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popculturebuffet · 2 years ago

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Monthly Muppet Madness: Muppets Mayhem

Hello all you happy muppets. For those of you new to this feature, i'm jake I review stuff and once a month I tackle all things muppets, from the troupe themselves to the various hensony spinoffs from Jim Henson and later Henson Workshop. If it has a muppet or something close to a muppet in it, it can go here. This marks a very special occasion for this feature as Muppets Mayhem is the first new Muppet project since I started doing this last march. It's also one I was entirely pumped for not just because I'd get to cover it whenever it dropped, but also for starring the electric mayhem, characters i've always liked and felt could front their own series.

It's also exciting as this is the first time in nearly a decade Disney has done a major muppets production. After the underperformance of Muppets Most Wanted and the quick cancelation of their sitcom, Disney has less cherished the muppets as anyone should and more.. trotted them out once every few years to do something with the property while not actually carring enough to do a new film or tv series and blaming the property itself for the fincial failures of Muppets Most Wanted and The Muppets... and not the fact the former was simply released against a pretty stacked theater and had a very diffrent (if still wonderful) tone from it's beloved predecessor, while the latter had a troubled production and while far from perfect had some good stuff in it.

Disney took a few setbacks as a sign that the muppets were done.. instead of a sign that maybe they just needed a new direction. Steve Whitmire's firing due to his increasing ego and Matt Vogel's rough go when he started as Kermit (not helped by not having the traning period whitmire did), really didn't help, but Disney didn't have a huge excuse. The Muppet Babies reboot happened and having watched some with my toddler nephew recently, it was pretty good, but as far as big mainstream attempts at reinviorating the muppets , Disney really didn't seem to give one iota of a shit and trotted them out for smaller projects like Muppets Now or the Muppets Haunted Mansion.

Disney Fucking up really isn't a suprise, especially given their recent debacle of removing a lot of disney+ shows including the muppet based earth to ned, which i'll be covering in july because fuck this decision entirely.

My point is, besides Disney can go eat a shoe sometimes, is that the Muppets really needed a full blown shot again and to try something new, something they'd adapted to. And Mayhem, for all it's faults.. is a good test of that: deciding to focus not on the core quartet of Kermit, Piggy, Gonzo and Fozzie, but on the wacky hippies on the side. It's honestly a brilliant idea to step away from the core cast for a sec and simply see if the various other weridos int he troupe could carry a story on their own. And Electric Mayhem are custom built for this test run: they provide an ensemble, so they don't have to explain why this set of muppets are off on their own adventure, one of their number is still one of THE most recognizable muppets, meaning they still get name recongition, and it leaves the creative team with a bunch of characters who while not BLANK slates, are still not as fleshed out enough to really get into.

So is this a great new direction for the muppets that will lead into a shared muppets universe as showrunner Adam F Goldberg hopes for.. or another horrible setback at a time when it's the last thing the muppets need? Hop in the van, and cruise with me under the cut as we find out.

So before we can get into the Mayhem themselves, let's get into the man

Let Me Take Your Picture, Add It to the Mixture. The genisis of this series is simple but fascinating: So in 2016. Bill Baretta, longtime muppet performer and the hand behind Dr. Teeth, was naturally there when the Mayhem did a set at the Outside LImits Music and Arts Festival. Baretta was stunned by the massive crowd.. and got to thinking, wondering just who these guys were outside of it and decided to start developing a series on the idea.

In true muppets fashion though.. he wasn't the only person to have the idea, as around the same time, Adam F. Goldberg's friend, editor Jeff Yorkes, cut him a sizzle real to sell him on the same idea. For those less familiar wtih him, Adam F. Goldberg was the creator of the long running 80's set sitcom the Goldbergs, and as happens often once he left the show hit it's seasonal rot HARD.

How both sides came together is unknown, my best guess being Disney realized they had two similar and awesome pitches for a show with the same concept in an IP they were barely using, so simply got the three together, the three gelling as they all had the same basic vision and simply used parts from both pitches to create the final show, with the same basic core of taking these obscure hippiees and fleshing them out. Part of the appeal for Goldberg, and something I strongly agree with is while the characters were known, there was just little enough known about who they were as people to give them wiggle room to develop.

And you can see a lot of The Goldbergs in Muppets Mayhem: it follows a cartoonish mildly disfunctional family, has schemes by one of the character whose a control freak usually cause the conlfict, and usually ends in a character developing button. And this could've been a disaster.. but the style does fit the muppets really well. The Mayhem are a family of choice, Nora works well in the beverley roll, more on her later, and while it has a bit of a formula to it, the episodes are still flexbile so that while most of the story is focused on the main plot of the band making an album, it uses it in a lot of creative ways: we see the band deal with electronic producing, accidently piss off every fan army on the globe, go for a marshmellow hallucination in the desert, save dr. teeth from his overbearing parents, do a documentary with Silent Bob, meet cheech and chong, paint danny trejo's house, nearly fall off a cliff and somehow record an album. Despite it's short run time the season goes a lot of intresting places and manages to expand the characters. It's clear while Goldberg has a style to his work that will likely carry to any future productions it doesn't really hamper a muppet production, and his , yorkes and of course baretta's clear love for the characters shows in tons of carefully picked archive footage and little continuity nods, from the mallory gallery to what have. you. There's even tiny bits of canon welding, with the band both apparently having beef with the river bottom nightmare band.. and having met the feebles.. which is now muppets canon. I didn't think anyone could top James Gunn making gobots canon to the mcu, but clearly I underestimated. The background does have it's drawbacks though: It's clear none of the three involved have really done a stremaing series , and as such ther'es a lot of little network watermarks, like uncessary cast photos and act breaks, sprinnkled throughout, things not really needed in a streaming series. There's also some bigger problems with the human cast but we'll save that for later. By now your all probably wondering what's this series even about? Okay most of you have probably binged the whole thing especially given how late after the series this is comign out. but bear with me

Use it If You Need It, Don't Forget To Feed It

The plot kicks off with the Band away from the rest of the muppets for a change, in the middle of a tour that's been going for the last 40 years ever since their Debut on the muppet show. It's a nice joke.. and also one that works well as given how loosey goosey the Mayhem are with anything resembling a plan, it makes sense they'd consider hanging out in a house with everyone else or working on miss piggy's show as her house band just part of a tour. It also points to another reason the Mayhem were a very easy fit to have their own show: it's not hard to explain why their not with everyone else. While chunks of the troupe have moonlighted, Bobo was an evil sidekick, Sam a government agent, as needed for the plot, with the Mayhem being musicians and party members them simply wondering off for a while makes sense. Kermit is probably so used to it he has a backup band on standby.

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Enter Nora Singh, played by Lily Singh, youtuber i'm not familiar with turned failed talk show host and now turned actress, a struggling assitant for Waxtown Records, once the height of the industry now about to close because it's head Penny wants to retire and is convinced the place is dead. While there are sadly no muppet skeletons this time, Penny herself IS a muppet, something I was glad ot hear: given this series only really has the Mayhem and two guest characters otherwise, I assumed Penny would be a human when I first heard about the character and the reveal in the first episode was all too welcome. She's played by Leslie Carrara-Rudolph, best known muppet wise as Abby Kadabby over on seasame street, which should tell you just how deep her range is. With Penny planning to shut down she has Nora shred all their old documents.. and it's there she gets her shot, as not only was Waxtown Electric Mayhem's label.. but their infamous in universe for never having done an album. It's also a nice bit of metatext as while they've done a decent amount of music, until there hadn't been a real life electic mayhem album, such a slam dunk marketing wise it's weird they never did it. As for why not in universe it's simple: They thought they had and simply forgot to. As the series establishes, and fits perfectly with what little we knew about them, they just sorta move from one thing to another on a whim, agree to most things. Their friendly and upbeat.. but getting them to actually stay on task is a challenge, something I deeply relate to as this coming out almost 20 days after the show came out can attest to. Even once that's in hand Nora still has a season's worth of problems both the bands and her own, as her sense of what a band needs to be to be profitable clashes with what the band is. Since the band is too nice to course correct her most of the time, a lot of this is left to Moog, the band's number one fan. Moog is played by former child star Taj Moowry and serves as the bridge between the band and nora: as their fan, he can explain a lot of intricacises about the band to our heroine and us in the audience, while also having a better grasp on who they are. If you've gussed a large chunk of the series is Nora ignoring Moog's entirely sound advice about how the band works, your right and it's only kept from being too tiring because we usually move on to the band doing something funny and Mowry's impressive comedic timing.

When not being her own worst enemy Nora has to deal with her more succesful sister Haanah Singh (Saara Chaundry), and her obnoxious wallpaper of an ex boyfriend JJ, who is trying to buy the record company and succeding at trying my patience every time he's on screen despite Anders Holm's best effort. The Mayhem, Hannah and Moog included over time, have to deal with all this and more, from their own personal demons, to trying to update the sound, to documentaries to Dr. Teeth's parents to the most amecae band breakup in history to Janice accidently starting a cult it's a long strange journey.. and now we have context for that journey we can dive into the meat of it: the muppets and all too many live action people and the plentifu and welcome cameos. Everybody's Lover, Everybody's Brother, I Wanna Be Your LIfetime Friend:

Now we've got context for them we can stage dive into our moshpit of a cast... and who better to start with than our headliners. The Electric Mayhem are awesome as hoped. The series was always going to live or die on if these 6 weirdos could be fleshed out enoguh comedically and emotoinally to carry a whole series, possibly whole seasons. While the series has other characters and almost all of them contribute to the story in some needed way, it was always going to be about these 6 weirdos and getting to know them better. The series really lets you get them to know them as much as a group as people. While they always had an air of being peace loving accepting hippie folk, the series simply takes that basic and gives them a fully fleshed out identity as a group and as people. In this case the Mayhem are accepting, warmly welcoming anyone to work with them, and gladly up to try anything wether it be edm or playing a concert in minecraft. It may not work but they'll at least try it. It also shows they , like many a muppet, are incredibly unfocused, running off to do a party or what have you when they get distracted. They can rock well together, but it takes some outside force to wrangle them. It's telling only Nora, who NEEDS this job tow ork and Kermit, whose simply used to doing this kind of shit with every singl eperson he works with bar scooter, are the only ones who've actually succeeded at getting them on task. And Nora often stumbles simply because of the size of the task. Not everyone is Kermit levels of able to take this and i'm pretty sure he's on like 9 types of anxiety medication with them only SLIGHTLY working.

What makes them work is their kindness: the only time they really get mad is when Nora , trying to fake it till she makes it, lies a bunch and triggers Janice's lie allergy. How she hasn't died with all the lies FOzzy and Sam tell themselves just to function is a mystery, but it's a neat enough bit. Only putting one of their own in the hosptial pisses them off and even then once Nora pours her heart out to the band and genuinely apologizes, they quickly forgive her. It's their endless optimism that drives the series, Nora's own development, and makes the series shine despite it's faults; Just a group of people who love those around them, will help anyone without a care and will genuinely not worry.

The last part holds them back. The only time they really fight with each other is episode 7, and for understandable reasons; Floyd is upset to find out a song he thought as he and janices was about how she loves the world, which is mildly dickish but understandable when you find someone you loved and assumed you were in a realtionship with dosen't seem to care at all back, while the band as a whole aren't happy Dr. Teeth took Penny, his girlfriend at the time's , suggestion to name the band after him. It's also telling that not only did Teeth never consider himself front man despite this, but once he realizes it's an actual problem, agrees to change it to just the electric mayhem. These guys.. are family. 6 very diffrent people who found each other somehow and who will gladly welcome anyone else in. While nora takes a while to bond with her new friends and soon surrogate family, they all welcome her from minute one and when Nora ends up homeless thanks to a spat with her sister, they welcome her in. When Moog dosen't understand why he's invited on tour at the end, as while he's become the album's producer, he assumes he'll just be following them as usual, they explain as if it was the most natural thing he's part of the band now. These are kind, loving, warm protaganists who simply live to play musuic, spread good vibes. It takes the good ideas of the 60's peace movement and applies them to today: simply show kindness, welcome people in as family wether your blood related or not, rock out, and do your best. That's all you can ask. I never thought i'd be deeply moved by the electric mayhem, but i'm glad I was. While the band is still mostly a unti, each one still gets fleshed out more. Three of them get full on origin storis Animal get shis first and it's truly touching and fleshes out how Floyd is always taking care of him. What was once more just a weird sort of friendship/beast taming, becomes a father and son, a development I utterly love: As it turns out whatever stygian being birthed animal left him on Floyd's doorstep with a note to KEEP, and Floyd being a kind, welcoming sort, gladly took in the small child and made him his son and adopted him with his commonlaw husband and wife. It also shows that while everyone's worried when Animal, thinking a joke about him being replaced by a drum machine is real, quits, Floyd is devistated and badly just wants his son back.

