Muppet Show Watch-along Season 1 Part 2
My friends and I are watching the Muppet Show on Wednesdays and I guess I’ll do a quick review and watchalong. But first, I guess we should talk about the thing about watching the Muppets in the year of our Luigi 2026.
The Muppet Show is a beloved institution, and everyone loves it. So you’d think it’d be super easy to watch today, right? It is NOT. It’s been re-released a bunch of times, but due to the nature of what the Muppet Show IS, the re-releases keep shifting and cutting things all over the place. So if you want the FULL experience, it’s pretty impossible. But you can do your best.
ANOTHER thing is, what is the order? If you ask Wikipedia, you get a specific answer. If you ask the Muppets wiki, you get another. We’re just… gonna do our best to watch them all in whatever order we can, alright? At least it’s obvious where the seasons begin and end.
And finally… the whole point of the Muppet Show is about the human guest stars who star alongside the Muppets. These are all the most famous stars of the 70s, so I know like, MAYBE five of them. Obviously, I’m gonna like an episode that stars Vincent Price, who I love, a little more than one that stars Sandy Duncan, who I do not know at all. There might be some jokes and commentary about those guest stars I just flat out do not get. I’m doing my best, but this isn’t like, a retrospective. This is a nerd who grew up watching random Muppets content who wants to watch the Muppets Show and the only way she can really connect to media is if she orders and ranks it all or some shit. So yeah, let’s do that.
Episode 117: Ben Vereen 7.5/10
I like the song they start with here, a cover of Jump Shout Boogie, where the muppets keep slamming into each other violently when “knock yourself out” is sung.
Anyways, Ben Vereen is another broadway star I don’t really know, as someone with no Broadway knowledge. But he does the whole gamut here, singing, dancing, including a song from Chicago on a set that is… very Sesame Street lol. There’s also a good gag where he jumps up and hangs down from the rafters.
He also does Pure Imagination, which I DO know! I love that song.
Meanwhile, the running skit is about Fozzie accidentally locking himself in a magician’s box. The only person who can open the box is the magician, who’s currently vacationing in Toledo, so they need to try and open it. Obviously without much success. …Well I SAY that’s the running skit, but honestly Crazy Harry just existing is the 2nd running skit.
So there are several recurring sketches that appear all over the first season that will basically completely disappear come the second season. Most of them are kinda mid so I don’t care. But I really won’t miss one in particular. Wayne and Wanda are two characters that Sam the Eagle will come out and build up as truly wholesome and uplifting… for some reason. Cause every time they show up, they get 5 seconds into their gag and then flub it and the curtain is dropped on them. It’s not super interesting, and I tune out every time they show up.
Over all this one was good, but it maybe leans a bit heavily on Crazy Harry
Episode 118: Phyllis Diller 6/10
Phyllis Diller is an interesting woman, she was one of the first women comics to really hit it big in the US, and was also a big champion for plastic surgery. Both of these things are important to the episode, actually. She, of course, does comedy on stage. But also Hilda thinks she looks amazing for her age (she does) and decides to try and freshen herself up and wear things to make herself look younger. It doesn’t work. Hilda is another character that will pretty much disappear come season 2, which is a shame, I kinda like her.
Anyways, she mostly does comedy gags and they’re pretty good. Other than that though, there’s not really much to say about this one. There’s nothing bad or anything, but nothing super interesting
Episode 119: Vincent Price
9/10
I do in fact, know Vincent Price. I LOVE Vincent Price, because I have a heartbeat and a soul. So this is pretty good just on that alone, but even beyond my enjoyment of all things Vincent, it’s pretty good! I also enjoy all things spooky and kooky, and all together ooky.
The best guest stars are those who either A) Treat the Muppets like any other actor or B) are Muppets themselves. Vincent Price is a muppet, and I mean that with all the love in the world.
The running gag is Scooter trying to get Kermit to get a three headed mosnter on stage. It’s good, but overstaged by Vincent for sure.
Episode 120: Valerie Harper 7/10
I dunno who Valerie Harper is, but she describes herself as “A muppet freak” and I 100% believe it. She claims she wants to do a big number at the start, and she sabatoged the original first act so she’d be able to go on. A freak indeed.
The running gag is uh… Statler and Waldorf fall in love with Valerie Harper and try to sneak into her dressing room to meet her. Well, Statler wins the toss and gets to shoot his shot. Get some, Statler.
There’s also a pretty fun skit with Rowlf and Sam performing “Tit Willow”, a Gilbert and Sullivan song, which gets Sam on board, but then he finds out he’s a dicky bird that sings “tit willow” over and over, and he’s less enthused. This was actually the UK Spot, which was interesting. In the UK, commercials were shorter, so they had to add a skit, usually just a song. But this is the best one for sure so far, cause it’s actually a skit and is funny, and not just a song.
Though it’s especially weird because the UK segment was shot after the rest of the season was made and spliced in, so uh, Sam has his normal head, while he appears later on with his weird off color head he has all season. It’s strange.
