dragonfire88's Full Review: Muppet Show - Season 3
I grew up watching Sesame Street and The Muppet Show as well as all of the Muppet movies. I still love the Muppets and keep hoping they will turn up in new movies. Once television shows started to be released on DVD, I kept hoping that The Muppet Show would be released in that format. I quickly grabbed up The Muppet Show - Season One and The Muppet Show - Season 2 when they finally were released. I just finished watching the episodes in The Muppet Show - Season 3.
The Muppet Show aired from 1976 to 1982. Some of the characters had first appeared on other shows or commercials. Several of the characters also appeared in The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper during those years. More movies were made after the series ended, though The Muppets Take Manhattan was the last of the movies to feature Jim Henson’s involvement because of his untimely death.
The Muppet Show was a variety show with a regular cast that were puppets. Kermit the Frog hosted the show and tried to keep things running. Most of the cast would perform numbers, with some of them being featured more than others. Every so often the audience, who was made up of puppets, would be shown. There were a few Muppets who were really only shown backstage somewhere who didn’t take part in any of the numbers. Every episode had a different human guest star who would perform with the Muppets. I didn’t know who many of the guests were in the first season and I knew who most of them were for the second. With the third season, I had at least heard of most of them, so there were only a couple that I didn’t know who they were. I still have no clue who Elke Sommers is, but I still enjoyed her episode. Children probably won’t know who most of the guest stars are, but I think the shows can still be enjoyed.
Each episode of The Muppet Show was a different variety show that the Muppets were putting on. Usually at least one thing would go wrong during the shows, which would cause Kermit to panic at least a little bit. The different guest stars would take part in scenes, including at least one musical number with some of them doing a few. Every show also had scenes that took place backstage. Those scenes showed the insanity going on behind the scenes and how Kermit was trying to keep things running smoothly. Dressing rooms and the cafeteria were included in some of the backstage scenes. During most of the episodes, there were props shown that were someone connected to certain scenes or the theme of the show in question.
I thought that the episodes from the third season of The Muppet Show were very entertaining. I enjoyed every episode, even the ones that featured guest stars that I didn’t know. I will admit that I was very surprised when I saw that Alice Cooper was one of the guest stars. He just didn’t seem like the type of performer who would be interested in The Muppet Show. His episode was very entertaining and one of my favorites from the third season. He worked very well with the puppets and didn’t seem out of place at all. There was a bit of a spooky feel to his episode that worked very well. For Lynn Redgrave’s episode, she and the Muppets did a version of Robin Hood that took up the entire show. There had been a few other theme shows, but none quite like that one. I think it worked well.
The Muppet Show continued to have the same type of silly humor in the third season that had been used in the first two seasons. Some people might find the humor too silly, but I think it worked perfectly. I thought every episode was funny and I was always laughing at something. All of the characters said and did things that made me laugh. There were running jokes during some of the episodes like in the one featuring Roger Miller - I’m still not sure who he is either. Throughout the show, different characters were turning into chickens while Kermit was freaking out and trying to keep Miller from finding out what was going on. For Loretta Lynn’s episode, they couldn’t use the theater and they ended up putting it on at the train station. The opening sequence was changed to make it look like it was being done live at the train station and several other funny moments happened because of the setting. Gilda Radner’s episode was very funny, especially how her helping out during Muppet Labs didn’t go well and interfered with her final number on the show.
Music had been important to The Muppet Show since it first started to air and it continued to be important in the third season. There were several musical numbers in each episode. I did recognize some of the songs that were performed while there were also some I don’t remember hearing before. All of the guest stars, even Sylvester Stallone, took part in at least one musical number. With Stallone, he was doing more speaking than singing, but he did sing some lines. However, when he did actually sing, all of the Muppets in the scene with him also started to sing, so his singing was kind of drowned out. I thought that all of the guest stars handled the musical numbers well. I had no idea that Jean Stapleton, Racquel Welsh, or Cheryl Ladd could sing before seeing their episodes. Ladd actually had a very funny duet with Miss Piggy.
