This past weekend, Saturday Night Live aired a sketch featuring Kermit the Frog and Lily Tomlin, as Statler and Waldorf are taken down a peg by the Muppet Theater’s new security team. While this should be of no surprise to most of the folks reading this, apparently it bears repeating: Those were not the real Muppets.
Just as it wasn’t the real Lily Tomlin (who was performed by the incredible Melissa Villaseñor), it’s pretty easy to tell that the Muppets were being voiced by SNL cast members, and that the puppetry didn’t quite match up to the high levels expected from Henson-trained performers.
But let’s say you’re a writer at Variety – arguably the biggest publication for the entertainment business world – and you publish an article like this:
The article begins with, “…a couple of the actual classic puppets made appearances”. Actual classic puppets?? No, Variety writer and Senior Features Editor Danielle Turchiano, they did not.
Several other news sites have reported on the SNL sketch similarly mistook the knockoff Muppets for the real deal. It’s reasonably easy to see why – most people aren’t intimately familiar with the exact distance between Kermit’s eyes, or the separation between Statler’s cheek and jaw. But still, don’t you get a strange uncanny valley feeling when you look at these guys?
So I suppose it’s time for us to share another lesson on what’s a Muppet and what is not a Muppet.
This is a Muppet. This Muppet is the real Kermit the Frog, who bungled “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” with Robert DeNiro (right) on Saturday Night Live in 2004.
This is not a Muppet. This is a Kermit puppet not produced through Disney or The Jim Henson Company, and not performed by current Kermit performer Matt Vogel.
These are Muppets. The Muppet crew showed up to help Jason Segel during his monologue when he hosted SNL. To date, the Muppets have yet to host SNL themselves, which is a travesty.
These are not Muppets. These aren’t even puppets. That’s the SNL cast in Muppet costumes, each of which is more nightmarish than the last.
These are Muppets. The real Muppets celebrated the holidays with Horatio Sanz, flipping the script as they imitated some missing Saturday Night Live cast members as they danced along to “Christmas is Number One”.
This is not a Muppet. This is another knockoff Kermit, being clearly performed by Will Forte as he gets dangerously close to Justin Timberlake’s crotch.
This is a Muppet. Yes, Sesame Street characters are Muppets. We’ve been over this.
These are also not Muppets. I don’t know what these things are. I hate them. (And, understandably, so does Christina Appelgate.)
These are Muppets. I know they don’t look like it, but the Land of Gorch characters were technically credited during the first season of Saturday Night Live as “Jim Henson’s Muppets”, and who are we to argue with an opening credits crawl?
Okay, pop quiz. The two images above are both from Saturday Night Live. Two of these hecklers are real Muppets, and the other two aren’t. Can you tell the difference?
Because not everyone can.
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by Joe Hennes – Joe@ToughPigs.com
