Hans Christian Andersen first published "The Little Matchgirl" in 1845, and it's seen scores of adaptations and retellings since then. (Here is a loose 1937 cartoon from real-life Disney villain Charles Mintz.) When the Disney studio was planning a third Fantasia movie (which I'd never heard of till today), this was one of the few shorts completed for the project. Director Roger Allers (The Lion King, also story contributor on Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast) jumped at the chance to adapt Andersen's story (this interview right here is a great overview of the project). It was finally released in 2006, as a bonus feature for its Andersen-inspired cohort The Little Mermaid.
Allers placed the action in Russia (since the music is from a Russian composer) and both the onion-dome architecture and Cyrillic lettering help us recognize the setting. The snow drifts down, slow but ceaseless. The most significant change from the original story is a lack of parental cruelty, which opens the story up for wider interpretation. Having not read the original story in ages, I first viewed the girl as homeless, rather than a victim of abuse.
But the most surprising change is the removal of the most cartoony scene from the story: that turkey running around the room, already fork-pierced. I can see how the tonal shift from something so funny would be difficult to achieve in a film this short (just six minutes, if you don't count the credits). And ultimately, in keeping with the Fantasia ethos, the visual content is determined by the music.
I don't intend to lecture you today about empathy and the need for compassion this time of year, but I can't think of anything but all those Syrian refugees. I worry that the politicization of their plight will doom them to wander, homeless, from country to country,
I'm pretty bad at empathy, myself. I try to be mindful of this, but like most people I need frequent reminders. One of the best sources of those reminders, for me, is art. With constant nudging from warm, humane art and the people around me, I hope to become kinder and less self-centered. I can't solve the world's problems, but my goal is to make life a little warmer for a few people. I recently made a small contribution here, and if you can too, that'd be great. Thanks, all. Happier stuff next time, I promise.
The star of this episode is the titular soldier. (That's an actor named Bob Peck. If he looks familiar, well, he probably is. Clever you.) He's fought in the wars for 20 years, and is down to his last three biscuits, far from home. His kindness leads him to give away his biscuits, though he's rewarded with a nice whistle and a joyful dance for each of the first two. The last gets him an empty pocket, a winning deck of cards, and a magical sack. He's able to use the sack to trap three geese, which he trades for a bed at an inn. (Folktales work strictly on the barter system, you see.)
After his rest is complete, he notices a rundown castle, and is told it's infested with devils. Our brave soldier isn't scared of a few devils, and after all, he has a magic deck of cards. Not to mention that sack.
The soldier breaks out his cards, and the demons gamble away all their gold. After they've lost their last coin, the fuming devils decide to kill and eat the soldier. Instead, he orders them into his sack, and bashes them around a bit. (Much less so than in the original folktale, where he calls a pair of blacksmiths to beat them on an anvil!) He lets them go, in exchange for a promise to stay away, and steals the hoof of the last one, threatening to call it into service in the future.
Sidebar: This is not an original thought with me, but those demons are the best part of this story. The puppets are all elaborate and complex -- watch how they sneer and blink and smoke. Each one is unique. It's a shame these puppets were only onscreen a few minutes; they could clearly carry their own show. Oh, and they're funny. Did I mention they're pretty funny?
The soldier slowly spends his new gold, and over time gets a wife and child, in that order. However, the child falls sick, and the soldier calls "his" demon, the one he enslaved, and orders it to cure his child. The demon trades him a magical glass for its freedom, one which lets the soldier see Death and know its ways.
So now the soldier-turned-lord turns healer, and travels the land, healing those who can be healed. Soon the tsar becomes ill, and our hero sees through the glass that Death will not relinquish the tsar. The soldier offers to trade his life for that of the tsar, and Death accepts. But our sneaky soldier still has his magical sack, and captures Death.
This is the most profound addition to the old folktale, as the Storyteller draws us pictures of the world without Death, using both broad strokes and fine ones to ground the fantasy. No one, and nothing, dies. Old people wander the earth, broken-down and useless, and the soldier is moved to release Death once again. Death, terrified, refuses to take him, so the soldier attempts to enter Hell. The demons, of course, don't want anything to do with the soldier or his sack, and give him 200 sinful souls to go away. (Barter!) The soldier ferries the souls to heaven, in an attempt to redeem his own sins, but the Holy Gatekeeper there (the original folktale quotes God himself, but this wisely doesn't show that) won't let him in there either. To paraphrase Tom Waits, Hell doesn't want the soldier, and Heaven is full. So our traveling soldier travels more, wandering the earth to this day, probably.