He may be a loved part of the mayhem and a treasured family member.. but he's Floyd's kid. It's why he's spent years helping him blend with others and keeping him form eating furintirue and why Animal ultimately comes back despite being a great hibachi chef. Floyd also gets some minor spotlight in Dr. Teeth's spotlight episode: when Teeth's domeneering mom and agreeable to said mom dad show up to drag him back for the 80th time we find out Teeth was a meek dental student content to follow his mom.. but meeting Floyd in a music store and then many other times because destiny ships these two as hard as I do, Teeth realizes what makes him actually happy and while he makes his grampy's floss case into a tooth, he ultimately becomes the rock god we know. And while Floyd does have at hing for Janice, the series still makes his and Dr. Teeth's orgiin story as gay as possible in the best way possible, with it being one long allegory for one person awakening anothe'rs sexuality, down to the disaproving parents. The fact the mayhem come off like they'd be very fond of open relationships makes neither this nor Teeth's actual love intrest in the series a problem. While the whole "son has parents who want to shove him into a career" is all too common a story trope.. and a thing that really happens in real life, it works well enough here as Teeth was never in a ton of danger of actually going with them, only breifly doing it when Nora interupts his normal process for this. It's stil lhealthier he finally made amends with his parents, but it works. The more compelling bit of his backstory, beisdes all the shipping in the previous bit, is Penny. Teeth broke her heart leaving a while ago and while they quickly get back together, and we sadly just as quickly find out he has a foot thing... and we see them playing this little piggy on screen

Look am I kink shaming dr. teeth? No. What they want to do to each other is their buisness and the relationship is oddly adorable outside of this scar to my brainpan. But do I want to see a muppets gross foot while Dr. Teeth implies he's going to do sex things to it? No. I'm sure even some foot fetishests would agree. The Dalmationatrix in the happy time murders was less overtly sexual. And also way hotter, but that may be a me thing and may make my point as i'm sure many of you shuddered a bit at that statment. Point is please no more stuff like this adam f goldberg. Implied muppet sex is fine, just don't show us muppet feet. Please no. No feet pics.

I was.. talking about something. Oh yeah. The problem is Teeth left her abrubtly earlier, and he find sout during the groups' marshmellow drug trip in the dessert it's because he has commitment issues, likely DUE to said parents. Penny isn't mad he coudlnt' commit forever, just that he couldn't FOR NOW. , and Teeth realizes this just isn't healthy, not only unblocking him writers wise, but letting him be open with their relationship, which not only gets Penny off the groups back, but onto his and OH GOD....

Okay for my sanity we're moving on to Janice. We get to see more of Janice's empathetic side: while she's still as fursurely as ever, we get to see she loves trying to help other people.. and much like Steven Universe, while this isn't a bad thing on the surface, it also means she never helps herself, something only her hallucination clone can get her to realize. It is nice to see her be so supportive, realize she needs self care, and generally get to be more than just "one of the only other female muppets" and "space case". She also forms a cult when the band gets addicted to the internet. This isn't a plot twist I saw coming but is it the best thing in human history? Probably. Fursurelian for life. Hopefully I will be spared when it happens. Animals as pointed out gets his backstory, and while he has a crush on NOra very early on, he later realizes it's because they both lost parents and becomes more protective. It's adorable. Animal dosen't change much but it makes sense: Out of the mayhem Animal was easily the most used and the one who could easily show up on his own for gags. Animal is often thrown in with the core four and has shown up in just about every muppet production. He's an icon for good reason: his simple antics and shouty performance just make him loveable as all hell. This series further highlights this by making him the mayhem's youngest, esspetainlly being a hyperactive 20 something. It also posititons hima s the heart of the gorup: they can't bring themselves to play when he leaves for an episode and their breakup to make tension for the climax mostly happens because he's too exausted from his side gig to stop it, and once he wakes up and finds noras gone missing he's the one to bring everyone back together. He's the core of the group: he may be the most popular but he wouldn't be without them. They need him and he would never leave them.

Finally we have Zoot and LIps. Zoot is the blue one and Lips is the one with an afro who I frequently forget is in the band because he disappears a lot. Zoot.. really isn't fleshed out that much. He takes photos and he's forgetful. They add nothing to him. He's easily the weakest character here. He does hang out with an anthromoprhic shoe, so there's that at least. In contrast Lips goes from being often wallpaper only there when needed, to quitely one of the best parts of the show. His gags now are that he's unitellgible and despite that has a LENGTHY and epic history. He's the one who convinced Kesha to drop the $.. which also implies he helped her breka free from dr. lukes' abuse. Zoot's a good one. He's also friends with Paul Mcartney and Paula Abdul among many others. It's just a nice gag and he's geninely fun and it's used in moderation enough to not wreck the show. So the band is solid as ever. The human characters.. are a bit more hit and miss. Starting with Nora, Lily Singh does her best, and she does have a nice energy that plays off the muppets well. She's trying very hard and i'd love to see her in another production as she has clear talent. The issue really isn't her.. it's the script. Nora is written however the episode needs her:, and thus is pulled between uptight nerd whose mildly out of touch with music, hence a running gag where she sees the lyrics of rock and roll all night "and part of every day".

Other times she has a deep love of rock, having a bob marely tatoo, well knows the modern scene, and her issues come more from simply not working with what she has in the band, of trying to make them what she THINKS will sell instead of what they are, which is a metaphor for how disney has treated the muppets and many ips at time if ever there was one. The latter just works better, and it's when it dips too far into one end or the other of her being uptight or into rock where it falters and singh can often come off stiff.. because I supsect she really dosen't know what this character feels. If the writers don't know who nora is how can the audience or the person playing her? Nora is supposed to be a major pillar of the series.. but the writers refusal to give her depth despite trying to plaster it on with her having had to raise her sister or her type a personality means the character flails next to the better defined muppets. It also dosen't help her most major human costar.. is given a more consitent and intresting character. Moog is easily the highlight of the show shuman caast, with Taj Mowry given way more to work with. Moog's character isn't super deep, but has just enough depth to work well: he intitially comes off as simply a fanboy, constantly asking Nora to look at his demo like any struggling musician.. but as the episodes go on we get to know him better. We see like any good fan the band mean a ton to him and his friendship with them is genuine: while he's a massive fan of theirs, they treat him with respect like they woudl anyone, gladly bond with him and are thankful he's there for him. IN turn he gets the band in a way Nora dosen't and part of her best moments is having him as contrast: he tells her very early on she simply dosen't have to posture because the band are the most acepting people. His best stuff comes in episode 5: while nora desperatelyt ries to get the band to make a "new sound", he gets angry.. but it's not fan entitlmeent as Nora thinks.. but because he's taken the time to actually listen. He get stheir sound and when nora finally listens to his demo.. she realizes, eventually at least, that his sound actually bridges their 70 vibes to modern production. He has real talent, and a real love for the band. We also get what I feel is one of the best seens for singh as a result: nora pouring over old footage as she goes from someone simply seeing the band as her next step.. to being a mayhead herself and knowing how to finally help them to their best. The show needed more of this, having nora as a symbol of a coprrate present.. and shedding that to be more herself, someone who really knows music and opens up.

Moog does take a hard nosedive in the last few episodes though. It starts to peak through when he gets jealous of Nora's ex jj and tricks him into bringing up the name thing, nearly breaking up the band.. but in the last two it really gets bad. Instead of telling Nora how he feels.. .he sulks in the background as she gets back together with human carpet, then blames her for the band's breakup because... she told them what the internet was. Which is something most acts need to know. They breakup because they all get hooked on various internet based things and because the writers forgot to write an actual reason for conflict and had to make something up fast. The romance with him and nora genuinely isn't bad at first: he has a crush on her, btu refuses to act on it because he needs this gig and she needs this to go well. It's when they make it love triangle stuff and turn him into a mopey dickhead who almost dosen't try to get the band back together till she apologzes, a band full of people who GENUINELY love him and see him as one of them that he genuinely loves and worships. Mowry does his best but like with singh when the material isn't great.. what can he honestly do. If behaviors bad enough an actor can make it hilarous or add a smuch depth as they can. But when all your given is a big spoonful of cliche, you can only do so much. i've hinted at the human embodiment of the color beige enough, let's talk about JJ. JJ is a character I think the right actor could've hammed up enough to be tolerable. Anders Holm by contrast is a guy who tends to paly his roless subtler. As such former bagle boy for waxtown and now rich tech bro is just... annoyingly bland. He shows up to try and buy wax town to win Nora back and just kinda shows up. He adds nothing to the plot. And look i'm someone who tries to not go too hard on actors in these reviews... but you could see the but coming from a mile away couldn't you? Anders Holm.. is awful in this. He tries, he does, but he's horribly cast. JJ needed someone with enough energy to make the bad writing on the character passible, someone who can really nail the "tech bro whose secretly just trying to be one because it's the kind of guy his ex wanted" charcter. Instead he's just the bland romantic false lead from every 90's film and romcom. Singh sometimes has weak material but does her best with it and that I can admire but Holm, even acounting for his character being supleforous at best is just so agressively bland it adds nothing.

What's extra annoying is that Ben Schwartz, who is an EXPERT at playing people with huge egos in suits, it's how his career started.

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Is instead left to just one episode working as Animal's job counsler. He's brilliant at it, deadpanning perfectly to Animal.. which begs the question why he wasn't given the part: At the time of this writing he isn't a regular on any live action or animated shows, he's experinced at the part and that small cameo showed he can play really well off the muppet JJ ends up interacting with the most. The result is a character who just sucks all the energy out when he's around. He's ONLY there for a very pointless love triangle no one asked for that goes EXACTLY how you'd expect with no varations toit. The idea they present in episode 7, that JJ became what he is to impress her is intresting.. but they do nothing with it and he spends the whole series as this bland cypher. You question why Nora's remotely intrested beyond "because the plot says she should be", and she suddenly moves back in with him. And he then easily blows it beause he dosen't understand why maybe the person whose dad died and mom impliclty abandoned her would bond with a band whose family. JJ just sucks, and he ends up making Moog suck as Moog spends the last two episodes moping and whining because Nora dosen't like him back when he NEVER TOLD HER. He did for good reason, this is his one shot and opportunity comes once in a life time, but it soon devolves into crap. It's the one part I genuinely hate about the series. Finally human wise we have Nora's sister, Hannah. Hannah is a character that didn't need to be in nearly as much of the series as she did. She's not bad, Saara does a decent enough job and unlike JJ the characters layers are explored well: Hannah took her sister in and let her stay on her couch.. but gets annoyed that her relationship with Nora has turned into all take and no give: Nora brings up raising Hannah after their father died and mother impliclty abandoned them a lot, and tends to put her wants over Hannah's, and is not so subtly jealous Hannah has easily reached what she wants in life, fame as an influencer, while Nora struggles and struggles and is only now getting anywhere. It feels like a real sibling conflict and the two actresses have good chemistry. It's just after Janice patches things up with the two... Hannah is reduced to influencer jokes. Once the series doesn't' really need her instead of writing the character off or finding something for her to do with the album, like I dunno work on costumes since she's shown changing costumes for her videos to pretend to be in fancy locales, or be the team's image consultant, she's just kinda there. While JJ is stapled onto the story to pad time Hannah is weirdly disconnected despite being vital to Nora's character and having plenty of ways she could be woven into it. A triangle between her, Hannah and Moog would've made WAY more sense. Instead Hannah is just there for the rest of the series.

