minor muppetz said:
What do you mean that Jim Henson didn't care about the main five fraggles?
I mean, he
didn't: The show as we know it was Jerry Juhl's baby from the beginning, and once it got rolling, Jim essentially let Juhl mind the baby, while he went off to create the Creature Shop's future with "Labyrinth".
Jim's original idea for "The International Show" was, quote, "Let's do a show about world peace".
And as far as Jim was concerned, that was as far as it went--An Educationally Allegorized Message, and the occasional cute song. (The fact that the first, and for a while, only, video ever put out was the bafflingly no-story-context "Fraggle Songs" was a pretty clear indicator of what the upper echelon of HA thought people tuned in the show for...Followed, of course, by the equally out-of-story-context "Doozer Music", since somebody--we're not sure
who--was apparently stubborn about insisting they get "equal time".)
This was around the period just before Jim was being wooed away by Creature Shop animatronics, and even starting to trivialize and second-class their foam-puppet work as "kiddie stuff".
And it was becoming pretty clear what Jim liked best about the show--After a couple episodes with the Five (and basically treating the Five as their on-paper character-sketches), Jim pretty much only directed all-Doozer episodes, and stopped by for the occasional guest character...But go back and look at some of the interviews Jim did to promote the show before it went on the air, and you can see which of the creatures was already starting to get a little more screentime when the boss was around.
Happened to hear Juhl at an appearance, though, and yes, he was the one putting enthusiasm into building up the Rock portion of the universe--
In fact, most of the Five's cute off-character quirks--Red's fantasy novels, Mokey's new-age rituals, Lanford--usually came out of Juhl scripts.