The Muppets: An Appreciation, Part One

So, this is a little different, I know this website is called Mark’s Game Space (For Games), but I want to talk about something that’s near and dear to my heart that’s not game related. We’re talking about the Muppets today not only because they’re awesome, but because I was raised with their presence in my life being a constant throughout the years. And because a new Muppet series is going to be streaming on Disney Plus here very soon! Strap yourselves in folks, because I think it’s going to be a long one!

The Muppets initially were conceived in the 1950s by Jim Henson for a Washington DC based public television show called Sam and Friends, premiering in 1955 and lasting until 1961. This marked the first appearance of everyone’s favorite frog, Kermit. Except he wasn’t really a frog, at least not at first. Together with his wife Jane, and future Muppet writer Jerry Juhl, as well as Bob Payne, he piloted and performed most of the characters. The soul of the Muppets was born here, and even in its earliest form, it is evident that even then, 60 years ago, they had that little spark of something that made them unique and endearing.

After Sam and Friends ended its run, the Muppets continued to make appearances on the many variety shows of the day, such as The Ed Sullivan Show. Rowlf the piano playing dog was the earliest Muppet star, appearing regularly on the Jimmy Dean Show, and receiving copious amounts of fan letters. Between this and advertising, the characters enjoyed continued success, but it wasn’t until the late 1960s when they would enter the collective pop culture consciousness.

Before Sesame Street premiered in 1969, Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett founded the Children’s Television Workshop and toured the US and Canada interviewing educators and other professionals and giving conferences extolling the virtues of using television to educate preschool aged youth. At one conference, Cooney noticed a man, with long hair and a thick beard, sitting at the back of the room. Cooney turns to Morrisett, uneasy, and says, “that man back there. Is he going to kill us?” Morrisett says, “I doubt it, that’s just Jim Henson!” Cooney and Morrisett later contracted Henson to build Muppets for their project, and as it grew closer to the show’s premiere date, the stable of Muppet performers that would make them a household name began to take shape, with Frank Oz joining up, in a position he would hold until his retirement from the Muppets in 2000. When Sesame Street premiered, there was concern that the Muppets would distract the children watching from the show’s educational goals. A study from a group of child psychologists found that the Muppets actually held children’s attention more effectively when they were on screen as opposed to not. And revisiting sketches from the 1970s and 80s, it’s easy to see why, as some of these make me, a 21 year old male, laugh really hard! Like this one, with Lefty the Salesman, a shady Muppet who attempts to sell Ernie various things, portrayed at various points by Frank Oz, Caroll Spinney and others.

This is from 1970 and it is genius. Not only is the subtext cleverly presented, as this is meant to be some sort of drug deal, which I would not have gotten when I was a kid, but both Henson and Oz portray their characters perfectly, with their voices and movements matching the characters’ personalities to a T. Their comedic chemistry is at least part of the reason the Muppets are so beloved to this day, whether it’s through Bert and Ernie:

Or Kermit and Cookie Monster:

(Just as a quick aside, not only is this clip hilarious, I love the subtle detail of Kermit sighing and shaking his head as Cookie Monster is giving his dramatic speech. Something funny I just noticed!)

Oz and Henson also shared a great working relationship as well, with Oz remarking that working with Henson and the rest of the Muppet performers at the Workshop was like a family and was dismayed to find out about rampant backstabbing and workplace politics in other environments. In my mind, both then and now, the Muppets make up the soul and the core of what Sesame Street is about, educating kids about the world and presenting it in a fun way! It sticks with you, because I remember a particular song, with Andrea Bocceli and Elmo from my childhood (when I was about 4 or 5) and it stood out to me because all these years later I still remember it. It was an adaptation of Time to Say Goodbye and I couldn’t find it for the longest time. Here it is for you now:

I feel I should inform you that as I was listening to this, I had the biggest smile on my face!
Time has a funny way of doing that to you, making memorable things stick out even after some have been forgotten. For instance, my mom remembers something that was on Sesame Street in her childhood, an animation aptly called “I Can Remember” from 1972:

And those songs and moments have influenced a generation, including my parents and later myself. It speaks to Sesame Street’s longevity and cultural staying power, something that my mom and I just talked about. Everyone has those moments that have shaped them and who they are, and for me, Elmo, Ernie, Big Bird and the rest of the Muppets on the Street played a big part in that, and if I were to meet them and their performers, it would be a gigantic honor!

