Peter Canavese
2007-08-27 22:52:44 UTC
Take two "mahna"s and call me in the morning.
The Muppet Show was, in some ways, the culmination of years of creative and career toiling by puppeteer Jim Henson. Other highs would follow, including some notable feature-films (from The Muppet Movie to Labyrinth) featuring work by what came to be known as the Jim Henson Creature Shop, but The Muppet Show gave Henson the weekly opportunity to spend his plentiful goodwill on a huge stable of characters, production numbers seemingly limited only by the imagination, a collection of astoundingly talented friends and colleagues, and an equally happy audience comprised of children of all ages.
Henson's 1955 series Sam and Friends was a training ground for his "Muppets," lively foam and felt characters with an absurdist streak of humor. The Muppets caught the attention of variety and talk shows looking for a little more novelty, and soon the Muppets were cropping up on The Jimmy Dean Show and with Steve Allen and Jack Paar (later, the Muppets regularly appeared in the inaugural season of Saturday Night Live). The Muppets settled and grew under the wing of the Children's Television Workshop, which produced Sesame Street for PBS, beginning in 1969.
That show featured Kermit the Frog, a Henson alter ego that dated back to Sam and Friends (hence the 50th Anniversary of Kermit heralded on this box set), and after years of hitting the pavement, Henson secured the support of infamous London TV producer Lord Lew Grade. The Muppet Show would premiere in 1976 and prove to be an international success, but its first season proved to be a hard sell to the celebrities pursued as guest stars. Once the show was a hit, of course, The Muppet Show (like Batman before it) became the hip place to hang out on screen.
The uninitiated might be surprised at the breadth of this uniquely colorful variety show, which emphasized sketch comedy and silly production numbers, but also explored more delicate tones of song, dance, and mime. In the series' first episode, Juliet Prowse performs a ballet—complemented by graceful, understated Muppets—to Scott Joplin's "Solace." Gentle, patiently staged songs by Kermit (Joe Raposo's "Bein' Green") and Jerry Nelson's Robin (A.A. Milne's "Halfway Down the Stairs") touchingly evoke the inner space of children; in fact, the latter soared to number 7 on the UK pop charts!
If traditional high culture and artful mood pieces are the medicine, the "spoonful of sugar" (okay, the ladle of sugar) is the show's comic vaudeville. The fretful but simply adorable Kermit hosts from a lived-in theater, where he lures talented guest stars to perform amid strange, scrappy Muppet acts (the balcony is the province of two elderly hecklers named Statler and Waldorf). Henson remounts old novelty songs ("I'm My Own Grandpa") and head writer Jack Burns (abetted by preeminent Muppet writer Jerry Juhl) orchestrates corny puns, non-sequitur sight gags, and old-fashioned routines, exemplified by the "Good grief, the comedian's a bear" sketch worked to perfection by Kermit and hopelessly bad comic Fozzie the Bear in Episode 10 (guest star: Harvey Korman).
The guest stars make a particularly unusual grab-bag in season one, but it's a far-from-embarrassing group, including Lena Horne, Joel Grey, Rita Moreno, Peter Ustinov, Phyllis Diller, Vincent Price, Ethel Merman, and Candice Bergen. Bruce Forsyth couldn't have meant much to audiences outside of England, though he acquits himself as well as can be expected, whereas Connie Stevens and Florence Henderson are the worst things about their respective production numbers. Trouble booking guests may have had a silver lining, allowing funkier choices like French chanteur Charles Aznavour and diminutive pop singer Paul Williams, who went on to co-write the music for The Muppet Movie.
For production ease, musical numbers were canned, and a laugh track (arguably necessary but sometimes undeniably intrusive) is present, but the word is still "performance," with live-to-tape genius by the Muppeteers. Like The Simpsons, The Muppet Show rotates gags—in its opening sequence (a Fozzie joke and Gonzo's doomed attempt to strike the gong-like "O" in the show's logo) and end credits (a Statler and Waldorf kiss-off)—and can exploit an extended family of characters. Some of those characters, most notably Miss Piggy, visibly and audibly take shape over the course of the season (Piggy, once traded by Muppeteers Richard Hunt and Frank Oz, becomes a star in Oz's hands).
Gonzo (Dave Goelz) is the unplaceably strange creature who does bizarre performance art; Scooter (Hunt) is the eager-beaver gofer whose uncle owns the theater (and don't forget it); Rowlf the Dog and Dr. Teeth (both Henson) are eccentric piano players; Sam the American Eagle (Oz, who also played Fozzie) promotes the wholesome song stylings of Wayne and Wanda (Hunt and Eren Ozker), whose numbers are always brusquely aborted. More than a dozen other significant characters debut in the inaugural season, though not all of them would stick (George the Janitor, Hilda the Wardrobe Lady, we hardly knew ye...).
Though I was blissfully unaware as a child, Laugh-In was an obvious influence on The Muppet Show with its frequent "blackout" sketches and casual absurdism. But while Laugh-In is a dated relic, the Muppet characters spring eternal. No one who as ever seen the Swedish Chef attacked by his own dishes will ever forget him (perfomed by Henson, with Oz's real hands on view to do the cooking). Surely Spanish sadist Marvin Suggs and his amazing Muppaphone (fuzzy heads that yelp in tonal agony when struck by Suggs' mallets) will haunt dreams for decades to come (once you see this, try to hear "Lady of Spain" without laughing).
Regular sketches like Muppet News, "At the Dance," and the hilariously pun-ridden soap spoof "Veterinarian's Hospital" prove their value over the course of the season. The first season also provided the ace material for the best-selling Muppet Show album: Gonzo eating a rubber tire to "Flight of the Bumblebee," Scooter and Fozzie adapting Randy Newman's "Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear," Zoot and Rowlf performing the indescribable piano-and-sax duet "Sax and Violence," Kermit's rendition of "Lydia the Tattooed Lady," and so on.
Henson's death in 1990 struck a blow to the world and to the company he built, but his wonderfully weird world—edgy but all charm—tenaciously endures. Muppet illusions are complete, which makes supreme children's entertainment; likewise, the groaning humor can reduce grown adults to fits of laughter. I don't want to know the person who can't enjoy "Mahna Mahna," the novelty number staged by Henson to feature a fuzzy-vested beatnik croaking "Mahna mahna" and two pink alien cows singing "Doo doo doo doo doo" backup. If you're ever feeling overwhelmed, take two "mahna"s and call me in the morning.
[For Groucho's interview with Frank Oz, click here, for his interview with Dave Goelz, click here, and for his review of The Muppet Show—Season Two, click here.]
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