Les Jones

A&E > Muppets Mayhem

Nine Things Which Appeared on The Muppet Show, But Wouldn’t Make It Onto Family Television These Days

1. Cigarettes, alcohol and death. Before he started making feature-length video game demonstrations like The Frighteners and The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson made a film called Meet the Feebles, a “behind-the-scenes” parody of The Muppet Show which depicts the cast doing controversial grown-up things like smoking, drinking, having sex, packing guns, trying to murder each other and experiencing Vietnam flashbacks. The problem here, as the rest of this list should demonstrate, is that the parody is almost completely redundant: it’s based on the folk-memory of The Muppet Show as something colourful and noisy, but essentially soft and fuzzy, whereas the truth is that the real Muppets are frequently seen lighting up, boozing up or snuffing it. A good test case is Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler”, in which the narrator of the song plies an aged poker player with scotch and fags until he dies happy in his sleep. Performed by humans, it’s unpleasantly cloying. Performed by Muppets, it’s just scary. See also Peter Sellers’ Muppet Show rendition of “Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild Wild Women”, although he does at least perform it in character as a reformed wastrel who’s joined the Salvation Army, so we never actually get to see the Muppet whores.

No time this morning to search for Muppets on YouTube, but there must be some good stuff on there. Post good finds in comments.

It isn't from the show, but Pulp Muppets is good.