There are a couple of dissolves in this story, from the face of the soldier to the face of the Storyteller. On the third or so viewing, I began to wonder: could the immortal soldier, master of improvisation, have become the Storyteller? After all, the Storyteller wears the regimental insignia of the soldier, and owns his magical glass, and his sack. The story is "ancient, antique," the Storyteller says. While the two are clearly played by different actors, if the story happened several hundred years ago, the soldier's ears and nose could easily have kept growing (with plenty of time for "A Story Short" to happen in the meantime). I doubt there's any evidence outside this episode to support my wild theory, and I seem to recall other artifacts from other stories showing up in the Storyteller's hands.
(While we're discussing wild theories, here's one which is completely insupportable: What if the dog is immortal, too? He is able to supply a Greek phrase at will, and he also appeared in the Greek Myths series with a different Storyteller. What if this series takes place several thousand years after the Greek Myths series, before the soldier/Storyteller even set out for his first Russian battle???)
Oh, and speaking of dogs, our next episode is Dog City! I love Rowlf, and I'm really looking forward to rewatching that one. (First, I have tonight's episode of the new Muppet show, and a TV movie with turkey monsters or some damn thing, but I don't think I'll write about that. So weird.)
The third episode of The Jim Henson Hour is better than the second one, that's for sure. Leon has a great idea for an act, though the show's already full. He brings on a singer, and her high note shatters a lot of the monitors.
After the opening titles, Jim appears, but his lion has gone missing. Instead, he's playing against the Storyteller's Dog today. He promos the Storyteller episode, and then throws it back to Kermit.
Kermit is just inundated with acts this week. Gonzo wants to bring on his all-chicken, all-rollerskating Sound of Music, but there's already an opening number cued up, and it's The Nylons, singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," with the lion Jim was missing just a minute ago.
"Who on earth are The Nylons?," I hear you ask (unless you're an afficionado of Canadian a capella music, that is). They were founded by four underemployed actors in 1978 Toronto, and are still around today. (Of the four founders, only one is still with the group, but they're planning the 2016 tour now. If you're in Canada and like a capella music, now is your time!) "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was kind of their big hit, and they had even showed up to sing it on Sharon, Lois, and Bram's Elephant Show a few years earlier.
The Muppet monsters are hosting a telethon, cold-calling potential contributors and extorting money. Digit switches away to The Time Channel, which is a great, simple sketch which would play just as easily on Sesame Street or Laugh-In, with a few appropriate modifications. (I'd recommend taking out the inexplicable joke at Ottawa's expense.) Then the monsters break in and threaten the Timecaster.
Fozzie pops up to tease his new career as a weatherman, but first it's time for a soap opera. And of course the monsters break in there, too. But that's the last we see of the monsters. Remember when I said the show was fully booked? That's true of the actual show, too. There are too many arcs and not enough time. It may be a result of the reduced episode order (Jim wanted to make four episodes every month, and a full season of shows, but NBC only ordered 12) and a surfeit of comedic ideas. The monster telethon is a funny idea, and the monsters are shown to be capable of breaking into all the programming, but they give up after the soap opera. I guess the writers also wanted to tell the second main story, which we'll get to after Fozzie visits The Today Show.
Fozzie is in New York, and it's a classic Fozzie moment. He doesn't realize that a lot of TV weathermen are clowns and comedians at heart, so he's going to be serious and has thrown out his Groucho glasses, whoopie cushion and banana peels. He visits Willard Scott to learn the ropes, and with Fozzie's help, Willard is quickly trapped in a dark closet full of fruitcake. Fozzie has to sub for him and, after an apolitical mention of Good Morning America, he attempts to make sense of the weathermap. Of course, Fozzie being Fozzie, he can't resist a terrible (and slightly sweary) pun. Then, Willard's escaped, and he returns Fozzie's props.
Frank Oz barely appeared on The Jim Henson Hour (during the time these shows were being taped, he was in postproduction for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), and it's just a shame we can't see Kermit and Fozzie in the same place at the same time. Jerry Nelson doesn't appear in this episode for some reason, and Richard Hunt never appeared on the series. The lack of major Muppet Show characters was a blow to the accessibility of this show, but the behind-the-scenes lack of Oz and Hunt also weakened the show considerably.
Now we're on to the second major plot of the episode. Angry that Kermit has rejected their sketch ideas, Leon and Gonzo set upon MUTINY! (Third time in three weeks. What's wrong, Jim Henson Hour writer's room? Are there some power struggles going on in there? Or were the other two sketches originally written for this episode?) But Kermit doesn't even realize it's mutiny -- he's just happy to have a break. He goes off to relax on a beach hammock, and the rest of the staff argue amongst themselves about what to put on the show. Digit, still strapped into his skates, crashes and cues the Fashion Dolls sketch. Bootsie is running for president, since the episode is kind of themed to politics. Kind of.
