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The Muppets: The Sitcom: The Podcast: The Ex-Factor · Muppet Fan Podcasts with ToughPigs.com

• 0:05
  Hello and welcome to the Muppets that sitcom the podcast
• 0:08
  presented by tough pigs.com. This is the podcast where we
• 0:12
  revisit the Muppets Grand return to television and the 2015 ABC
• 0:16
  series, The Muppets and see how it holds up five years.
• 0:20
  Later, you can follow along with us by revisiting The Muppets,
• 0:23
  which is now streaming on Disney plus.
• 0:26
  I am Ryan row, your host for this week's show.
• 0:30
  And our special guest today is, hey, I'm Scott Hanson.
• 0:35
  I am in the Muppet fandom as an editor of Muppet Wiki, which I
• 0:40
  co-founded with someone. You probably all know Danny horn
• 0:43
  back in 2005 and happy to be here on this episode of your
• 0:50
  podcast. Thank you for being here.
• 0:52
  And yeah, you're one of the like, how many edits do you have
• 0:54
  on Muppet Wiki? I'm even I'm closing in on two.
• 1:00
  Hundred thousand I think. Wow, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02
  I'm getting. I'm getting close.
• 1:04
  Yeah, that's like, you're definitely one of the big
• 1:08
  Cheese's at the wiki. Yeah, we are coming up on our
• 1:12
  15th anniversary this year. Wow.
• 1:13
  That's yeah. That's amazing.
• 1:16
  It's kind of hard to think, like, every once in a while, I
• 1:19
  will be looking something up on our tough pigs forum and I'll
• 1:23
  stumble upon an old thread where somebody was like, what was the
• 1:27
  episode that had this one musical number?
• 1:29
  Like we used to Have to ask each other and then like, oh, I don't
• 1:32
  remember, let me go check my tapes or whatever.
• 1:34
  And now everything that we could ever need to know about the
• 1:37
  Muppets is on the wiki. Now, it's on the wiki and we
• 1:40
  don't have to talk to each other anymore.
• 1:41
  Alright, we just got to look it up.
• 1:45
  I mean, most people don't know this, but my bit Wiki was
• 1:48
  started by Danny and myself from a phone conversation that we had
• 1:54
  about a tough big article about Grover's Mom.
• 1:57
  Oh yeah. The now legendary Where's
• 2:00
  mom.com? You know, when we tell people
• 2:02
  though, we're from tough pigs, like a muppet events.
• 2:07
  That's an article that is still comes up a lot.
• 2:10
  No, that's that's good. I mean, we did we put weeks of
• 2:14
  research into that and those weeks of research and all that
• 2:17
  work that we put into it was, what was I hate?
• 2:20
  Why don't we just make Grover's mom.com?
• 2:23
  And actual thing for hate, but apply it to, you know, apply all
• 2:27
  of that research that everyone liked that one particular.
• 2:30
  Yeah, exactly. To every character.
• 2:32
  So, and here we are thirty-seven thousand articles later.
• 2:35
  Well, well, everyone should go to Muppet Wiki everyone should
• 2:40
  read the Grover's mom.com article.
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  I will do that in the show, and it's a classic.
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  Yes, and yes, you invaluable contributions to both of those
• 2:51
  things from you. We are here today to actually
• 2:53
  talk to each other rather than looking things up online to talk
• 2:56
  about the episode. The X Factor, this is the fourth
• 3:02
  episode of The Muppets. This aired on ABC, on November
• 3:05
  3rd 2015. And before we get into the
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  specifics of this one Scott, what are your overall thoughts
• 3:13
  on this series? I assume you watched every
• 3:15
  episode as it aired. Well, my first thought is that
• 3:19
  it's the sixth episode. Did you say it was the fourth
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  episode? Yes, I said the fourth of us
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  have because that was left over from the last my previous notice
• 3:27
  that I didn't I copied and Is it and didn't change everything?
• 3:31
  You know what? I'm going to leave this in, but
• 3:33
  I will say that the X Factor is the fourth episode, which I
• 3:37
  believe aired on November 3rd 2015, less.
• 3:40
  I got that wrong too. So yeah.
• 3:42
  So, the X Factor is the sixth episode 6 yet, and it aired on
• 3:46
  November 3rd. For some reason I don't know if
• 3:49
  you guys have talked about this already but Canada got it the
• 3:52
  day before so it technically premiered on November 2nd right
• 3:58
  City TV. That.
• 4:00
  Yeah. Yeah.
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  Canadian channel, right? Yeah.
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  So they so they get the the honor of the, the premiere of
• 4:07
  each of the episodes. But of course, the, the domestic
• 4:12
  air date was November 3rd. Yeah.
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  So the the X Factor's are good episode amongst, what I think is
• 4:21
  a good series. I know that it's kind of fans
• 4:24
  fall down on one side or the other for for this show and I'm
• 4:28
  a big fan of the show. Show the and The X Factor is a
• 4:33
  good entry in that it's not, it's not my favorite.
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  I mean, some of the things I like about the show is that, you
• 4:40
  know, one of the things that Frank Oz says about a lot of the
• 4:44
  Muppet projects that have come after.
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  He had been involved was that when they try to make them too
• 4:50
  sweet, it just sort of makes them makes him gag, and I feel
• 4:54
  like this was the the project that was if it wasn't a
• 4:59
  conscious. Response to that.
• 5:03
  It certainly felt like something that flew in the face of that,
• 5:08
  that sentiment. Yeah, I people love to say like
• 5:13
  Disney doesn't understand the Muppets but and but people also
• 5:18
  love to say they should listen to Frank Oz and do what he says
• 5:21
  they should do with the Muppets. And yeah, if Frank Oz if his one
• 5:25
  of his complaints is a The Muppets car getting too sweet.
• 5:28
  Either this series, I Don't think you can accuse them of
• 5:32
  doing that, right? Yeah.
• 5:33
  Absolutely. I mean it definitely has its
• 5:36
  sweetness, but I think the the irreverence was sort of
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  overshadowed by any of the sweetness that was put into the
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  show primarily because, you know, I know we're not talking
• 5:47
  about this episode but it was in the trailer.
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  You know, Kermit has that line about his life being a
• 5:51
  bacon-wrapped hell on Earth, you know.
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  And and I think that there are many examples of that throat,
• 5:57
  the series that people just Latched onto and they say, you
• 6:01
  know, how dare they and yet they forget the Liza Minnelli episode
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  of The Muppet Show, which is all about literally stabbing and
• 6:07
  murdering Muppets. Yes, but yeah, I think people
• 6:12
  have a, have a Sentimental memory about the Muppets and a
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  lot of that has to do with crossover crossing their
• 6:17
  memories over with, with seven Sesame Street, certainly you
• 6:20
  would never do anything like what they did with the 2015,
• 6:23
  most of the series on Sesame Street and I'm sure you guys
• 6:27
  have talked about this that, you know, at Lengthen, by the way, I
• 6:31
  generally refer to this series as M15.
• 6:34
  Yeah, yeah. Because there's the Muppets the
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  characters. The Muppets, the 2011 movie, The
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  Muppets the 2015 series, it's very confusing.
• 6:41
  Yeah. It's all so confusing to Disney
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  plus a few. If you go onto the landing page,
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  for the 2015 ABC, Muppets series, the header photo, is a
• 6:52
  photo. From the 2011 movie The Muppets.
• 6:56
  Notice that I do have to kind of take a second, every time I go
• 7:00
  to look for an episode, I just have to double check which logo,
• 7:05
  I'm looking at to make sure it's the right one.
• 7:07
  Yeah, the logos are pretty good. If you're on the Muppets,
• 7:10
  landing page, but once you get to the the show, the header is,
• 7:14
  it's a photo of the Rainbow Connection.
• 7:19
  Yeah, and while the time that makes it seem like somebody
• 7:21
  actually confuse the two projects, When they're using the
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  photo. So.
• 7:26
  Yep. That's right.
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  So generally, you're a fan overhaul of the series.
• 7:32
  Yeah, absolutely. I mean and and not just the the
• 7:35
  tone but I mean, you know, certainly watching it again.
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  Five years later. I'm picking up a lot of the same
• 7:41
  things that I loved about it, but I'm really fascinated by
• 7:45
  just how Snappy the dialogue is have.
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  It is a funny show, it is a, yeah, it is show with a lot of
• 7:51
  good jokes. Yeah, there's and there's a one
• 7:54
  recommendation. I make two people as that watch
• 7:59
  it with the subtitles because the jokes come fast and furious.
• 8:02
  There's a lot of subtleties, there's, I was writing down some
• 8:07
  notes for the wiki for things that we forgot to add five years
• 8:10
  ago. There's in the last episode Pepe
• 8:13
  has line about. Even God rested on Sunday or
• 8:17
  something like that and he's referring to himself as like a
• 8:19
  god, like, writing character something I figured Exactly what
• 8:22
  it was. But but the, the quickness that
• 8:27
  he, you know, he puts that line out there in the the subtle way
• 8:30
  that it's delivered is you almost miss it.
• 8:33
  Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so listen to, if when
• 8:37
  you're watching the show again I recommend putting on the closed
• 8:40
  captions of the subtitles. Yeah, but not just the writing,
• 8:44
  and not just the characterizations but, you know,
• 8:47
  the I think the lighting looks so good.
• 8:50
  You know, when you compare this with the latest, Outing Muppets
• 8:53
  now on Disney gloss, which I was not a fan of the, the lighting
• 8:59
  in this show is so rich. The set design is gorgeous.
• 9:02
  I mean, it is more, I think. Well, this show is supposed to
• 9:06
  take place in the real world. Yeah.
• 9:08
  And Muppets now is, I don't know, just some kind of crazy
• 9:12
  internet world. Yeah.
• 9:14
  Yeah there's actually one thing I was looking at was we have
• 9:17
  there's an article on the wiki for the Katsuya restaurant which
• 9:22
  Happens later in the episode on over you.