Finally we have Penny. Penny is a great addition, being hilariously curmudgeonly and making a decent antagonist for the first half of the series without being overwrought: she hates the mayhem but doesn't actively impede them as she correctly figures win or loose, she get something out of it: the album actually happens, her protégé gets a win and she gets money. It fails, her ex falls flat on it's face and she just finishes selling the business like she was going to. Her relationship with Dr. Teeth is also genuinely sweet... I still did not need to know.. things, but it is nice and she slowly warms up to Nora, by the end ditching her vacation with Dr. Teeth to go help the band find her and willingly turning the business over to her.

Cameo wise the series is utterly stacked, with my co-pilot for this series, @jess-the-vampire often wondering how they got all these people. As it turned out from an interview most of it was just "Hey you want to be in muppets" "Done" "But I haven't even told you what you'll be doin.." "I SAID DONE". And thankfully for more Muppets tend to cast a wide generational net so there was only a few acts that had me going

Mostly confined to episode 2's cameos for Zedd and Sophia Carson. Otherwise it's filled to the absolute rim with great cameos. So just rattling off my faviorite in no paticular chronological order we have: The aformentioned bit with Ben Schwartz, Kesha showing up to jam with the band when Nora's trying to find someone to produce the album, Danny Trejo showing up in episode one for one of the best bits of the series as the band paints his house thinking it's theres and later warming to them saying "Those guys painted my house. And according to Bill Danny is apparently the easiest cameo to get and it's why he's become a muppet's regular himself at this point and it's easy to see why. Also really game was my boy Kevin Smith, who naturally was more than willing to take shots at himself, refering to himself as a one star director and letting them take a shot at yoga hosers, which I haven't seen, and god willing never will. He even gets to , as Dr. Teeth puts it be "Silent bob saying something meaningful at the end of the film. " We also get a nice Peter Jackson cameo that as I said confirms meet the feebles is canon to the muppets. How Goldberg got away with that I GENINELY have no idea. And in a long overdue team up we get Weird motherfucking Al Motherfucking Yankovic who appears to Floyd to tell him to stop being such a perfectionist.. and to remind him that yes, Al does more than parodies that criticism is fucking old please stop. Other great cameos include James Hong as Dan, the chef who declares Animal the Chosen one, Joe Lo Trugilo as a Mo Cap Maestro the band works with for their minecraft concert, Charlamange Tha God as himself interviewing the band when they have their contrived penultimate episode amicable breakup, Cedric Yarborugh as a cop who pulls the band over for holding up traffic, Tommy Lee as a walking STD, and most entertainingly Jack McBrayer, Rachel Bloom, Riki Lindholme and Nicole Beyer, always a highlight, all showing up as the heads of various fan armies when Dr. Teeth's autocorrect pisses off all of music.

So with that there's one last bit of business.. and frankly if your going to do a show about the world's greatest muppet band.. it's one of the most important

All of Us Are Winnin, Pickin and a Grinnin, Lordy But I Love to Jam The music was always going to be the thing that either made the series or ruined it for me. Can You Picture That? Is one of my faviorite muppet songs, and as the Mayhem's only original song up to this series it left some VERY big shoes to fill. I mean it's hard to go up against music legend paul williams and their VERY lucky Beef wasn't involved or they'd of been screwed.

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Luckily Disney brought in someone every bit Paul Williams equal, which is a sentence I rarely get to say: Micheal Gicchano, composer supreme best known for his jazzy as fuck scores for the incredibles, who got the band's style perfectly. With a 70's style groove that perfectly fits the band's vibe and most songs picked being along those lines. Paul Williams would be proud and probably is atop his magical cloud castle. As a result most of the original songs on the soundtrack are damn good and the covers are great. So let's run through them in order of appearance shall we? Rock On is the series theme and at first I wasn't a huge fan mostly because it sounded a lot like a sitcom theme. Eventually though I got over myself and asked the eternal question

It's still one of the weaker tracks as a song but as an opening it sums the band up decently, has a nice beat and is chopped up decently. I realize now they didn't do the obvious and use can you picture that as it's both hard to get to theme song length, and because it's such an icon it'd overshadow everything else. Rock On is a message that this show is still the mayhem but it's something new with them, and it's still damn groovy. Not the best song ever, i've seen better tv theme songs, but a solid enough one that really worms it's way into your brain.

The first song in the show proper, Rock and Roll All nite is a fine enough cover, it's just Dr. Teeth's vocal's weren't quite the best choice for this and they didn't really change the song any to fit his vocals. To contrast this to another mayhem cover, the band did a truly awesome one of Dancin in the Moonlight for Muppets Haunted Mansion. While that song also has a softer vocal track on the original, they balanced it by having Floyd do the voice and leaving Dr. Teeth for the chorus where his croakier style fits better. Neither's vocals are bad, it's just like any band you have to match them to the song or it turns out okay at best.

So i've spent two straight songs complaining, let's get some positivity back in here. The show's version of Can You Picture that is still damn awesome, letting the current performers for the Mayhem (Zoot excepted as he STILL has the same performer) jam to their greatest song. The lyrics are fun, bouncy, and really fit the band. Do they make a lick of sense? not entirely. Are they fun and get across the vibe of a bunch of people making music? Yes.

Finally for episode 1 , we have Have a Little Faith In Me, the joe cocker classic which the band utterly nails and emotionally, shatters me in show as it was the song Nora's dad sang to her.. and the band sing it for her as thanks for giving them a shot. It's a nice moment, her finally convinced to hang in there with them, as she realizes the true magic of the mayhem and Bill Baretta's vocals are absolutely perfect. Unlike Rock N Roll All Night, Teeth's rough vocals PERFECTLY fit this song.

Next we have episode 2's finale true colors, this time lead by Janice who has a shockingly great singing voice and the tenderness of this version really hits as the Band let Nora know she can be herself. It's the heart of these songs that really works: While True Colors has been used 998 times in the history of film and tv, it's used here not because "Well it pulls the heart strings" and more because it naturally fits the moment.. while also doing that previously mentioned thing.

The next song is a bit of a joke, as Zedd makes a song with the mayhem and sofia carson they gave to her. It's funny enough, nothing great music wise, but it's made to be played over the radio and even the album version lasts exactly a minute.

Next is Bridge Over Troubled Water, a song I honestly haven't heard a ton. While I absolutely love Paul Simon, I prefer his post garfunkel works. Especially when they involve muppets.

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It perfectly meshes with both the flashback to Animal and Nora turning up to stay with the Mayhem. One of the best tracks on the album.

We have a nice montage of the band trying to do diffrent versions of Rockin Robin. I'm disapointed we never finished Ziggy Marley's but hey, what happened with him and janice. I get it man. I get it.

We get a very nice cover of God Only Knows to show Moog knows what he's doing but what makes it work is it's paried with a truly stiring montage of the mayhem's history as Nora dives into it and finally really gets the band. Truly moving stuff.

Gonna Get There is a decent enough montage song, the first new song from the band in canon. It's pretty okay, mostly saved by the vocals.

Thankfully next episode makes up for it: Capping off what's already one of the best episodes of the season, we've got Gotta Be. Gotta Be has both one of the best performances but also just one of the best beats, being the kind of funky newmanesque groove that really fits the band, sung as Floyd convinces Teeth to be himself. It's one that not only perfectly fits the message of the band, but the uprorarusly joyful performance at the dental confrence is truly great. Baretta and Vogel play off each other perfectly, getting to do a full on deut and it's as awesome as it sounds. It's easily my faviorite song on the soundtrack.

Naturally the only way to follow this up.. is another cover. This time though it's of the freaking beatles, and frankly All You Need Is Love fits the band so perfectly, I don't see what else they could've gone with, especailly after an episode long homage to the documentary get back.

We Are One is another awesome 70's jam band style song, with the gang singing for unity and succesfully uniting the fan armies. It once again let's vogel vocally jam as Floyd, and there's a damn good reason they ping pong between him and Bill or both unite: they both have great vocals, and it gives the band a nice range. It's why the rock and roll all nite cover sticks out: it would've been better in Matt's hands.

So we're to the final episode as the band has seperated, hence no song for episode 9, and our first is the sound of us, another fun jam band style as Animal brings the band back together. It's perfect for a montage but far less bland Gonna Get There.

There's a fun cover of Join Together as they find Nora that once again fits the band. It feels like post poilot Goldberg and co realized what fit the band better and from that point on every song fits their style perfectly.

WE then get to the band's climactic hollywood bowl performance, belivie in us which is just.. beautiful. A joyous, uplifting celebration that fits everything perfectly and is exactly what you'd hope for. A nice power ballad using both baretta and vogel perfectly and incredibly well suited for Baretta's scratchy teeth vocals.

On Our Way is a nice U2 style song to finish out the song as the band sings us out. It's a good way to close the series and it's only real issue is that Janice, Teeth and Floyd's vocals don't really work together for the chorus. Janice might of been better left off the chorus but the bits between it are so well done, it dosen't matter.

Can You Even Find It? So we have one last odd to clean up.. so I guess it's also an end.

I WAS going to do an episode guide like i normally do.. but realized as I went that in addition to this review taking a very long time as is, I had already commented on most episode based things I wanted to as I went. So this section is more just for the bits I haven't talked about. The first is the only muppet characters besides the band and Penny, Dr. Teeth's parents. Their honestly fairly entertaining his mom going a mile a minute and not seeming to get her son is super succesful, as well as her passive agressive hate of floyd ("Maam") before finally coming around to her sons music and sexuality, while her husband always agreeing with a yup while being treated in charge works. I'ts nothing really new, but their in the episode just enough for the gag to not outstay it's welcome.

The second.. is less fun. The last two episodes.. are a complete mess. The episode before this foreshadows it: it's not a bad episode. The simple idea of the band getting online and autocorrect causing them to accidently pick a fight with every fandom in music is comedy gold. It just has some age signs like having a concert in a video game, something that still happens but not nearly as high profile as it once did, and the game being minecraft, which while I havent' played a ton is a game I like and my nephews and nieces adore, is a weird choice and feels like it was the only one that said yes or disney signed off on. I mean I don't want the muppets anywhere near fortnite, but it's not something minecraft's ever done and dosen't feel like enough of a joke to work. Or maybe it's just me

The last two eps though.. are not great. They have great moments and some good gags, but feel contrived: the band get hooked on various side projects. The side projects themselves are mostly entertaining, with only Teeth's (doing a spicy food tasting channel with penny ala hot ones) not really landing: We get Floyd getting hooked on jingle writing and soon having a jingle empire with Kristian Schaal as his assitant in the span of a week, Lips doing a ted talk, which while not the best ted talk gag of all time, this is..

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Is still harmless enough, Zoot getting into photography and forgetting nora exists, Animal getting big on tiktok by scratching himself, and my personal faviorite: Janice starts a cult. It starts with just having people follow her, slowly escalates, and she has a full on compound by the time Nora tries to bring her back into the fold.

The problem is it feels like the band breaks up, if as ambicably as expected, simply to have drama. They likewise don't listen to nora or she can't get to them. It feels like padding to get to ten episodes, especially when episode 7 has a far better reason than "because the internet", the name issue, for them to break up. We also get Moog bitching and moaning because nora "broke up the band" because.. she told the mayhem about the internet.

The actual finale at the hollywood bowl is great, as is them coming to get nora, but the road there feels like they ran out of ideas for this seasons overarching plot and just came up with something quick instead of just finding something weird to fill the space instead.

