The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence (1975)

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the end of sex and violence on television!

Who doesn't love The Muppet Show? Debuted in 1976, ran in prime time syndication, five seasons, 120 episodes, survived the downfall of the variety show craze, celebrated as one of the greatest televisual achievements of the modern era, spun off a number of movies and specials and series and everything.

Don't deny it. You watched it as a kid and/or when it first came out and you loved it. A lot of you could probably name your favorite episodes off the top of your head Vincent Price Elton John Gilda Radner Carol Burnett John Cleese Alice Cooper.

But as with all television programs great and small, they have to start somewhere. Usually with a pilot.

Sex and Violence was one of TWO pilots for The Muppet Show, the other one being The Muppet Valentine Special one year earlier. While the Valentine Special had Mia Farrow as a guest star and contained several musical bits, Sex and Violence has more of an emphasis on comedy and puppet-induced silliness. You might say that the Muppet Show that eventually emerged is a combination of elements from both pilots: the guest stars and songs of the first and the sketch format of the second.

It was first broadcast on March 19, 1975 on ABC and was advertised in TV Guide as "a fun-filled musical comedy special for grown-ups...and kids too!"

...Wait, "kids too"? Well, yeah...even thought the name of the pilot is Sex and Violence, there isn't really any sex in it and not a lot of violence either. It sort of satirizes the proliferation of sex and violence on TV with Jim Henson's trademark Muppet humor. It was actually marketed as more of an adult-oriented Sesame Street, but otherwise it's pretty tame content-wise and is for the most part safe for family viewing.

The special begins with an announcement of "the end of sex and violence on television"...followed by Crazy Harry blowing up the words SEX AND VIOLENCE carved in stone.

Okay, maybe the end of SEX on television, but I don't think violence will go quietly.

After the title sequence, we begin in the conference room, and already we're seeing some familiar faces. Our host is a lizard-type Muppet named Nigel (whom die-hard fans may recognize as the conductor of the Muppet Theater orchestra), and music man Floyd Pepper and Sam the Eagle are there as well. Animal is barely visible when the camera pans over to him growling through a barred window in one corner of the room. Nigel, Sam and company are getting ready for the "Seven Deadly Sins Pageant", where all seven deadly sins compete for...which of them is the deadliest sin, I guess. Actually, when I say "getting ready", I really mean they're just playing board games while the Deadly Sin Muppets come in one by one and are shown to their dressing rooms.

FYI, for Muppet n00bs, Nigel's the one on the left.

From this point on the special can be broken up into a number of scenes cut up into segments and spliced together in random order resulting in a series of jump cuts. Such bits include:

The presidents of Mount Rushmore exchange jokes, all of which go over George Washington's head...no pun intended. ("Roosevelt nice but Gladys felt nicer!")

A foreign cooking show strangely titled "Railroad Crossing" features the Swedish Chef showing us how to make a foot-long submarine sandwich. His list of ingredients grows a little odd as he adds a napkin, a rubber chicken, a glove, a 7-inch vinyl record, and even puts a candle on top. At the end of his last segment, the sandwich grows wings and flies away only to disintegrate when the Chef tries to shoot it down with his "bloomerspoot."

It's worth noting that this is the Chef's only appearance in Muppet canon where they actually give us subtitles. Subtitles in Chinese and printed backwards, but subtitles nonetheless.

A wrestling match is taking place between two long-limbed wrestlers named The San Francisco Earthquake and The Homicidal Maniac. Pay attention to the crowd in the background and you'll notice some more old (new?) friends--Rowlf, George the Janitor, several members of the Electric Mayhem, Kermit in his "Sesame Street News" jacket...

Speaking of the Mayhem, Floyd is called on stage, where Dr. Teeth and the group--they're all there, including Animal at the drums--perform a rather violent love song titled "Love Ya to Death", the instrumental of which is the opening and closing song of the show.

Why if it isn't our old heckler friends Statler and Waldorf! And they're...just sitting there. Talking to each other. Not really doing much of anything. They're just sitting there talking while the grandfather clock ticks in the background. Kinda dull, if you ask me. A major departure from the wily old coots in the theater box we know and love.