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  And I are we jumping? Are we going chronological?
• 9:26
  We come around and we will but you can that's fine.
• 9:29
  You can mention it. Yeah, well, I mean, just in
• 9:31
  since I'm speaking about the, the stats Katsuya is a real
• 9:34
  restaurant. There are several locations in
• 9:36
  l.a. the several locations worldwide.
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  But they actually they built that set because they needed to.
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  And you can see there are production photos, they built it
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  the way we have seen, most Muppet sets where there's, you
• 9:50
  know, it's sort of like built several feet off the The floor,
• 9:52
  so that it can accommodate a whole lot to the real
• 9:55
  restaurant. They actually built it.
• 9:56
  So, so right, take us to Muppet characters, could move around in
• 10:02
  it, pretty much. Yeah, thank you.
• 10:05
  Muppets are actually inside the building Piggies.
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  I think piggies in the doorway, at the end of that scene, so I
• 10:10
  guess technically three. Yeah, yeah.
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  And and then whoever was assisting, you know, somebody
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  might have been right handing Kermit if they were doing so
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  yeah, that's probably true. Yeah.
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  So there's probably a handful of Papa Is there?
• 10:22
  Yeah. Wow.
• 10:23
  They definitely put a lot of work into this show and money.
• 10:27
  Yeah. And it looks gorgeous.
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  I mean, you'd never would, you know, I think at the time I
• 10:32
  Googled Katsuya just to see if it was real and before I did any
• 10:35
  real research to find out that they built the set.
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  I was like oh yeah that that looks like the restaurant that's
• 10:40
  in the show. So they clearly were not of
• 10:42
  their way to really put a lot of detail into the set design and
• 10:48
  Katsuya. They apparently had a good
• 10:51
  relationship with them because For a week after the episode
• 10:53
  aired, kazuya also had a special on the menu, the Miss Piggy
• 10:58
  role, and the the Kermit roll. Oh, I had no idea.
• 11:01
  Yeah, well in the episode Kermit says they ate so much Sushi.
• 11:06
  They named a roll after him but it's something that sounds gross
• 11:09
  it seal and something. Yeah.
• 11:11
  To Healing cream cheese? Yeah I assume that's not what
• 11:14
  the real life. Kermit the Frog role as at
• 11:17
  Katsuya. No it's not they they blogged
• 11:20
  about of the time, the blog and baby.
• 11:22
  Gordon. Yeah.
• 11:24
  So on the wiki, we included the full ingredients of the dish.
• 11:29
  I don't remember exactly what it is but if you if you look at the
• 11:32
  photo, you know, it's a sushi roll and there are, I think it's
• 11:39
  I think there are caviar eggs on the top but they're laid out in
• 11:42
  the shape of Kermit's people. Wow.
• 11:45
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 11:47
  That's, that's really cool. I guess I'll have to look that
• 11:49
  up. So, yeah.
• 11:51
  We We got to talking about the air dates and stuff.
• 11:54
  And I skipped over the synopsis of this episode, which is at.
• 11:59
  This is the one where Kermit has to buy a birthday present for
• 12:03
  Denise. And the Electric Mayhem takes
• 12:08
  Kristin Chenoweth on a strange van ride in the desert.
• 12:13
  Yes. So, starting with the Kermit and
• 12:16
  Denise storyline at the beginning of the episode there,
• 12:20
  take, they're taping an episode of Up late with Miss Piggy.
• 12:24
  Kristin Chenoweth is the guest on the show.
• 12:27
  Kermit's girlfriend, Denise shows up, she's really excited
• 12:30
  about Kristin Chenoweth. I think this is only the second
• 12:33
  time we've seen Denise on the show.
• 12:35
  It's true. Yeah.
• 12:37
  And considering that she was sort of set up as like this, so
• 12:40
  it's Kermit's new girlfriend and then everyone, you know, she was
• 12:43
  in all the press releases and the promos and everyone started
• 12:45
  to freak out about it. Like what is this?
• 12:47
  Kermit has a new girlfriend. Yeah.
• 12:50
  And then yeah, here we are. And And she's only been seeing
• 12:53
  this is only her second appearance.
• 12:55
  Yeah, Denise's. She's been kind of interesting
• 12:59
  and that she's not very interesting.
• 13:02
  I think that she was included in a lot of the press materials
• 13:05
  because they knew that we get people talking, you know who
• 13:09
  that the Scandal, you know, Miss Piggy and Kermit break up and
• 13:12
  blah blah and I think it was effective.
• 13:14
  I think it I think it worked as a character.
• 13:17
  Denise isn't a bad character at all.
• 13:19
  I think we were only just getting to know her.
• 13:23
  As a matter of fact, I think we probably get to know more about
• 13:26
  her in this episode and maybe any other, because it's her
• 13:29
  birthday and ya later on, in the episode Piggies asking some
• 13:35
  details about her so that she can, we'll get into that.
• 13:39
  But but yeah, he lists off a whole bunch of stuff that like
• 13:43
  we didn't know about Denise before.
• 13:45
  Yeah. Yeah, they're really trying to
• 13:48
  give her more of a character in a personality here which is nice
• 13:52
  because you want to you want to have an idea of why Kermit is
• 13:58
  infatuated with her. So yeah having her sort of just
• 14:03
  get so flustered to talk to her favorite celebrity cousin.
• 14:06
  Chenoweth is kind of an endearing moment that that makes
• 14:09
  you like. Denise, a little more.
• 14:11
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 14:11
  I like that moment and and I like A couple we actually it was
• 14:17
  inspired by this show. Five years ago I started sort of
• 14:22
  like a rough draft article for the wiki that still isn't
• 14:25
  finished. I need to get back to it about
• 14:28
  basically a the history of Miss Piggy's relationships with other
• 14:32
  women, you know, on The Muppet Show.
• 14:36
  She it seemed like she was either, you know, good friends
• 14:41
  with them like with Who's the guest star who Cheryl Cheryl
• 14:49
  Ladd Cheryl Ladd yeah the whole they do that whole karate.
• 14:54
  Let's beat up Kermit and sequence right?
• 14:56
  Yes. That's like a weird violent girl
• 14:59
  power thing. Yeah.
• 15:00
  Which, which I think worked really well in the 70s, but
• 15:03
  would work. Well now or you have somebody,
• 15:07
  you have a female celebrity that she, she decides is her Nemesis
• 15:13
  for that one episode. And I like this Kristin
• 15:16
  Chenoweth who has a history with with the Muppets.
• 15:20
  These sort of she doesn't become an instant rival, which is nice
• 15:24
  because we already had, we already had Reese Witherspoon as
• 15:28
  a rival. Yeah.
• 15:29
  And that was, I wasn't on the podcast last week to talk about
• 15:33
  that one. That was Joe.
• 15:35
  And I don't have the guest name right in front of me, but I do
• 15:39
  want to say that is not a good episode, the one with Reese
• 15:42
  Witherspoon. Oh, yeah.
• 15:44
  Yeah. Well, I am not a fan of that
• 15:46
  whole like Piggy. Hates Reese.
• 15:48
  Witherspoon, Reese Witherspoon hates piggy.
• 15:50
  They and they try to upstage each other at Habitat for
• 15:53
  Humanity. That's a mess.
• 15:55
  I think Piggies interactions with women are.
• 16:00
  I mean, that's, that's one of many.
• 16:02
  And that's it. Certainly a problematic thing.
• 16:05
  I think that that's probably a discussion for an entirely
• 16:07
  different podcast, but the other one was Christina Applegate.
• 16:13
  She also has a rivalry with her earlier in the series.
• 16:18
  So you here we have, I don't know, is it what the third,
• 16:21
  fourth, fifth, pretty, blond guest star that Yeah, yeah, a
• 16:27
  large percentage of the guest stars on this television program
• 16:32
  are attractive, blond women. Yeah.
• 16:35
  So, you know, Kristin Kristin Chenoweth is, she's, you know,
• 16:39
  people know she's an a-lister and she's kind of known for
• 16:43
  being. I mean, we'll certainly, she's a
• 16:45
  theater person and they make some jokes about that in this
• 16:47
  episode. But what what I liked was that
• 16:52
  there's a, there's a teeny bit of a variety.
• 16:55
  Rivalry there, but not much mostly, they're talking to each
• 16:58
  other on a friendly basis. You know, Kristin Chenoweth said
• 17:01
  something like, oh, hey, you know, this, I think is the first
• 17:03
  time I've seen you, since you and Kermit broke up and right?
• 17:07
  They kind of have a friendly report.
• 17:10
  They do seem like Piggy, seems to be happy to be talking to
• 17:15
  Kristin Chenoweth and hanging out with her.
• 17:16
  Yes. Rather than like just furious at
• 17:19
  her and and of course, because it's piggy.
• 17:22
  It can't be Computing, completely Okay, she does make
• 17:26
  a, she does take a crack at her about her Broadway career, but
• 17:30
  Kristin Chenoweth gets back at her because when they, when they
• 17:33
  sing their song Together, which I think is a real fun set up, by
• 17:37
  the way, with a like, oh, no, we're out of time.
• 17:39
  And they, that's another bit where they're working together,
• 17:42
  right? Yeah.
• 17:43
  Well, it's like, oh, it's it would have been nice.
• 17:45
  It's the end of the show would have been nice if we had been
• 17:46
  able to sing together and then I think maybe at the same time,
• 17:49
  they both go hit it. And the music starts.
• 17:51
  Yeah. So that's that's clearly
• 17:53
  something where with Within the, the, you know, the fictional
• 17:57
  confines of that show Miss Piggy and Kristin Chenoweth decided
• 18:01
  together off-camera that. Oh, hey, we're going to do this
• 18:05
  bit for the audience and it'll be cute.
• 18:07
  So that's, it's kind of like a nice little moment.