So with that we've come to the end of the road. The Muppets Mayhem is a promising first step for a new era of the muppets: it proves both a muppets production with a reduced cast can work and be pretty awesome, with lots of great gags, fantastic music and a nice heart. It just needs to either flesh out the humans better or focus more on what we came for, and rely less on stock plots the muppets have never really needed to play so straight. Also fire JJ, out of a canon.. into the sun. That'd be great. The pieces for Muppets greatness are there, they just need to get the bugs worked out of the felt. Still after a decade of no major productions, this is a very nice welcome back and hopefully the start of something fresh for the muppets. And I can certainly picture that. Thanks for reading Next Month: Daddy Daddy, take us underground as we're Returning to the Labyrinth!

#the muppets mayhem #electric mayhem #animal #dr teeth #floyd pepper #janice #zoot #lips #nora singh #hannah singh #moog #bill baretta #adam f goldberg #Youtube

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mutogamingco · 1 month ago

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Yooo that’s so cool about puppetry. It’s amazing how a skilled puppeteer, like the ones behind the Muppets, make you forget you’re looking at a puppet and not a little living mini-being in their own right

Thank you! It was always volunteer work, so I didn't do any huge shows or anything, but it was so much fun bringing characters to life! I have always been a huge fan of the Jim Henson workshop, it has always been magic to me. I'm putting my rambling under the cut because this is one of those special interests I have that I don't get to talk much about!

My first serious puppet was named Critter, and he looked like a sloth so I didn't think he was that off putting. I had a few marionettes as well, but I did not get to practice with them as much. Sadly, not everyone around me agreed it was cool and I had to stop bringing him around because unfortunately, he creeped people out, so that was a bit discouraging. Apparently some people can't get past the mechanics part and where you need to access the mechanisms if you aren't behind a curtain or a set. I used to spend hours practicing mannerisms for them, and these days I use my skills for my shoulder puppets at the Renaissance Faire and have fooled multiple people into thinking the creature was animatronic, or even real.

My current active puppets are Quinn (Griffin) and Jasper (Cat)

This year, I attended the Thunderbolt Fantasy panel at Anime Central and got to see the puppets from the show up close, and even try out some of them. Those guys make it look so easy, and they are absolutely beautiful in person! I have a video saved on my phone showcasing my skills on a smaller traditional puppet of the same style that a fellow attendee brought, and she gave me such nice compliments: that she had never seen him look so alive before. It was a honor to try him out as well! (If I post the video I am in my Yuugi cosplay, so that's even more amusing.)

I do have a dream of being a part of a team to operate one of those multi-person puppets, I briefly got to handle one during a college workshop and it was an amazing experience and we even impressed the professionals with some of our unconscious movements. They though we planned them, but we were working as a full uni, and didn't even realize we were doing things like turning our heads all at the same time. I also have a dream to do a really ambitious full body puppet build, but I sadly do not have the time, resources, equipment, or space to do so, nor the storage space for the off season. But hey, I can dream, right?

#ooc #long post #grey rambles

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ariel-seagull-wings · 2 years ago

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FICTIONAL CHARACTER ASK: FOZZIE BEAR

(Asked by popular vote on the polls)

@thealmightyemprex @amalthea9 @angelixgutz @moonbeamelf @queerfloydpepper @mx-piggy @softlytowardthesun @princesssarisa @silverfoxstole @goodanswerfoxmonster @professorlehnsherr-almashy

Favorite Thing About Them: He started out a bit proudfull, erroneously thinking that to proove to others that he was a good comedian, he "had to work alone". But slowly he evolved into a character who wasn't afrayed of showing vulnerability nor ashamed of asking his friends to help him out, and with their support Fozzie started to make comedy not to proove something to anyone, but out of love for comedy. Somedays will be good, somedays will be bad, the harsh criticisms will hit hard on his self steem, but he always regains confidence to get on the stage again. And Fozzie is so gratefull for the encouragement he receives that he becomes one of the most loyal and kind friends of Kermit and the other Muppets, sharing his shoulder for them to cry and his support when they are feeling down or even in great danger.

Least Favorite Thing About Them: As somebody who prefers to stick with plans, I relate to his mother's frustration when Fozzie appears by surprise in her house and brings all friends along without asking her if she can prepare herself to receive them as guests, making her cancell a travel that she has been waiting for days.

Three Things I Have In Common With Them:

* I deal with self steem problems;

* I can be bumbling and awkward in social interactions;

* I consider comedy the greatest comfort in my life;

Three Things I Don't Have In Common With Them:

* I'm not a bear;

* I'm not working as a stand-up comedian;

* I don't wear a tie;

Favorite Line:

From The Muppet Show

"I went to a resort hotel for a change and a rest. The waiter got the change and the hotel got the rest!"

"Fozzie: Say, a funny thing happened to me on the way to the theater. At the stage door, I passed a bunch of Muppet fans and suddenly, I hear...

Kermit: GOOD GRIEF, THE COMEDIA'S A BEAR!

Fozzie: No he's a-not. He's a wearin' a neck-a-tie!"

"Rowlf: Oh Fozzie, what are you carrying the fish for?

Fozzie: Oh, just for the halibut!"

"Rowlf: Oh Fozzie, what are you carrying the hoop for?

Fozzie: Because Statler and Waldorf are always saying the show is hoop-less!"

"Rowlf: I said can you play hat-less?!

Fozzie: I don't know! Who wrote it?"

"Fozzie: Would you lend me a fiver 'till pay day?

Kermit: Fozzie, you already owe me five!

Fozzie: Oh, please, please! I know it, but I gotta pay my writer: the legendary Gags Beasley.

Kermit: "The legendary Gags" comes pretty cheap, doesn't he?

Fozzie: Well, we worked out a pretty good deal.

Kermit: Oh, you pay him by the line?

Fozzie: No, I pay him for the laugh.

Kermit: Oh, then he owes you money!"

"Fozzie: Hey, did you hear the one about the bed?

Kermit: Uh, no.

Fozzie: That's good 'cause I haven't made it up yet!"

"Scooter: Hello, and what's your name?

Fozzie: Mike Oznowiski.

Scooter: Oh, so you're the telephone pole!"

"Kermit: Fozzie, what is that?!

Fozzie: I'm the Tin Woodsman.

Kermit: There's no Tin Woodsman in Alice in Wonderland!

Fozzie: Alice in Wonderland? I tought we were doing Peter Pan!"

"Fozzie: Kermit, are you feeling okay? You look kinda green.

Kermit: I'm always green!

Fozzie: How do you know when you're sick?"

"Fozzie: Now, I am going to pull a rabbit out of this hat. 1, 2, 3 Presto!

Rabbi: Shalom!

Robin: Fozzie, that's not a rabbit, that's a rabbi!

Fozzie: You was expecting the Pope maybe?"

From The Jim Henson Hour

"Showbiz! The first time you open the script to see the magic, the excitement, the adventure...and how many lines you got."

From The Muppet Movie

"Here I am, Fozzie Bear. To tell you jokes both old and rare."

"Fozzie: Once, there was this sailor who was so bad...

Sailor: How bad was he?

Fozzie: Uh... he was so bad that everybody liked him and there was nothing funny about him at all."

"Kermit: Fozzie, where did you learn to drive?

Fozzie: I took a correspondence course."

"Fozzie: Oh, I'm so nervous. If I'm not funny, I won't be able to live with myself.

Bunsen: Well then, you'll have to get another apartment, won't you?"

"They don't look like Presbyterians to me."

"Kermit: Fozzie.

Fozzie: Yes.

Kermit: Uh, bear left.

Fozzie: What?

Kermit: Bear left!

Fozzie: Right, frog.

Kermit: What?"

From The Great Muppet Caper

"Kermit: Great Britain! We're actually in Great Britain!

Fozzie: Oh no! We'll never get to England now!"

"Fozzie: Kermit, are bears allowed in these fountains?

Kermit: What?

Fozzie: Are bears allowed in these fountains?

Kermit: No, I don't think so.

Fozzie: I need a bath."

"Boy, a classy place like this you'd think they'd have pretzels on the table."

"Ya' know, if you put enough sugar in this stuff it tastes just like ginger ale!"

From The Muppets Take Manhattan

"Scooter: Listen, all I'm saying is that maybe it's time we all went out on our own.

Fozzie: You mean 'out on our own' alone? Without even each other even?"

From Muppet Treasure Island

"Bunsen: How unfortuitous our firearms weren't loaded.

Fozzie: I'll say. We might have shot somebody."

From Muppets from Space

"Kermit: We have to save Gonzo from a whole army of Goverment agents.

Fozzie: I have a joke book."

From The Muppets at the Walt Disney World

"Kermit, you don't understand. You are asking us to choose between Walt Disney World and fried bugs!"

From Muppets Online

"Why did the chicken cross the web? To get to the other site!"

"Last night, I was on the computer so late that today, I had to take an-pp."

From The Muppets Haunted Mansion

"Fozzie: Hiya hiya hiya. Boy, you're an scary audience. Usually I'm worried about dying up here, but it looks like you beat me to it!

Statler and Waldorf: Boo! Boo!

Fozzie: Oh no, not you guys. Don't you have anything better to do than boo me?

Waldorf: We're ghosts!

Statler: Yeah, booing comes with the territory!"

brOTP: Kermit the Frog, Robin the Frog, Rowlf the Dog, Miss Piggy, Link Hogthrob, Gonzo the Great, Animal, Scooter, Skeeter, Bunsen Honeydew, Beaker, Janice, Sweetums, Sam the Eagle, Rizzo the Rat, Yolanda the Rat, Pepe the King Prawn, Bean Bunny, Clifford, Bobo the Bear, Statler, Waldorf.

OTP: Link Hogthrob, Kermit the Frog, Rowlf the Dog, Gonzo the Great, Scooter, Skeeter, Beth Bear, Dora Bear, Becky.

nOTP: Miss Piggy, Animal, Statler, Waldorf.

Random Headcanon: Fozzie once tried to get a job in a circus, but gaved up because the owner insisted in making him a Wild Bear to be Tamed instead of giving him the job of clown he actually wanted.

Unpopular Opinion: It's time for a Muppet movie or special to have Fozzie experiencing a personal conflict as the main plot focus. We have a sitcom, several movies and specials focusing on Kermit and Miss Piggy, and several movies and specials focusing on Gonzo by now. Fozzie is Kermit's best friend and the emotional hearth of the group, who is capable of much pathos just as he is capable of providing comic relief. I believe he has the right to be the main lead in a project just like his friends have been.

Song I Associate With Them:

Movin' Right Along

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Oklahoma

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Close to You

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Knees Up Mother Brown

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Wotcher Knocked 'Em In the Old Kent Road

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An Actor's Life For Me

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You're Special to Me

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Best Friends

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Favorite Picture of Them:

Solo Posing

With his Mother

With his best friend, Kermit the Frog

As a baby in The Muppets Take Manhattan

As a baby in the 1984 cartoon series Muppet Babies

#tumblr mutuals #fandom musings #fictional character ask #character ask meme #the muppets #muppets #the muppet show #fozzie bear #frank oz #Youtube

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princesssarisa · 2 years ago

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Character ask: Statler and Waldorf (The Muppets)

What a coincidence! I was just thinking of these two and how I hadn't answered an ask for them yet!

Favorite thing about them: All their funny remarks.

Least favorite thing about them: Well, their heckling can be a little bit mean sometimes.

Three things I have in common with them:

*I like theatre, film, and music (they must like them, or they wouldn't keep watching, even if they do complain all the time).

*I sometimes complain too much.

*I sometimes make corny jokes.

Three things I don't have in common with them:

*I'm not elderly.

*I'm female.

*I don't heckle stage performers.

Favorite line:

Hard to chose, but here are some classics:

Statler: I wouldn't mind this show if they just got rid of one thing.

Waldorf: What's that?

Statler: Me.

Statler: Do you think this show constitutes cruelty to animals?

Waldorf: Not unless they're watching it!

Statler: So that was Alice Cooper!

Waldorf: You should see his sister, James Fenimore!

(In response to the song "Boogie in the Barnyard")

Statler: Boo, boo!

