We’re past the halfway point in the first season, and the question at this point seems to be, what to do with Miss Piggy?
I mean, she’s clearly a major character by this point. She appears in half the scenes in the Candice Bergen episode, including Vet’s Hospital, the talk panel sketch — and, most prominently, her own solo opening number, singing “What Now, My Love.” She even interrupts Kermit’s opening intro to demand that she be given that opening spot. Her comic aggressiveness is well established; she karate chops both Fozzie and Mildred in this episode, and intimidates the frog. She’s so important that they even build a pair of legs for her, so she can lie on a divan for her production number.
But they can’t decide who performs her. It’s weird. Frank Oz does the opening and sings the number. But then Richard Hunt plays Piggy in the talk panel sketch, while Oz performs Sam. Oz takes Piggy again for the Vet’s Hospital sketch, and then Hunt performs Piggy for Fozzie’s karate chop backstage. They keep passing the pig back and forth the whole episode.
It’s partly because Oz is performing other characters in the scenes where Hunt performs Piggy, but that’s not the whole story. In the Vet’s Hospital bit, Jim Henson is performing Rowlf as Dr. Bob, but then Kermit pops up at the end of the sketch — and Kermit’s dialogue is looped and lip-sync’ed, so that Henson can perform both Kermit and Rowlf in the same scene. They do it for Kermit and Rowlf, but not for Piggy, even though she’s clearly a featured player in the episode.
At this point in the show, the only other characters who don’t have a consistent performer are the really minor ones, like Droop. (“Who?” you say. My point exactly.) And even with the minor characters, they try not to switch voices in the middle of an episode.
The only explanation I can think of for the Pig switch — and this is pure speculation — is that they were resisting giving Oz another major character. From the start of the series, the Kermit-Fozzie relationship was front and center. They avoided giving Henson another major character, so he could focus on performing Kermit — and Rowlf, in particular, ended up being used much less than he otherwise might have. It looks like, at this halfway point in the first season, they’re realizing that Miss Piggy is developing into a major character, but they’re not sure whether Oz should have two main characters.
All the other Muppeteers end up with one “signature” character on The Muppet Show — Henson has Kermit, Hunt has Scooter, Dave Goelz has Gonzo, and Jerry Nelson has Floyd. At the start of the series, Oz has Fozzie… but it’s slowly becoming more apparent that Piggy is pushing her way to the spotlight, and that she’s Oz’s character, not Hunt’s.
Fifteen episodes in, they’re still fighting it, but there’s no hope for the bear. Miss Piggy is the rough beast, her hour coming at last, slouching towards center stage to be born. Or something like that.
by Danny Horn