• 18:10
  If you know piggy, amicably, working with another woman who
• 18:14
  doesn't threaten her. So they sing their song and it's
• 18:18
  and it's fun and everything. But the very end Kristin
• 18:21
  Chenoweth does get the final Diva moment, which is a really
• 18:25
  nice. Yeah.
• 18:26
  And and the fact that she did that and got away with doing it
• 18:30
  without a karate chop from Miss Piggy is you know major kudos to
• 18:34
  her for that. Yes.
• 18:36
  And to the writers I would say because look, it piggy doesn't
• 18:40
  have to be mad at everybody all the time and it's still
• 18:42
  entertaining. Yeah, I would have liked to see
• 18:45
  I would have liked to have seen more of this musical number.
• 18:48
  But of course because it's this show, we can only see a few
• 18:51
  seconds of it. Yeah.
• 18:52
  But I also like during that song it's the song I could have
• 18:56
  danced all night. Yeah I like that.
• 18:58
  We see Statler and Waldorf singing along with it is very in
• 19:01
  character for them. Like it's an old song, they love
• 19:03
  it. Is this the one where we're
• 19:08
  Statler goes, woo at the end and Waldorf is like what you like
• 19:12
  that and he's like, what I can I can have feelings too, is that
• 19:16
  this episode? Or so now he actually I think
• 19:18
  Statler makes a comment out. He says something like, I like
• 19:24
  that Kristin Chenoweth. You think, I'm too old for her?
• 19:26
  And well, there says what you're cold and Statler says, I guess
• 19:30
  that answers that question. Yeah, something like that, that,
• 19:33
  that might be, that might be the same moment where they're
• 19:36
  talking about how they like Cristiano.
• 19:38
  They say something about actually it's in my my notes
• 19:41
  here but they're all over the place.
• 19:43
  Not want to waste time hunting from but they, yeah, they say
• 19:46
  something about how attractive she is or something and there's
• 19:49
  a there's a young man in his early 20s.
• 19:52
  Or so sitting right next to Statler and you can sort of, you
• 19:56
  can see him looking in like he's white.
• 19:58
  I'd like nodding his head in agreement like that.
• 20:00
  She sure is an attractive lady. That's like an extra just hoping
• 20:05
  that somebody will notice someone camera and you noticed
• 20:07
  him. So yeah, we saw.
• 20:09
  We saw you. Dude.
• 20:10
  It paid off. Also Uncle Dudley says that he
• 20:14
  has. He owns the domain name.
• 20:17
  Chenoweth fan. Number one.com.
• 20:19
  Yes. Did you try going to this
• 20:21
  website? Because I sure did Yes, I did it
• 20:23
  redirects to disney.com. So they actually bought this
• 20:26
  domain name. Yeah, there's usually to keep it
• 20:29
  away from people who would turn it into a porn site.
• 20:32
  Yeah, well, okay sure you had to go there Ryan, but I was going
• 20:36
  to say I was just going to, you know, buy it and redirect it to
• 20:39
  like, you know, some Muppet Fan Hub or something.
• 20:42
  Yeah. Or you could you could buy it
• 20:44
  and redirect it. If it becomes available, again,
• 20:48
  redirect it to Kristin chenoweth's Page on Muppet Wiki.
• 20:51
  That's right. Yeah.
• 20:52
  That's that's one of two fictional websites in this.
• 20:56
  I didn't write the other one down but it's at the very end
• 20:58
  when Pepe gives us an email out. Yeah, yeah, I have that.
• 21:03
  So I'll just talk about this now.
• 21:05
  It's done one prawn at I am Pepe.com.
• 21:10
  Okay, I am Pepe.com also, redirects it disney.com, but
• 21:15
  knowing that, that existed, I tried sending an email to that
• 21:20
  email address just to see Like, he actually holds it up on a
• 21:24
  card written down, which makes it seem like they wanted people
• 21:27
  to try writing to that address. Of course, that was five years
• 21:30
  ago. So I did not get a reply to my
• 21:32
  email that I wrote, which I basically just said like hi
• 21:35
  Peppa. Is this still your email address
• 21:37
  but if they do right back I will let people know and give an
• 21:41
  update on this podcast. Yeah, please do.
• 21:44
  I didn't bother doing it for the same reason to because you know
• 21:47
  it's five years on and I didn't think anybody would be doing
• 21:50
  anything with it, but I can't remember.
• 21:52
  Anybody did it at the time? And I, again, I ran out of time.
• 21:56
  I meant to go back into our conversations on the tough pigs
• 21:59
  for him about when we were talking.
• 22:01
  Each of the episodes when I came out and we probably mentioned
• 22:04
  the email address of the time and somebody might have done it.
• 22:07
  I just can't remember if we did and what happened with it or
• 22:09
  not? Yeah, I don't if they did, I
• 22:12
  don't remember. But yeah, that's a good
• 22:14
  question. If anyone else out there who is
• 22:16
  listening to this? No email Pepe and 2015.
• 22:20
  Yes, definitely let us know. Email them to the past and find
• 22:24
  out what he was saying. Five years ago.
• 22:26
  Yes, that too. Yeah, so Denise is birthday is
• 22:29
  tomorrow and Yolanda and deadly tell Karma that he has to buy
• 22:34
  Denise. A birthday present, which he is
• 22:38
  really nervous about, because he's a bad Gift Giver, which I
• 22:41
  believe is a brand new trait of comments that were learning
• 22:44
  about, but I kind of like that. Yeah I I can see you know Kermit
• 22:49
  is the producer of up late with Miss Piggy.
• 22:51
  He was the Reserve of the Muppet Show back in the day.
• 22:54
  He's kind of, he's always been the producer roll over, see a
• 22:58
  roll, I could see him being so, tied up in everybody's chaos
• 23:03
  that he just doesn't have the emotional capacity to pick out a
• 23:09
  good gift like he always runs out of time or right?
• 23:12
  Yeah, although actually, now, I'm just now remembering that in
• 23:17
  Muppet family Christmas, he gives Miss Piggy Christmas
• 23:20
  present that she loves, which is a me, Think there's at least one
• 23:26
  of the great classic Muppet jokes.
• 23:29
  Yes. So there's at least one
• 23:31
  precedent, I guess, for Kermit giving a good gift, but you
• 23:34
  know, who knows? He may have been thinking and
• 23:36
  planning and worrying about buying that mink for the whole
• 23:40
  year until Christmas. So sure, yeah, yeah, that I like
• 23:46
  Uncle deadlies line when Kermit is asking for suggestions.
• 23:49
  He says, I don't present Solutions.
• 23:52
  Dramatic problems. Yeah, I wrote that down to.
• 23:55
  I love that line. It's good.
• 23:56
  Yeah, Dudley is starting to emerge as this this great
• 24:00
  supporting character who eventually will be the sort of
• 24:03
  the MVP of the series. Oh, he's so goodness show.
• 24:05
  And, and Matt Vogel is just incredible with him.
• 24:09
  Yeah, yeah. It's really like a revelation
• 24:13
  this character. Yeah.
• 24:14
  So Kermit asks the rest of the staff for suggestions, there's a
• 24:18
  whole scene of this, most of this, most of these jokes are
• 24:20
  not very good God. Yeah, Gonzo suggest getting
• 24:24
  Denise a scale because women are always asking if they look fat.
• 24:28
  So now she'll know for sure pretty bad scooter.
• 24:32
  Talks about the time, he bought his mom a gift.
• 24:36
  He, he painted a plate for her at Color Me.
• 24:39
  Mine. This is also the beginning of
• 24:43
  scooter. He's talked about his mom before
• 24:46
  on this series, but this is where he starts talking about
• 24:49
  his mom's boyfriend. Ken, yeah, he has.
• 24:52
  Lyin about Ken is always staying over.
• 24:55
  Put a robe on can pick. I'm okay with the mom stuff.
• 25:01
  I know that was not universally popular as an addition to
• 25:04
  scooters character. I'm okay with the mom stuff, but
• 25:06
  I was never, I don't think I ever laughed at any of these Ken
• 25:09
  jokes. Oh, I love them.
• 25:11
  I thought they were great. I love the mom stuff.
• 25:14
  I don't think I've never disliked scooter, but I also
• 25:19
  don't think that scooter has ever been as interesting as As
• 25:22
  he was in this show and and that changes further on like there's
• 25:26
  a there's an episode later where he goes on a date with Chelsea
• 25:29
  Handler, which I like that a lot.
• 25:33
  But yeah, you're right. This is this might be the first
• 25:36
  mention of Ken. It's a little bit more of the
• 25:38
  stuff that we get with his mom. I yeah, I like all that stuff.
• 25:45
  I like that. He lives with his mom.
• 25:47
  I like the scooters, a dork. So that fits.
• 25:50
  Yeah, I like to hear He's reason, but he's resentful of
• 25:55
  her boyfriend for whatever reason.
• 25:57
  And I don't, I don't exactly know what.
• 25:59
  The so the put a robe on can bit, might be a dick joke, but
• 26:09
  it might myself. And I just assumed Ken is
• 26:11
  walking around the house in his underwear.
• 26:13
  Well, okay, right. So but what made me think about
• 26:16
  it is during promotion for the show.
• 26:19
  They did a there's a Oster of Kermit wearing nothing but of
• 26:24
  course is his collar but he's also got like a towel around his
• 26:27
  neck and the caption for the poster says, finally a show that
• 26:34
  has the guts to do full frontal nudity or something like that.
• 26:37
  Right? Okay.
• 26:38
  I vaguely remember that. So I sort of connected the put a
• 26:42
  robe on can line with that and say, well I don't know if is are
• 26:45
  they making the making a d joke or are they or do we just not
• 26:50
  know Ken species because it's perfect?
• 26:52
  Be fine for current to walk around with an open robe and
• 26:56
  wearing any underwear. So, you know, if Ken is a bear
• 27:00
  or something else, it might be perfectly fine.
