The Jim Henson Hour Appreciation Thread

[minor muppetz]

The Jim Henson Hour premiered on this day back in 1989. So to honor the 25th anniversary, Toughpigs is starting an article series reviewing each episode. I hope they complete it.

http://www.toughpigs.com/my-weeks-with-the-jim-henson-hour-part-1/

 

[Drtooth]

That first episode where they were trying to jumpstart Digit after being overloaded with alien TV signals never failed to get me to laugh.

From the "Ker-er-er-errrrmet..." to the "Today's show is brought to you by the letter Friday, Joe Friday with more precipitation Saturday Morning... and you are NO Jack Kennedy!" There was just so much going on, all slightly connected... it was a chaotic mess and I loved it. There's something very special with the Muppet Central segments of the show that I feel worked better than the original Muppet Show did. Too bad it lasted as short as it did.

 

[minor muppetz]

Lately, I've been wondering if InnerTube actually is the official pilot for the show. It's similar to the MuppeTelevision segments (mainly due to the same basic set and heavy uses of new technology), though the concept was soon replaced with Lead-Free TV (which definitely was going to be part of the show), but Jim Henson: The Biography seems to talk about this pilot as if it was meant to be its own show, before the idea for The Jim Henson Hour came up. Jim Henson: The Works also briefly mentions InnerTube, but from what I remember it was not in the section on The Jim Henson Hour.

I used to think that InnerTube and the pitch reel were both part of the same thing, similar to how the show ended up being broken into two half-hours (and with that in mind I thought it was odd that Jim's pitch reel mentioned each week being a full hour as opposed to the two half-hours it would become). I think that was due to looking at tape trading listings and seeing them both grouped together (were they both on the same master tape? Did one fan happen to have them both on one tape and therefore included them both in tape trades?). But then again, a clip from InnerTube is shown in a Jim Henson Hour montage in The World of Jim Henson, and that big guide for the 2004 Muppet sale to Disney (which was posted on a blog last year) includes a section of Henson's registered trademarks Disney was getting, grouped by projects, and various InnerTube characters were listed under "Jim Henson Hour" (as opposed to InnerTube).

And you know what? I don't think Jim's red book site has had anything on InnerTube yet.

 

[fozzieisfunny]

Someone's going to confuse me with Constantine ( since I am being evil right now) but in TJHH, I did not like The Storyteller parts. Muppet Central was awesome and everything else, but I just didn't like The Storyteller. Also, does anybody know if this was the only Muppet TV show that had Jim Henson in it? ( not Jim, of the country trio Jim, Frank, and Jerry)

Up there, I put the first episode of TJHH

​

 

[minor muppetz]

I've read some toughpigs posts that point out the long, awkward pauses Louie Anderson does when he's on the monitors interacting with the Muppets, and it got me thinking... The first two guests are really the only guests to do a lot of interacting via monitors (though Ted Danson less than Anderson). Buster Poindexter and Smokey Robinson also interact with characters from their monitors, but not to the extent of Danson and Anderson. I don't know why they had to have Louie Anderson on a monitor for so many backstage scenes (though it does allow him to give many one-liners that I can't tell whether they're funny or poor attempts at humor... but many of those lines could have been given to Muppet characters).

If I only knew the broadcast order, I'd think it was an early concept they quickly dropped, but by production order they are among the last ones, so maybe they decided to have the guests more involved in the backstage stuff later on. Of course, most of the first few and last few MuppeTelevision episodes are more-or-less reversed from production-to-broadcast.

It seems like the guest stars could only interact with the Muppets in control room scenes by appearing on monitors. I'm guessing because of the blue-screen, but why should blue-screen have prevented them from being there? Guest stars have appeared with the Muppets on so many real, raised sets. I would think it'd be easier to put them on the blue screen sets. In The Secrets of the Muppets it seems the performers were standing straight up instead of on their knees, but they still could have put the performers on raised platforms.

And I wonder about one of Louie Anderson's lines, when Lindbergh is working on Digit and says he's an expert on repair and plumbing, Anderson says "if he dies, will you look at my sink". At first I thought it meant that if Digit died he'd have more time to look at a sink, but is he trying to ask Lindbergh to destroy his sink?

 

[LouisTheOtter]

I didn't get NBC at the time the show aired, and Canada's national broadcaster (CBC) ran the episodes somewhat out-of-order and on a sporadic schedule - a couple of them (including "Secrets of the Muppets" and "Dog City") actually aired after Jim's death in the spring of 1990, giving them a very wistful feel from my end.

I liked what I saw of The Jim Henson Hour. I didn't always connect with the material but I was just happy to see so many of my favourite Muppets on TV in the late '80s. I don't think I groused about certain characters not being there - I was just happy to see Kermit in charge, Gonzo running wild again, and others like Fozzie, Piggy, Rowlf and Link popping up in small doses. Digit and Bean Bunny struck me as fun characters, too.

It's disappointing that it didn't really fly. I was heartbroken to read the section of Jim Henson: The Biography that talked of the low ratings and critical savaging Jim took for this one. I thought it was a great representation of both the Muppets' approach to late-'80s pop culture and Jim's creativity in general, but as we've recently seen with MMW's box office returns, that doesn't always translate into a warm response from the general public.

