The stars are the animals: Kermit, the pure and reasonable frog; the ineffable Miss Piggy, every circumferential inch a lady; Rowlf the Dog, a philosophical pianist; Fozzie Bear, the can't-stand-up comic; and The Great Gonzo, the magnificently inferior creature whose inventors insist, despite damning evidence, that he is not a turkey. Monsters are the remaining important category of beings: such enormities as Sweetums, who is about 9 ft. tall and covered with a three-day growth of brownish shag, and Thog, who is a good deal bigger and still growing, lend chaos to the goings-on but don't say much. Other apparitions, such as the 7-ft. carrot with whom Gilda Radner of Saturday Night Live sang a duet from Gilbert and Sullivan, fit messily into miscellaneous.
Scooter's curtain-time alert is for the flesh-and-blood human being who is the weekly guest star: Raquel Welch, for instance, looking scholarly in spectacles as she practices Shakespeare. Scooter guesses that she has decided to change her image, and he says that this is fine; she doesn't need to wear any of those scanty, revealing costumes on The Muppet Show.
"Well, thanks, Scooter..."
". . . unless you want to."
Immediately, half a dozen heavy-duty monsters thrust themselves through the door to beg in plaintive unison, "Oh, please want to!" The joke works nicely, because these are Muppets, and their voyeurism is acceptable. It is the kind of gag that evokes queasiness when it is given to middle-aged bandleaders on variety shows.
After Floyd, Zoot, Rowlf, Animal and other bandsmen have laid down the Muppet Show Song ("It's time to put on make-up/ It's time to dress up right") for the big everybody-on-stage opening, Kermit gives viewers the high-blood-pressure hello, and Gonzo tries to blow a fanfare on his trumpet. It never works. Butterflies come out of the trumpet. Water comes out or the thing explodes. Each week Gonzo gives it a good try; each week a new disaster. Gonzo looks dazed but not surprised, a tiny Chaplin.
Some sort of dizzy production number generally follows. One week Eskimo folk songs were promised, and sure enough, there were Miss Piggy and the show's other pigs perched on an ice floe, dressed in mukluks and parkas, surrounded by igloos, walruses and snow. The song they sang was Lullaby of Broadway in a nice, bouncy and entirely straight version. The viewer kept waiting for the joke, thinking, "Let's see, now, Eskimos, Broadway . . ." The joke was that there was no joke. It was a surreal moment, and it was very funny. If you wanted to take it that way, it was a devastating comment on what we call entertainment: turn on the tube and watch Eskimos sing Lullaby of Broadway.
In the meantime, two old geezers named Statler and Waldorf are making scornful remarks from their box seats, and terrible things are happening backstage. Kermit works frogfully, but events conspire against him. It is payday, and in the cashbox Kermit finds only "three moths and a washer, more than we usually have." His voice is quavery, his jaw tremulous; he expected to find the moths, but the washer is a welcome plus. Kermit expects the worst, and he accepts it. As he sings now and then, "It's not easy being green." After working with such characters, Lily Tomlin, another human friend, said that the difference between playing a scene with a Muppet and with a human actor is that "when you break the scene you don't both go for coffee. It's sort of sad."
