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Gorgon Heap
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- Apr 15, 2002
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I liked Wayne & Wanda. I wouldn't say I think of Wanda the way Byron thinks of Janice and Mokey, but I will agree with Warrick that she wasn't a bad-looking puppet like so many people say. Love the hair.
Wanda's voice was perfectly awful, and Wayne's was perfectly hammy. It was their send-up of Louis B. Mayer's favorites Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy (what would Louis have done if he had seen this show, I wonder?)
The way their acts worked put a definite limit on them as charactes. What would've helped was incorporating them into the backstage drama, thus fleshing them out as characters. Of course, part of the problem with that is that they were, like Sam, in the wrong place. They didn't fit in with the nuts in that theater and their purpose was to do morally unobjectionable acts that proved to be at odds with the style the show and its performers had. Had they been fleshed out as characters, they would surely have been antagonists and may have resorted to trying to undermine Kermit (a la Frank Burns and Hot Lips Houlihan on M*A*S*H- uh-oh! I hope Maynard didn't see that!
)
It's also a pity that while they gave Wayne the chance to play to his nature in Season Three with the melodramas- he was undoubtedly conceived as the melodrama hero type in the beginning- they didn't do the same with Wanda, who was obviously created in the innocent, weak, fragile, victimized melodrama heroine mold (Uncle Deadly tying her to the railroad tracks like he did Piggy or threatening to feed her to crocodiles would look as natural for the character as anything.) Of course, Wayne always seemed to have more character, except of course in such moments as Wanda's reaction to Wayne being eaten in "Some Enchanted Evening" and to Wayne's leaving her to pursue a rival during "I'll Know" the following week.
Last year I had the idea of doing a "Behind the Muppets" backstory on Wayne & Wanda, from their conservatory days to the glory days of The Muppet Show, Wayne's extramarital dalliances and affairs and the never-ending earthquake that was life with Wanda, to the end of their career on TMS to their eventual divorce. Maybe this summer I'll write it for y'all.
David "Gorgon Heap" Ebersole
Wanda's voice was perfectly awful, and Wayne's was perfectly hammy. It was their send-up of Louis B. Mayer's favorites Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy (what would Louis have done if he had seen this show, I wonder?)
The way their acts worked put a definite limit on them as charactes. What would've helped was incorporating them into the backstage drama, thus fleshing them out as characters. Of course, part of the problem with that is that they were, like Sam, in the wrong place. They didn't fit in with the nuts in that theater and their purpose was to do morally unobjectionable acts that proved to be at odds with the style the show and its performers had. Had they been fleshed out as characters, they would surely have been antagonists and may have resorted to trying to undermine Kermit (a la Frank Burns and Hot Lips Houlihan on M*A*S*H- uh-oh! I hope Maynard didn't see that!
)It's also a pity that while they gave Wayne the chance to play to his nature in Season Three with the melodramas- he was undoubtedly conceived as the melodrama hero type in the beginning- they didn't do the same with Wanda, who was obviously created in the innocent, weak, fragile, victimized melodrama heroine mold (Uncle Deadly tying her to the railroad tracks like he did Piggy or threatening to feed her to crocodiles would look as natural for the character as anything.) Of course, Wayne always seemed to have more character, except of course in such moments as Wanda's reaction to Wayne being eaten in "Some Enchanted Evening" and to Wayne's leaving her to pursue a rival during "I'll Know" the following week.
Last year I had the idea of doing a "Behind the Muppets" backstory on Wayne & Wanda, from their conservatory days to the glory days of The Muppet Show, Wayne's extramarital dalliances and affairs and the never-ending earthquake that was life with Wanda, to the end of their career on TMS to their eventual divorce. Maybe this summer I'll write it for y'all.
David "Gorgon Heap" Ebersole