Waldorf: ..say the men in the theatre box!

Both: Don't boogie in the barnyard!

From Muppet Treasure Island, after they catch Kermit and Piggy when they fall off a cliff:

Statler: Waldorf, you old fool! We're heroes! We saved the pig and the frog!

Waldorf: Well, it was too late to save the movie!

brOTP: Each other, of course, and Fozzie's mother Emily Bear, whom A Muppet Family Christmas reveals is their friend.

OTP: For Waldorf, his wife Astoria (who looks just like Statler in drag). For Statler, none – I don't know if he's currently married or not.

nOTP: Miss Piggy or Janice.

Random headcanon: Their health suffered for a few years in the '90s after Jim Henson and Richard Hunt died. Grief can have a physical effect, after all, especially for two elderly men who, judging by the various pacemaker jokes they've made, already had heart conditions. By 1996 they were both particularly frail, which is why they only played the ship's wooden figureheads in Muppet Treasure Island (the figureheads themselves were animatronics – Statler and Waldorf just provided the voices), and why they had to live in a nursing home for a while, as shown in the first season of Muppets Tonight. But by the end of the '90s they fully recovered, and came to live with the other Muppets in their boarding house (as shown in Muppets From Space) after they left the nursing home.

Unpopular opinion: Hmm... Do I have one? I know some old school Muppet fans complain that they've been Flanderized in recent years; that they criticize everything now, when on The Muppet Show they actually enjoyed some things, like old-fashioned ragtime. But if this is true, then I don't mind it. I've always felt as if they really do enjoy the things they complain about, at least more than they pretend to. They just love heckling!

Song I associate with them:

"The Varsity Drag"

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"Take Ten Terrific Girls"

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"It Was a Very Good Year"

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"Marley and Marley" from The Muppet Christmas Carol

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Favorite picture of them:

#character ask #the muppets #statler and waldorf #ask game #fictional characters

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queenofthursday6599-blog · 6 months ago

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Hey so I've got a question to all the people who work in public libraries.

Would a library accept the donation of like a painting that I painted myself?

I know various libraries will accept like historic works, but the painting I'm talking about is not that.

Because right now I'm making a painting for my baby niece (or at least I'm in the planning phase of the painting, meaning concept sketches, and practicing to get things to look how I want) but the focus of the painting is going to be various muppets.

Specifically those of Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street, and Bear in The Big Blue House.

So while my niece is obsessed with the Bear and his house currently, it is undoubtable that she will outgrow said obsession.

Or at least table it until she wants to show Bear in The Big Blue House to her own kids.

The way my sister introduced it to her, as Bear was the Jim Henson show preferred by me and her as toddlers, vs our cousins (and parents) who favored the traditional Sesame Street (though our mom did like Fraggle Rock as an older kid).

Anyways, once she finally moves on from her mental death grip on Bear, be it in a year or five, we will be left with a 2 1/2 ft x 3 ft painting depicting the titular ursine alongside various other muppets, that will be left homeless in the inevitable wake of her disinterest.

So I would just like to know if a public library would likely be open to accepting such a painting to hang in their children's section as decoration.

Or if I just need to go ahead and make my peace with the fact that I will be the owner of some truly massive muppet crossover fan art for the rest of my life if I go through with making this painting.

And it's not like that'd be the end of the world.

I adore the muppets, and the Fraggles being included is an entirely selfish desire. Considering my niece is currently at the age where she finds them perfectly ignorable if they're not singing.

Which is understandable as she is an infant and Fraggle Rock is directed not at literal infants the way Sesame Street and Bear is, and more towards the 6+ crowd of kids.

I just need to know if I need to include this behemoth in like my death plan or not, because I don't think I could sell it considering it's literally fan art. Not to mention I'd feel weird selling it because it's fan art.

#library posting #question for librarians #I know that different libraries would likely have different standards #but like just a local library with a children's section

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dorkynerd23 · 2 years ago

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My Name Is Jasmine, But I Don't Mind Being Called Jazzy! I'm 22, Bisexual, And A Fan And Lover Of Animation And Cartoons. My DM's Are Always Open, If Anyone Out There Wants To Talk, Or Need Any Advice. I'm Always Happy To Listen, And Help Anyone In Need. 🩷 I'm Also A Roleplayer As Well. So Feel Free To Message Me, If You're Interested In Roleplaying With Me!

{https://hhhh5.carrd.co}

[FOR MURDER DRONES/MD FANS]

(I'm a Nuzi|Enzi|BiscuitBites shipper 💜💛 So, N X Uzi antis, shipping discourse, toxic Envy shippers + toxic shippers in general, DNI and leave me alone!! But, if you're not into Nuzi or don't ship it, that's totally fine. I'm respectful and supportive of all ships in the community just as long as they're not problematic, you can like what you want just as long as it makes you happy! But, please respect my and others opinions and feelings and just be nice, PLEASE. ❤️ We already have enough shipping drama and toxicity in this fanbase that has resulted in people feeling/being hurt and I DON'T want any of that over here. Just be kind and respectful to one another, everyone!)

[♥️MAIN OBSESSIONS/WHAT I'M INTO MOST♥️]

My Obsessions/What I Love:

- Hazbin Hotel (Vivziepop + Spindlehorse/A24)

[♥️✨WHAT I'M MOSTLY OBSESSED WITH/HYPERFIXATED ON!♥️✨]

(PS: Though Sometimes, I Try My Best To Distant Myself Away From The Fandom + I Really DON'T Like Or Support The Creator, AT ALL)

- Cuphead/The Cuphead Show! (Video Game And Show)

- Lackadaisy (Webcomic + Pilot)

[♥️WHAT I'M MOSTLY OBSESSED WITH/HYPERFIXATED ON!♥️✨]

- Animaniacs. (1993)

[♥️WHAT I'M MOSTLY OBSESSED WITH/HYPERFIXATED ON!♥️✨]

- Billie Bust Up/BBU (Video Game)

- Hex (Motion Comic/Web Comic) (Dawko)

- Murder Drones (GLITCH)

[♥️✨WHAT I'M MOSTLY OBSESSED WITH/HYPERFIXATED ON!♥️✨]

- The Amazing Digital Circus (Gooseworx/GLITCH)

[♥️✨WHAT I'M MOSTLY OBSESSED WITH/HYPERFIXATED ON!♥️✨]

- Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure (Animated/Live Action) (1977)

- Smiling Friends (Adult Swim)

- Many Disney/Non Disney Animated Movies

- Broadway Musicals (And Even Movies That Are Based Off Musicals, Or Movies That Are Musicals In General) + Romantic Movies

- DreamWorks Animated Movies (I Don't Like All Of Them Tho)

- Puss In Boots (The Last Wish Got Me Obsessed And Into The Fandom! :3)

- Aardman Animations (Stop-Motion)

- Doraemon (Shin-Ei Animation/Fujiko Fujio)

(I'm Also Into Other Animes As Well, Btw)

- Fraggle Rock And The Muppets (Jim Henson)

DNI: "TRANSPHOBES, LESBOPHOBES, HOMOPHOBES, BIPHOBES, ACEPHOBES, AROPHOBES, PROSHITTERS, MAPS, L*LICONS, ZOOS, ECT!!"

[🚫IF YOU'RE ANYTHING LISTED IN MY DNI, YOU ARE NOT WELCOMED HERE!! YOU ARE NOT WELCOME ON MY BLOG, FUCK OFF!🚫]

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jimhenson-themuppetmaster · 6 years ago

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Origins of Oscar the Grouch (Information: Muppet Wiki)

According to Sesame Street Unpaved, "The character of Oscar was inspired by a nasty waiter from a restaurant called Oscar's Tavern in Manhattan. Jim Henson and Jon Stone were waited on by a man who was so rude and grouchy that he surpassed annoying and started to actually amuse both Jim and Jon. They were so entertained that going to Oscar's Tavern became a sort of masochistic form of luncheon entertainment for them, and their waiter forever became immortalized as the world's most famous Grouch." In the Ask Henson.com web column, Jim Henson Company Archivist Karen Falk said that the restaurant was named Oscar's Salt of the Sea -- and went on to say, "Some of the designs that we have in the Archives were done by Jim Henson on Oscar's paper placemats!"

Caroll Spinney says that he based Oscar's voice on another New York resident -- a Bronx taxi driver who drove him to work on his first day performing the character. When Spinney got into the cab, the driver snapped, "Where to, Mac?"

While Jim Henson's first Oscar sketches were colored purple, the original Oscar puppet was orange (Henson later said in an interview that this change was made because the early cameras weren't good enough to capture the color right). In chapter nine of the book The Wisdom of Big Bird, Caroll Spinney states that the Oscar puppet was rebuilt about a month after Sesame Street had started taping. Jim tore apart the original puppet, and a new puppet was built. An early version of the green Oscar debuted on The Flip Wilson Show in 1970 and Oscar's explanation for that was that he had vacationed at Swamp Mushy Muddy, where the dampness had turned him green overnight. In a 2003 appearance, Oscar stated that while his time in Swamp Mushy Muddy made him appear green, he is still in fact orange underneath all the slime and mold. (With an exception, he's just never taken a bath).

In his introduction to the book Sesame Street: A Celebration - 40 Years of Life on the Street (which also contained his lunch from yesterday, grape juice, and something unidentifiable), he explains how he ended up on Sesame Street, saying he was a normal when Joan Ganz Cooney and Jon Stone decided to create the show, they hired Jim Henson, who bugged him until he agreed to be on the show for the first episode only. He headed off to Swamp Mushy Muddy after the production wrapped, disgusted, but discovered that his agent, Bernie, had signed a contract to have him on the entire run of Sesame Street. Oscar became so mad he that he turned green (a fictous explanation around how he became green), but figured the show wouldn't run for more than six months anyway (obviously disappointed).

Oscar explained his family roots and fur color again in a Life Magazine article in 2009, "Most of the family was orange. But I had a lovely vacation in Swamp Mushy Muddy resort. It was so dark and dreary I kind of turned green. It's mostly moss. I like it — it goes with my eyes. I accidentally took a bath once, turned orange again and washed all the moss off, so I went right back to Swamp Mushy Muddy, and here I am."

Oscar's first line on Sesame Street, in episode 0001, was "Don't bang on my can! Go away." This sums up his personality as it would remain for over 40 years.

#jim henson #the muppets #oscar the grouch #origins #information #1969 #orange oscar

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themuppetmasterencyclopedia · 6 years ago

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Telly Monster

PERFORMERS Martin P. Robinson 1984-present

Brian Muehl 1979-1984

DEBUT 1979

Telly Monster is a slightly neurotic young monster who lives at 1304 Sesame Street.

Telly was initially conceived as a monster obsessed with watching television; his name is short for Television Monster. In his early appearances on Sesame Street, Telly had antennas coming out of the top of his head, and his eyes would whirl around when he watched TV. A segment of his first appearance appears on the 40 Years of Sunny Days DVD set. This one-note personality, along with the antennas and whirling eyes, was soon dropped, and Telly became the worrying, easily frustrated character he remains today (however, in the Talk, Listen, Connect episode Deployments, he is still shown to be an expert on TV and computers).

Telly was originally performed by Bob Payne for his first few appearances in 1979, then by Brian Muehl who used a low, gruff-sounding voice. Muehl also developed Telly's worrywart personality, making Telly a character who always needed reassurance in order to be confident. When Martin P. Robinson took over in 1984, he originally began with the personality Muehl already established for the character, using a voice similar to Muehl’s Telly voice. However, Telly evolved over time, gaining a much stronger emotional range. “His main thing now is that he believes totally in whatever he’s into,” says Robinson “And he can turn on a dime and that doesn’t belie what he was feeling before. He can go from great joy to great sorrow and it’s all totally genuine.”