• 27:04
  It's true. There we have no idea when we
• 27:06
  never see can, that's right. So, and I'm glad, you know, I
• 27:11
  they should not show a character like that, so but I guess I like
• 27:14
  the idea that even if it is socially acceptable, for
• 27:18
  whatever species can is to be walking around with his robe
• 27:21
  open. I still Like that.
• 27:22
  It makes scooter uncomfortable. I think that's funny.
• 27:26
  Hmm, I can't agree. But you, you have made your case
• 27:31
  for it. Alright, so scooter takes Kermit
• 27:34
  to the Color Me, Mine store, whatever it is.
• 27:39
  This is one of these places where you choose a piece of
• 27:42
  pottery, and then they give you the paints to paint it with and
• 27:47
  you decorate it and then they put it in the Kiln and glaze it
• 27:51
  for you. When this episode aired, I think
• 27:54
  we all just kind of assumed that this was product placement for
• 27:57
  Color Me Mine, which is a chain of these places.
• 28:01
  Oh, is it? I forgot to look that up too.
• 28:04
  Yeah. Okay, so have you ever been to
• 28:05
  any of these kinds of places? I know of them, they there are.
• 28:11
  I know that there are like there are Play-Doh are clay places for
• 28:16
  like kids that you can take to do this sort of thing.
• 28:18
  Hey, this sort of this more reminded me of like a sir More
• 28:23
  like a ceramic shop, where you go and you, you know, my mother
• 28:26
  used to do it. When I was a kid, she'd call it.
• 28:28
  I'm doing air quotes. I'm going to Ceramics Now, call
• 28:33
  it. So you would, you would quote go
• 28:35
  to Ceramics with, quote, your girlfriends and you would quote,
• 28:39
  do Ceramics and their there. That means they're paintings
• 28:42
  Ceramics. Yeah, I guess so.
• 28:46
  That's similar. Yeah.
• 28:47
  It's, I guess it's just a crafty thing for folks to get together.
• 28:50
  And do, I love the idea that this is Like this is scooters
• 28:53
  idea of like a wild night out, right?
• 28:55
  It. Yeah, he talks about that, but
• 28:57
  yeah. I've been to one.
• 28:58
  I don't think it was a Color Me Mine.
• 28:59
  But I painted a monster which I still have somewhere on the
• 29:06
  Shelf. Yeah, it's kind of fun.
• 29:08
  It's kind of time consuming if you really want to do a good job
• 29:12
  of it. So yeah, I don't know that I
• 29:13
  would want to go back and do it again.
• 29:15
  So Color Me, Mine will not be a sponsor of this podcast but well
• 29:19
  please find your monster and post a photo Do with this
• 29:23
  episode when I close. I said, yeah yeah.
• 29:26
  But scooter loves it. So yeah.
• 29:28
  And that is fun to see. He is a Color Me, Mine expert.
• 29:33
  He knows all the employees who work there.
• 29:35
  Yeah. And he gives Kermit a plate to
• 29:38
  paint for Denise and then he keeps offering helpful pointers
• 29:44
  on how to paint it. I like this seeing this aspect
• 29:48
  of Kermit and scooters dynamic because there is a history of
• 29:52
  Scooter quietly. Driving Kermit.
• 29:55
  Crazy. Yeah.
• 29:56
  Which is what we're seeing in this scene.
• 29:58
  Yeah, I noticed Kermit picks up the paintbrush with his right
• 30:02
  hand and then his painting with it in a very coordinated way.
• 30:08
  Usually Muppets are left-handed when they write because the, as
• 30:12
  we know, the puppeteers are almost always right handed.
• 30:16
  So, their right hand is working the puppets mouth, which means
• 30:19
  their left hand is working the puppets, Hand.
• 30:24
  So they must have had another Puppeteer here, whose job in
• 30:28
  this scene was to work Kermit's paintbrush and, and it's really
• 30:32
  good. Yeah, I did notice that, but I
• 30:34
  guess it proves that Kermit is ambidextrous if.
• 30:38
  Yeah, I mean, and that's true for a lot of people to some
• 30:41
  people, right, with one hand and then they do like another
• 30:44
  dominant activity with their other hand.
• 30:47
  Yeah. So but but it does remind me
• 30:49
  that I don't know what episode it is but the Puppetry in this
• 30:53
  show is extraordinary and it really is, it's not something
• 30:57
  that most people I think notice. And I realized that that makes
• 31:00
  me sound like that. The, the onion t-shirt.
• 31:02
  I appreciate the Muppets of much deeper over there to you know.
• 31:05
  But in this case, it's true. It is true.
• 31:07
  There's one episode, I don't know which one it is.
• 31:10
  But I was so fascinated by it where Kermit is just holding one
• 31:15
  of those clicky pens and he's holding it in his hand, and his
• 31:19
  thumb is actively clean. The button to make, you know, to
• 31:24
  extend the pain, and I love that.
• 31:27
  They, I don't know if that mechanism was already built.
• 31:30
  I mean, certainly they've built stuff for his fingers in the
• 31:34
  past, to do banjo, plucking stuff Fort Lee in close-ups of
• 31:38
  maybe. It's something similar to that a
• 31:41
  friend of ours, Grant Harding from the tough pigs for him.
• 31:44
  He actually built one for one of his puppets and right.
• 31:46
  He's always working on cool stuff like that.
• 31:49
  Yep. So he kind of showed off the how
• 31:52
  that could kind of work. So, I assume they're doing
• 31:53
  something similar to that, but I talk, I just, I love those those
• 31:58
  little details that I think I made a gif of it at the time
• 32:01
  that the clicking pen and it's and it's quick and it's subtle
• 32:04
  and it's not like in Focus. It's just something that he just
• 32:07
  happens to be doing because he is a character who lives in this
• 32:10
  world, and that's good puppetry, right?
• 32:13
  And the average viewer just sees that.
• 32:15
  And, you know, like of course, anyone can click a pain, but
• 32:19
  right people? I will say people like us are
• 32:21
  watching. Wait, how did they do that?
• 32:24
  Yes so yes a lot of that here and yes Steve Whitmire whoever
• 32:28
  is working his right hand in this scene is.
• 32:31
  Yeah, it's very impressive and just really good puppet
• 32:35
  coordination. Yeah it's good stuff.
• 32:38
  So Kermit's plate I think is really cute and I think Denise
• 32:41
  would have loved it. It's this very it looks like a
• 32:44
  child drew it which is a little unusual for Kermit but no II
• 32:50
  like yeah it's this delightful. The painting of the Kermit and
• 32:54
  Denise on their first date. It's and scooter thinks that
• 32:58
  their table is a hippo. So and and she's a giraffe
• 33:01
  because some tea. Yes, I don't know why necks are
• 33:04
  so hard to draw but apparently Kermit struggled with it, right?
• 33:07
  He says an extra hard. Yeah, so scooter throws the
• 33:11
  plate in the whoopsie bin. I don't know if that is a term
• 33:15
  that they actually use at Color Me Mine but is it is a very
• 33:18
  funny turn of phrase. The whooping it's funny or later
• 33:21
  and I won't Well, we'll talk about that when we get to it.
• 33:24
  Yeah so Kermit is really desperate now.
• 33:27
  So he goes to Miss Piggy for advice.
• 33:31
  He figures this will probably be fine because they said they were
• 33:34
  just going to remain friends. I guess you know they've been
• 33:36
  okay as co-workers this is probably still a bad idea but I
• 33:41
  guess he I don't know. If does he say that piggy is a
• 33:45
  good Gift Giver or he just thinks that she would be good at
• 33:48
  this, I don't know but it does lead to know.
• 33:52
  I think he's skeptical and she has to prove it.
• 33:54
  And the way she proves is that she shows a letter that she
• 33:57
  received from Queen Elizabeth. Thank her for a GoPro.
• 34:03
  The go of the GoPro. Yeah.
• 34:05
  So it's some point in the past for some reason we don't know
• 34:07
  why Miss Piggy, gifted a GoPro to Queen Elizabeth.
• 34:11
  Yes, and she has a particular see what I would have liked to
• 34:14
  see. During the end credits of this
• 34:15
  episode is the GoPro video that Queen Elizabeth like running
• 34:20
  around Buckingham Palace. Her point of view, they could
• 34:23
  have rehired the same actor. They got to play Queen
• 34:27
  Elizabeth, and that episode of Muppets tonight.
• 34:30
  Oh, well. That's the one where Bobo is
• 34:34
  refusing to let anybody into the studio.
• 34:36
  Yeah, I believe so. And it's like, Queen Elizabeth
• 34:40
  and I don't know, a bunch of other notable dignitaries, and
• 34:45
  he won't let them in a studio. Yeah.
• 34:47
  It's it's a Muppets tonight. It's the Billy Crystal I sewed.
• 34:52
  Okay. And she's yeah, she's hanging
• 34:55
  out with Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton, and Clint
• 34:57
  Eastwood, and, and force weight, and according to the wiki Boris
• 35:02
  Yeltsin. But, you know, I was going to
• 35:03
  say, Boris Yeltsin, but I wasn't sure so yeah, yeah, they
• 35:07
  absolutely. Should have brought her back for
• 35:09
  this episode. Yeah, just keep a family man.
• 35:12
  Yeah, piggy asks Kermit, what does Denise like?
• 35:15
  And he mentions a bunch of things, she likes.
• 35:19
  She puts ketchup on everything including Tomatoes.
• 35:21
  That's a good joke. Yeah, I like that.
• 35:23
  She eats cupcakes upside down until there's nothing left.
• 35:27
  But the icing that's a little weird.
• 35:31
  Yeah. Quirky and a bunch of other
• 35:33
  things. He mentions than piggy asks,
• 35:36
  what she mentions that she's a big fan of the, the Georgia
• 35:40
  Bulldogs? Yeah, that was a Bulldogs
• 35:42
  football. So that's probably an indication
• 35:45
  of where she's from. We know she speaks with a, with
• 35:48
  a slight, southern accent. Not a very everyone.