By the mid-1970s, Jim Henson, although having immense success and acclaim for his work on Sesame Street, was growing weary. He was afraid he would be typecast as a children’s performer, so he, along with Frank Oz, Richard Hunt and Jerry Nelson, met with Lorne Michaels and were contracted to perform on Saturday Night Live’s first season in 1975 and early 1976. It did not go well. The Muppets weren’t a good fit because the writers didn’t care, and didn’t know how to write for them, with one writer, Michael O’Donahue, quipping,“I don’t write for felt”. The resulting sketch, The Land of Gorch, was the first attempt at a darker, more adult oriented Muppets and it fell flat. Critics hated it, the writers obviously hated it, Frank Oz didn’t like it, and it fell into obscurity where it should stay. A couple upsides though, this darker atmosphere was later revisited and workshopped until it became 1982’s The Dark Crystal. And Henson used the experience he gained with putting on a show in just seven days and having made some friends in high places to work on the Muppet Show! But before that, two pilots were made and aired on ABC in 1974 and 1975. This was a very embryonic form of the Muppet Show. The format isn’t even to where it would be, even in the first season. Kermit is not the host, that role goes to Wally, who was later relegated to conducting the orchestra in the actual series. The Swedish Chef, my favorite Muppet, had his regular sketches retooled from his introduction. I haven’t actually made it all the way through both pilots, as I don’t think they’re very good, but most pilots aren’t very good. But, having both pilots fail to be picked up didn’t deter Henson in the slightest, as he made this absolutely insane pitch reel, in order to convince networks to pick up the Muppet Show:

“….And we’ll all get temperamental and hard to work with but you won’t care! BECAUSE WE’LL ALL MAKE A LOT OF MONEY!!!”

Surprisingly, no American networks picked it up. No, for the entirety of the Muppet Show’s run, they actually filmed at Elstree studios in England after Lew Grade, a British television executive, agreed to help Henson get his show to the air. And so on September 5th, 1976, The Muppet Show premiered and became a huge hit in England.


As with any show, it took the Muppets a while to find their groove and fine tune their formula. It was an okay season, far better than most first seasons are, in my opinion, but it still suffers from a weird format and off characterizations. For example, Gonzo isn’t the daring, high flying stunt-master we know him as; he was nervous, unsure of himself, mirroring his performer’s mindset during this time. Whole sketches were cut after this season, like Talking Houses:

Other sketches aired a lot less, like the At the Dance segment and Talk Spots, where Kermit sits down with the guest of the day’s episode. There are some good episodes in there though, like Paul Williams. I would say that his is the first great episode of the show because it has it all: Great sketches, great songs and good interactions with the Muppets themselves.

The other episode that people bring up when discussing this season is the one with Vincent Price and for good reason. He’s a perfect fit for the style of the Muppets and the show, as evidenced by this clip:

But, one of the issues I discussed earlier is evident in the first season’s lack of name recognition on behalf of the guest stars, something that was fixed by the second and third seasons.
The format for the next two seasons was refined, and it is the format that most people remember when they think of the Muppet Show. Guests were usually given 2 or three songs and those songs were from their back catalogue, if they were a musician, or just famous pop standards if they were an actor. My favorite performances were from guests recognizable to modern audiences, like Elton John, Steve Martin and Julie Andrews, and from guests that I recognize because I’m familiar with their works, like Roger Miller, Loretta Lynn and Gilda Radner. Here are some of my favorite performances from the Muppet Show in no particular order.