Early on, Telly was often paired with Oscar the Grouch, whom he tries to befriend against tremendous odds. The two were traveling companions in Follow That Bird, and Telly is a member of Oscar's fan club, the Grouchketeers. The two starred in two recurring sketches together: "Ask Oscar," which Telly introduced; and "Sneak Peek Previews." Their most recent pairing together was in a sketch demonstrating words that begin with the letter B. (First: Episode 4248)

In recent years, Telly has often been seen in the company of his good friend Baby Bear. Telly has a great love of triangles, and owns a pet hamster named Chuckie Sue. Telly has a favorite toy doll which he named "Freddy." When Telly was a baby monster, his favorite toy was a stuffed animal horse which he named "Clark" before he got "Freddy". In the video Bedtime Stories & Songs, when Telly comes to Big Bird's nest for a sleepover, he brings a menagerie of different stuffed animals that almost overflow the entire nest. He also plays the bassoon, the tuba and, of course, the triangle. He also occasionally appears as a Monster on the Spot reporter. He also often jumps on a pogo stick, after Mr. Handford taught him how to in a 1993 episode.

Modern versions of the Telly puppet have movable eyelids to let his eyes widen, a handy technique when the monster is in panic mode. There are also two Telly puppets that have been interchangeably used throughout the show. The more frequently used version is a "sack puppet", similar in design to Cookie Monster or Rowlf the Dog, where the arm sleeves are directly attached to the base of the puppet. The second version is a full-body version of the character, with legs and feet attached. The puppet's arms are stuffed, with visible arm sleeves similar in design to the arms of Ernie or Fozzie Bear.

For Sesame Street's 40th season, Sesame Workshop featured a digital promotion called "Muppetbook", which featured profiles similar to those seen on Facebook. The profile listed squares, circles, and Woody Allen movies (too much anxiety) as Telly's pet peeves. Among his favorite songs are "I Whistle a Happy Tune," "Don't Worry, Be Happy," and "Don't Cry Out Loud."

FILMOGRAPHY

Sesame Street

Big Bird in China

Don't Eat the Pictures

The Muppets Take Manhattan

Follow That Bird

The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years

Learning About Letters

Sleepytime Songs and Stories

Sesame Street, Special

Sesame Street: 20 and Still Counting

The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson

Big Bird's Birthday or Let Me Eat Cake

Sesame Street Jam: A Musical Celebration

Sesame Street's All-Star 25th Birthday: Stars and Streets Forever

Sesame Street Stays Up Late

We All Sing Together

The Great Numbers Game

Sesame Street 4-D Movie Magic

Elmopalooza

Elmo's Musical Adventure: Peter and the Wolf

The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland

CinderElmo

The Street We Live On

Let's Make Music

↑ hide

BOOK APPEARANCES

The Sesame Street Circus of Opposites (1981)

City (1982)

More Who's Who on Sesame Street (1982)

Bert's Big Band Paint-with-Water Book (1983 reprint)

People in Your Neighborhood (1983)

A Baby Sister for Herry (1984)

Lovable, Furry Old Grover in Please Don't Push the Red Button (1984)

A Silly Sesame Street Story: The Three Little Pigs (1984)

Big Bird's Book of Rhymes (1985)

Big Bird Joins the Carnival (1985)

Ernie's Finish the Picture (1985)

Follow That Bird Activity Book (1985)

Follow That Bird coloring book (1985)

Sign Language ABC (1985)

A Bird's Best Friend (1986)

Find the Shapes (1986)

Through the Year (1986)

The Runaway Soup and Other Stories (1987)

Colors (1987)

Shape Up! (1987)

Big Bird's Square Meal (1988)

Going Places (1988)

A New Playground on Sesame Street (1988)

Oh, I Am So Embarrassed! (1988)

The Sesame Street ABC Book of Words (1988}

Come As You Are (1989)

The New Who's Who on Sesame Street (1989)

Museum of Monster Art (1990)

How to Get to Sesame Street (1991)

Sesame Street 123 (1991)

We're Counting on You, Grover! (1991)

What Do You Do? (1992 edition)

Grover's 10 Terrific Ways to Help Our Wonderful World (1992)

Happy and Sad, Grouchy and Glad (1992)

We're Different, We're the Same (1992)

Elmo's Mother Goose (1993)

From Trash to Treasure (1993)

Around the Corner on Sesame Street (1994)

Bright and Early with Elmo (1994)

Elmo's Big Lift-and-Look Book (1994)

Sesame Street Stays Up Late (1995)

B is for Books! (1996)

Elmo's Lift-and-Peek Around the Corner Book (1996)

Rise and Shine! (1996; reworked as Up, Up, Up! in 2011)

Elmo's Christmas Colors (1997)

Pumpkin Patch Party (1997)

The Sesame Street Word Book (1998)

Elmo's ABC Book (2000)

Watch Out for Banana Peels (2000)

Elmo and the Monsters (2001)

Clap Your Hands! (2002)

#jim henson #the muppets #telly monster #information

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dollysdiarydotcom · 2 years ago

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6/27/22

Dear Diary,

I'm sorry I haven't written in so long!! I was in New York for my Grandpa's funeral. It was so different there. Long Island is so much cleaner and richer than here, it was bizarre. I got to watch lots of movies tho! I watched both Legally Blonde movies, House of Gucci, Elvis, and The Devil Wears Prada! They were all so good! I looove fashion, and they were all such good inspiration. Elvis and The Devil Wears Prada, were prob my favorites, tho Legally Blonde was awesome too!! We also went into the city, and saw the Museum of Moving Pictures! There was a special Jim Henson exhibit, and seeing the muppets in person felt like meeting a celebrity.

Look at her!! Ignore how I look. So that was fun! Later today I'm going to go thrifting, I'm hoping to find some more coquette clothes, since I don't have many.

Love, Dolly

#dollys diary #dollys photos #dollys thoughts #dollys writing #hyper feminine #dollcore #crushcore #coquette #diary post #digital diary #legally blonde #legally blonde 2 #house of gucci #the devil wears prada #elvis 22

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popculturebuffet · 2 years ago

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Monthly Mupppets Madness: Seasame Street Presents: Follow That Bird Review!: A Film that Will DestroY you In A Good Way ( Brought To You By Emma Fici)

For Carroll

Hello all you happy muppets nad welcome back to Monthly Muppet Madness. Today's review is brought to you by the letters W and B as I finally got told how to get to Seasame Street! Yes after touching on them in Muppet Family Christmas it's time to give Kermit's other family a proper look with their feature debut FOLLOW. THAT. BIRD. This one.. has been delayed a bit, but we're finally here.

It also.. puts me out of my element as i'm way more familiar with the muppets as a troupe than I am with their public education forebearers, having only watched some as a kid too young to remember any of it (I scarely remember having a tickle me elmo), and as an adult watching his nicce and nephew, where it was very diffrent. I know the muppet side fine, but knew none of the adult performers as they were all gone by the time I was growing up and certainly by the time my niece and nephew came in.

For a brief history Seasame Street was created by producer Joan Ganz Cooney and LLoyd Morrisett , VP of the Carnigie Foundation, both things i only learned when looking this up on wikipedia but both vital. With crticism of tv at a high, the two decided to weaponize it's addictive qualities for good, to create educational programming to help kids in poorer areas who may not have access to as quality education, as well as promote diversity. The result was Seasame Street. Jim Henson was asked aboard as his muppets were incredibly popular and Cooney knew what she had. Jim didn't want to do it at first as he was worried it'd make it seem like the muppets were just "for children", a fear that sadly came true as it made getting the muppet show out there harder.. but he relented. It was a good cause and they inteded to make the show alla ges: mainly to edcuate small chidlren but entertaning enough their parents and older siblings wouldn't change the channel.

It goes without saying Henson was key to the shows success, with many of his performers joining the cast and while he had to wittle down to just performing his characters as the muppet show took off it's clear he loved these characters too.

Seasame Street naturally became the monster hit it is today, big with kids, loved by the kids who grew up with it and well loved, parodied with affectoina nd generally important. It's so relevant that last year it even got a newer parody survivial street about a ragtag group of public education performers fighting for seasame street in the post apocalypse. And if your wondering if that'll be covered her eventaully

(can confirm)

When I don't know the in pile is pretty big over here. At any rate as for how follow that bird happened

(daffy hands)

I tried my best but from my usual first choices (wikipedia and the muppets wiki to at least start) to combing I couldn't find anything behind the scnenes on why this film was made. I found out what I could but I can't tell you why the film came to be.

What I can is that it wasn't a huge success in theaters. It got slammed right up against films such as back to the future and pee wee's big adventure, and thus got utterly destroyed, not helped by WB barely promoting it and mostly saying "EH WE GOT BIG BIRD".

Thankfully like Muppet's Christmas Carol after it, Home Video and in this case HBO gave it a second life, so many an 80's and 90's kid saw the film and loved it young and slightly older, and the film became a bit of a cult classic. Yet despite having seen many a film from the Jim Henson era of muppets until sitting down for this review i'd never seen this one. So with fresh eyes join me under the cut as you, me, the seasame street players, a misguided racist social service bird, two shady canadian sketch comedy actors, and more FOLLOW. THAT. BIRD!

This is More Soul Destroying Than I Expected:

This film taught me NEVER to underestimate a muppet production. See I thought , much like it's succesor, this would be a light film , a road picture about finding big bird. Which it is.. what I didn't expect.. was for it to do THIS to me.

For those of you less familiar Follow That Bird is about the fedral council of birds deciding that Big Bird cann't POSSIBLY be happy without other birds around, so they send Mrs. Finch to go take him from his happy found family and stick him with a bird family. Yes today's show is brought to you by Bird Racisim.

HIs family reluctantly lets him go as he's curious to have a bird family, and is too innocent to relaize the system's broken. I didn't expect a muppet film to be an indictment of social services and unittional racisim and shame on me for not thinking they could do it. THey do it well too: Miss FInch isn't INTENTIONALLY racist, she's just so set in her ways she genuinely CAN'T see why Big Bird would be happy where he is and dosen't put any real thought into his placement, putting him with the dim witted dodos. The Dodo's themselves aren't BAD people, they just don't know how to take care of big bird like their own childrne, lack his imagination. Even Big Bird can't understand writing a letter asking "Why am I not happy?"

The only bad thing they genuinely do intetionally.. is tell Big BIrd he should have a bird friend instead, which gets him to run away. And what makes all this more painful is that Big Bird.. is a kind kid. He writes the dodo's a thank you note and simply wants to go home and being only 6, yes really, he dosen't get that he can't just walk home, how dangerous that is, and how CPS will be right after him. Carrol Spinney does a masterful job conveying Big Bird's innocnece and pain throughout the picture and part of why it hits so hard is his earnestness. It makes me miss the guy that much more seeing just HOW brilliant he was in the role. THe heart the emotion, he's a true master at Muppetry.

The film DOES ballance the melancholy at the center well: while it's got a downbeat tone in a lot of it for obvious reasons, it ballances it with heart: Big Bird is warmly naive and befriends anyone he meets wehter it's some small children or you'd expect or of all people country music legend I know nothing about whatsoever Waylon Jennings. Why is it the Seasame Street Movie iis one of the weirder ones i've seen. It's Big Bird's genuine kindness and childish innocence that keep the film from getting too dark. For instance with said kids we go form him sadly reflecting on being alone to spending a day with the kids goofing off while their parents are trapped in the negative zone, I guess.

Also helping are the rest of the main cast. Naturally while Big Bird's the titular bird to follow , our heroes are going to follow him. They see a news report about his running away lead by Chevy Chase, with of course Kermit showing up in his original role as newsman, something that's werid to me. This was also Jim's last film performance as Kermit, and it seems fitting that kermit end his film career with some old friends.

