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.
Sidebar: The real Barbie didn't start running for president until 1992, though it seems she's done it several times since. Is she running in 2016? The old 2012 doll is still apparently in production, but I can't find anything more recent.
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 two fellows 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.
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