The Jim Henson Hour #1a: Science Fiction

So the new Muppet show has found its groove, and the last three episodes have been uniformly good, in my opinion. But what about that time Jim Henson tried a new Muppet show? It wasn't perfect either, and it suffered as much from its unevenness as it did from the mixed digest format. I haven't seen these shows as a whole since they aired, and most of them not even then. As a devoted Henson and Muppet fan, I was constitutionally required to buy all the official DVDs that came from this show (The Storyteller , Dog City , even The Song of the Cloud Forest ), but I haven't seen the MuppeTelevision segments in forever.

So I'll be watching, and writing about, The Jim Henson Hour this month.

It's a little jarring, at first, to see Kermit and his all-new friends (Gonzo and Link pop up, but not till the last two minutes) in a futuristic TV studio, but then Jim Henson himself comes on to remind us he still has his hand on the tiller.

Sidebar: I remember from Brian Jay Jones' outstanding Jim Henson: The Biography that Jim was extremely uncomfortable hosting on camera, and I think it certainly shows during this first appearance. He tries for the casual avuncularity that Walt Disney also strived for as a TV host, and it feels similarly staged to me. (I just rewatched, for example, the old Wonderful World of Color segment where Walt is interacting with a Carousel of Progress animatronic, and even that late into his TV-hosting career, he still feels awkward and stagey.)

We head back, after one last look at that gorgeous lion puppet, to Kermit's studio, and spend a few minutes with our newest Muppet friend, Digit. Digit is mostly a robot, kind of, but his voice is more Reverend Jim than C3PO. He's watching intergalactic TV, but guest star Louie Anderson is worried he'll be displaced by the alien programming.

We have a musical number, "Neutron Dance" in a perfectly late-80s spacey setting, complete with overdone late-80s music video effects. Then, it's the first independent sketch, Louie Anderson in ...

The Muppets, as a genre unto themselves, have always trafficked in commingling seemingly unrelated things. It's a kid's show, with adult jokes. It's the same characters singing 30's songs and current hits of the day in a 19th-century vaudeville theater. It's a frog dating a pig. This works on a smaller level too -- one of my favorite Muppet things from recent years is the barbershop quartet version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from the 2011 movie, and more classic Muppet Show songs than I can count reinterpret songs in a different style. This is a perfect example of that, and even if it's obvious that Louie and the Codzilla puppet were never in the same room at the same time, that doesn't affect how I watch this sketch.

Now Digit is watching an alien beauty pageant, hosted by Chris Langham. (If you don't know him, I'll thumbnail it for you: he was a friend of Spike Milligan and John Cleese -- you can see him in Life of Brian -- and Cleese recommended him to Jim Henson as a funny writer. Langham joined the Muppet Show writing room, and guested on one of my favorite episodes. He also did a lot of other British comedy stuff, including my friend's favorite thing, People Like Us. He had, um, a career setback, and I don't wanna believe the charges against him, and we'll leave it at that.)

Digit needs more power, so he ends up overdoing it and blacks out. As they try to help him, Kermit watches the "Heavy Culture" channel (along with Clifford! Hi, Clifford!), and we see my favorite sketch from this episode. It's so lightweight, it'll almost blow away, but it's a very silly Pythonesque minute.

Digit's still not well -- he's quoting Sesame Street, Dragnet, and presidential debates -- so Waldo flies into his head, and we end up there too, along with Kermit. As they try to Fantastic Voyage their way out, we see a "Fashion Dolls" sketch...

...which I don't mind. The costumes are creepy, sure, and I seem to recall the writing went off the rails, but this first version of the concept is ok. I like the gender role reversal expressed in it, long before the official Barbie and Ken got their own version in the Toy Story movies.

Oh, and then Louie's back, and he's playing a Space Guy being held in a tractor beam of cuteness by Bean Bunny, who transforms him from a mean action hero into Pink-A-Boo, "the cutest, cuddliest, most pinkaliciously wonderful person in the universe!"

And now it's time for the closing number! What closing number? Digit's finally fixed (kinda) and he's found an alternate universe where The Teppums put on a familiar-looking variety show. So the casts of both shows sing "Chattanooga Choo-Choo," and we learn that Louie's stuck in Pink-A-Boo's body (Kermit: "We've merchandised you to sixteen toy companies!") and the show's over.

I'm going to break the show into two parts, so we'll talk about that Storyteller episode later, but this is a good place for me to mention my immediate desire for this show. When I was 11 in 1989, I was in the second era of my strong Muppet fandom, and I was taping The Muppet Show on TNT every day, and watching Muppet Babies each week, and when my family first saw a promo for The Jim Henson Hour one night on NBC, I remember a strong sense of anticipation. I don't remember any of our responses to the show, but I have a strong memory of purple Timrek The Gorf up there (no relation to Kermit The Gorf).

This show premiered just over a year before Jim's death, and in the long run it's not a lasting tribute. Around the same time, Jim was working on Muppet Vision 3D for Walt Disney World (featuring Bean and Waldo from TJHH), and that has certainly been seen by more people than all the episodes of this show put together. I know MV3D is possibly going away, and I'm okay with that if there's some Muppety replacement, but I like to think of that attraction as Jim's last completed project. It's the final thing Jim was working on, the thing he was thinking about during the last week he shared with us here. It's technologically ambitious, but less complex in its storytelling than The Jim Henson Hour. It's friendlier, and funnier, and has more staying power.

I know there were times Jim felt shackled by the popularity of The Muppets, but people loved Jim because they loved Kermit and his family. Sure, the nonMuppet things Jim did were mostly good, occasionally great, but like TJHH they were inconsistent. Ambitious people, no matter their talent level, will sometimes fall short of their goals. Jim followed his own advice from the end of The Muppet Movie, though:

Life's like a movie, write your own ending
Keep believing, keep pretending
We've done just what we set out to do
Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers, and you.