So the Seasame Street crew splits up into teams: America's faviorite power couple in a biplane,the count riding solo in his bat mobile ah ah ah, Maria (the big sister style oft voice of reason on the team) unfortunatley gets saddled with Oscar who in natural oscar fashion keeps derailing the quest, and Gordon, his sister olivia, and Cookie monster all pile into a car with Linda, a local deaf librarian. ALl the human actors are pretty good but me and @jess-the-vampire got a good chuckle out of the fact that they still act like their on a show for small children with all the overacting that implies. Having seen seasame street I spotted the style ofa cting at once and it still works fine here it's just weirder to see it when the stakes are far higher. Linda is the easy stand out, a deaf actress who not only revolutionzed portryals of deaf people on tv with her apperances on seasame street but is damn funny and energetic the whole film and is easily the standout of the huaman performers. And of course capping them all off is Grover on his own as SUPER GROVER!

Along the way the gang gets into various hyjinks: Bert and Ernie go upside down and sing an upside down song while chasing Big BIrd north by northwest style, something we'll get into more when we get to their song.

We also get one of my faviorite set pieces as Oscar forces his party to go to the goruch cafe, with only Linda going inside (Telly and some other guy are also along) with him: we get sandra berhanrd as a waitress, the food you'd imagine from a place like this and then throw up from thinking that, and salad served by catapult.

Finally we have one of my faviorite runners, the fact that Cookie monster spends the entire movie SLOWLY eating Gordon's car. By the end it's barely back and he owes them

I was also suprised he ate something besides a cookie. Granted unlike others I didn't get my hackles up when he switched to veggies, I got why, but I assumed those were the only two things he ate.. and was delighed when emma pointed me to THIS PAGE ON THE MUPPET WIKI.

Yes folks it's a list of EVERYTHING cookie monster has ate. My faviorites include:

An Aretha Franklin Record The Most Snowballs Two Safes Telephone 1973 Ford F-250 Pickup Truck Nearly All of Seasame Street Brick Wall Filmstrip and Rosebud A Baskedt Faith Hill and Tim MCGraw's Kaledioscope Ernie's Ukelele Smoking Pipes A Guitar (And never drew a dime) Ernie's Frying Pan Autumn Leaves NPR Microphone Stephen Colbert's Peabody Award Emmy A Sneaker Wooden Toy House TV Guide Logo Mattresses A Rock Two Hot Dogs and a Donut Bust Stop Sign Paper Clip, Egg Timer, and Microwave Cords Jack Black's Xbox 360 Half of Ernie's PIllow Bicycle Dr. Zhivagho John Oliver's Tie

And just for the anti vegtable eating idiots: An apple, bannaa, carrot, grapes, watermellon, yam, two apples ah ah ah, asaparagus, raisins, cucumber spears, carrot sticks, more apples, even more apples, and more bananas.

I also had no idea he and Ernie used to be friends.. though I can see why it's also in past tense. Where was I? Oh yes, these antics help ballance the deep sadness of the main plot making things work: we see plenty of misery from poor big bird, but the wacky hyjinks ballance it just so.

Speaking of which in addition to the muppets, what good would a muppet film be without a hammy villian who can match the muppets. And this one picked two excellent canditates, two people I never thoguht i'd see in a muppet film and who had I known were in this would've watched it long before I started this series: Dave Thomas and Joe Flahrety as Sam and Sid Sleaze!

Yeah for most of you they'd be before your generation.. or mine even. But thanks to binging SCTV dvd's in college I know these two as sketch performers supreme and with the film shot in canada, they were perfect. The two perfeclty play the sleazes as over the top villians with Sam as the slightly smater one asnd Sid as the goofy idiot, and both hamming it up as they tended to anyway. Their bits tend to read as an SCTV sketch that ocasionally guest stars muppets, and that is not ab ad thing> The bit with them extording a nickle from a kid to let him off a ferris wheel kill me and the two's comedic timing is great, with dave in paticular getting to ham it up about money. The two are just fantastic, while also being nicely cruel when needed whent hey imprisoin a 6 year old for thier own finacial gain. The shot of joe crying druing the most heartbreaking scene of the film, which we'll ocne again get to shortly, is something i'll be using for some time

The two are just great and as an added bonus I assumed, being a big star at this point, John Candy wouldn't share a scene with his two co stars… and I was wrong as John's one cameo is arresting the two fo them and i'ts glorious. I would like to see the rest of the sctv cast such as rick moaranis, eugene levy and cathrine o hara show up in a muppets production if they haven't yet as this showed me just how great it could be, and while they never got their co stars success, Dave and Joe REALLY are on the level of the others and this film shows it. Their easily top tier muppet villians and only charles grodin or tim curry may surpass them. Thankfully the Sleazes don't kidnap big bird long as some kids call seasaame street, they call our various heroes and they come resuce him. I also love how adorable the climactic chase is. They managed to get Big Bird's cage open before the sleazes took off with him, but Big Bird bein ga children is reluctant to jump and takes some gentle coaxing to jump.

Naturally they return home and while Mrs. Finch finds them she finally realizes family is not your species or race.. but who you love and who loves you and agrees to back the hell off. It's a happy ending and a truly great film. The film deftly ballances comedy and melacholy to create something truly special, that's just sappy enough without going too far and really touches the heart. It also has a great soundtrack and has been tradition lately, let's break it down:

Musical Muppetry:

We oepn with the Grouch Anthem, a gloriously batshit way to open the film as Oscar stands in front of a flag pattons tyle and goes on and on about his grouchy creed while other grouches back him up. Did I see this coming? No. Did I love every second of it? You better you bet.

Ain't No Road Too Long is our Waylon Jennings number and I loved it too, a nice jolly road song. The kind you need in this kind of film in the vein of movin right along or on the open road.

One LIttle Star is truly heartbrekaing as Big Bird and Snuffy sing to each other in absentia, as does Olivia because apparently she did this a lot. If a small child and his weird friend who everyone assumed wasn't real for several years , and his surrogate aunt singing about how much they miss each other dosne't break your heart you do not have one and I do not know why your here.

Easy Goin Day is a fun number with Kermit playing with some other kids. Simple, nice, and a nice break from the overwhelming misery before OH NO MISS FINCH IS BACK.

Upside Down World is probably my faviorite number, burt and ernie just singing upside down in a plane… and Jim Henson and Frank Oz really WERE upside down for this one, and sang it upside down as a result. The dedication these men have to a good muppet stunt is amazing and I love them for it.

I'm So Blue comes very close though and if you thought One LIttle Star was heartbreaking, this is heart atomizing as poor Kermit sings painted blue in a cage while Joe Flarhety rightfully sobs. one of the saddest, most emotoinal numbers in any muppet film and only not THE most emotoinal because When Love is Gone exists. True poetry

Rankings:

The sountrack as you can see lands in a solid fourth place, just inching out the muppets take manhattan. It's good but it's not the best.

Movie wise it also lands in fourth beating out Muppet Treasure Island, as I feel the character work is stronger here, and given how hard it's been to crack the top spots that's high praise but this film more than earns it. If you haven't seen it yet it's on HBO Max and I highly recommend it and i'm happy to own it. Check it out as soon as you can.

Next Month: Emma takes a break and it's Kev's turna s we enter one of the muppets few purely for adults experiments as live from new york IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT with the land of gorch. Thanks for reading…. this has been a great year of content and I can't wait to see what year 2 of monthly muppets brings.

#seasame street #muppets #big bird #oscar the grouch #sctv #linda #grover #super grover #burt #ernie #burt x ernie #telly #kermit the frog #chevy chase #dave thomas #joe flaherty

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loyalwreck · 3 years ago

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I posted 8,817 times in 2021

23 posts created (0%)

8794 posts reblogged (100%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 382.3 posts.

I added 610 tags in 2021

#food - 273 posts

#fave - 90 posts

#star trek - 53 posts

#mcr - 43 posts

#the muppets - 30 posts

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#jim henson - 23 posts

#evsbs - 22 posts

Longest Tag: 136 characters

#there's these little boxes at the bottom and it's really tempting to just click through all of them cause they all seem like good causes

My Top Posts in 2021

Finished my bachelor's today, thinking about playing neopets again

1 notes • Posted 2021-04-27 16:48:43 GMT

Just saw a post kinda vaguely related to the subject, so instead of commenting I just made me own post cause I'm shy I guess. ANYWAY, I think transphobia is a natural trapping of radical feminism (not saying all radical feminists are transphobic, just that it's an easy jump, I don't know the numbers or anything). Cause we have to remember, and I don't think everyone realizes, that radical doesn't just mean like "out there" or wild, it stands for a way of thinking about the source of misogyny (sex in this case). There are other branches of feminism (ex:socialist, liberal etc) that don't have the same kind of prejudice based on biology/inherent rivalry of the sexes because they'll put the source of inequality somewhere else, for example they'll consider women a "class" in the political sense that can be used as a scapegoat when convenient (as of now this is the point of view I personally favor)

Anyway this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately and if you guys have any insight/ opinions/ reading recs lmk

2 notes • Posted 2021-03-16 22:37:27 GMT

who did this

4 notes • Posted 2021-05-21 14:51:52 GMT

I have a zoom murder mystery at 7 but got bored and did my costume early, so time to play stardew for 2 hours as "maple syrup mafia boss"

4 notes • Posted 2021-03-11 21:59:02 GMT

23 notes • Posted 2021-04-20 02:11:42 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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popculturebuffet · 1 year ago

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Monthly Muppet Madness: Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (Comission for Emma Fici)

Happy holidays all you happy muppets and welcome back to monthly muppets, my monthly look at all things muppet related. It's christmas time again and for this year it's something near and dear to my heart we haven't covered yet and when I asked my co-pilot emma to do this one her response was a resounding "Wait we hadn't done this one yet?" Friends grab your washtubs, your glam rock glasses and your christmas branches, it's time for the Tail of Emmet Otter's Jugbband Christmas.

Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas is a 1977 special done for the CBC and aired on HBO the next year here in the states. The special came about because.. the CBC asked?

I did my due dillegence but coudln't find anything on why the CBC comissioned this special. I mean you don't need much justification to ask Jim Henson do to a heartwarming holiday special. Because muppets is how this feature got started, it's a very good reason for doing something. I just expected more than that from a special this high quality and well loved. I DID find more on how this got maid though thanks to this wonderful oral history.

So we can dig right in.

At the time this show was greenlit most of the crew worked in London, leaving the Henson Workshop to Don Sahlin, a longtime builder for the crew who created the Rowlf the Dog Puppet and did most of the puppetry and set design for this film, so props to him. So to make Don's Muppet's come alive, Jim enlisted a small but powerhouse crew: himself, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, David Gohelz, Richard Hunt and Charlie Ozeker, basically a whos who of muppet stars likely because they could do it fast, do it well and could do it big.

See something I never knew about Emmet Otter is that it's a vital step in the evolution of the muppets: it was the first one Jim did on a full set, building a whole ass river for characters to move down for the boating segments, a full on world. IT was the first without humans, something I didn't even scan as the story works fine as is. And it premired techniques not using a raised stage, something vital for the muppet movie. It was a brilliant way to test new techniques too: since the story's small scale, it made it easy to tech this sort of thing out. It could be difficult with beams in the way of their heads, but the results paid off with a special that looks seamless but clearly took a lot of tech wizardry Another all important addition to the Muppets was

Yes Paul Williams, music icon and muppet god. Williams had guested on the muppet show, but going into it was already a fan of Jim's work from Ed Sullivan and Seasame Street, with the latter being a reliable source of entertainment for a traveling musician it turns out: no matter where you were you could guarantee something pretty neat as almost everywhere carried it.

With WIlliams becoming fast friends with the muppet crew, Jim naturally asked him to do this special.. though Williams suspects he had ulterior motives.. granted this being jim henson those motives were entirely still pure and good because Jim Henson was our own personal jesus and I miss him dearly. Anyway quoth williams from the SYFY article

" I think what he was actually doing was giving it a test ride to see how we worked together. Because what was major on his plate at that time was The Muppet Movie coming up. It was a huge gamble, and I think one of the things he was wondering is if I would be the right guy for The Muppet Movie. "

I entirely buy it, as while Jims likely didn't doubt williams was good: At this point in his career he'd written three #1 hits for the carpenters including "We've Only Just Begun" andthe classic "Old Fashioned Love Song" for Three Dog Night, which jim personally loved. On top of that he'd already done the music for Phantom of the Paradise, a horror rock opera whose soundtrack i've listened into infinity and whose review also got pushed back to next year as my schedule continues to spiral just a tad.