"Dog City" will always be my favourite episode. Partly because it was just so funny and well-written, and partly because a longtime friend of mine from western Canada watched it with me and also loved it when she came to visit me in the summer of 1990. We could still crack each other up years later just by saying things like "Dun dun dun dun" and "Oh, he WILL all right!" "But what if he DOESN'T?" She passed away last October (claimed by pancreatic cancer) and I'll always think of her whenever I watch "Dog City" in any form.

"Secrets of the Muppets" is wonderful, too, especially the scenes with Gonzo trying to shake the phone off his hand (wonderfully replicated in The Simpsons' Muppet Christmas parody in 2010) and the shocked reaction by the rest of the Muppets to Kermit's "reveal" of the people underneath. I saw that a few weeks after Jim's death and was thrilled, moved and heartbroken all at the same time. I really should watch that again on YouTube sometime.

Other favourites: "The Ratings Game," "Miss Piggy's Hollywood" (especially the scene where she's battling Justine Bateman by the pool), and Fozzie's attempt to become a weatherman. Somehow the thought of Willard Scott tearing through the weather map to get at Fozzie just makes me smile.

And...a strange case of Six Degrees of Separation - Mrs. Otter thinks she knows one of the people who worked on "Lighthouse Island," which was shot in my Canadian province of Nova Scotia. She told me that one of her workplace rivals (a marine biologist in the Nova Scotia capital of Halifax) was a stunt double for the mermaid in that story. I'd love to connect the dots on that one but for now I'm just tickled to think that all happened pretty much in my backyard.

 

[rowlfy662]

If your wanting to watch secret of the muppets again fear not some great man has re-uploaded it to youtube and its just as great as I remember it. I suggest downloading it while you can.

 

[minor muppetz]

I think Nickelodeon moved around the commercial breaks for The Secrets of the Muppets, though it's hard to know for sure since it didn't air during the shows original run (I wonder if The Odyssey Channel had the same breaks and fade-ins as Nick). The original airing probably would have had a fade-in after Gonzo admits one of his secrets (as that's where the first commercial break would have occurred on NBC), but then I noticed something that must have been an added commercial break: After the Song of the Cloud Forest sequence, it goes to commercial, then we see a few seconds of the cloud forest for no apparent reason as it transitions back to Jim and Jojo and Jojo starts talking during the transition, which I guess would be hard to cut out completely if they needed a commercial break there.

 

[minor muppetz]

One of the recent reviews at Tough Pigs mentions that it seemed like a bad decision to have the first half hour to focus on the Muppets and be so energetic, only to then be followed by the more serious StoryTeller. I wonder if the show would have done better if The StoryTeller came first and then MuppeTelevision followed. Would people better digest a serious half-hour followed by lots of music and comedy?

Though I feel it makes more sense for MuppeTelevision to be the first half-hour. The Muppets are what Jim Henson was best-known for and should have gone first, and with the format of MuppeTelevision, it's like Kermit chose shorter programs for the first half-hour and then an entire half-hour show to close it all out.

Although it would most likely mean more material that'd be more unlikely to ever get an official release (I know, Disney hasn't given MuppeTelevision an official release, outside of those Canadian reruns), I often feel like maybe the second half-hours should have had a brief skit with the Muppets at Muppet Central, giving their opinions on the second half-hour (perhaps following the second half-hours commercial break). And it is interesting how the first half-hour always refers to the closing numbers as closing numbers, when there's another half-hour to sit through (I guess they did that in case the first half hours were ever shown on their own, or in case viewers changed the channels after the Muppets ended). Considering this and how energetic most of the half-hours were,I feel like maybe the first half-hours should NOT have had a closing number (or at least not announce the closing numbers), then have the second half-hour, and then save some time for a big two-minute closing number after the second half-hour, focusing on the Muppets.

 

[minor muppetz]

Is it just me, or do the opening numbers rarely feel like opening numbers? Compared to The Muppet Show and even Muppet's Tonight, the opening numbers feel like they come in a little late to be opening numbers.

Of course, on The Muppet Show, episodes rarely began backstage (after the opening). They began straight with Kermit on-stage to introduce the show and then we got the opening number (though in the third season it seems like a lot of opening introductions lasted a little longer than usual).

And since The Jim Henson Hour had Kermit introducing all acts from the control room instead of on-stage, each episode began in the control room, with a little bit of the plot already starting before the opening episode (though The Muppet Show sometimes had its plot begin in the cold open or the introduction). But we get at least three control room scenes before the opening numbers (the cold open, the scene after Jim's intros, and the scene following the first commercial break).

Maybe I should look at the Muppet Wiki rundowns, or watch them all again (though currently I don't think all of them are on YouTube... It seems like they often are and then are not and then come back to YouTube again). Though it does feel like the opening numbers in Videotape and Food start rather quickly (and with Food, would you call The Food Chain Song the opening number, or the impromptu singing of the band backstage as the opening number?).