• 35:50
  Does have a southern twang? Yes, yeah.
• 35:52
  So, She must be from Georgia, I guess, or I guess so, yeah.
• 35:57
  So there you go. Yeah.
• 35:59
  So every because Miss Piggy reasons, every couple has to
• 36:03
  have a song. So, Kermit and Denise must have
• 36:05
  a song piggy says, about referring to her and Kermit's
• 36:10
  relationship, she says we nailed ours.
• 36:12
  Their song was, you are the sunshine of my life the Stevie
• 36:15
  Wonder song which also makes me wonder.
• 36:17
  Why hasn't he done more with these characters?
• 36:19
  He did one interview with Muppet magazine in the eighth He's and
• 36:23
  he's been on Sesame Street, but you would think that Stevie
• 36:26
  Wonder would have done more with the Muppets.
• 36:29
  Yeah, I guess. It's, I guess for, for the
• 36:32
  Muppet Show Family characters, it's only that photo spread he
• 36:36
  did from up a man. Yeah, right.
• 36:38
  Yeah, that's too bad, huh? But so, so with all this
• 36:42
  information piggy is now planning to take Kermit shopping
• 36:45
  for this gift but he has a meeting with the network
• 36:48
  president so she's going to buy the gift for him so he can have
• 36:52
  Vit in time for his his I guess it's a lunch with the nice later
• 36:57
  in the day. There's a moment where he's just
• 37:00
  like still stressed out thinking about all this and piggy says,
• 37:03
  you're making the squishy face. Don't make the squishy face
• 37:06
  relaxed, relaxed smile. And then it goes from doing his
• 37:11
  trademark squishy face though. We all know to sort of shaping
• 37:16
  his mouth into something resembling a smile.
• 37:20
  Yeah. Which which I love that.
• 37:22
  That's one of my notes to is that there's at least two two
• 37:26
  moments in this episode alone where Kermit has some really
• 37:31
  great facial expressions. One of them is directly
• 37:34
  referenced in the script. It's this one where you know,
• 37:37
  she says, oh, you're making the squishy face.
• 37:39
  The one that everybody has made memes of and then sort of like,
• 37:43
  I think she does. She put her, does she put her
• 37:46
  hands on his face and tell ya, which makes me reminds me of the
• 37:52
  The the Adele hello music video that they did this promotion
• 37:56
  for. For this show, she has a similar
• 37:58
  sort of thing where she's she's sort of more forcefully molding
• 38:04
  his face into into something. I love that video but yeah I
• 38:08
  love that moment. Yeah and again good manipulation
• 38:13
  from Steve Whitmire to make Kermit's face sort of look like
• 38:16
  it's smiling but still it's it's it looks weird enough that it's
• 38:21
  a very funny visual guy. It's not just Kermit looking
• 38:23
  like he's smiling. Yeah, so yeah, that's good.
• 38:26
  Yeah, so later, we see Kermit at the sushi restaurant Katsuya,
• 38:32
  waiting for piggy to bring this gift.
• 38:34
  He's been stalling. He tells her on the phone or
• 38:38
  he's leaving a message. I guess he says, lunch is almost
• 38:41
  over. And the only thing I've got to
• 38:42
  give her as a punch card from Cinnabon and I'm still seven
• 38:45
  Cinnabons away from a free Bond. That's not a gift.
• 38:47
  That's a burden good joke. It's a good joke and and part
• 38:52
  Replacement, there's a lot of product placement.
• 38:53
  I guess, that that's, that is to, this is, yeah, well, you've
• 38:57
  got in this episode 13 so far, you've got Funyuns, you've got
• 39:00
  Tic Tacs, you've got tender, you've got some ugly and you've
• 39:03
  got Katsuya. Yeah, well talk, we'll talk
• 39:06
  about Funyuns Tic Tacs and tender in the Olympic my
• 39:09
  unfortunate. So you're right.
• 39:12
  He's trying to stall. He starts singing.
• 39:14
  Happy birthday to Denise, but he tells her that first, there's a
• 39:17
  20th, a little-known 52 verse intro.
• 39:20
  Like a singing? Yeah.
• 39:22
  Like that the lyrics sort of closely resemble like how
• 39:26
  somebody might start telling a child about the birds and the
• 39:28
  bees, right? It's like long time ago your mom
• 39:32
  and your dad really loved each other a lot.
• 39:34
  Yeah and then Peggy shows up and it gets cutoff rate.
• 39:38
  She says up with the gift for Denise.
• 39:40
  It is a jewelry box and it's just a bunch of a bunch of
• 39:46
  elements to it that are from the list of things that Kermit
• 39:50
  mentioned before that Denise likes.
• 39:53
  It's a great gift. Yeah, it's just like a very
• 39:56
  personalized. Yeah, sheep for to basically,
• 40:00
  she basically made like a bullet bullet point list of all the,
• 40:04
  the things that Kermit, you know, told her about Denise and
• 40:08
  she went out and she sort of made, you know, the, the perfect
• 40:12
  gift out of that, which, which I think is, is very sweet.
• 40:16
  But as I sent your getting to it's not quite so sweet, right?
• 40:20
  Right. Well, so and weave.
• 40:22
  On this podcast about how the show started out with piggy,
• 40:26
  being too mean and too much of a character that like there's no
• 40:31
  reason for us to like her. So it sort of feels in this
• 40:36
  story like they're moving in the direction of making us like
• 40:40
  Piggy a little more. I mean the Kristin Chenoweth
• 40:42
  thing, we talked about definitely that works.
• 40:45
  So yeah, here she's done is very sweet thing and bought a perfect
• 40:49
  gift for her. Ex-boyfriends new girlfriend.
• 40:52
  Friend. She also though gives Kermit her
• 40:55
  the bill for her lunch that she had.
• 40:58
  While she was out shopping which includes caviar.
• 41:00
  That is a very nice, very Miss Piggy.
• 41:02
  What else do you dip your Lobster in?
• 41:04
  Yeah. So Denise loves this jewelry
• 41:08
  box. She's so impressed that it is
• 41:10
  made of the wood from the state tree of her.
• 41:13
  Home of Georgia, her home state of Georgia.
• 41:17
  She knows Kermit's tree to his state tree is Magnolia and know.
• 41:22
  Yeah, did you look this up? The mirror dimly is.
• 41:25
  Does that check out? It is the state tree of
• 41:27
  Mississippi, which is where Kermit is often, said to be from
• 41:30
  nice. Good.
• 41:31
  Yeah. They did their research but then
• 41:34
  she opens it and she discovers that.
• 41:35
  It's also a music box and it plays.
• 41:38
  You are the sunshine of my life. Yeah.
• 41:41
  And then Kermit looks up the window and Miss Piggy is
• 41:43
  standing there. Like I think she blows him a
• 41:44
  kiss. Yeah.
• 41:45
  She or she's got her hand up on the window ways that him.
• 41:49
  Yeah so I'm not sure. Exactly.
• 41:52
  What piggy is trying to do here? What point she's trying to make?
• 41:55
  I mean, I guess looking she says it right afterwards, right?
• 41:58
  She's like, you know you don't ask your ex-girlfriend to buy a
• 42:01
  gift for your new car and girlfriend.
• 42:03
  I think he knows that now. That's I guess that's the
• 42:06
  ultimate Point II. Don't, I don't disagree.
• 42:09
  That piggy is mean in this show, but Piggies always mean, you
• 42:14
  know, I remember Watching the Muppet Show with my daughter and
• 42:18
  so many years ago and you know, she was always pointing up When
• 42:22
  piggy was being me and I think it bugged her.
• 42:25
  Well, I think piggy can always have the capacity to be mean.
• 42:30
  I don't she always has a high opinion of herself and I think
• 42:34
  it's easy for some of the lazier writers to mistake that to her
• 42:38
  just like, being mean to everybody.
• 42:41
  I agree. Which is why I think she's
• 42:43
  really well written in this show because she's not mean for the
• 42:46
  sake of being mean. You understand in the show, why
• 42:49
  she's being mean, she feels like a three-dimensional mean
• 42:52
  Character, you know, Frank Oz talks a lot about, you know,
• 42:55
  where the pain of being piggy comes from, you know, he talks
• 42:59
  about it in interviews, but I don't know if even he ever
• 43:03
  telegraphed that. Well, in the performance.
• 43:05
  I mean, certainly he did, I mean, you know, you know, he
• 43:08
  will always be, you know, Miss Piggy's ultimate performer and
• 43:13
  one. I think it was always at the
• 43:15
  root of his performance. It was, but I think the way
• 43:18
  she's she, the way he performed her, it was It usually felt like
• 43:24
  it was for. It was just for like a one, no
• 43:27
  joke. And certainly in the movies,
• 43:29
  they made her a little bit more three dimensional.
• 43:31
  But this this show in TV terms, she feels like a
• 43:36
  three-dimensional character who is mean, because of the things
• 43:40
  that she has gone through she and certainly, she's going
• 43:42
  through stuff right now as they set up in the, in the first
• 43:46
  episode. But I believed it, I'm more
• 43:50
  comfortable with piggy as a main character in this Show that I am
• 43:53
  in any other TV show. I think, I think there are
• 43:56
  episodes of this series that do that more successfully than
• 43:59
  others I would say. This one is maybe sort of in the
• 44:02
  middle for me. The the previous episode with
• 44:06
  with Reese Witherspoon is not. I just thought that was just
• 44:09
  like Piggy being annoying and there's no reason to like her
• 44:12
  and that one but yeah, I can see how this one.
• 44:15
  They're trying and yeah, you can see why she does this.
• 44:18
  I guess. I guess it's just you know it's
• 44:22
  just sort of torturing Kermit to have Denise be like oh I love
• 44:26
  this song and like like deciding that their song is also the song
• 44:34
  from the relationship with his ex-girlfriend that ended
• 44:38
  painfully. Yeah II.