Back in the studio, the gang are discussing elections, and ways to choose a leader. Bean Bunny declares himself Prince, and cutely starts a storybook tale about royalty.
In the story, a king has long ago abdicated any power, so he could focus on his career as a hat sharpener. (If the king looks familiar, that's because he showed up in that Cosby Show episode, with the same voice from Kevin Clash, which was filmed the same month this episode aired.) Chris Langham's very Germanic stranger comes to town, in an attempt to persuade the king that kings must lead. The king makes a few useless proclamations, and the story has a happy ending. Then it has an unhappy ending. The unhappy ending feels so perfunctory that I can't help wondering about that writer's room again. It is, of course, a Muppet tradition that things blowing up is funny, but this ending feels like a first draft. I'm by no means a professional writer, but why can't the monsters invade this fable? If you added two minutes to this story, the king could fight off the threat, tying the episode together. Sure, that would undercut the extreme uselessness of his position, but I'd rather have a slightly less funny episode that made more sense as a whole.
And speaking of second-guessing, Gonzo realizes it's no fun to have power, and he misses Kermit. So the whole gang follows Kermit to his beach, and they put on a huge closing number. The song is original, and catchy, and written by the twofellows who wrote most of the Fraggle Rock songs.
The show's happy ending is that most necessary of TV tools, the return to status quo. We know that next week, Kermit will again be back in charge, frazzled and secretly enjoying it. And the others will be happy to disclaim responsibility.
Which might mirror the Jim/Frank dynamic, though I think we do both of them a great disservice if we think of the "mutiny" as an allegory for their relationship, or assume Oz's choice to spend time away led to the creation of this story. Neither Jim nor Frank was exclusively a follower or a leader. Jim was always happy to let Frank step up (he all but ordered Frank to co-direct The Dark Crystal), and Frank would always give up his (very limited) free time to play with Fozzie and Piggy and Bert and Grover. Frank Oz still speaks fondly of his days as a member of the little puppet troupe, and still shows up to do a day or so at Sesame Street most years, but he prefers to be the leader on his film sets.
As to Jim's love for childlike play, free from responsibility, I remember a story from Brian Jay Jones's biography. Sadly, I can't find it in the book to quote, but it goes like this: there's a large group number being filmed. Some bunny in the background is going completely insane, dancing all over the place and upstaging the foreground performers. The director calls out that bunny, and sheepishly Jim pokes his head up above the set and apologizes, promising to behave.
And speaking of power dynamics, next we have a Storyteller episode in which a man cheats death so severely that all of humanity is changed. I'll be back soon to talk about that.
Lighthouse Island is an old leftover pilot script, from the usually reliable genius Jerry Juhl, with a few hints of the energy and whimsy that made Jim's film experiments so consistently watchable. Unfortunately, it has more of the nonsensical dreamlike quality that frequently made those experiments hard to love. (Obviously, your mileage may vary, but I can't imagine ever watching Timepiece all the way through more than once. I love the energy and spirit, but it feels so undisciplined as a whole.)
Before we start properly discussing it, I'd like to talk about that opening narration. This special has seen several airings and releases since 1989, and apparently they all remove Jim's opening comments. In a show which desperately needs humor, I really like the juxtaposition of Jim saying "It's an ordinary little town" over that shot of a little girl taming a polar bear. And, without the narration, the opening scenic shots are picturesque (I totally want to visit this little town in Nova Scotia now), but maybe a little boring, polar bear or no.
And while he's here with us, let's discuss that bear. Look at that puppet. Standing still, it's perfectly believable. I feel a little churlish pointing out that its movements are distractingly imperfect, since the performer, Gord Robertson, is clearly a gifted mime. (He played Pa Gorg, among other Henson parts, and [along with the other two main Gorg body performers] even puppeteered Johnny 5 for Short Circuit 2! I can't help but wonder -- was he on set playing with Gerry "Doc" Parkes' priest?) I know a little bit about how those full-body costumes are performed, and can imagine the short time available for filming. I picture Robertson inside the bear, sweating and struggling to smooth out his motion. The problem is, I shouldn't be picturing that -- I should be seeing a polar bear.