The Muppet Show featured several reoccurring sketches like Pigs in Space, Veterinarian’s Hospital, and Muppet Labs. Veterinarian’s Hospital is a bit corny and silly, but I still enjoy it. At the Dance was barely used during the third season and it did seem like Muppet News Flash wasn’t done as often either. The Swedish Chef was back doing his cooking segments, usually with disastrous results. I think that the third season was the first time they started doing a Muppet Sports segment that would feature a reporter at some sort of bizarre sporting event. A sketch that started in the third season was Bear on Patrol. Fozzie was a bumbling police officer and Link Hogthrob was his supervisor. The two ended up in some interesting situations.
The main Muppet characters were well established by the third season and they all looked normal. In the first two seasons, there were still some things slightly off about how a few of the characters looked. I did notice something slightly different about the Swedish Chef during the third season that I don’t remember seeing before. Instead of his hands looking like puppet hands, he had human hands. That was a bit different the first time I noticed it, but it worked for the character. It probably made his attempts at cooking slightly easier.
Kermit was still running the show and trying to keep everything running smoothly while insanity rained around him. Miss Piggy continued to act like a diva. She was also still obsessed with Kermit. She even tried to trick him into getting married at one point through a marriage ceremony as part of the show. Something similar was done in The Muppets Take Manhattan, the third Muppet movie. Fozzie was still messing certain things up. He didn’t do his stand up as often, but when he did, his jokes still weren’t funny. After coming to really enjoy Sam the Eagle in the first two seasons, I was disappointed that he wasn’t around more. He was just so funny with how uptight he was.
Gonzo was finally the crazy chicken loving weirdo that I remembered. His stunts were crazier, like when he hypnotized himself. He wasn’t showing any interest in Miss Piggy anymore. Instead, his attention had shifted to Camilla the chicken and their relationship really got going. They even had their first date during the episode with Elke Sommers. Statler and Waldorf were shown in every episode heckling what was going on. They were still very grumpy and funny. Scooter was at least briefly in every episode. Kermit’s nephew Robin was only in a few episodes, so he didn’t have as much to do.
Rowlf played his piano in many of the episodes and he also turned up in some other sketches. It seemed like the members of The Electric Mayhem weren’t around as much in general, though Animal turned up fairly often. Link started to turn up in a few other sketches and he even got to perform with a few of the guest stars for a change. Beaker continued to get hurt by Dr. Bunsen Honeydew’s experiments. Some other characters like Crazy Harry and Lew Zealand weren’t around as often. There were also a few new characters added to the cast. Annie Sue was a young pig who seemed to be a bit of competition for Miss Piggy. Beauregard was the somewhat slow janitor. He tended to just be seen in the backstage scenes.
The third season of The Muppet Show included the same main group of people performing the puppets. Jim Henson and Frank Oz are probably the most well known of the Muppet performers. They were responsible for several of the more popular characters. Their characters worked very well together and were responsible for some of the best scenes in the show. They also worked together for the Swedish Chef with Henson providing the voice and working the mouth while Oz did the hands. I’ve read that the two of them did a lot of improvising in the scenes with the Chef. That’s probably why his scenes were so funny.
Henson performed as Kermit, Rowlf, Dr. Teeth, Swedish Chef, Waldorf, Muppet Newsman, and Link Hogthrob. Oz was mainly responsible for Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Animal, and Sam the Eagle in addition to helping with Swedish Chef. He also performed some of the more minor character like Marvin Suggs. Dave Goelz was responsible for Gonzo, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Zoot, and Beauregard. Jerry Nelson performed as Camilla, Sgt. Floyd Pepper, Lew Zealand, Dr. Julius Strangepork, Crazy Harry, Robin, and a few other more minor characters. Richard Hunt did Beaker, Scooter, Sweetums, and Statler. All of them also performed various other puppets who weren’t main characters. I can usually tell when Henson or Oz is doing one of the other characters because I recognize their voices. Steve Whitmire, the man who took over Kermit after Henson’s death, was part of the cast for the third season as well. At this point, it seemed like it was just doing some smaller characters. I did recognize the voice he would use for Rizzo the Rat coming from a penguin in one episode and another random puppet in another episode. I think that Annie Sue was the only reoccurring character that Louise Gold performed.
