The Muppet Show 1.15: ‘Candice Bergen’...
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...
The Muppet Show 1.14: “Sandy Duncan”...
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...
The Muppet Show 1.13: “Bruce Forsyth”...
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...
The Muppet Show 1.12: “Peter Ustinov”...
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...
The Muppet Show 1.11: “Lena Horne”...
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...
The Muppet Show 1.09: ‘Charles Aznavour̵...
In previous posts, I spoke of how, in the first season, before The Muppet Show became a massive hit and celebrity guest stars were banging down the doors to appear, the show paid host to a number of lower-tier stars who were friends of the producers, doing them favors. Well, given that the singer, Charles Aznavour, who Kermit calls an...
The Muppet Show 1.08: “Paul Williams”...
Remarkably, the Paul Williams episode of The Muppet Show received an Emmy nomination for Best Writing on a Variety Show. Unfortunately, the reason I find it remarkable is that it is easily the most poorly written episode up to this point with a higher-than-usual number of jokes that completely fail to land–for example, the Newsman...
Ray the Raychem Seal and Miss Piggy
Ray the Raychem Seal
Today I looked at two unrelated yet fascinating curiosities, the first of which is the first thing I’ve watched for the site that actually wasn’t created or run by Jim Henson at all but which is significant due to its performer, and the second of which features the debut of one of the most important characters in the entire Muppet canon.
We begin a short industrial video, much like the films Jim made for companies such as IBM, but this one was actually done by Dave Goelz, who is best known today for performing such beloved characters as Gonzo and Boober Fraggle. In my post on Jim’s 1974 appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, I discussed how Goelz originally became involved with the Henson Co., and how Jim initially hired him as a
Read MoreThe Muppets Valentine Show
“The Muppets Valentine Show”
In 1973, Jim Henson decided to once again pitch a TV variety show starring the Muppets, which had been a goal of his since all the way back in the immediately-post-Sam-and-Friends era but which had always failed to come to fruition due to American network executives not being able to get over their bias that puppets were for children, despite all the evidence as to how much adult audiences enjoyed the Muppets when they made appearances on other peoples’ shows and even on Sesame Street.
Jim’s written pitch announced that the “time is right for a variety show hosted by dogs, frogs, and monsters…The show is aimed at the adult or young adult audience, but it is a show for the whole family…The Muppets,
Read MoreJim and Kermit Visit Johnny Carson
Kermit and Jim visit Johnny.
On January 23, 1974, Jim Henson and Kermit made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, in order to plug The Muppets Valentine Show, the first Muppet Show pilot, which ABC aired as a special a week later on January 30th. More on that in another post, and how this pilot came to be, coming later today.
For now, however, just a quick recap of this visit to Johnny Carson. It starts off with Limbo: The Organized Mind, a recreation of the same sketch Jim brought to Carson in 1968. Here, however, rather than just the background projected footage, I was actually able to see the finished product, with Limbo’s floating face in front of it, which was fascinating but also quite creepy, as well, particularly the bit in which the eyes and mouth
Read MoreJulie on Sesame Street
Julie Andrews and Perry Como visit Sesame Street.
While one might expect an hour of TV starring Julie Andrews called Julie on Sesame Street to be either a PBS production or a special episode of Sesame Street, this actually isn’t the case. It was actually a nighttime network special, one of a series of specials starring Julie produced shortly after ABC canceled her critically acclaimed variety show, The Julie Andrews Hour, due to low ratings, which were largely the result of it having been up against Mary Tyler Moore.
In order to maintain a good relationship with her, ABC agreed to air the specials, which were shot in England and produced by ATV/ITV, a British entertainment company run by Lord Lew Grade, who would later go on to produce The Muppet Show, which might have never happened were it not
Read MoreSesame St S5: Bert and Ernie, Etc.
And now we finally come to our last day of clips from Season 5, nearly all of this batch revolving around Sesame Street‘s own dynamic duo, Bert and Ernie.
The first is called “TV Repair,” and it’s actually a twist on a Season 1 sketch we watched, in which Bert and Ernie’s TV would display nothing but the letter A, until Bert encourages to Ernie to reach into the back of the set, where he pulls out a bunch of items that begin with “A” that somehow seem to have gotten stuck inside the set. Once everything’s out, the set seems fixed, until it starts blaring the letter “B” instead, but Ernie actually seems to like it, so they leave it. This later sketch is basically a straight-up remake, however instead of Ernie attempting to watch TV, it’s Bert, whose favorite show, The Wonderful World of Pigeons, has been interrupted by a droning letter “H”:
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Sesame St S5: Highlights #3
Kermit counts 4 eggs.
And today, we have even more highlights from Sesame Street‘s fifth season! The first one I watched for today’s post is another brief lecture from Kermit, this time about counting 4 eggs. As his demonstration goes on, however, each egg begins to hatch and a baby Muppet chick pops out, which subtly introduces the concept of subtraction. Then, he has 4 chicks to count, after which each wanders off one at a time, reiterating the lesson. It’s also particularly fun because the series of flustered expressions Kermit’s face goes through by the end reach practically epic heights. And you can watch all of them, along with the rest of the sketch of course, here!
I also watched another quick Kermit lecture, in which our intrepid frog
Read MoreSesame St S5: Highlights #2
Today, we continue on with more Season 5 highlights, beginning with a classic Sesame Street story-song by Joe Raposo, “The Ballad of Casey McPhee,” in which Cookie portrays a brave, stalwart train conductor delivering 6 carloads of cookies and ice cream through a snowy mountain pass in order to deliver them to children on the other side who need them for their birthday parties, the fact that he actually manages to avoid eating them a testament both to his impressive resolve and the fact that he’s playing a role here because the real Cookie might have had a great deal more trouble remaining focused on the task at hand and putting his own hunger aside for the sake of kids he doesn’t even know:
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