The townspeople on Lighthouse Island are distracting in that same way, too. Each one seems to have several distinguishing quirks (this one's the bartender with the frog brooch and the parrot on his arm -- that one's the guy whom light never touches, with Jerry Nelson's voice) but it all feels prefabricated, deliberately whimsical for whimsy's sake. If the series had been made, I assume each character would've had more depth and development, and then maybe I could be drawn into human stories. Instead, we get this:
I'll say this: it's a great image. But, at the risk of hammering this nail too hard, it encapsulates what's wrong with the episode. Like the show's hero, we've just completed a tiring task (in our case, watching a grueling unfunny allegory about pollution), and we'd love refreshment (say, a charming, funny fairy tale). Instead, we get something both weird and unpotable.
The story is about a young man (Chris Makepeace, who was in Meatballs and My Bodyguard a decade earlier) trying to find a wedding present for his penpal/fiancee. Zeb Norman is headed to the shop of a mysterious woman, whom the townspeople seem to think is some kind of hexing witch, to get a pair of silver slippers.
Clara, the witch (played by, hey, Chris Langham's mother!), sets Zeb a task -- a different mysterious person has something she wants, something she has a dubious claim to, and Zeb must help her retrieve it if he wants those shoes. So they take a journey to Hog Island, and along the way they're attacked by a sea monster.
It just so happens that the sea monster is the man with that thing, which just so happens to be a magical transformation pearl. As a huge eagle and a tentacled beastie, Fred the shape-shifter (also Jerry Nelson) continues to attack Zeb and Clara, until they find and retrieve the pearl. They eventually return to Lighthouse Island as dawn breaks, and Zeb's fiancee finally arrives.
When we first see Rosalie, Zeb's fiancee, this is how she looks. She promises to tell him stories of the sea. His fortune included only a fish.
If you've never seen a fantasy movie, or heard a fairy tale, it may surprise you that Rosalie turns out to be a mermaid.
It didn't surprise me. But the second twist, revealed just seconds later, DID manage to surprise me, and feels like a satisfying conclusion to Zeb and Rosalie's story. Plus, Clara's transformation pearl, which we can assume she would put to some nasty use, is conveniently etched out of existence.
My enjoyment of the second twist almost makes me feel guilty for disliking the special as a whole. Almost. Perhaps it's my lack of enthusiasm for fantasy in general, but I can't help wondering practical things. Do mermaids and mermen wear a lot of sweaters? Can they swim well in them?
And even more practically: If I had a transformation pearl, and wanted only one thing in life, to become a merman, why would I trade that pearl, with a lifetime of magic, to a petty villain-in-training? The silver slippers only have one trick, but Zeb has seen firsthand just how powerful the pearl is. Maybe I just don't belong in a fairytale universe, where a handshake with even the most morally dubious person must be honored, no matter the cost. Maybe I'm just too jaded as a media consumer.
It's entirely possible that, with a heavy rewrite, this could've been a charming early 70's fantasy TV series. After all, Juhl and Henson were nearing the peak of their imaginative powers then. But, like a fish in a glass of cider, I just can't swallow it.
I've been thinking about this for days now, trying to frame this post correctly. As I mentioned last week, The Jim Henson Hour is a pretty flawed show, and this is a deeply flawed episode of it. (A person whose opinion I respect a LOT says it's the worst episode of the series, and even though I disagree with him about some specifics, I hope he's right.) I dislike this episode as a whole, but it has a lot of good (or at least interesting) smaller parts, and I would like to talk about them.
To start the episode, Bean has oh-so-cutely borrowed the satellite dish from the studio, and the attempted repairs leave the studio in shambles. (I promise not to do this every week, but I can't help but be reminded of last night's episode of The Muppets., where poison ivy brings butter, which brings floods and blackouts and both freezing and boiling, to hilarious effect.) The Muppet Theater was always falling apart in one way or another, and even if most of our old friends from The Muppet Show aren't in evidence here, it's nice to feel that chaos will always attack Kermit's projects.
Jim introduces the second half of the show, and then throws it to Kermit, who announces there are a lot of fish on the show, so it's a "friends and relations" thing for him. Our guest Ted Danson admires Kermit's coolness under pressure, and then some folk dancers fall right through the floor. To keep us entertained during the rescue, Kermit cues up the first song. It's a fish, in an undersea bathtub, singing the obvious Bobby Darin hit, with a very familiar-looking duckie by his side.
Don't think too hard about why the fish has to use a bathtub, because his friends the seahorses somehow play dual saxophones down there too. This is a serviceable musical number, with a huge crowd of fish, octopi, clams, jellyfish, and even humans scuba diving.
