Ladies and gentlemen, frogs and pigs — welcome to the first week of My Week with The Muppet Show, a ridiculously ambitious media-crit endurance test.
Here’s the idea: I’m going to watch every episode of The Muppet Show, in production order, and write a commentary for every single one.
I’m doing five episodes a week, every couple of weeks, until either the supply of Muppet Shows gives out or my brain explodes. It’s probably going to take me more than a year to do the whole thing, so feel free to visit the Tough Pigs Forum and place your bets on how long you think I can last. So far, the smart money’s on the middle of season three — let’s say, somewhere around Helen Reddy — but the field is still wide open.
So, it’s time to raise the curtain. On your mark. Get set. Go.
Juliet Prowse
“Thank you, thank you!” Kermit nods to the cheering audience.”Hey, listen, it’s another great show, folks.”
Another one? We haven’t even had a first one yet. It’s about ten seconds into the first episode with Juliet Prowse, and already they’re acting like they’ve been doing this forever.
Which makes sense, since this wasn’t intended to actually air as the first episode. The producers recorded the first two Muppet Show episodes as pilots, so they could try out the format. They recorded the episodes with Juliet Prowse and Connie Stevens in late January and early February, 1976, and then there was a production break until May. The first two episodes were testing the format, kicking the tires a bit, and the production break allowed them to make some early changes. When the show actually aired, they led off with some later episodes, making sure that they premiered with the more polished stuff.
So here, for the first recorded episode, we’ve got Kermit pretending that it’s later in the season. We’ve got Scooter already in place backstage, even though his official “introduction” is in episode 6. And we’ve got Mahna Mahna.
Kermit introduces the opening number, “Mahna Mahna” — and the crowd goes wild. Henson starts off on home turf, with a hit sketch that they’d donebefore on a dozen variety shows. It’s like Madonna coming out on stage and doing”Papa Don’t Preach” — it’s familiar, it’s safe, and she knows you’regonna dig it. Basically, if you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you like. And there’s good reason why Mahna Mahna was Henson’s sure-fire hit: it’s just really, really good. Even twenty-five years later, it still makes me laugh, and it still amazes me.
The thing that’s cool about Mahna Mahna is that moment of “planned accident,” which was the major theme of The Muppet Show right from the very first sketch. Mahna Mahna and the Snowths are singing this simple little tune — Mahna Mahna, doo doo, da doo doo — and then MM busts out with a groovy little scat riff. This annoys the button-down Snowths, and they rein him in with a disapproving glare. This happens for a couple more choruses — and finally MM takes off, scatting as he bolts out through the stage door. The Snowths are nonplussed. Then Kermit gets a phone call, and he brings the phone out to the Snowths for the final, unexpected “Mahna Mahna.”
Of course, all this riffing and messing around is rehearsed, and more than rehearsed; they’ve performed it on TV a dozen times. But they’re playing it like it’s an unexpected surprise, as if none of this was planned out in advance. It’s a trick that the Muppets are going to keep playing for the next twenty-five years, and it gives the show an amazing vitality.
The Snowths are acting like they’ve rehearsed this number, and it isn’t going the way they rehearsed it… so they’re annoyed, and confused. They aren’t just singing pink dolls — they have attitudes, and expectations, and feelings. They’re characters. There’s this little break in what they thought was going to happen — and, all of a sudden, the puppets have a point of view.
The Muppet Show changes a lot over its five-year run. Characters develop in unexpected ways. They start telling longer, more complex stories. The girl pig becomes a superstar. But the one thing that’s in place right from the first moment is this commitment to giving each puppet a real character, with a recognizable interior life. That’s the magic right there that transforms The Muppet Show from a foolish, risky adventure into a full-blown, bona-fide TV phenomenon.
Hey, did someone say… Phenomenon? Doo doo, da doo doo…
Aw, go ahead. You know the rest.
by Danny Horn
