"It's time to put on makeup. It's time to dress up right. It's time to get things started..." - "The Muppet Show" Theme
The Muppet Show: Season Two DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
After two years, Muppet fans finally have something to cheer about with the delayed release of The Muppet Show: Season Two. With characters like emcee Kermit the Frog, his young nephew Robin, diva Miss Piggy, vaudevillian-at-heart Fozzie Bear, daredevil whatsit Gonzo, doggie pianist Rowlf, animalistic Animal, and hecklers Statler & Waldorf, two years was well worth the wait.
Once again, the show's line-up of guest hosts is rich and varied, including film and television stars, Broadway vets, singers, and even a ballet dancer. Season two's guests are, in the order presented, Don Knotts (The Andy Griffith Show), Zero Mostel, Milton Berle, Rich Little, Judy Collins, Nancy Walker (The Mary Tyler Moore Show), Edgar Bergen, Steve Martin, Madeline Kahn, George Burns, Dom DeLuise, Bernadette Peters, Rudolf Nureyev, Elton John, Lou Rawls, Cleo Laine, Julie Andrews (Cinderella), Jaye P. Morgan, Peter Sellers, Petula Clark, Bob Hope, Teresa Brewer, John Cleese, and Cloris Leachman (The Mary Tyler Moore Show).
Of course, not all guests are created equally. The Muppet Show is vaudeville with felt, and guests who started out in vaudeville-including Milton Berle, Edgar Bergen, George Burns, and Bob Hope-tend to fare very well. During his monologue, Berle is heckled by Statler and Waldorf (or, as he calls them, "Starsky & Crutch"). Berle is an old pro at this kind of stuff, and they make a great trio. He also finds the time to perform a touching version of Joplin's "The Entertainer" and duet with his number one fan, "Top Banana" Fozzie. Bergen performs several amusing routines with Mortimer Snerd and "Candice's little brother," Charlie McCarthy. Finding another artist to look up to, Fozzie decides to start his own ventriloquists act using a self-made doll, Chucky. It isn't until halfway through his act that Kermit is able to tell him that the ventriloquist provides the voice. Burns, one of the true greats, exchanges quips with Rowlf while performing "The Train Back Home," has a talk with Gonzo, and performs a medley of songs in his inimitable half sung/half spoken style. Due to scheduling constraints, Hope doesn't have much to do, but don't miss the show's final number in which he performs "Don't Fence Me In" while astride a wisecracking horse. The life-sized horse puppet is very amusing, and Hope's effortless interaction with it makes this number a true classic.
Singers like Judy Collins, Elton John, Jaye P. Morgan, Petula Clark, and Teresa Brewer also contribute memorable performances. Collins' rendition of "Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" is accompanied by and exquisitely funny shadow puppet of said old lady eating a succession of critters, including a fly, a spider, a bird, a cat, a dog, a goat, and, finally, a horse. Collins' performance of "Send in the Clowns" is less successful, beautifully sung, but marred by an incongruous group of dancing clowns. John's show is practically a concert as he performs "Crocodile Rock" with a chorus of crocodiles, "Bennie and the Jets" with Scooter, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" in concert with the Muppet band, and "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" as a duet with Miss Piggy. Morgan performs a memorable version of "Tweedle-De-Dee" dressed in a costume that appears to have been stolen from The Bugaloos' Benita Bizarre. Clark's "The Boy from Ipanema" features a gigantic Muppet character. Brewer is also game, singing "Music! Music! Music!" atop a giant jukebox (or make that nickelodeon) and "Spinning Wheel" while being pushed on a swing by Sweetums.
Several of Broadway's biggest female stars-Nancy Walker, Madeline Kahn, Bernadette Peters, and Julie Andrews-are also hits on The Muppet Show. Walker stars in a funny skit about a café patron who encounters a glass- and scarf-eating monster and performs a funny slapstick song-and-dance version of "You Can't Take That Away From Me" with Sweetums. Kahn-so funny and wacky she should have been named an honorary Muppet-sings a foot fetish song, uses her wits to defeat a monster in a park (proclaiming, "Sometimes you have to talk your troubles down to where you can handle them"), and fights off Gonzo's advances. Peters also performs a song-and-dance number with a group of monsters (an oddly recurring theme this season pairs female performers with monsters) and sings a touching version of "Just One Person" from the musical Snoopy!! to Kermit's nephew, Robin. Andrews sings a cute version of goatherd song from The Sound of Music, a song about whistling in the face of fear (yet another number with a female guest menaced by monsters), and one of her own compositions, "When You Were a Tadpole."
Not all of the guests are winners. Zero Mostel lives up to his name in a performance that is closer to boiled ham than Broadway. Impressionist Rich Little makes very little impression. He isn't very funny, doesn't particularly sound like most of the celebrities he is aping, and his tribute to musical comedies is only half good. Episodes with Dom DeLuise, Steve Martin, Cleo Laine, and John Cleese are also disappointing to various degrees.
While season two is not as strong as the series' first, overall The Muppet Show is still zany, goofy, and sometimes sentimental fun. How about a group of chickens clucking along to "Baby Face"? A wistful "Time in a Bottle" sung by an elderly scientist? Kermit tap dancing to "Happy Feet" while never once showing his feet? Gonzo auditioning dancing chickens-actual chickens? A bird symphony that eventually has its revenge on a bird owner? Gonzo performing Shakespeare while hanging eight feet off the floor by his nose from a feather boa? Wild ideas like these-along with recurring sketches like "Pigs In Space," "At the Dance," "Muppet News Flash," "Muppet Labs," the Swedish Chef, and Sam the Eagle's rants-mean that each episode still provides laughs.
The twenty-four episodes that make up season two are divided onto four discs. Each disc is imprinted with a portrait of one of the Muppet gang-Piggy on disc one, Kermit on disc two, Beaker on disc three, and Animal on disc four. The discs are housed in a foldout case that features photos of the Muppets on the exterior panels and a detail of a purple show curtain on the interior panels. The four discs attach to two panels - each panel holds two discs (one on top of the other) in a figure eight pattern. The back panel lists the guest stars for each of season two's episodes. The case slides into a cardboard sleeve, the front of which is decorated with a flocked close-up of Miss Piggy's face. Apart from the fact that the disc configuration forces viewers to remove one DVD to get to another, the packaging is clever and well-designed.
The DVD menus-which feature full-motion clips of various Muppet characters-are simple and easy to navigate. Viewers can play all episodes or choose them individually. The episodes are divided into chapters, but there are no scene selection menus.