Then Kermit speaks the first groaner pun of the show ("I think that went swimmingly"), which until now I didn't realize I really wanted as part of the Muppety DNA. That's followed up by a pun about the miners now coming up through the hole in the floor, and we get a sketch from the king of bad puns, Rowlf as Doctor Bob Merlin the Magician, who is trying to cure a man with a fish through his head. Muppet Wiki tells me there are only two Merlin sketches, which is probably good. I love Vet's Hospital, of course, but Merlin's assistant going "Ta-Da!" after every single pun gets annoying fast.
Sidebar: Unless you're a huge Muppet fan, you probably haven't seen "Hey, You're As Funny As Fozzie Bear!" It's a straight-to-video production, and Jim Lewis' first writing credit for Muppets. It attempts to teach kids how to be funny like Fozzie, which seems to completely miss the point. At one point, it teaches the kids that saying "Wocka Wocka!" at the end of every joke makes the joke funnier. I feel like maybe Merlin's assistant had recently seen that video. In a sketch this dense with puns, it's actually helpful to have someone make sure we don't miss one, but I'm also glad it only lasts a few minutes. (To use the most cogent analogy, if Kip Addotta had put a Ray Stevens-style laugh track on his masterpiece Wet Dream, I would hate it. And I wouldn't be the only one.)
Now Ted finally gets to do something, a sketch about a couple taking a cruise on - SURPRISE! - a pirate ship. I love his bone-dry delivery of the anachronistic jokes, and I really like his date. Is there another female Muppet with human hands? I can't think of one, and can only assume those are Fran Brill's.
The pirate jokes aren't terrible, and we get a quick appearance from a parrot with a nearly-famous name, and Link and Gonzo show up again. The joke at the end of the sketch is so inside that I can't imagine it even makes sense to kids. During a swordfight, of course the glasses had to be glued down to the tray, and the show points that out to us in what's probably the smartest joke here. (Knowing his Milligan-Python past, I naturally want to credit that joke to Chris Langham, but that way lies madness.)
Every year, I host a Pirate Movie Night for all of my friends, and this sketch will make a decent companion for Glenda Jackson's episode of The Muppet Show next year.
Then we see a trailer for "The Karate Squid" (no relation) and are regaled with a vaguely offensive (or offensively vague) dialect stereotype. Then the monitor springs a leak, and even more water is shooting onto the studio floor. Digit fixes it (kinda).
The Extremes, who sang "Neutron Dance" last week, sing another top hit of today, "Maneater," as a huge shark gobbles them up one by one. Just like puns, having characters eaten is part of the Muppets' DNA, and again I didn't realize I missed it in the first episode of TJHH. (And, not to put too fine a point on it, in the new ABC show. That show is feeling more Muppety every week, and this week's was the best episode yet. But I still would like, occasionally, to see Big Mean Carl eat someone.)
After another repair gone wrong drenches Kermit from an unlikely source, it's time for another stereotypical dialect sketch. This one, at least, I mostly like. I can't say why, but think it has so much to do with Jerry Nelson's straightforward performance as the sheep, and a lot to do with the sketch's logical construction. It's not easy to write a whole string of sentences that mean two things at once, and have them seem natural. The sheep's egocentric recontextualization of each sentence is on one level a comical misunderstanding, but on another level it's about comedic metaconflict. The sheep hears his species mentioned once (he thinks) and barges his way into the sketch uninvited, rewriting each line so it's about him.
For the second week in a row, we see a captain undergo mutiny (though last episode's mutinous lobsters are now the outside threat), and for some reason the sketch closes with an out-of-left-field homophobia joke.
But! After that, we see Kermit do the best thing in this episode. The studio floor is still all wet, from the various misadventures, and he wonders how he's supposed to entertain people in such adverse conditions. Using only the things around him, he improvises a quick song and dance, and the folk dancing troupe return and join him. It's a quick, joyful, fun moment.
This is the spirit of the Muppets -- making something (a dance, a joke, a simple lizardy-froggy puppet) out of nothing (a wet floor, a species of fish, your mom's old coat). No matter how sophisticated the technology gets, Jim felt that the secret to entertaining people had less to do with the tools and the medium, and more to do with the spirit and heart invested.
Unfortunately, that fun dance wasn't the end of the show. There's an allegory about oceanic pollution. Ted Danson is apparently VERY interested in protecting our oceans, and Jim was an environmentalist way back before that word even existed in the common parlance. I understand how both of them felt very deeply about this topic, and certainly agree with them. I know that Jim did a lot of work making unfunny things (pollution, business meetings) funny, but this is not an example of that. This is not entertaining. It's hectoring, and the show points its finger at me and you and all of us for not doing anything. But it doesn't give us a constructive solution. I can't find any evidence that, even in its original airing, the show gave us an 800 number to call, or a book to read, or a nonprofit, not even TED DANSON'S OWN, to contribute to.