Lloyd introduces our next act as strictly "for the birds" and plays some bass music to accompany the scene. Here we have a trio of male birds roosting on a tree branch and chirping in English phrases ("Whaddya say?" "Oh boy!" "For cryin' out loud!") They meet some nice lady birds on the branch of an adjacent tree who also chirp in English ("Oh, really!" "You know!") whom they totally fail to get off with - they both fly off with a gatecrasher ("Right on right on! Right on right on!")

In a rather abstract bit, two feathery compost pile monsters hit each other with clubs, and then take out their further aggression on two long-nosed creatures who talk gibberish.

Throughout all this we cut to one of many "At the Dance" segments like they had--or WOULD have in The Muppet Show, where dancers tell jokes with their partners. Only in this special the jokes are more like one-liners. At one point Kermit the Frog makes a cameo, offering his dance partner a job in "an educational show for kids."

Hey, it's Bert! I wonder who he's dancing with...

...NO!! NO!! I WILL NOT MAKE A GAY JOKE!! I AM ABOVE THAT SORT OF HUMOR!!

A Gene Shalit Muppet gives a review of the newest installment of the popular science fiction franchise, "Return to Beneath the Planet of the Pigs", which takes place on a planet where pigs evolve from men or however that works. A Charlton Heston Muppet is rounded up with the other remnants of humanity and is about to be experimented upon by mad scientist Dr. Nauga, who looks and sounds like a lot like Dr. Strangepork from "Pigs in Space". Miss Piggy appears as well, or the beady-eyed Muppet who will look like her once the series is greenlit.

By this time you may notice that characters from certain sketches are appearing in other skits--for instance, Dr. Nauga shows up at the dance, while the two long-nosed creatures are watching the wrestling match. You might have also noticed that every time we cut back to the conference room they change some things up in the background--look for a picture of Big Bird in one segment.

We finally get to the Seven Deadly Sins Pageant. The tension builds as our host Nigel is about to announce the winner, but sadly they run out of time before the judges can make a decision. The credits roll and the Electric Mayhem, joined  by a Jim Henson-lookalike Muppet on the banjo, play us out while Crazy Harry makes some more explosions. Watch during the end credits as the camera pans backwards slowly to reveal Jim, Frank Oz and all the puppeteers running around on set.

It's always interesting to see a TV series in its pupa stage, when its creators were still figuring out what worked and what didn't. Sex and Violence gives us an early glimpse at pieces of the Muppet Show series that made the cut--Swedish Chef, Dr. Teeth and others--as well as some that didn't (REALLY glad they reworked Statler and Waldorf, because it wouldn't be as fun with them in the balcony the way they are here). It doesn't have as much comic energy as the TV series which it helped birth, and there are some parts that slow the pacing down to a crawl, but overall it has its moments. I found the skits with the birds and the heap monsters very original, and the Electric Mayhem's song was very nice as well. And of course, the Chef is always a crowd-pleaser.

Diehard Jim Henson fans will get a kick out of this. Casual fans who preferred the chickens and eating and explosions I'm not too sure, but they'll find some bits they like from it. So at least everyone will come out happy.

And let's not forget the series WOULD have a bigger budget...

A Muppet Family Christmas (1987)

Well, they certainly seem to be having a good time out there, Sprocket. Yep, I like it when they have a good time. But tell you what, somebody'll have to do something about these dishes, Sprocket. C'mon. I'll wash, you dry, okay?
--for me to know and you to find out

...What?

What are you doing here? I've got people coming over today! It's Christmas!

Oh, right! One more Christmas review! Okay, this will be a quick one:

Some Christmas movies and specials you see all the time every year. Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Charlie Brown, the Grinch, you know the ones.

