Probably wasn't a conscious decision, but last night I realized that it was rare for recurring characters performed by Frank Oz and Richard Hunt to appear together. Aside from them both performing members of the Twiddlebugs family, none of their characters were regular/semi-regular pairings. Of course there were a lot of sketches they both performed in, as one-time Anything Muppets/monsters, or maybe one of them did a recurring character while the other did not.
It is weird. Of course during the 1970s Richard Hunt didn't really have that many recurring characters, but I assume both Oz and Hunt were on set at the same frequency. In season 13, Richard Hunt started performing on a more full time basis, a few years before Oz's directorial career led to him performing less, but I think Hunt was on the set regularly enough that he could have been on the set during the dates when Oz was able to make it.
In terms of their regular characters appearing together, we got...:
- Grover interacting with Sully in the three-part segment where Grover wants to glorify the number 2.
- Sully being among the marching band Ernie brings into the apartment, Bert briefly acknowledges Sully by name, if that counts.
- Grover and Don Music appear together in an American Revolution sketch.
- Cookie Monster helps the Two-Headed Monster pick a vacation destination.
- As I said before, multiple Twiddlebugs segments, with both performers getting a character.
And I think that's it. I wonder if they just never thought to have their characters appear together or if they wouldn't have much chemistry (I doubt it, though) or something else. I'm pretty sure Hunt and Oz didn't have any issues with each other, their Muppet Show characters often interacted and Oz often talks fondly of Hunt (and he said in his MuppetCast interview that when Hunt was near death he would visit him every day).
I can't remember if I've mentioned this here before or not, but as a matter of fact, it seems like Frank Oz also rarely performed his characters alongside the newer Muppet performers of the 1980s, at least not until the 1990s. Seems like his characters started to interact with Elmo in season 20, and in the 1990s his characters have had a bit more interaction with characters like Telly. During the 1980s it was often awesome when Jim Henson performed alongside the newer performers, and it seemed especially special if one of his recurring characters appeared alongside a recurring character of Kevin Clash, Martin Robinson, Brian Meehl, and others (it also seemed special when they would appear alongside Richard Hunt's newer characters like Forgetful Jones and Placedo Flamingo). It's a shame Oz's characters didn't appear with them as often.
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