It feels like the show is convicting us for not caring, no matter our personal actions, but can't be bothered to spend twenty seconds telling us an address to write for more info.
Later in the run of the show, Jim would present another environmental fable, which was much more entertaining. I'm looking forward to rewatching, and writing about, Song of the Cloud Forest in the near future. That was, in my recollection, a fun way to spend a half hour and think about the environment and all our animal friends.
And in the next day or two, I'll also write about the second half of this show, Lighthouse Island. Back soon.
I know this is irritating, but YouTube won't let me embed and also set a start time, so you wanna go to 23:52 on the following video:
We're through with all the funny science fiction jokes, and on to an episode of The Storyteller. This show was another of Jim's less profitable experiments -- NBC ordered nine episodes and only aired four of them, from October 1987 till April 1988. So Jim had five more of them in the can, with the rights presumably tied up by NBC. He included The Storyteller in his pitch for TJHH, and five of the twelve episodes included the remainder of those shows. (Should TJHH have been renewed, I hope there would've been more Storyteller episodes made, three years after the first batch. Of course, if the show had been renewed, Jim wouldn't have lasted long into the second season... and now I'm sad again.)
All the Storyteller shows were written by Oscar-winner Anthony Minghella, and this particular one was directed by the fella here who's not a heartless giant:
The credits claim this comes from an early German folktale. I'm no folktale expert, but I can't find a German version of this story -- here's a Norse one which is particularly close, and you can get the Kindle version of that whole book for free here. Also, the hiding place for the heart is similar to that of Koschei The Deathless, a Russian legend (not the Hellboy character).
But neither of those stories contain the elements of betrayal and potential for redemption -- are those Minghella's? I can certainly see the redemption part of the story coming from Jim - it feels like so many other stories he captained, from Hoggle's to the deepening and humanization of the Gorgs.
Jim claims in his intro that these stories will have "the visual punch and pace of today's music videos." I certainly love the stylized feel of the visual storytelling, but I'm also very glad these aren't cut with the pace of music videos. There are plenty of lengthy shots, and the storytelling feels expansive, never choppy.
Like everything else Jim was excited about, the puppetry techniques were cutting-edge, and his Creature Shop builders were at the top of their form. The bird with the broken wing looks very real indeed, and if this wolf is less than believable, well, it's good enough for its five minutes of screentime.
The quality of the effects appears lacking to us now, 25 years later, but they're certainly the best they could be for television at that time.
I like The Storyteller as a series, but I very rarely love it (the most notable exception for me personally is the third one, "A Story Short," where the Storyteller appears in his own story). I like a lot of Jim's explorations of adult fantasy, but sometimes this show feels less special and almost formulaic. I also wish the Jim Henson Hour episodes' themes-of-note had more to do with the Storyteller shows paired with them -- this has nothing to do with science fiction or outer space ("The Soldier and Death" feels like a better choice, but I'm just some guy sitting in front of a computer second-guessing a genius).
On our next episode, Ted Danson does something to do with Oceans.
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 thanIcancount 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.
Here it is -- my ultimate Halloween post for 2015!
If you've ever spent more than ten minutes with me in person during the month of October, I've probably made you watch this. If so, I implore you to watch it again. This is a 1998 film based around a 1930 novelty record, and I'd love this song even if the accompanying visuals weren't so great.
Sidebar: Why didn't the Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah) band ever record this song? I love their Monster Mash, and even considering the low budget, their visual presentation of the song is ambitious and fun. I would love at least one more spooky, atmospheric song from them, and a cover of this would fit the bill and meet their early-years need for generations-old novelty songs.
I've always loved this film, since it uses puppetry and stop-motion animation and even some shadow animation to tell a weird, spooky, wacky story. There's a graveyard jamboree (you could almost call it a swingin' wake) and Mose has to round up (or dig up) all the musicians for the show.
Okay, so maybe it's light on plot, but each frame of this does something interesting, and it's obvious that each character and set was built by hand in the real world. In 1998, computer animation wasn't as advanced as it is now, but the love and hard work invested in this production clearly shine through as the textural opposite of that year's metallic, shiny CGI-fests Godzilla and Armageddon. In just a few years, CGI would've been an affordable method to remove all the visible rods from the puppets and special effects, but the directors don't care -- the handmade nature of this is an important part of the fun.
Appropriately, there are a few mysteries I don't get about this video: first off, do I know this guy from somewhere else? This weird green bird only has a few seconds of screen time, but he rang distant bells in my head I can't place. (Sure, he looks a LEEETLE like Jose Carioca, but not much.)
