Useless (but still interesting) Muppet trivia!

[muppet maniac]

I am sorry but I am going to start this again. The Muppet Show was not a Children's Show. It was a Show that kids had a certain attraction to. With alot of the humor on the Muppet Show, it was not and can not be classified as a Children's Show.

True. Plus, he originally wanted to do it for adults, but then decided to do it for family audiences. Also remember that there had been some adult things on the show: the song Peter Sellers sings and beats the drum to about smoking, drinking and women; countless explosions and Muppets getting eaten by monsters---you wouldn't see that type of thing on Sesame Street now wouldn't you?

Remember in the pitch film made to sell the series, Leo states that "adults will enjoy the humor and children will enjoy the colorful characters"

Even the commercials the Muppets made in the sixties had a lot of adult humor(well, not all of them, but most of them did, like the ads for Wilkins coffee).

 

[MartyMuppets]

I used to think that if Jim had been alive to work on Muppets Tonight he would not have approved of all the adult oriented jokes included in it. Now having read this I'm no longer so sure.

 

[minor muppetz]

When I first saw the Leslie Uggams episode, I didn't realise that Gonzo had fallen for Big Bird. I didn't realise this untill many years later.

 

[CensoredAlso]

I used to think that if Jim had been alive to work on Muppets Tonight he would not have approved of all the adult oriented jokes included in it. Now having read this I'm no longer so sure.

Jim obviously approved of adult-oriented humor. But there is a difference between subtle, witty and well-written adult humor and...um...not so well-written adult humor. I think the difference is pretty clear when comparing classic Muppet projects to more recent ones.

 

[minor muppetz]

Another interesting piece of trivia that seems both useless and useful: unofficial sources seem to be more accurate than official ones. Of course, unofficial sources are sometimes wrong as well, especially if some official source (or sources) was wrong and the fans believed it.

 

[Ruahnna]

Humor

I used to think that if Jim had been alive to work on Muppets Tonight he would not have approved of all the adult oriented jokes included in it. Now having read this I'm no longer so sure.

I would have to say, Marty, that Jim was not offended "per se" by grown-up humor. (I always object to calling peruile sesxual humor "adult humor," and prefer to call more sophisticated humor grown-up humor.) In TMM, Kermit and Piggy share an obviously romantic dinner and drink champagne (albeit with straws)--not the sort of thing that children are into, typically, but dead-on for romantically aspiring teen-age girls--I know because I was one when the movie came out, and that part of it positively slayed me. Also, after Piggy abandons their romantic date, Kermit goes into a bar and orders a grasshopper (funny, and grown-up). Rowlf mentions drinking beer. Kermit and Rowlf proceed to complain about women in a very grown-up way, and one of the lines is "the little feet of tadpoles," implying a lot more than smooching.

Also--and I have to say this because the scene is soooo masterfully done, but when Piggy is singing "Never Before," she is imagining herself and Kermit in a number of romantic settings. In one scene, while embracing, they slip below the viewers sight, fading to black, as it were. But--instead of leaving it at that, we see Kermit reappear, and on his face is wonder, bafflement, uncertainty, until a lavender-gloved hand reaches up to pull him gently back down! Stop now--go watch the scene! It will make you want to go snuggle your honey if you've got a working hormone in your bod. Lovely stuff--and still very chaste. How often on modern television do I wish they did love scenes so tastefully.

Jim wasn't above using Lew Zealand, whose "Just for the Halibut" was not a joke you'd see on Sesame Street.

All this to say that, IMHO, Jim treated the muppet characters like "real people"--some, like Grover, were children, and treated as such, but no one would mistake Piggy, for example, for anything other than a full-grown woman with all that that implies. Although she rebuffs the Kermit-robot's suggestive comments in the first season(which we, thankfully,don't hear), she wants to do more than hold Kermit's hand in the moonlight, and viewers knew it. Still, she was no tart, and her motives--while obvious--were honorable. So, Jim realized it was possible to appeal to the grown-up part of every audience without being overtly child-like or overtly coarse.

Ahh--now I'm nostalgic.

 

[MartyMuppets]

Very true Catherine. (That is your real name isn't it?) And actually the Liza Minnelli episode is perhaps the most adult episode with a murder mystery play as the plot.

But still as you said the whole series is very tastefully done to be appropriate for family audiences.

 

[Barry Lee]

Well let me talk about two different things since that's what seemed to have happened in this thread.

Frist off, Gonzo being bisexual, ok you're talking about a character that falls for chickens most of the time. Other than Miss. Piggy and a few other guests. Plus to be honset, with the whole having a crush on Big Brid thing, I would be more worried about the fact that Big Brid is suppoesed to be a little boy about six or so over him being a male . But let's not read into that much into the whole thing, it was just a little joke on that episode of the Muppet Show.

Now back to the useless trivia thing. When Kermit was frist made, he wasn't thought of as a frog at all, he was known as a Lizard like creature.

Actually Kermit along with all the other muppets in "Sam & Friends" were just abstract creatures but Kermit did have a semi-likeness of a lizard.

 

[Dragon]

now his name will be Gayzo

 

[Beakerfan]

I used to think that if Jim had been alive to work on Muppets Tonight he would not have approved of all the adult oriented jokes included in it. Now having read this I'm no longer so sure.

I think that Jim possibly would not have approved, because The Muppets Tonight was aired on a televion station geared for children rather than family or adults. Then again, if Jim was around to approve or disapprove, the show would have done much better and most likely been aired on a station like ABC or CBS.