• 44:40
  Guess the difference for me in this case is that And look ever
• 44:49
  since I was a kid to like I always was kind of like why is
• 44:52
  why is p? So mean the same way my daughter
• 44:54
  would point it out. But this this might be the first
• 44:58
  time where I agreed with something slightly vindictive
• 45:02
  that she did. You know, when she said when
• 45:04
  she's talking to the camera later, after the gift giving
• 45:07
  giving the scene takes place, she says, you know, you don't
• 45:11
  ask your ex girlfriend to fight and that was and she and she
• 45:14
  says, I move on Kermit's part, right?
• 45:17
  So I I think this is the first, this might be the first time up
• 45:20
  at history where I agree with her.
• 45:22
  I fall down her side of the issue rather than than Kermit's
• 45:26
  and and I think that that's a, it's a testament to the writing
• 45:29
  of the character, but also the setup of the joke and there is
• 45:33
  some sweetness. There, there is some genuine.
• 45:36
  When she says, I would do anything for Kermit.
• 45:38
  He is my friend. I believe that.
• 45:40
  But but then even in that, that sweet moment she still has that
• 45:44
  little bit of vindictive, you know, I got to Get back at you
• 45:48
  for this because how dare you you know yeah I guess maybe just
• 45:53
  with this being the punch line of this story line, I might have
• 45:57
  found it a little bit more effective.
• 45:59
  If they do set it up with piggy sitting this was their song.
• 46:03
  But maybe if we saw like a talking head, were Kermit tells
• 46:07
  us that he can't hear this song Anymore without crying or, you
• 46:11
  know, just something something to make it a little bit more
• 46:16
  effective for Reaction to it. Okay well so how do you feel in
• 46:21
  the first place about this being their song?
• 46:24
  Like I don't think it's ever I mean certainly they have sung
• 46:29
  songs together in the in the past but I don't think anything
• 46:32
  has ever been established as air quotes their song.
• 46:36
  Right. No, I don't think so.
• 46:39
  Yeah. I mean it's fine.
• 46:40
  I'm sure one reason this was chosen is that it's This is from
• 46:46
  the 70s or the 80s this Stevie Wonder song, I Don't Know But I
• 46:50
  do know that whenever I hear it. Of course, I know that it's a
• 46:53
  Stevie Wonder song but when I hear it in my head, I
• 46:56
  immediately go to. You are the sunshine of my life
• 46:59
  Minute. Maid minute minute may use this
• 47:03
  as their in a commercial, probably in the in the 80s.
• 47:07
  So I know that that's neither here, nor daughter.
• 47:09
  No, but I love that. Well, I actually always think of
• 47:12
  Jim Nabors doing a cover of Where he at.
• 47:16
  Yeah which is you know he was supposedly a good singer but
• 47:20
  when I hear his singing voice, I can only just hear Gomer Pyle
• 47:24
  that's one, that may be a percentage of our younger
• 47:27
  listeners will not really understand but no, Jim Nabors
• 47:30
  was a Muppet Show guest stars, right?
• 47:31
  Yeah. And he's episodes out on DVD.
• 47:33
  So every Market friends who are just a very Gomer.
• 47:40
  Well, is that like, when you see Frank Oz show up in An American
• 47:44
  Werewolf in London and you Immediately here, Fozzie Bear.
• 47:48
  Yeah, it's kinda like that. But yeah, no, I like this song
• 47:51
  and I like that, it's established as their song.
• 47:53
  I don't really have a problem with the fact that this is the
• 47:55
  first time we're hearing it know.
• 47:57
  And I was just going to say, if I think if we if they had chosen
• 48:01
  a song from the 2010s, that would have felt wrong somehow.
• 48:05
  But with this being a song that we all sort of think of at this
• 48:09
  point as a, like, an old classic love song.
• 48:13
  Yeah. That it's a good choice.
• 48:14
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 48:15
  No, I like it. It's good.
• 48:18
  Yeah, so that's it for the storyline.
• 48:21
  Yeah, I think we've pretty much Taco.
• 48:24
  Well, there is the little tag at the very end of the episode
• 48:27
  where Pepe and Rizzo are now at Color Me Mine and scooter finds
• 48:32
  them there and he's just kind of disgusted by their irreverence.
• 48:36
  Yeah, I like this scene which is surprising to me because I'm not
• 48:40
  that big of a fan of Rizzo and pepe.
• 48:42
  I think that they obviously No, I think most fans who have been
• 48:47
  watching them for any period of time, know that they're kind of,
• 48:51
  they might be the more sexist characters.
• 48:53
  They're, they're the ones who are more likely to throw out
• 48:57
  and, you know, some kind of a joke about Justin, something
• 49:02
  your irreverent about women or whatever.
• 49:05
  But, but I like this scene and, and I like it in contrast to the
• 49:09
  earlier scene with scooter and Kermit at the Ceramics place,
• 49:13
  which didn't didn't I? He works for me.
• 49:16
  At it goes on for a bit too long and I don't understand the
• 49:19
  orange joke that that's good or makes.
• 49:22
  Oh, is he trying to discourage comment from using so much
• 49:27
  orange paint. Yeah, but but he says something
• 49:30
  like, if you're going to use that much orange, you might as
• 49:34
  well paint. All right, an orange.
• 49:38
  Yeah, I didn't quite that. Didn't that joke didn't work for
• 49:41
  me. Whatever the joke was, maybe it.
• 49:44
  Maybe it was just a display. A of his being awkward or
• 49:47
  something, I guess. But this scene in contrast, I
• 49:50
  like that. They go back to it.
• 49:54
  It I try to think of scenes with me, you know, any jokes that
• 49:57
  they might be making about women.
• 49:59
  Like with this work, if you placed two female characters in
• 50:02
  those roles making jokes about men and in comparison to some of
• 50:07
  the other jokes that they make like this in the past, I think
• 50:10
  this was using Color Me Mine as a spot to pick up women, right?
• 50:13
  Yeah, exactly. So They they're using as about
• 50:17
  to pick up women, but I can also Imagine in a world where there
• 50:21
  are more female Muppet characters, which is another
• 50:23
  whole podcast, I won't get into that.
• 50:26
  But you could imagine to other, you know, women going to a
• 50:29
  Ceramics class specifically to pick up like the cute guy at the
• 50:32
  Ceramics class, you know. So in that respect I don't have
• 50:37
  a problem with it and and it does lead to a pretty funny joke
• 50:40
  that I laugh at, you know, you mentioned earlier that they
• 50:43
  establish you. Don't know if the the official
• 50:48
  name of the throw out bin is called the whoopsie bin, but the
• 50:52
  fact that Pepe can use that later as a pick-up line for, you
• 50:55
  know, a lady. He's making sweet eyes on.
• 50:58
  And she appears to be reciprocating.
• 51:01
  I think that's a funny joke. It just sounds funny.
• 51:03
  Yeah, he says meet me at the whoopsie bin.
• 51:05
  Yeah, which just yeah, it sounds funny, it does it.
• 51:10
  I don't know if it was supposed to be a reference to, you know,
• 51:14
  like The song Makin whoopee or if it just sounds similar.
• 51:19
  But yeah, it's yeah. It's just a funny sounding thing
• 51:21
  to say. Yes.
• 51:23
  Yeah. So the current and Denise and
• 51:26
  piggy storyline pretty good. There's yeah.
• 51:32
  I mean, there there's sort of getting the hang of the
• 51:36
  characters, the trying new things with Denise.
• 51:39
  And as we've said, they're trying to treat Piggy and Kermit
• 51:43
  piggy relationship in amateur Our way.
• 51:45
  So. Yeah.
• 51:47
  And what they're trying to do. Yeah.
• 51:49
  And you know, like we said about Denise.
• 51:52
  She's I don't I don't dislike her and and certainly by this
• 51:56
  point, this is only her second appearance.
• 51:58
  So, you know, it takes some time to build up a character and
• 52:01
  you're putting this one new character in with a group of
• 52:04
  characters who've been around for decades.
• 52:08
  But mostly I mean, you know, if we're looking at it, honestly,
• 52:11
  she really was just a created as a, as a foil.
• 52:15
  For Kermit and Piggies story. That's why she exists, right?
• 52:20
  And that said, as she's they did try to make her a
• 52:24
  three-dimensional character. And I think they, she's not like
• 52:28
  I said, she's not as three-dimensional, some of the
• 52:29
  other characters but it's she's slightly more than just a one no
• 52:34
  joke, which is kind of what she is on paper.
• 52:37
  If that makes any sense, right? Yeah.
• 52:41
  They never, they probably should have given her a story line and
• 52:45
  An episode where there's some, you know, she's in marketing for
• 52:48
  the Network that has potential they could have given her some.
• 52:51
  Yeah, you know, there's there's some scandalous thing happening
• 52:54
  with one of the stars of their other shows and she asked, I
• 52:57
  don't know. Do you know, some kind of clean
• 53:01
  up on that? Or I don't know.
• 53:03
  Something like that. Whatever marketing people do
• 53:04
  there must be a story in there somewhere.
• 53:06
  Yeah. And maybe we would have gotten
• 53:08
  that at some point. I mean this series, right?
• 53:10
  Yeah. 16 episodes. And I mean, they did have a lot
• 53:14
  of Writers and halfway halfway through the show, they got a
• 53:19
  female showrunner. So I'm sure, you know, I liked a
• 53:23
  lot of what they were doing with Yolanda.
• 53:25
  We don't get a lot of you enter in this episode, but no, she
• 53:29
  does have a funny G has a couple of funny joke.
• 53:31
  She she does the little let me put that through my lady
• 53:34
  translator. And she goes, she looks at her
• 53:36
  phone and she goes beep. Boop boop, right?
• 53:38
  It says, Denise already told him that she doesn't need.
• 53:42
  She doesn't want a gift. Yeah, and Yolanda looks at her
• 53:44
  phone and says I let me run after you my lady, translate
• 53:46
  your poopy. Poopy poopy.