Secondly, the credits thank Don Sahlin. Everyone else in the thank you section (that a quick googly search will find, anyway) seems to have had something to do with the actual production, but Sahlin died twenty years before this film was made. He was, of course, enormously influential in the worlds of both stop-motion and puppetry, working with George Pal and Burr Tillstrom and designing/building most of your favorite Muppets in their first incarnations. At least one of the other credits appears to be a joke ("Costumes by Cesar Romero"), but this sticks with me.
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Looking back from the end of this month, I've certainly missed posting a few days, but I wrote more things than I did in December last year, and I consider that a win. I'm hoping to post more regularly (if less frequently) in the future, so watch this space! Thanks, all, for your kind attention. Have a great Halloween night!
I've missed quite a few days this month, but I posted more times than in December, so I'll call that a victory. No matter what, I wanted to post on the day itself.
Betty Boop first appeared this same year, and she was less human and more dog in this, one of her very earliest cartoons. (Her best-known voice actor, Mae Questal, hadn't taken over the role yet.) In this cartoon, despite her high quota of screen time, Betty is nonetheless a second banana to the nominal star of this cartoon, Bimbo.
Betty is still not as grown-up sexy as she'd come to be shortly -- the joke about her shirt being literally scared off her is played entirely for laughs, and it doesn't feel particularly scandalous or titillating, which we always think coexists with the laughter in Betty's work.
So Betty's in bed late at night, and the wind is blowing, trees are rattling, animals are making spooky noises outside her window, and she's scared! It's so spooky that her hair goes white for a few seconds. Then, she meets a shadowy shape shifter, and he brings his bug and bat friends to serenade her with a strange, unearthly song.
This is more a weird romance cartoon (I'm trying not to think too hard of the creepy, Twilight-y implications of the girl falling in love with the guy who breaks into her house at night) than a straight-up scary picture. There are quite a few spookier Betty Boop cartoons, but the reason for my sharing this one will become clear later today, when I post my final Halloween thing.
Hard to believe, but I couldn't find a buy link for today's cartoon, so please just watch it on YouTube again...
The download link, like all the rest on that blog, is long-since dead, but I've once again made the songs available, for a limited time only. If you like what you hear, please go buy the songs from the copyright holders. And if you're reading this past, say, November 15th or so, don't be surprised if the link is down. Sorry.
Did you know that title comes from Shakespeare? In "Venus and Adonis," he wrote:
...Hateful divorce of love,'—thus chides she Death,— 'Grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm, what dost thou mean To stifle beauty and to steal his breath, Who when he liv'd, his breath and beauty set Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet?''
And now that I've given you your culture for the day, get to listening! I've already got two posts in the pipeline for tomorrow, and one of them is, like, my favorite thing ever. See ya then!
Holy cats, I'm waaaay behind. Here's a quick one for today - promise to make it up to you.
As usual, my own pictures didn't look very good, so here's a picture I stole from someone else (sorry, Margaret!):
Wow. These were a lot better than I expected. They have the same consistency of regular Fudge Stripes, with a thin cookie and nearly as much "fudge" on the bottom. I was expected a graham cracker-style cookie, but the cookie is more like a ginger snap. It's not sharp, but there's a huge amount of ginger there, just perfect to balance with the creamy fudge.
There are a LOT of cookies in this pack, and I don't think I want more than two or three in a setting. Unless I have a cold glass of milk. ... I just realized I should probably buy some milk after work.
So, two weeks after their official Halloween episode, Paul Simms and his silly friends did another spooky thing, and it's just one layer of one of the best Newsradios ever.
The office A/C is out of order (Joe's working on it!) and it's leading everyone to have some strange daydreams. Bill, of course, is having fantasy makeout sessions with all the ladies, and Lisa is trying desperately to craft a proper verbal comeback to Dave.
Sidebar: Of course Lisa won't match Dave's quickness -- she enjoys fast-talking verbal barbs, My Girl Friday-style, but after one quick exchange she's usually spent. Why oh why isn't Maura Tierney still working in comedy? I haven't seen her current show (though I made the mistake of trying both of Dave's last shows), but I don't imagine it gives her much opportunity to make with the yuk-yuks.
Dave just wants people to do something (work would be nice). Catherine is imagining more people of color in the office (including her future Treme husband), but only ends up with poor Joe Furey, fresh off his triumph as the mime who wouldn't shut up in our last episode.
Beth is more out of it than most, since she and Matthew stayed up all night watching horror movies, so she keeps seeing Matthew as every scary movie. (He's Chucky! He's Jason! He's Dracula! He's Alien!) We spend a large portion of this episode as Beth relives the most iconic horrors of recent times.
