Let’s Talk About Those Muppet Show Edits

Published: February 22, 2021

Yay, The Muppet Show is finally on Disney+! Boo, some of the episodes are edited or missing. But y’know what? That’s okay.

Muppet fans (myself included) have been going through a roller coaster of emotions over the past week, from an overwhelming feeling of anticipation to explosive excitement, through a corridor of mild disappointment. Honestly, it’s exhausting being a fanatic.

Since the announcement that The Muppet Show would be coming to Disney+, a day hasn’t gone by without a dozen Muppet fans messaging us asking if we know anything about potential edits to the show. This question took up just as much headspace as our preparation for five seasons of a classic Muppet series to be released to the public. And believe me, it was frustrating to not have all the answers until launch day.

Once the day came, we were not entirely shocked to see a few episodes missing. We were, however, surprised to see a dozen or so missing segments. What we expected to be a near-complete offering of The Muppet Show turned out to be swiss cheesed.

Of course, my initial reaction was that of disappointment. Despite an absolutely gorgeous remastering of the series, would I even want to watch some of these episodes knowing that the blurry bootleg versions on YouTube are technically more complete?

But then my pragmatic side took over, and I remembered that the priority is to get as much of The Muppet Show into as many households as possible, which is exactly what Disney+ promised and delivered on. Not only that, but they managed to clear over 98% of the series, and remastered the entire thing in the best quality we’ve ever seen of the show.

I mean, come on. How lucky are we??

But despite our satisfaction with what we’ve got, there’s always going to be that nagging feeling that we don’t have everything. So let’s look at the three big missing chunks of the series:

The most surprising loss is the exclusion of the Brooke Shields episode. Despite being released years ago with Time-Life’s “Best of The Muppet Show“, we understand that music rights are keeping this one off of Disney+ for now. I know it’s hard to see the silver lining on this one, but it’s a good thing that it’s missing. Hear me out.

On the assumption that music rights are truly the issue, Disney had the option to slice the episode up and serve us a heavily edited mess of a show. Rather than do that, they opted to hold the whole thing back, because otherwise the final product would suffer. So their plan is likely to either keep only the best possible versions of The Muppet Show on their streaming platform or to find a way to clear the episode and deliver it to us at a later date. Aside from getting the full episode, this is an understandable second choice.

The second missing episode is Chris Langham. We’ve written here on ToughPigs about what a shame it is that Langham’s problematic personal life has marred our experience of revisiting his Muppet Show episode. But in this modern era, it’s a relatively easy sacrifice to make to miss out on 26 minutes of content because of the unfortunate actions of a celebrity. We’re lucky that The Muppet Show didn’t also feature guest stars like Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey, or Harvey Weinstein, and Langham’s is the sole outlier out of 120 episodes.

Beyond the missing episodes, we’re also missing a handful of songs and UK Spots. As a stark contrast to the missing Brooke Shields episode, about a dozen Muppet Show moments have been surgically removed due to (presumably) music clearance rights. Of course, we can’t argue with Disney’s lawyers (All very good-looking and smart people! Please don’t sue us!), who I’m sure worked extremely hard to clear the gross majority of the series for us. Just imagine how awful it’d be if those episodes were all missing just because one song couldn’t legally be included? We’re beyond lucky to have 22 out of 26 minutes from each of those to watch whenever we want.

Remember when we got the first season of The Muppet Show on DVD, only to discover missing songs? Those songs (all of which happen to appear in their Disney+ episode counterparts) could never be reinstated onto your DVDs. Once they’re cut, they’re cut. Conversely, the Disney+ versions have the rare and futuristic opportunity to be updated. If there’s a possibility that more song clearances can come through at a later date (and if the aforementioned, good-looking Disney legal team is still pursuing them), we could see those missing pieces find their way back to their proper homes.

Another thing to keep in mind: Disney very easily could have edited out a lot more. There’s certainly a bunch of stuff that will most definitely be seen by many of us as problematic or inappropriate. Off the top of my head, we’ve got the Confederate flag in the Johnny Cash episode, a group of oil-obsessed Arabs in the Kenny Rogers episode, stereotypical Asian impressions in the James Coburn episode, and don’t get me started on Spike Milligan. Rather than remove these elements, they’ll come with a disclaimer (seen above), which is literally the smallest price to pay for maintaining history while giving proper notice of the issues in question. Despite the missing segments in the series, we’re damn lucky to have everything that remains.

Yes, it’s frustrating that we came so close to getting every moment from every episode of The Muppet Show on Disney+. But what we got instead is pretty damn impressive: 118 episodes (including many that have never been commercially released), over 100 completely uncut episodes, brand new remasters in breathtaking quality, and the opportunity to share these episodes with new or budding Muppet fans.

Honestly, losing a few minutes of Muppet content is well worth getting all of the above and more.