The Muppet Show

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STUDIO: Buena Vista
MSRP: $39.99
RATED: NR
RUNNING TIME: 612 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Muppets Valentine's Day Special
• "The Muppets on the Muppets" interview segments
• Weezer "Keep Fishin'" music video

The Pitch

“Now that’s entertainment.”

The Humans

Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, and other Muppet Players.

The Nutshell

A series of gracious guest stars shuffle along with a merry band of felt and stuffing, singing, dancing, and making pratfalls all the way.

Plus puns. Oh, god, the puns.

The Lowdown

There used to be a mystique surrounding entertainers; it had something to do with the power to transfix an audience, and it crossed over the disciplines of singing, dancing, comedy, and acting. It seems to have traced a line straight out of vaudeville and into the realm of the more “legitimate” stage shows, as the latter incorporated the popularity of the former. A memorable entertainer would have an unspoken contract with the audience: I will transport you, somehow. It was, by most accounts, a magical time in the entertainment arts. And I’m too young to remember any of it.


Can you guess how many of these guys I was afraid of as a child?
That's right. All of them.

From the stage, that kind of human-shaped escapism landed on the small screen, and variety shows were born. Not having grown up on the beasts, I've got a kind of abstract interest in why they worked at all. In an entertainment industry devoted to delivering what the audience wants, it's faintly confusing to me that audiences have changed so much from wanting a whole stew of different types of entertainment to wanting one consistent thing. I mean, even shows these days that might earn the “variety” label are concerned first and foremost with comedy. Can you imagine a soliloquy on death – performed straight – in the middle of an episode of SNL?

All right, neither can I, and that's not exactly the sort of thing that you'd find in golden age variety shows, either. But while it's a brand of entertainment you're liable to find given full parody in a modern sketch show, The Muppet Show gave an equal measure to homage. The intention of a comedy sketch is to make you laugh, but what remains most distinct about Henson's show is its willingness to bind the bitter to the sweet, to confuse the intent of any given skit or song. Whether it's interjecting absurdism into a lament or ending a dancing puppet routine with a sweet note of love, The Muppet Show unabashedly maintains variety.


The Tsar is getting less subtle.

I'd love to attribute that to the showrunners' love of the entertainers that won them over, but I can only hypothesize. After months of research, I've come up with a graph that traces an arc from Ed Sullivan through The Muppet Show and on to The Whitest Kids U Know. It is not a very accurate graph. And, though it doesn’t have any bearing on this set of discs, I’ve noticed a shift from The Muppet Show to Muppets Tonight, which, though short-lived, was entirely of my generation. We’ve gone from variety shows to loving paeans to variety shows to, finally, full parodies. Muppets Tonight was sketch comedy, without the breadth of experimentation and willingness to abandon comedy for a damn good, melancholy song, as The Muppet Show did. And I think that Tonight, and similarly, all the Muppet movies from Treasure Island on, are lesser for their single-minded behavior, their lack of depth as it relates to both emotion and irreverence.

I have yet to mention the most obvious thing about The Muppet Show, which is that it's a variety show performed almost entirely by puppets, marionettes, and dudes dressed up in furry suits. That's a source for a lot of humor right there; but I think it does this classic show a disservice to stop you're appreciation of it at that level. Look past it and you get a show with significant variety of entertainment, from song-and-dance to comedy to drama and more, between and within its individual episodes, a quality that doesn't seem to have a place on television anymore.


Shadow puppets are the Tijuana Bibles of the poor.

The Package

Not a whole lot in the way of bonuses, but they are good ones. A January 30, 1974 Valentine's Day special is included in its entirety. I was negative nine in 1974, so I can't say as I missed the episode's time in limbo, but it's a good addition to the rest of the set. You also get a set of mock interviews set up with human guest stars and some of the Muppets, commenting on the show in all seriousness.

And, because you asked for it, the music video for Weezer's “Keep Fishin',” truly one of the pop masterpieces of our time. It's included because the thing was staged as a guest appearance with the Muppets. What I want to see is Animal paired with Rush.

7.5 out of 10