniums growing in the garden (“They were planted by the people we rented the castle from,” Arthur says) for identification. Which would have been a great idea…except for the fact that it’s then unknowingly thwarted by Featherstone’s suggestion to the king that he bestow a gift on each partygoer as well, and Goshposh chooses those very geraniums!

 

In short, the script thinks of everything. In changing the original story, it also comes up with ways to patch up any plot holes caused by its own shifts, making a pretty air-tight, if decidedly silly, narrative. There’s even a cute little Chekov’s gun placed when Cinderella’s slipper falls off as she dashes back to her house. “I’m always losing my slipper,” she tells Arthur, setting up…well, you know.

 

The Stepfam

The Stepfam

And so, back at her house, Cinderella begs her stepmother to let her go to the ball, and she tells her she may…if she can find a beautiful dress, a horse-drawn coach, and horses to…draw it, which she, of course, knows is impossible. Why Cinderella would need a coach to go across the street she doesn’t say, but, again, as I said before, the woman’s completely cuckoonuts. After she flounces off with her horrible daughters, Cinderella sings a lovely song by Joe Raposo called “If I Could Go Dancing,” which was composed for the original Cinderella pilot and, in my humble opinion, is the most beautiful song written for any Cinderella musical I’ve seen.

 

That’s when she begins to cry and POOF! along comes her Fairy Godmother, brought to hilariously, slightly cranky life by human actress Joyce Gordon. Her appearance in Cinderella’s house isn’t actually the first time we see her in the special, however. She appears in scenes scattered throughout the first 20 minutes or so of the show, in which she is performing in a cheap-looking, Las Vegas lounge act magic show, repeatedly trying to turn a pumpkin into a horse-drawn coach, each attempt proving to be more disastrous than the last–the first time the pumpkin basically just collapses, the second it turns into a magician’s top hat with a tiny pumpkin inside, the third an orange trash can, the fourth a telephone booth with a ringing phone (“No, I will not accept the charges!” she grumpily answers), and finally, the fifth, it simply transports her to Cinderella, whose first request after a dress and dance shoes is…of course…a horse-drawn coach, and what would be the perfect thing to transform into a coach? A pumpkin, Cinderella decides. “Did you ever have one of those days?” the Fairy Godmother asks the camera.

 

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