Now depending on where your seeing this review you'll know that yesterday I promised that i'd be taking a look at a piece of classic Muppet media. Well i'm a man of my word and as luck would have it I happen to have a piece of classic Muppet media on my laptop this is also something that i've not seen people and so I think i'm the first one to tackle this show but I could be wrong and so here is my review of what IO assume to be the first episode of The Muppet Show at least according to the season 1 DVD box set anyways and so enjoy the review.
The I guess you could say plot of this episode is that Kermit has to deal with a dog who is asking all for all of these insane demands all because he's the favourite pet of the theatres owner and also happens to Scooter's Uncle. How do you talk about the plot of an episode of The Muppet Show because of the one hand you can't say that it doesn't have a strong story because that's the point but on the other hand you do have a say that it has a weak story so for once i'm honestly stuck on what to say about the plot but I can say that the story was cute and that's really all I can say about the story.
Starring in the episode is Jim Henson as Kermit , Rowlf , Waldorf , Mahna Mahna, and Flower-Eating Monster and Frank Oz as Fozzie , Miss Piggy , The Snowths , George , Mildred, and Feather Boa Constrictor. Also starring in the episode is Richard Hunt as Scooter , Statler , Miss Piggy , Miss Piggy's dancing partner , Frogs, and Bartender , Dave Goelz as Gonzo , Muppy , Zoot , Miss Kitty , and Pigs , John Lovelady as Cowboy and Frogs , Eren Ozker as Flower-Eating Monster's dancing partner , Waitress , Chickens and Juliet Prowse Muppet and Juliet Prowse as Herself.
The acting from the muppet actors is honestly pretty spot on yes some of the voices do sound a little rough but since was the show's first season they are of course still trying to perfect the voices. Performance wise the muppet actors do a solid job with each of them getting a good laugh out of me at some point during the show and hell even Juliet Prowse who isn't an actor still manages to get a good laugh from me.
Something that really caught me of guard is the fact that the chickens talk not only in English but they also use full sentences. I'm so used to the chickens talking like actual Chickens and so to see an early episode of The Muppet Show where they actually talk like regular people was for me quite a surprise and was honestly pretty freaking weird since i'm so used to how they talk now and it was honestly pretty hard for me to get past the fact that there talking like regular humans instead of talking like chickens.
Another thing that I wasn't expecting is that in an early scene they give Miss Piggy a more gruff voice and I checked it is meant to be her. To me that was just so weird because not only does it not sound like the character at all it actually sounds more masculine it was like they forgot that they were recording and so the actor playing Miss Piggy just used his normal voice and when they found they just couldn't be bothered to change it.
Now the version i'm watching had a scene that was exclusive to UK showings of The Muppet Show and in this case it featured Rowlf The Dog singing a song. I honestly like the little scene not only does it feature a weirdly dark song called "You and I and George" but the scene does also have plenty of laughs mostly with how dark as hell the song gets but also due to the fact that the actor playing Rowlf the late and great Jim Henson does such a good job performing as the character that you can't help but laugh at what's going on.
I felt that the way they integrated this episodes special guest star was very natural and lot of that stems from the fact that this show takes on a verity show type of format. As such it would have been very easy for them to have a guest star and have them take part in the show in a way that feels natural and this way allows for the guest star to do stuff that there not really known for which in the case of Juliet Prowse is acting.
This episode is twenty six minuets which for me at least is a fairly big issue since alot of the acts that the characters do go on for a fairly long time. Which for me at least made the episode feel boring at times which is a shame because the episode for the most part is honestly really entertaining and it would have been a damn near perfect episode if they made the episode a little bit shorter but that's just what I think.
Now if you recall back when I listed who's acting in this episode I listed both Frank Oz and Richard Hunt as playing Miss Piggy. Well that wasn't a mistake since for this episode they both play the character to some degree with Frank Oz doing the speaking lines for the character and Richard Hunt doing the characters singing voice both for the exact same sketch that being the Muppet Glee Club Sketch and in my opinion both perform the character really well in my opinion.
Now then since this is a comedy that does mean that we have to talk about the jokes that are in this episode. For me I thought that the episode was honestly really funny with there being at least one solid joke every few sketches and just like with The Muppet Movie I really cannot count how many times I laughed out loud that's how good the jokes were in my opinion and the fact that the jokes hold up all these years later says how timeless The Muppets are.
Overall this show is a classic for a reason and in my opinion this episode is a prime example of why it's considered a classic since it has all of the typical Muppet mayhem that we've come to know and love from these characters and this franchise. That doesn't make this episode perfect tho because it does have some faults even if one of those faults actually fits in with the type of show this is as such this episode gets an 8.5 out of 10 from me.
All of the images that I used in this review were gathered from the official The Muppets fandom wiki page and nowhere else. Since I only went to one place for the images that I used in this review I have no choice but to recommend The Muppets fandom wiki page if you want to use images from any of The muppets properties but I will say that rather understandably alot of the images aren't high definition so don't expect to find alot of high definition images because chances are you won't find them just go in expecting to find medium quality images and you'll be good.