Meanwhile, the A/C's still out, and Joe's still working on it! And he can only dream of the day he's converted everyone else into robots to do his bidding.
This won't be the first time I've mentioned my love for audio commentaries, and the one recorded for this episode is a doozy. It's got creator Paul Simms, along with Dave and Vicki Lewis and Andy Dick. And Andy Dick, predictably, doesn't remember much about the episode. (My friend went to the recent stage reunion of the cast and tells me this is still the dynamic among the cast: We love Andy, and he's special, but...)
This is the first "weird" Newsradio episode, and the first they filmed without a live audience. The writing is incredibly tight, but still has room for things like the daydream of Howie, the little old man who runs the snack cart and is never heard from again. The nesting daydream of Matthew with red "Thriller" eyes perfectly mirrors the inescapable dreamlike horror of the ending of that video.
And speaking of iconic endings of things, let's spend a second on St. Elsewhere, shall we? I've only ever seen one episode, but I know the ending is a direct lift from that, theme music and all. It's weird, but I still get a little emotional at this episode's end. He doesn't say it much, but we know (or at least desperately need to believe) that Jimmy truly loves all the nutballs at his radio station, and the sweet chiming music (no matter where it's from) can make me mist up a little. I'm really grateful for the joy this show has brought me (and I believe most of the cast and crew truly felt like a family during the production), and the ten seconds of elegy for the show, midway through its run, is both ridiculous and touching. When this show's actual end came, it was messy and disheartening, not at all what I hoped it would or could be. So, I'll take what I can get.
As an episode of Newsradio, I rate this 10/10. I'm tempted to go higher -- this is a paradigm-setting part of this show, and led to even higher flights of fancy later, but remains grounded and in-universe.
As a Halloween episode, I rate this 4/10. We don't spend a large percentage of our time on scary things (though I count Joe's cyborg fantasy in that), but it is solid and fun.
Let's lighten up a little bit, shall we? Here's a great Halloween episode, from one of my favorite TV shows of all time.
Newsradio was on the air for too short a time, just one of the many casualties of our country's dearth of mental health care. (Wow, sorry, I really WANTED to lighten things up.) And in season three, they made two great Halloweeny episodes. This first one is set on the most wonderful day of the year, and actually aired on Halloween Eve, 1996. I hope you've seen it, since we're, as always, spoilertasmic from here on out.
As a Newsradio superfan (no, really, I have the costume and everything), I'm no longer capable of being surprised by anything in this episode, or even remembering my first impressions. But, there are a lot of great, memorable moments in this episode.
Probably most notably, this is the episode that let Dave Foley wear a dress. At the time, he was still best known for KITH, and the audience cheers at his reveal. Of course, it happens because Dave and Lisa are scrapping over who's in charge, and they have to outdo each other to impress Mr. James. (Jimmy's line about zig-zagging is still one of my twenty most-quoted sayings from the show, and his completely dry delivery is just another example of his brilliant, unpredictable characterization.)
The rest of the staff are in costumes too, and they're all reflections of their personalities: Beth's ballerina, Catherine's queen, Joe's doctor (how in god's name did Jimmy correctly guess he's an alien autopsy coroner?), and Matthew is ...not pulling it off.
Sidebar: This is the first time I've seen this episode out of context, without other episodes around it, and I was really struck by the gay jokes. Even considering Andy Dick's complex sexuality, I'm surprised how casually the writers threw around stereotypes for a quick and dirty laugh. (I expect Joe to say thoughtless things, but Jimmy's almost dismissive description of Matthew's costume feels out-of-place, both from his character and on this show.)
Oh, but Bill's not interested in costumes. He's doomed, y'see. In retrospective, one of the show's creepier moments is when the psychic predicts Bill's death. (I know, I know, I'm sorry! Lighter and funnier! I promise!) So he meets a woman who helps him put things in perspective and live one day at a time.
So the older lady (the actress is best-known from Donnie Darko) reminds Bill, and all of us, what Halloween's about -- death comes for us all, which is why "tonight, we dance!" And, fittingly, the episode ends with a quick moral lesson for Bill, and then a funny dance. (Why, it's like Matthew put himself into the mind of a robot.)
As an episode of Newsradio, I rate this 8/10. Everyone has something to do, and most of it's both in-character and funny.
As a Halloween episode, I rate this 6/10. Sure, it's a Halloween party, and everyone's in costume, but there's nothing scary and not even a spooky song (sorry, Jimmy, but The Hokey-Pokey will never be spooky).
, 
, even 
), but I haven't seen the MuppeTelevision segments in forever.
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.)