A Muppet Family Christmas, shockingly, is not one of them and has not been one of them since some time in the 1990s, which is just totally unfair since this is a rare gem in the history of television. You don't see crossovers much on TV, at least without the motive of corporate synergy or when one popular show just happens to pull in some guest stars from one of its spinoffs, or when one of those guest stars just shows up for a brief cameo appearance. And to have as many of your favorite characters from your favorite shows as possible in one hour-long TV special...this is more than just the best Christmas present ever. This is like Christmas, your birthday, and your alma mater's basketball team winning the national championship all at once.

The whole special takes place at Fozzie's mother's farmhouse in the country. And guess who's just about to leave to spend the holidays in Malibu:

And guess whose son is dropping in for a visit, bringing as many of his friends as he can fit in the back of a pickup truck.

And guess who Fozzie's mother has rented the house out to:

For those who didn't grow up in the better part of the 80s, those would be the eccentric inventor Doc (Gerry Parkes) and his Muppet dog Sprocket from the wildly popular Canadian Muppet show Fraggle Rock. They're renting Mama Fozzie's place for the holidays, looking to spend a nice quiet Christmas in the country. Incidentally, this was Doc's first appearance on UK TV when this premiered across the pond, since Sprocket's owner was a lighthouse keeper in the British version.

And it only gets better.

Fozzie, Kermit and all his Muppet Show cohorts arrive much to the surprise of everyone in the house, and from here we get this special's running gag - there's an icy patch on the front porch which no one can avoid slipping on, as everybody comes in single file and slips on it.

During the course of the special, some things happen:

Miss Piggy, to add a bit of tension, gets waylaid with a photo session and some last-minute Christmas shopping en route to the farmhouse, and then gets caught in a blizzard.

Fozzie duets with a snowman, and the two of them form a comedy duo which Statler and Waldorf quickly shoot down.

Everybody watches some home movies of the Muppet Babies (not in cartoon form, but rather in live-action) sing "Santa Claus is Coming To Town".

They had such big imaginations back in the day.

During the proceedings, some carolers drop by--AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

You are looking at the all-felt cast of Sesame Street, circa 1987, before the Great Elmo Takeover. Oscar the Grouch, who refuses to join in on "Deck the Halls", is there as well, in the center of the shot. Guess Bob and Maria and everyone else had their own families to visit. That, and Mr. Hooper had been dead for four years.

The Sesame Street gang put on a pageant, where Ernie reads "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and Bert wears women's pajamas while that two-headed monster whose collective name I cannot remember play Santa Claus riding a sleigh pulled by other monsters.

The Swedish Chef has "invited" a turkey to Christmas dinner who makes every attempt to avoid getting cooked by convincing the Chef that other animals in the house are turkeys, including Sprocket. When he persuades the Chef to cook Big Bird instead, the oversized fowl inadvertently gets himself out of danger with the gift of chocolate covered birdseed. Then they sing a bilingual version of "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" before the Chef makes a last-minute menu change: shredded wheat and cranberry sauce. Big Bird's favorite.

Somewhere in all this, the subplot about Mama Fozzie's trip to Malibu is never mentioned again.

As Kermit still worries about Piggy, Doc, who has taken a liking to his strange new housemates, goes out to look for her, while Robin explores the cellar and shows Kermit an unusually sized hole in the wall.

Wait a minute. Muppets? Hole in the wall? YOU DON'T MEAN...

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! THE UNIVERSES ARE COLLIDING!!!

Yes, those are Fraggles. The very same Fraggles whose show came to an end not too long before this special came out. And as luck would have it, they're in the middle of celebrating a holiday sort of like Christmas, where they give each other the same pebble as a gift. And yes, they sing a song. It's from their own show, too. Quite nice.

Doc finally returns with Miss Piggy via dog sled (such a prima donna) and after she too slips on the icy patch, Mama Fozzie gathers everyone in the living room to say that they're running out of room in the house, and two of her guests will have to sleep on hangers hung on wall hooks, which Gonzo and Animal don't seem to mind. After that, much of the rest of the special is a medley of Christmas songs, and the Fraggles make another appearance as well.

After about ten minutes of jovial musical merriment, Kermit gives Piggy a mink for Christmas. A living, breathing mink...who is her number one fan. Piggy loves it. Then Doc comes in dressed as Santa Claus and starts handing out gifts as everybody joins in one last chorus of "We Wish You a Merry--AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

...I think I just crapped myself.