Guest Stars in Order of Appearance Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge ~ Leo Sayer ~ Roy Clark ~ Gilda Radner ~ Pearl Bailey ~ Jean Stapleton ~ Alice Cooper ~ Loretta Lynn ~ Liberace ~ Marisa Berenson ~ Raquel Welch ~ James Coco ~ Helen Reddy ~ Harry Belafonte ~ Lesley Ann Warren ~ Danny Kaye ~ Spike Milligan ~ Leslie Uggams ~ Elke Sommers ~ Sylvester Stallone ~ Roger Miller ~ Roy Rogers & Dale Evans ~ Lynn Redgrave ~ Cheryl Ladd ~
DVD Information
The Muppet Show - Season 3 was released on a four disc DVD set that contains twenty-four episodes. The case is the same type that was used for the first two seasons that I hate. The case opens up like a book and has two discs, one slightly above and behind the other, on each panel. I really don’t like cases like this since one disc has to be removed to get to the second disc on each panel. Each disc had a slightly different clip featuring Kermit and Miss Piggy that would play on the main menu option. If a selection wasn’t made fast enough, another clip would play. Some of them, like when Kermit talked about how young Miss Piggy looked in the episodes and her reaction to that, were funny. There was the option to play all the episodes on the disc or go to another screen where they could be selected to play one at a time.
There were three extras on the fourth disc. Muppets on Puppets was filmed in the late 1960s and aired in 1970. There was some information about the filming of the show shared before it was shown, and I think it said it was shown on some PBS stations. Jim Henson, Frank Oz, and either Jerry Nelson or Richard Hunt were involved in the show. It mostly featured Henson talking about puppets. Rowlf was featured a lot as well. Different types of puppets were shown and the men put on a short sketch. A little bit of how they worked with the puppets was shown as well and I found that part to be very interesting. The footage was in black and white and some of the audio was missing. There was a message at the beginning talking about how the audio on the original had been damaged and would cut out at times.
A Company of Players featured different people involved with The Muppet Show talking about working on the show and working with Henson. Some people who designed puppets as well as some of the Muppet performers were shown talking. There were short clips from different episodes shown as well as some of the backstage stuff showing the people working the puppets. It was mentioned how a few characters developed and evolved, like Miss Piggy. There were some pig puppets made and one of them had a blonde wig it and Oz grabbed it and started creating the character. She was just identified as a chorus girl the first time she appeared, but she quickly became more popular. It was also talked about how Oz came up with her famous karate chop after he couldn’t get it to look right when she was supposed to slap Kermit. Just about everyone who was shown talked about Oz and Henson working together so well, so I was disappointed that Oz wasn’t featured. Some of the Purina dog food commercials that Rowlf had done before The Muppet Show were also included.
The first season DVD set had something called Muppet Morsels that when selected would have little bits of trivia popping up during the episodes. I really enjoyed that feature and learned some interesting things about the characters and show from it, so I was disappointed when it wasn’t brought back for The Muppet Show - Season 3. It wasn’t used on the second season DVD set either. I did enjoy the extras that were included, but it would have been nice if there had been more, like possibly old interviews with Jim Henson or more with the other performers.
I grabbed up The Muppet Show - Season 3 as soon as it was released. I loved the show as a child and I still enjoy the episodes now. This is a great DVD set even though I don’t care for the case. I think the set is a must own for fans of The Muppet Show.
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