• 53:47
  Look at that. She wants a gift.
• 53:49
  Yeah, yeah, right. I like you all day and it's the
• 53:51
  puppet was a little strange to me when you compared to some of
• 53:55
  the other puppets. I don't like the way that they
• 53:57
  did her, I guess her eyelashes. But anyway, that's do know.
• 54:02
  That was the original Yolanda puppet, or did they just redress
• 54:05
  another rat puppet? Or I don't know, I don't really
• 54:08
  understand a whole lot of the, you know, when they refurbish a
• 54:12
  puppet, or they begin to rebuild a puppet or whatever.
• 54:15
  But the eyes look to me, the eyes don't look up at a enough.
• 54:20
  And I think it mostly comes from, they've got these, you
• 54:23
  remember, those scissors? You would use in like, crafting
• 54:25
  class in school that were they kind of had like, like zigs.
• 54:29
  I zag zig zags to the scissors to the.
• 54:31
  Yeah. It kind of looks like somebody
• 54:33
  cut her eyelashes out, with one of those pairs has.
• 54:36
  Maybe they did. Yeah, I mean, no disrespect to
• 54:39
  whoever built that in puppet them.
• 54:41
  No, no. The Muppet Workshop people do a
• 54:44
  job? Yeah.
• 54:45
  Yeah, but yeah, I would like to have seen, maybe more of an
• 54:48
  evolution, with, with the look of the characters, the show had
• 54:51
  stayed on. Yeah.
• 54:52
  Again, maybe it would have. So then there's the other story
• 54:56
  line, which is Kristin Chenoweth, and the Electric
• 54:58
  Mayhem after the show, she's walking out and the band.
• 55:03
  Thanks her for performing with them.
• 55:06
  She says, you know, it was, it was great.
• 55:08
  She's always wanted to perform with them.
• 55:10
  Animal says, animal always want to perform with live snakes.
• 55:15
  But Zeke, big baby weird joke and also like, I don't know if
• 55:21
  they ever if they were ever specifically snakes on The
• 55:25
  Muppet Show. But I do feel like it's a weird
• 55:28
  when you talk about live snakes, but it doesn't seem like like
• 55:32
  much of a leap to think about the Muppets performing with
• 55:36
  snakes on stage, you know? Yeah, no, yeah, certainly.
• 55:43
  There must have been Takes on The Muppet Show.
• 55:46
  I can't. You would think?
• 55:48
  Yeah, I mean I guess my mind instantly goes to the snake in
• 55:53
  amador's. Jug Band Christmas, that that
• 55:56
  might have been a background stake in some.
• 55:58
  Yeah, yeah, right. So I don't know but then this I
• 56:02
  guess this series takes place in a more grounded reality where
• 56:07
  there's snakes are just snakes and they're scary.
• 56:10
  So but sued is very funny in this scene just like loosely.
• 56:15
  Still and not doing anything. And occasionally, yeah, huge get
• 56:18
  some great Liners in this series and this episode's.
• 56:22
  No, no exception. I'm curious how you feel though
• 56:26
  about animals, dialogue. Like he's and certainly this
• 56:31
  isn't the first time they started doing it.
• 56:33
  They probably started doing it. Not too long after Eric took
• 56:36
  over the role, but he at some point in the history of the
• 56:40
  character, they started using not quite full sentences, but
• 56:44
  much Fuller. Sentences than animal used to
• 56:47
  traditionally. Yeah but kind of like
• 56:49
  caveman-talk. Yeah.
• 56:51
  Like in Muppets Most Wanted when Kermit comes back after being
• 56:57
  replaced by Constantine, he says something like none of you
• 57:01
  notice that I had been replaced by an evil, doppelganger and
• 57:04
  animal says animal. No.
• 57:07
  Yeah. Just kind of like I don't know
• 57:10
  how that line would have been written.
• 57:13
  You know, but Geri Jewell and the 70s.
• 57:15
  But I don't think it would have quite sounded like that.
• 57:18
  No, I mean animal were even even when he was supposed to be doing
• 57:23
  more, there's a figure who it is but for during I think it was
• 57:29
  promotion for it was a talk show in promotion for Muppets, Take
• 57:33
  Manhattan, Kermit and animal were speaking to a presenter.
• 57:39
  It might have been Merv Griffin, I can't remember.
• 57:42
  But the, the interviewer and curve it, they both keep asking
• 57:46
  animal like, all these questions and Frank is just, he's sticking
• 57:50
  to his guns on his animal. Animal is just a one-note kit,
• 57:53
  like he's just giving out Grunts and like, maybe like half a word
• 57:57
  here and there. Yeah, I guess that's really
• 57:59
  more. Like what we've seen from animal
• 58:02
  traditionally? Yeah.
• 58:04
  Naughty. Yeah, nothing.
• 58:05
  That's even resembles of a sentence construction.
• 58:08
  Just Just a word or two and yeah and grunting.
• 58:13
  And I don't I don't begrudge the change.
• 58:16
  I mean, you know, certainly I'm, that's not a big deal.
• 58:20
  Yeah, I don't think so either, but I can see how there might be
• 58:23
  some traditionalist Muppet fans, who are like, you know, no, this
• 58:26
  isn't what animal it is he supposed to be, you know, the
• 58:30
  sort of grunting character. But I think at a certain point,
• 58:33
  you know, the there's always been this weird balance with the
• 58:36
  Muppets were you want them to evolve?
• 58:39
  Change. But you also need them to stay
• 58:41
  true to, you know, the basics of their characters.
• 58:47
  And I think that this is an acceptable change for animal and
• 58:51
  maybe at some point in the future, they go back to just
• 58:54
  nothing, they probably will, you know, there's different people,
• 58:56
  writing them all the time. So yeah, yeah, this is not a big
• 58:59
  deal. Yes.
• 59:00
  A little different. So the band asks, Kristin,
• 59:03
  Chenoweth to perform with them at Floyds parents anniversary
• 59:08
  party this weekend, It's their 40th anniversary.
• 59:13
  Yeah. So how will this Floyd?
• 59:15
  Because this implies that he is, I mean we don't know when they
• 59:19
  had him as opposed to when they got married.
• 59:21
  But if light is younger than 40, that can't be right.
• 59:25
  Well no, I mean maybe they maybe they had him out of wedlock and
• 59:29
  didn't get married officially until Floyd was like, 35 years
• 59:32
  old. Yeah, even better.
• 59:35
  It just somehow and like, even trying.
• 59:39
  To assign ages to these characters field Ops wrong?
• 59:43
  Yeah, most of these characters. But then, yeah, we've talked
• 59:45
  about this on this podcast, even to about the sort of quandary
• 59:50
  for the writers of, like, when like when do the Muppets exist
• 59:55
  and how much of Life have they lived?
• 59:57
  Like, do they remember things in the 70s as having happened in
• 59:59
  the 70s or yeah, you know. Yeah, I think it depends on the
• 1:00:03
  context. Certainly, you know, Kermit will
• 1:00:07
  he'll he'll acknowledge a Since to a guest on The Muppet Show,
• 1:00:10
  but in the same breath. Yeah.
• 1:00:12
  He'll say, you know, he'll forget about something which
• 1:00:15
  there's many layers to that and I won't get into it.
• 1:00:18
  But yeah, it's interesting to think about for something like
• 1:00:21
  this, right? I just I just don't think Floyd
• 1:00:24
  should be younger than 40 but I don't know exactly how old he
• 1:00:27
  should be. But that reminds me under
• 1:00:30
  recent, this has by the time this goes up, this episode will
• 1:00:34
  have been published but we did a bonus episode of moving right
• 1:00:37
  along on. Denver and the Muppets Rocky
• 1:00:40
  Mountain holiday nice which includes a joke.
• 1:00:43
  Where Floyd talks about having been in Marseille like
• 1:00:48
  apparently Floyd fought in World War Two.
• 1:00:51
  So what? He's old.
• 1:00:53
  Yeah, stay tuned for that episode of moving, right along.
• 1:00:57
  All right, Perfect. All right, so they she agrees to
• 1:01:03
  play this party with them so we see them driving out in the
• 1:01:08
  desert. And the Electric Mayhem van, I
• 1:01:11
  forgot to look it up. Is this the first time we saw
• 1:01:13
  this van? I think so.
• 1:01:16
  Because, you know, we all loved the Electric Mayhem bus which
• 1:01:19
  was seen in The Muppet Movie and Muppets from space.
• 1:01:21
  Yeah, that was destroyed in a fire leader.
• 1:01:25
  Fortunately tragically, so I like this van.
• 1:01:28
  It's cool. They've used it in several
• 1:01:29
  things, since then it's it was used in some of the carpool,
• 1:01:34
  right? Was it what was it used in
• 1:01:36
  Corporal carpool karaoke Yeah, I think so.
• 1:01:40
  And in the music video footage that was used at Outside Lands
• 1:01:45
  and the Muppets take the bowl and the 02.
• 1:01:48
  Okay, maybe, maybe Court was it in Kodachrome, that I don't
• 1:01:53
  remember, but I wouldn't be surprised if I like it.
• 1:01:55
  I think it's a good sort of spiritual successor to the old
• 1:01:57
  bus. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:01:59
  Just this this multicolored Electric Mayhem van Kristin,
• 1:02:03
  Chenoweth starts. So she's concerned because her
• 1:02:08
  seat belt Is actually just a guitar strap.
• 1:02:10
  That's connected to nothing. Good joke.
• 1:02:14
  That is very good joke. And then Janice says,
• 1:02:17
  everything's connected to something.
• 1:02:18
  When you think about it, animal offers Kristin Chenoweth
• 1:02:23
  Funyuns. Yep.
• 1:02:24
  More product placement. As you suggested, we find out
• 1:02:29
  that Floyd's dad's place is not exactly a house.