This is an alright one with some funny gags, but I feel like it doesn’t use Valerie to its fullest. At least she gets to punch Animal!
Episode 121: Twiggy 5.5/10
I love how Kermit yells “Twiggy”, it’s like a weird squawk. tbf it’s a weird stage name. She was a British model, well known back in the day, but one of those who… kind of isn’t talked about much anymore. Honestly a stage name like “Twiggy” is weird to me, it gives me vibes of like… Boxxy. Remember her? God, I made myself feel old.
Anyways she’s fine, but it starts with a weird skit where she sings The Beatles over a black background while images of her modeling are put up behind her and cycled through. I… don’t get it.
Also there’s THIS horrible fucking thing. I appear to have taken some bad acid.
The running skit is there’s a “Phantom of the Muppet Show” who’s freaking everyone out. Well, most everyone. Hilda thinks it’s just her.
It turns out to be Uncle Deadly, a Shakesperean actor who was killed by the critics after doing Othello, and has been trying to drive people out of the theater as penance.
As much as I like Uncle Deadly, Twiggy doesn’t have anything really stand out that she does, so the episode in general is just okay.
Episode 122: Ethel Merman 6.5/10
More broadway musical alumni. More people I don’t know at all. In fact, her first skit is her just doing duets of all her most famous songs with different Muppets. She sings a song called “You’re the top” to Kermit. Kermit is 100% NOT the top. I’ve seen Miss Piggy.
The running skit is that Fozzie’s agent is stopping by and wants to discuss Fozzie’s contract, or lack there-of. He’s a pair of shoes in a top hat called “Irving Bizarre”, which is a reference to famously short Irving Lazar, a Hollywood talent agent.
Apparently Ethel Merman isn’t just “Broadway musical alumni”, she’s like, THE Broadway musical alumni. She was THE queen of Broadway. At this point she’s a rather old woman, in her 60s, and she has a lot of classics under her belt. I just know behind the scenes all the crew is nerding out cause they are 100% broadway nerds. It’s just not my scene, is all.
The conclusion to the Fozzie Agent storyline is that Irving manages to haggle Kermit to give Fozzie 10x his current pay rate. Wow, what a deal! Now he’s making… 0 dollars still!
Episode 123: Kaye Ballard 8/10
Not sure who Kaye Ballard is, but man this show is really giving me a crash course on white women who were apparently big at one point but when I look them up on Wikipedia it’s just stuff I’ve never heard of. And knowing media is like, my job. At least she does a cute duet with Thog.
Today’s running skit is that Floyd Pepper intends to quit and basically the entire rest of the band is following him, except for Rowlf. This also puts a spotlight on Nigel, one of the most interesting Muppets to me, because he fell from grace so, so, SO hard. He was the original host of the Muppet Show in the pilot, but when it came time to actually make the show, they chose someone else, because frankly, he lacked the sauce. He’s a fraggle that escaped because no one noticed him leave, because he has no stage presence. He’s relegated to being the conductor for the Muppet Orchestra, and apparently the writer of the theme. He’s rather disliked by the musicians because of how fucking lame he is.
There’s a Muppet News Flash where Kaye is playing a woman trying to get the world record for speaking the longest sentence, and she’s basically just saying a long string of unintelligable giberish. Oh, she’s reading Atlas Shrugged.
lmao Floyd being like “You won’t like my music. No one gets it. If I didn’t know I was a genius, even I’d hate the trash I write” is very funny. What he makes is basically just Frank Zappa. Kermit does, in fact, hate it.
There’s a scene with the “Vendaface”, a vendingmachine that swaps the faces around of the different Muppets. And it does what I can only describe as the first sex change done on screen on any TV show.
To close out the show, they do in fact have ONLY ROWLF doing the theme. He’s like “Y’know Nigel, you gotta admit, this IS pretty square.” Gotta love commitment to the bit.
Episode 124: Mummenschanz 8/10
I actually DO know Mummenschanz! Imagine that :o I find them interesting. They’re very bizarre, and very different from any other kind of performers that were on the Muppet Show from this season, so this makes them very intriguing. I’m not… SUPER sure I get it?? Like their performance might not super be for me, but I find it fascinating.
They do a whole skit of them painting on paper they have on their faces and tearing them off to reveal new expressions and faces underneath, while weird music plays. It’s… again, interesting!
The running skit is that Gonzo tells Miss Piggy that he loves her. She does NOT take this well. Well shit, Miss Piggy, no accounting for taste. Kermit tries to wingman for Gonzo. Miss Piggy threatens to bisect him over it.
Okay I said I wasnt sure I got Mummenschanz but I seriously could not fucking look away. Especially from their weird clay mask act. That at least should account for something. Though at the end when they showed up without masks and started speaking it was fucking WEIRD, it was like stepping out back at Disney Land and seeing Mickey smoke.