Point is Williams was proven and likely had the job.. Jim was just nervous. The Muppet Movie was a big gamble and something he'd wanted since he started doing puppetry, the cumulation of his life's work. He HAD to double check. It's also likely why he took the big swings technically HERE: it was a smaller project he could do it on to see if the even bigger, riskier ideas of the muppet movie could be pulled off. He was testing everyone.. including himself. He's Jim henson: he's nothing if not fair. He had to see if he could pull it off on this scale, that he really had it. I get that impulse in creating something: that you have something you want to do and WORRY you can't do it so you test yourself or , in the worst cases, simply say your not capable and never make it. Thankfully jim wasn't that kind of guy and could easily past his own task.

And sountrack wise, he hired Paul Williams, so Williams passed the test with flying colors and became a mainstay for the muppets, soundtracking both the muppet movie and last year's christmas review, A Muppet Christmas Carol, which now lives rent free in my head. Passing it wasn't effortless, but Williams rose to the occasion, to quoth the man again.

"It's funny because I've never had songs write themselves as quickly as these songs wrote themselves. And some of the titles are [from] the book. With Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, you have this remarkable tale that has such depth. I think it's written in such a way that the titles, and the story, led me to what we would now call Americana, and it's not what I did. I think probably as close as I got to that style is one of the songs that Jim mentioned when we met. He said "I just loved you from the time I heard "Old Fashioned Love Song." And though "Old Fashioned Love Song" was really kind of rinky-dink, old-fashioned, there was something about that song and the simplicity of my melody that he lit up around it.

So, I went to the script [for inspiration], and I think that the script is a wonderful fairy tale with a great spiritual lesson in it. Ma Otter and Emmet take a chance, and they basically destroy their means of earning a living with the washtub and hocking the toolkit. As brave and as wonderful as they are, and as much as we're rooting for them, the fact is that they are outperformed by a hard rock group, The Riverbottom Nightmare Band. But from that, there's that wonderful opportunity to write two songs that, put together, make one song, but also have a message like "Our World" and "Brothers." It was a marvelous opportunity for a songwriter. "

So with a genius musical soundtrack, marvelous new puppetry and a lot of heart.. how does the special stack up now a days? Join me under the cut and i'll tell ya.

Our World:

The story of Emmet Otter is simple, but effective: Emmet and his mother Ma Otter, puppeted by Frank Oz and played by stage actress Marilyn Sokol, and her son Emmet, played by Jerry Nelson make not even enough to really get by doing odd jobs on the river, Ma doing the wash for various people and Emmet doing odd jobs. As we see on the scene of both jobs, the two get stiffed with Mrs. Fox faking a singe mark to try and get a refund and an old lady offering Emmet and his friends 50 cents to repaint her fence neglecting to metnion her fence is also half dead. The two barely get buy and while Emmet looks forward to Christmas, Ma is less jolly about it: they can't afford much to eat let alone presents. It's a well done message: sometimes Christmas isn't something EVERYONE can afford and some struggle to just live, let alone provide gifts.

Not helping is the passing of Pa Otter, sir not apperaing in this film, who wasted money on Snake Oil, but no one wanted to oil a snake. The two seeing possible presents for each other at a music store, a piano for ma and a pearl trim guitar for Emmet, the two are talked into entering a music contest by their respective friends, emmet's variety of jug band buds whose names I don't remember and aren't really important and Hetty, ma's only friend. The catch is to even have a chance of winning.. they'd need to hock something from the other person, a weird, sad, all too probable take on Gift of the Magi: Emmet needs to turn his mom's washtub into a bass, the greatest instrument and Ma Otter needs a dress. Why Emmet's friends can't find an old washtub or use one of THEIR mother's washtubs and why Ma specifically needs a fancy dressy to compete..

So our heroes decide to take after pa and take a chance on something big, with enough left over to replace the thing they just.. outright stole to give their family member something better. MAYBE.

This could easily be more messed up, I mean their stealing to give each other presents.. but it's their desperate situation that makes this premise work: The two are barely getting jobs as is, and simply wanted their loved one to have a good christmas. It's better to gamble on a dream that may not come true, than to simply sit in abject misery, and the gamble still makes sense as neither knows abotu the other and thus isn't risking all their money. I bet both ma and emmet would do their hardest to make up the extra income. It's all worth it for what they assume will be a happy christmas. After all..

The two are geninely talented too: Emmet's band performs the in-universe standard Bar-B-Que , a fun and lively number we'll unpack later, and when someone else performs it and they don't want to be accused of copying at the talent contest, the main trope talent contests have but one that works here, the two make something up on the fly, Brothers. Likewise Mom blows THEM out of the water with the touching and thoughtful Our World.

Problem is... their good.. but they simply aren't as good as the best people there. And the best people there are

A bunch of punks seen earlier in the special causing havok every so often with really neat designs, including a fish that was .. tricky to puppet. David Goetz was entirely in black box gear to appear invisible.. and sitting on top of a forklift. so if someone move it.. his arm would've snapped off. You needed to know this because Muppet Performers go damn hard, but probably shouldn't of been at that level of risk.

I'll get into WHY this performance is so damn great later, but I like this plot point as not only is their consequence to hte gamble the otters look.. despite being huge jerks.. the river bottom band.. is talented. They won their win legitly: Their musically talented, have a nice theatricality and the stinger to it is that they likely didn't spend MUCH more: Only Chuck, their leader has a special outfit for the concert, and at most they fancied up their guitars.. or stole them. Did anyone check paul williams? Is Paul okay? I think they might've mugged Paul Williams.

It's a hard truth: you can be really great for what you have.. but if someone can outspend you while also having just as much talent, or simply has more people to pool resoruces and mug paul williams. I mean their just four beavers and a middle aged beaver, they can't mug paul williams. He's paul williams. It takes at LEAST a snake and some weird fish to beat paul williams. Everyone knows that. The River Bottom Nightmare Band (Technically the nightmare but I prefer the longer name), are just.. good. It's a trope i've only seen so often, most recently with Glitz and Glam's number Klown Bitch from helluva boss, but it's one i like: it's easy to have the jerk antagonist in a picture win or come damn close simply because they bought their way to victory, bribed or whatever and are untalented.. it's a harder truth that sometimes, assholes be talented. And sexy as both the twins and the river bottom nightmare band show.

At any rate our heroes loose, and loose big, having nothing left but each other.. though I also like that there's no recrimination, no blame.. they both get what they did, that their kinda screwed.. but it wasn't done out of greed.. but out of love for one another. If they can't hold onto that, what DO they have left? So they combine their two songs into one beautiful melody of togetherness, a sweet song trying to welcome all.

Naturally though they still get a happy ending as a bullfrog what been in this story on and off, including being a contest judget, who runs the local inn hears their duet and offers them to be his house band. So our heroes win.. simply by being good people, and said risk paid off as he already saw they could perform profesionally. They never go hungry again.

Also Kermit was here. Yeah Kermit opens and closes the show and apparently in previous versions narrated it. It'd be nothing more than just a neat cameo.. if it wasn't also the reason this special was in limbo for a decade, with only one early dvd release. The reason is understandable: Kermit got bought by disney, Emmet Otter belongs to the jim Henson company, so it was a rights issue kerfuffle, with some versions removing kermit to still at least air the special. Eventually shit was worked out and as of last year you can stream the special on peacock and at the time of this article can also stream it on Amazon Prime, which I used. No adds and such.

Paul Williams Baby:

I really could end it there: Pauls work on The Muppet Movie, Muppet Christmas Carol and Phantom of the Paradise all speaks for itself, Emmet Otter is no exception. But it's not my job to let work speak for itself, so here we go.

The special opens with The Bathing Suit Your Grandma Otter Wore, a goofy song about one of the Otter family's grandma. While the jokes are mostly "Gee Grandma Otter sure was fat wasn't she" it dosen't come off as fat shaming, more some playful joking... or alternatively.

But either way it's meant with a goofy tone and comes off like the sort of joke Grandma Otter herself told, more a fond rememberance by sharing her humor. Or it was just the 70's and this was still okay, but I just.. can't detect any malice from this. Trust me i've seen out and out fat shaming jokes plenty. This.. just isn't it. THIS is fat shaming.

youtube

The one bathing suit your grandma otter wore is just goofy. It's too goofy to get really mad at. Like the actual goofy. He may destroy yoru house but only someone without a soul or donald duck who has suffered enough at his hands to get an exemption can truly get mad at goofy.

Where The River Meets the Sea.. wasn't in the original version of this review because i'm stupid, but is now. i'ts a beauitful song I feel deeply ashamed having missed and was williams taking a song MENTIONED in the book and expanding it.

There Ain't No Hole in the washtub is the thing I remembered most after catching this special on Cartoon Network once as a kid outside of one number we'll get to towards the end. A fast paced, fun country number with some really nice pattering from Nelson and Sokol. IT's just pure country fun.

Bar-b-que: another fun fast paced country number. And look I won't lie these first three songs are pretty simple but it dosen't make them any less fun and I get what Henson and Williams were going for: a sort of theme park version of the country, but without getting offensive. Hence a quick country song about a mess of barbeque is just.. fun, wholesome and really makes me want some ribs. Soon... soon.

Our World is a genuinely sweet song by Ma Otter, with a good message about being welcoming to all and not letting hate in. Sokol sings the hell out of it and i'ts why the first few songs sorta. It's a touching calll for peace and unity.. which given in the years sense this special we've gotten so much war on christmas nonsense and calls to stop letting everyone into the holidays, is a really nice thing to here

The Jugbands song, Brothers is also really nice. it has a fast tempo like Ain't No Hole and Barbeque, but takes it up a peg, while having a really ncie message about found family comparing themselves to "long lost brothers"... a sentiment certainly shared by most of the henson crew.

River Bottom Nightmare Band. Oh baby this song. It stands out in part because it's diffrent from the folk stylings of the rest of the tracks, being a glam rock number which Williams was already skilled at thanks to phantom of the paradise. He takes it up a notch here, just having the rive rbottom nightmare band be card carying villians talking about how they don't brush their teeth so their toothaches make them mean and grass dosen't grow whereever they standddddd

It's the standout track on an already stellar lineup.

The final track though comes close and is a work of musical genius: Williams had to build Our World and Brothers to function well on their own.. and PERFECTLY together. While Mash Ups aren't exactly uncommon nowadays, it's not Williams tweaking with two unrelated songs.. he built TWO diffrent songs, complete and still damn good and made it so they interlocked perfectly. That my friends takes talents and what makes this my second favorite track of the special: a heartfelt song of unity, warmth and peace to close out a special that's kind wholesome and wonderful.

Our WOrld:

So yeah.. Emmet Otter's is great. Even beyond the heartwarming and sadly still all too relevant story that manages to sneak in an aseop about poverty, it's a heartwarming tale tha thas a lot of technical mastery packed into a simple, moving tale. It also has sexy glamorck bear monsters who apparently pissed off the mayhem, so it has that. It's a wonderful, well done, simple special that touches the heart. It's worth a watch if you haven't seen it.

Now before we go , something I haven't done in a while as I haven't been covering as many films muppet wise: i'ts time to bring back ye old letterboxd ranking list!

As you can see Emmett Otter shot right up there to #3 and it's well done technical work and warm soundtrack earn it that place. It was a joy to see this again and to cover it and I hope if you haven't seen the special you will and if you have you enjoyed this look at it. Thanks for reading.

Next Time: We can finally do one of these with confidence as next time we go to a land down under to visit australian human and muppet do Sammy J and Randy as they stake out on Bin Night.

#emmet otter #emmet otter's jugband christmas #paul williams #the muppets #jim henson #christmas #holidays #xmas #river bottom nightmare band #Youtube

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