This is probably my favorite episode of The Muppet Show as a whole because Elton John is a perfect fit for it! He’s the closest thing to a real life Muppet we have in this world! I love the fact that Zoot, the saxophone player, is just sitting there, jamming out to the music, not playing a single note. Why is he even there? The song has no saxophone!

The same principles that applied for Elton John also apply to Roger Miller, who’s nuttiness and generally zany and offbeat songwriting make him a particularly perfect fit for this show, and it is demonstrated in his medley for the show!

I was going to go with the shorter version of this song that I found on YouTube but everything about this clip is pure comedy gold, from Fozzie’s broken typewriter in the intro, to all of the Muppets being off at the end of the song, so I had to include the whole thing for you all here! Plus Mr. Belafonte’s performance of this song is excellent! I feel like that’s about enough for the guest stars and their performances, because if I were to list off all my favorites, this would be longer than it’s already going to be so I’ll just leave you with this: The guest stars on the Muppet Show were varied and each brought something unique to the table, good or bad. Also in the show were segments called UK Spots. In their original airing, the Muppet Show in the UK took advantage of their shorter ad breaks to add in small sketches unrelated to the original episode, usually with no guest star. Here’s one that gets stuck in my head all the time:

These were made available on The Muppet Show’s DVD releases and add extra charm to an already super charming show, because it’s the Muppets on their own and not helped or hindered by any guest star. Take this song by Rowlf for instance:

There’s nothing like a little dark humor! But these are a little old fashioned. I mean, old British music hall songs and novelty songs are nice, but something more rock-ish is more my speed. Like this one, originally by Billy Joel and performed by The Electric Mayhem.

These songs dovetailed in with the various sketches to make something that has influenced my sense of humor and regularly put a smile on my face, and made me forget my troubles. My second favorite recurring sketch is Veterinarian’s Hospital a parody of various medical dramas, in which Dr. Bob (Rowlf) and nurses Janice and Miss Piggy attempt to operate on other Muppets and inanimate objects, while cracking terrible jokes in the process.

I’m a fan of these so-called terrible jokes so it works wonders for making me laugh, but it is not my favorite sketch. That would be the Swedish Chef! He’s my favorite Muppet because he’s just plain silly, and the word is still out on whether he’s even a good cook! Originally performed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz, who performed the hands, the character came about because Jim Henson had a tape in his car entitled “How to speak Mock Swedish”, and according to Jim’s son Brian, he would practice this accent on the freeway and get weird looks when stopped at traffic lights. This was an early version of the character that would grow to be The Swedish Chef! Early sketches were fairly straightforward, with no obstacles and the Chef preparing what he said he was going to prepare:

Later, the sketches evolved into the comedic antics we know the Swedish Chef for, with him trying and failing to prepare what he was going to, often with slapstick style injury to himself, or getting interrupted by Kermit’s intervention, as was the case when he tried to make frog legs:

In later seasons, the Chef was rebuilt, and used more sparingly, but to greater effect, like in the fifth season where he demonstrates Swedish bread Lump puppetry:

Or this absolutely golden video of the Chef, Beaker and Animal singing the old Irish classic, “Danny Boy”

My favorite part of this video is Animal and the Chef backing up Beaker when he sings his verse, and Animal’s verse only consisting of the first three words of the song. These three Muppets would be trotted out once again many years later but as far as I’m aware, this was the only time these three shared a single scene! It’s silly and it makes me laugh every time I watch it.

The Muppet Show lasted 5 seasons, from 1976 to 1981 and about 120 episodes. Instead of a big finale, Henson decided to just let it end and run its course. As usual, he wasn’t content to let the show get stale, because he had greater ambitions. Movies, to be more specific. Beginning in 1978, director James Frawley shot several scenes with the Muppets outdoors to make sure they would work on film as they did on television. The rest of the world would have to wait until 1979 to see how that turned out.

(This Muppet retrospective continues with Part 2, which should be up by the time you read this)