Not to make an obvious plug here, but for people interested in re-living a lot of the great (and funny) Muppet moments, you might check out The MuppetCast, the only podcast on the web dedicated to the work of Jim Henson and the Muppets.

A personal fave from muppets tonight is Kermit (well three Kermits) singing ‘same as it ever was’.
The humour comes from there being more than one Kermit on screen – which shouldn’t be funny, as intellectually you know he’s a puppet and there would be multiple copies of him – but he is such a fully formed character that it really throws you off guard.

Of course, there’s also the Star Wars episode, with guest stars Luke Skywalker and Mark Hamill. Yes, AND. It almost makes sense in the end.

As to Scooter, my thought was that he always wanted to be in show business, but the best he could do was to use his pull with his uncle to get a no-respect job in a run-down theater helping a bunch of crazy people. Sure, he does it well, but you kind of imagine him always hoping it’ll lead to something bigger, and, well…it never does.

But he doesn’t get discouraged. That’s the wonderful thing about the Muppets, really. They never despair, even when things don’t go their way. “Life’s like a movie, write your own ending..”

And speaking of interns, Scooter isn’t much of a failure, is he? Unless, by being a (mostly) quietly competent guy who gets most of what gets done done he’s “failing” at being the owner’s idiot nephew…

Rumor has it that Brian Henson is pushing for “Muppets Tonight” DVDs when the original is finished, so we can hope. (I’d rather see them do the Jim Henson Hour first, though that would have the problem of overlapping with the Storyteller collections.)

I’d offer one corollary to the general rule: The satisfaction of the Muppet performers with their performances seems to be inversely correlated with the entertainment value their work has for others. Lew Zealand is in this category; he always seems to be enjoying himself with his boomerang fish act, and it never really backfires on him, but no one else appreciates it all that much. (Marvin Suggs could also fit in this category, as could Crazy Harry if you consider him a performer.) This is also the formula that made Fozzie and Gonzo work better after the first season; in the first season they were kind of pathetic, but Gonzo in particular acquired a joie de vivre and never-say-die attitude that made him fun to watch even when his acts fell apart.

And yes, “Muppets Tonight” was awesome. I loved the one with Cindy Crawford (“If you’re a supermodel, what are your super powers?”), which was also the one with the Frog-keteers, an obvious play on the Mouseketeers. One of them had short-term memory disorder, and for the rest of the episode, every few minutes or so he’d jump in from off-screen and shout his name again. Never failed to crack me up.

I really hope they do the other Muppet series on DVD at some point when the original is collected.

Particularly because of the “Istanbul” moments…

Oh, and Johhny singing “Pierce Brosnan, he’s the man..” to the theme of Goldfinger…

One thing I read in an article while the show was still on the air, was along the lines of -if a joke is too bad to do once, it’s worth doing several times. I don’t remember the exact wording-but it was along those lines–and the Muppet Show lived up to that.

So lets’ all sing the Rhyming Song…

Christopher Reeve – “Super-Rat, you’re in charge.”

Zero Mostel singing “what do the Simple Folk do?” from Camelot

Candace Bergen, then, later, EDGAR Bergen!!

And, of course, the Muppet version of “For What It’s Worth” (Stop, children, what’s that sound). I remember a DJ complaining years later, when somebody – i forget who – covered it in the 90′s with a looping sample of Mick Jagger starting every bar, that he was tired of people calling in requesting “that song the Muppets did” – an entire generation had no idea who Buffalo Springfield even were.

Man, that rambled – but the Muppets RULE!

but you also get comedians who haven’t been heard from since.

Some of which are dreadful, but others are in some of the funniest episodes – either just because the Muppets themselves are carrying the weight, or just because they’re so bad their hilarious.

The Mad Bomber character for example…..which is another example of a Muppet who isn’t a failure.

And yet you summed things up well.

Thok…good call on Rowlf. Of course, Rowlf rocks…and has two You Tube vids up!