The Muppet Show 1.15: ‘Candice Bergen’
Candice Bergen debates travel with Sam the Eagle.
With Candice Bergen, The Muppet Show had a perfect opportunity to concoct a classic episode. After all, it was rare for them to find a guest so comfortable with puppets. In fact, she had likely spent most of her younger years surrounded by them, given that her father was the great Edgar Bergen, one of America’s foremost puppeteers prior to Jim Henson (Edgar would later appear on The Muppet Show himself, making Candice and him the only father and daughter to ever both guest star on the show; he would later not only make a cameo in The Muppet Movie, but when he died shortly before its release, the film would be dedicated to him.).
And Bergen is just as terrific with the Muppets as one would expect (and
Read MoreThe Muppet Show 1.14: “Sandy Duncan”
Sandy Duncan sits on a park bench with a friend.
After at least a handful of uneven episodes–sometimes due to not utilizing a great guest star to their best advantage and other times due to a middling performance by a guest star dragging the proceedings down a bit–The Muppet Show finally finds its footing again with the Sandy Duncan episode, which benefits from a delightful celebrity who enthusiastically embraces every moment she gets with the Muppets, along with an actually terrific story thread which might not yet be developed enough to qualify as a plot but is one of the first season’s best examples of a running gag that actually holds it all together well. Even better, that gag springs from character and allows Fozzie to continue his development from the previous episode.
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The Muppet Show 1.13: “Bruce Forsyth”
A bird hits on Bruce.
With the Bruce Forsyth episode, we have yet another mostly lackluster celebrity appearance. This isn’t helped by the fact that, despite Kermit extolling his virtues and calling him a “one-man variety show,” his singing, dancing, and comedic stylings fail to impress–or at least fail to impress a modern eye. I don’t know much of Forsyth outside of this appearance (other than that, in his later years, he was accused of being racist numerous times, but I’m sure British viewers could enlighten me further) but at least here he seems to be of the breed of male song-and-dance entertainers of the mid-20th-century who never seem more than adequately talented when viewed today.
As with the Harvey Korman episode, a lot of the schtick here seems to
Read MoreThe Muppet Show 1.12: “Peter Ustinov”
Peter Ustinov and Fozzie crack jokes.
The Peter Ustinov episode of The Muppet Show is a perfect example of how, no matter how iconic and storied the guest star, whenever the Muppets failed to incorporate them into any musical numbers, the show usually suffered, particularly in the first season, when the writers made up for non-singing guests’ lack of singing by featuring them in additional comedy sketches, which, at this point, usually felt creaky and forced, since they were the epitome of the show trying to behave like any other variety show, which it was always so clearly begging not to be.
Later on, this could be mitigated by the generally-more-natural backstage scenes in which the guest would take part, often as the focal point of the story, but at this point, a non-singing guest feels more like something they
Read MoreThe Muppet Show 1.11: “Lena Horne”
Lena Horne consoles Gonzo.
Growing up, my only real point of reference for Lena Horne was that she was a celebrity who appeared on Sesame Street, but in her relatively brief scenes, she exuded a warm, gentle glow that, even at a young age, made me sense that she was one of those people who really got the Muppets. She and they seemed to fit together so naturally that I remember her spots on the show more vividly than most other famous people who popped up there.
By comparison, her Muppet Show episode doesn’t feel nearly as iconic, and that’s almost entirely due to the writing and presentation. The show still hasn’t fully figured out how to best feature and utilize its guest stars consistently. There are some terrific moments that demonstrate just why
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