Hey Cinderella!

The Fairy Godmother, Cinderella, and Rufus

The Fairy Godmother, Cinderella, and Rufus

Like Kermit, the Fairy Godmother provides another element that ends up undercutting the original story in numerous, hilarious ways. For one, she brings lots of anachronistic humor and references to other classic stories. Before Cinderella can get a word in edgewise, the Fairy Godmother tells her she’s there to grant her wish to “turn you from a puppet into a real boy!” until Cinderella corrects her and she says, “Glad I thought of him, though. I think I left him in a whale somewhere.” After she gives Cinderella her dress and is about to give her her glass slippers, she tells her, “Close your eyes, make a wish, and they’ll take you and your dog straight home to Kansas!” And when Cinderella again requests a coach, she offers to pay for a taxi instead! But she then finally performs the spell, seeming to say the correct phrase by accident and afterwards having no clue how she did it.

 

But Cinderella is still clearly in need of a coachman. Frogs make great coachmen, the Fairy Godmother declares. “You don’t happen to know any unemployed frogs?” she asks Cinderella, and Cinderella points her across the street to Kermit, but after a few moments of intense negotiations, Kermit refuses. “I don’t want to be turned into no coachman,” finally showing a bit of froggy empowerment when he tells her, “I like being a frog. It’s all I know.” Finally, however, he agrees to be the coachman, as long as he can stay a frog. “I know your work, lady, and frankly, I don’t want to chance it.” And who shall be a suitable footman? Why, Kermit’s best friend, Splurge! But after Splurge ends up scaring away the horses that the Fairy Godmother rented from the local stables (“I hope [they] take credit cards,” she says), Kermit decides that Splurge can pull the coach! And thus Cinderella is taken to the ball across the street in a huge-purple-monster-drawn pumpkin carriage driven by a frog, who inspires the monster to move by dangling a radish–Splurge’s favorite food–on a stick in front of him.

 

But there are still further snags to the evening. Once the ball begins, both Cinderella and Arthur realize that their plan to recognize each other isn’t going to work due to all of the geraniums everyone is sporting. Naturally, however, the two still end up bumping into each other, but neither knows who the other is. Cinderella does seem oddly familiar to Arthur, however. “School, maybe?” he asks. “I didn’t go to school,” she responds. “Neither did I. Maybe that’s where we met!” he cluelessly replies. And they each end up having a good time, and when the clock strikes midnight, just like clockwork, Cinderella runs off and Arthur chases after her, but not necessarily because he’s fallen for her but because he thinks it’s a shame for her to leave before the cake and ice cream.

 

At the ball.

At the ball.

And this is where the story really seems set to completely derail because what should happen the moment after she leaves her shoe but a resounding CRUNCH?! For you see, Arthur has accidentally stepped on and shattered the slipper into a thousand pieces, leaving him with no way to track her down! Not that he even wants to. For this is where things get really interesting. The King is still hell-bent on marrying him off to a princess and so demands that they find this one (he’s particularly pleased by her gift of a backscratcher, not knowing it used to be Rufus, her dog’s!), even though Arthur himself is still pining for Cinderella, despite the nice time he had with this woman. Meanwhile, Cinderella feels the exact same way. When the King has Featherstone place an ad in the paper asking for the princess from the party to respond and marry Prince Charming, she ignores it. Talk about completely eliminating the poor-girl-wants-a-prince aspect of the story! She doesn’t want a prince at all but rather the sweet, poor gardener she met.

 

When the ad fails, the king’s next scheme is to have “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” try to get the slipper back together again, a plan that also backfires! “I think if I had to do it over, I’d leave out the horses,” he wryly admits. Finally, three months later, he concludes that (a) the princess must not like Arthur very much and (b) she naturally has to have the other glass slipper, and so he orders Arthur to search every house in the kingdom but to begin with the least likely one, because obviously, the princess is hiding from him. Instantly realizing that the least likely place in the entire kingdom would be her own house, Cinderella has Rufus bury her slipper, knowing he never remembers where he buried his bones. That way, the Prince could never discover the truth and she won’t be forced to marry him. Which shows extreme cleverness on her part even as it continues to brilliantly invert the fairy tale.

 

This backfires, however, when Arthur arrives at her door, and after some convincing, she finally accepts the truth that he is Prince Charming after all! However, she no longer has the slipper to prove herself to be the mystery princess. Rufus, of course, doesn’t know where it is anymore, and despite his backing up her story, Arthur woefully responds that he can’t accept legal testimony from a dog. And, despite the fact that Kermit can talk, the king won’t accept it from him either, since he’s a frog and all. The stepmother and stepsisters also scoff at her assertions, and she begins to cry, again prompting her Fairy Godmother’s return, who testifies on her behalf and tries to give proof by using her wand on Cinderella again, but instead of changing her dress, she accidentally poofs her away entirely! While her godmother struggles to figure out how to get her back, Splurge arrives with the slipper, which Rufus had hidden in his radish patch, thus finally providing the proof!

 

Splurge and Kermit

Splurge and Kermit

And a moment later, the Fairy Godmother finally brings Cinderella back, gown, slippers, and all. Apparently she’d sent her to Kansas! “Hello, Arthur,” she says. “Hey, Cinderella,” he softly replies. Speaking of which, this phrase is repeated throughout the show, at first, in the rude, demanding tones of her stepfamily, but later numerous times by Arthur, his inflection sweetly turning it from her least to most favorite phrase.

 

We end on Kermit saying “I could’ve solved this whole thing months ago but who listens to a frog?” and then, finally, presumably a few weeks later, receiving a personal royal invitation to attend the wedding, likely due to his help in reuniting the happy couple, his letter ending with the postscript, Bring a present for the king. “How’s that for a happy ending?” Kermit sarcastically asks. “Yeesh!”

 

And there we have it, the first Tale from Muppetland. You can watch the entire thing for yourself here. And tomorrow, we finally reach the origins of Sesame Street, with a pitch reel that was created to sell the show to the networks!

 

Pages: 1 2 3

« »