All right, gotta wrap this up. My guests will be here any minute.

The last time this special came out on home video was back in 2001, when the Muppets were owned by a German corporation and weren't seeing much action. The version which was released had some scenes cut out of it because of some copyright issues with the songs performed in them, in particular Fozzie and the snowman singing "Sleigh Ride" and almost the entire baby Muppet segment; your best bet to find an uncut edition would be to find a copy released in Canada or overseas and have it imported. Couple this with the fact that the Muppets, Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock are all now owned by three different corporate entities (Disney, Sesame Workshop and the Henson company, respectively) and you've pretty much summed up its chances of ever re-appearing on DVD or television again.

A crying shame, really, because for a hardcore Muppet fan, this special is a DEFINITE must-see. Nowhere else in the history of mankind are you ever going to see characters from three of the greatest childhood-defining TV shows ever conceived quite literally under the same roof. Never again might you see Doc making small talk with Bert and Ernie about what letter his name starts with, or Oscar hitting it off with Rizzo, or even Animal befriending Cookie Monster.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have relatives coming over today and I need to go change my shorts. Happy holidays, everybody!

Wait, didn't Doc meet the Fraggles at the end of the series?
And where was Uncle Traveling Matt during all this?
...ah, screw it. It's Christmas.

"The Letter People" (1972)

Come and meet the Letter People
Come and visit the family
Words are made of Letter People
A, B, C, D, follow me!

Who doesn't reminisce about kindergarten? Back when learning was still fun and hands-on, when you were still allowed to play during class, when it was still cool to watch Sesame Street, when life was so simple and carefree and all you needed to know were colors and numbers and shapes and the days of the week and the letters of the alphabet. Truly it was the best time of our lives.

Then you enter the first grade…and it's all downhill from there.

If you were like me, you probably were sat down to watch a lot of videos in kindergarten. And if you're my age, chances are that some of these videos may have featured puppets with giant capital letters emblazoned on their chests who sang and had adventures and taught phonics.

The Letter People was conceived in 1972 as a classroom program aimed to teach younger children how to read which in the same year branched out into television thanks to St. Louis PBS station KCET. A total of sixty 15-minute episodes were produced through 1976, which became so popular with new readers that reruns ran on PBS stations and in kindergarten classrooms for years.

Each show takes place in Letter People Land, home of twenty-six individuals known as Letter People. In this land the spirits are high, the atmosphere is friendly, all the consonants are men, all the vowels are girls, and the business of the day was always bringing literacy to the under-sixes. (Bet some of you didn't catch on that the vowels were all girls, huh? Though it does raise a question about Mr. Y...a hermaphrodite, maybe?)

Each Letter Person had a specific characteristic or bodily feature which helped children remember the sound they made. For instance, Mr. H had "horrible hair":

Mr. N had a "noisy nose":

Mr. S was a superhero with "super socks":

Mr. T had "tall teeth":

No, not that Mr. T.

There we go. It also appears he had a huge capital letter T welded to them for some reason.

And Mr. L looked like a lemur wearing lipstick with lemon lollipops stuck all over him:

A clever idea, though in one case they seemed to be stretching a bit. Miss O in the classroom program was an optimist, but on the TV show she became..."obstinate."

I'm not sure anyone in this show's target demographic knew what the word "obstinate" meant.

As the series goes on, it introduces each Letter Person by putting them in situations full of words which start with each character's letter. It also tackles more advanced phonics such as two-letter clusters, different sounds coming from the same letter, and in the last few episodes covered words with more than one syllable and even got their audience started with full sentences. And then there was "The Catching Game", an idea that came about when the Letter People discovered they could make words by bumping into each other and "catching" each other's sounds. It started out as a game show within a show but evolved into a recurring motif in later episodes.

Oh yeah, and each Letter Person had their own song, too. And good grief, if the songs on this show don't get stuck in your head. I've taken the liberty of linking some images in this review to YouTube videos of their respective songs, and they all open in a new window, so click to your heart's content.

Wherever you find a show like this, that people grew up on, have memories of and hopefully introduce their kids to, there's always that small faction of maniacal fans who combine their love for the show with their unparalleled hatred for everything new in its genre and start wishing they revive their favorite series. They will post on their favorite forums and write up online petitions, "everything new sucks nowadays, bring back this show, kids need to watch more of this stuff instead of the garbage they're putting out now," blah blah blah.

Well, that's understandable, because most new stuff is crap. But there are some problems with franchise reboots. You see, standards have changed from the 1970s to today, which have been helped along by the FCC, certain special interest groups, and the soccer moms of America, all of whom have taken steps to strip the fun out of entertaining children. They will not be satisfied until their kids are watching nothing but wholesome, inoffensive, bland TV programming. Using this show as an example, we can already see that these self-appointed censors would pick the littlest things apart.

Take, for instance, Mr. M and his "munching mouth":

Given that we've spent these last few years fighting childhood obesity alongside the mainstream media, agreed upon as the single most dangerous weapon in the modern world, it's obvious they'd make this guy go on a diet.

Then there's Mr. W and his "wonderful wink":

This guy wouldn't last five minutes with Focus on the Family. Neither would Miss E, for that matter:

The very thought of a Letter People revival is tantalizing, but just remember that as with Hanna-Barbera's non-violent self-bastardization of Tom and Jerry in 1975, the Star Wars prequels pandering to children and teens with Jar Jar Binks and the trashy romance novel storyline, and with all these movies based on old cartoons and TV shows coming out to universal condemnation from critics and moviegoers, teaching an old dog some new tricks isn't always a good idea.

So it may surprise some of you to know that they actually DID revive this franchise—not the show per se, but the characters themselves in new books and educational content. Abrams and Co. Publishers bought out the rights to the characters in 1990 and turned them loose upon younger readers once again, but not without giving them a major facelift. I've got a link to the website right here, so let's have a look at them.

...

Good lord, they all look the same! They're all blue skinned and around the same height! And it looks like some of them changed sex...even the ones that didn't!

How about individually? Let's see…looks like they let Mr. M keep his munching mouth, and yet ironically they've rewritten the Mr. C ("cotton candy"), Mr. D ("delightful donuts") and Mr. L ("lemon lollipops") characters. Miss E still exercises (even though she's a dude now), but they've also taken away Mr. R's ripping rubber bands and turned him into a walking Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. Mr. H's hair is no longer horrible, but "happy". Mr. W's wink is gone, replaced by "wonderful words" (what's so unique about that? They make words all the time, what makes his…sorry, hers any better?). And just what the hell are "impossible inches"?

And perhaps the biggest kick in the face to fans of the original…Mr. X, the one who was "all wrong" or "mixed up" because he was based off the mark that a teacher would give a wrong answer, is now just "different." That's right, he's DIFFERENT from the other Letter People. He does things A DIFFERENT WAY, which doesn't make him any less of a Letter Person than any of the others. Considering there aren't a lot of words in the English language that start with X, it would make sense that its original creators would focus more on the letter's symbolic use, so this little slice of political correctness makes absolutely no sense.

Luckily this reboot has yet to spawn a new TV series (at least one that I'm aware of), but there would be no doubt in my mind that if they ever decided to produce one it would echo the PC blandness of these new characters. I think part of the reason we remember The Letter People is because each of them were unique as well as a little silly, and it's difficult to recapture that uniqueness when they're redesigned as little blue people.

As for the original TV series…it's a harmless kids' show. Sure its low production values are visible from time to time, but it's charming, it's clever and many of the songs are kinda catchy. Sadly, no DVD of it exists, which sucks because, not to suggest they make a new TV show, but I really do think kids could eat stuff like this up.

I know we did.

Not much weird stuff in this review...but then you haven't heard Mr. X's song yet...

(For more audio-visual trips down memory lane, visit "letterpeopleland" on YouTube. It's where these clips came from and lots more like it.)