• 1:02:33
  It's a hole in the ground with an old school bus in it.
• 1:02:37
  And that leads to a rare line of From lips.
• 1:02:40
  Yeah lip says he just sitting there all day playing cards with
• 1:02:44
  a bunch of stuff. Jack rabbits.
• 1:02:47
  So thank you lips and congratulations on getting a
• 1:02:51
  full line of dialogue. Yeah he's got a couple in this
• 1:02:54
  series, I think. Yeah, yeah, it's not you know,
• 1:03:00
  this doesn't really you don't get a sense of who lips as a
• 1:03:04
  character from this line. No.
• 1:03:06
  But I don't know. Maybe they could have kept doing
• 1:03:10
  more with him if the series is gone on.
• 1:03:12
  Yeah, absolutely. And I think this this whole
• 1:03:15
  scene is interesting because, you know, it it eventually
• 1:03:20
  devolves into a bunch of bickering and we'll talk about
• 1:03:23
  why, but the the bickering might feel a little bit out of left
• 1:03:28
  field for some viewers because I don't think we've ever really
• 1:03:31
  seen this depth, to this group of characters before
• 1:03:35
  traditionally dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem
• 1:03:38
  bad, Are mostly just kind of like these one-dimensional
• 1:03:40
  characters. You know, we talked about it a
• 1:03:42
  little bit with with animal. And this is kind of this is the
• 1:03:45
  most amount of dialogue they've had together as a group maybe
• 1:03:48
  ever. It's true.
• 1:03:50
  Usually they're just like the one of them will have a line
• 1:03:53
  here and there where they'll be part of a group seen.
• 1:03:57
  Yeah they're just kind of thrown into like 11 no jokes usually.
• 1:04:01
  It's usually like, you know, you know, rock band on the other on
• 1:04:06
  the road type jokes and right. Right?
• 1:04:08
  And and Floyd, an animal were involved in some Backstage
• 1:04:11
  storylines on The Muppet Show. Yeah.
• 1:04:14
  But you know like an animal like we say animal have kind of has
• 1:04:17
  to be a one-note character. Yeah, and yeah, Floyd, we have a
• 1:04:20
  little bit more of a sense of who he is.
• 1:04:22
  He's just this cool guy. He's very concerned with doing
• 1:04:25
  things that are cool. He doesn't want to be involved
• 1:04:29
  in something like the, the, Camelot number on the Pearl,
• 1:04:33
  Bailey episode, where he has to wear a suit of armor or he hates
• 1:04:36
  Fufu. I like like that.
• 1:04:38
  Yes. He does not like Miss Piggy's
• 1:04:40
  cute little dog with any. I think it in one episode.
• 1:04:42
  He shoves her in a drawer. He does.
• 1:04:45
  Yes I want to say this. That is that the Dyan Cannon
• 1:04:48
  episode? I don't know.
• 1:04:49
  Yeah, you were great. But well, okay, so that's a
• 1:04:54
  precedent for Floyd being a jerk but so Kristin Kristin Chenoweth
• 1:05:00
  asks how long Floyd and Janice have been together there?
• 1:05:03
  It's nice that the writers didn't forget that.
• 1:05:05
  Floyd and Janice are a couple. Yeah.
• 1:05:07
  Janice though. So kind of Demers on this.
• 1:05:09
  She says she's not anyone's lady which annoys Floyd I guess this
• 1:05:15
  is not something they've ever talked about before which in 40
• 1:05:18
  plus years. Well, right?
• 1:05:20
  Depending on how their continuity Works versus our
• 1:05:22
  timeline. Sure.
• 1:05:24
  And then he's even more annoyed when dr.
• 1:05:26
  Teeth says that she used to be his lady, and that's interesting
• 1:05:30
  to Us Muppet Geeks, because on the first season of The Muppet
• 1:05:33
  Show, it was generally implied in several scenes.
• 1:05:37
  That Janet that Janice and Zoot were together.
• 1:05:41
  Yeah. And they would dance together
• 1:05:43
  and at the dance and there were, I think a few little scenes,
• 1:05:46
  where they were, just kind of write seen together implying
• 1:05:49
  that they were a couple and that's why I don't like this
• 1:05:53
  joke. No, I don't like this part of
• 1:05:57
  this scene. So basically, it ends up with
• 1:06:00
  the whole band just kind of yelling at each other and
• 1:06:03
  squabbling over various grievances.
• 1:06:05
  Yeah. But and I don't know I guess.
• 1:06:08
  Is there? I don't want to be a hypocrite,
• 1:06:12
  because I've been every time I talk about this series.
• 1:06:15
  I say, you know, it the Muppets should be allowed to try
• 1:06:17
  different things. With the characters, they should
• 1:06:19
  be able to, to develop the characters.
• 1:06:22
  And yet, I don't like seeing these specific characters
• 1:06:29
  squabbling like this amongst each other.
• 1:06:32
  I don't mind the squabbling. I wish it was.
• 1:06:35
  I wish it was a different premise.
• 1:06:38
  I don't think that's. Yeah, maybe that's II don't like
• 1:06:41
  that. They Janice is the only female
• 1:06:44
  in the band. So I think there's a tendency
• 1:06:47
  for when you have characters like this in a franchise,
• 1:06:52
  there's a tendency for especially when you have
• 1:06:55
  rotating writers and you, you take the one female character
• 1:07:00
  and you say, okay she's had her run with every guy in the group.
• 1:07:03
  You know, they've done this if Wonder Woman in Justice League,
• 1:07:06
  they've done this with Batgirl in the bat family for our DC
• 1:07:10
  fans out there. And this this feels like the
• 1:07:14
  Muppets version of that. It's like, oh okay.
• 1:07:16
  So Janice has like, what, at what point is she going to have
• 1:07:20
  had a relationship with the other band members?
• 1:07:24
  You know, right. She's up to three now out of,
• 1:07:27
  you know? Yeah, well I mean although this
• 1:07:29
  it's not they don't say that she was that she's been with Zoot in
• 1:07:34
  the scene. Yeah, and I'm sure the writers
• 1:07:36
  probably had no idea or ignored it or whatever they are.
• 1:07:40
  It didn't care. Yeah, but yeah, no, you're
• 1:07:43
  right. If it was something, I think if
• 1:07:44
  it was something sillier, yes, started the fight.
• 1:07:50
  It would still be just as effective, you would still have
• 1:07:54
  because it's not really funny to have them arguing over.
• 1:07:57
  Janice not wanting to commit to Floyd, and having been with dr.
• 1:08:01
  Teeth and the past, that's not really a funny.
• 1:08:04
  No idea. I like the ticket if it was
• 1:08:06
  something silly or that they were arguing about.
• 1:08:08
  Yeah, I like to give Janice The opportunity to do the whole.
• 1:08:12
  You know, I'm nobody's lady routine.
• 1:08:14
  I like that about the character but you're right.
• 1:08:16
  It's not funny. Yeah.
• 1:08:19
  I think I feel like they could have done something funnier with
• 1:08:23
  that. Yeah.
• 1:08:24
  Yeah. Something just more irreverent
• 1:08:27
  for them to be our, something more unreasonable for them to be
• 1:08:30
  arguing about actually yeah. Yep.
• 1:08:32
  But later than we see them, they're all the van is parked
• 1:08:36
  and they're all outside. The van, Floyd, a doctor teather
• 1:08:39
  yelling at each other. They're going to actually start
• 1:08:41
  physically fighting but Kristin Chenoweth tells them, you know,
• 1:08:45
  now that they've gotten everything out in the open, they
• 1:08:47
  can just start over and be friends again, and then Floyd
• 1:08:51
  points out that actually, they never had any of these problems
• 1:08:54
  until she showed up. So they leave her stranded on
• 1:08:59
  the side of the highway, in the desert and drive away that yeah,
• 1:09:04
  that that doesn't work for me. No, that is it's it's very
• 1:09:10
  Strange. No and there's it's not funny
• 1:09:13
  know if this if the guests are had actually, I don't know.
• 1:09:20
  I mean, I like this is something that maybe would work with a
• 1:09:25
  group of characters who were like, who we knew to be more
• 1:09:30
  sort of enough misanthropic as the word, but like the cast of
• 1:09:35
  Seinfeld, I could see them doing something like this because
• 1:09:38
  they're just all sort of And or the cast of It's Always Sunny in
• 1:09:45
  Philadelphia, which I haven't really seen very much of.
• 1:09:47
  But from what I understand those are all just sort of unlikable
• 1:09:49
  characters. Yeah.
• 1:09:51
  The only the only thing I can think of that, that the writers
• 1:09:55
  might have been thinking of, is that, maybe they thought it was
• 1:09:58
  funny because Kristin Chenoweth is such a sweet.
• 1:10:01
  She's known as kind of being the sweet sort of celebrity
• 1:10:04
  personality, right? Like maybe they thought like
• 1:10:06
  okay well yeah obviously we could do this.
• 1:10:08
  If like the celebrity was kind of I've known for being like an
• 1:10:11
  edge Lord or something. Maybe it's funny that they do
• 1:10:14
  this too but I don't, I don't think it's out of like it works.
• 1:10:18
  It's right. Yeah.
• 1:10:20
  And now I'm thinking if it were if the guests are have been
• 1:10:25
  portrayed as being more mean in the episode, would it have been
• 1:10:30
  funnier and maybe a little bit but still not that much.
• 1:10:33
  Yeah because you thinking it's out in the middle of the
• 1:10:35
  California desert on this lonely Highway she's gonna die of a
• 1:10:39
  heat stroke. That's not Well, it's possible.
• 1:10:42
  So I don't know if you're going to talk about this now but
• 1:10:44
  there's a I don't think it was meant to be a deleted scene but
• 1:10:48
  there was a promotional photo released for this episode where
• 1:10:54
  the Electric Mayhem band are standing in front of the Twin
• 1:10:57
  Pines Chapel, right? That was it's the it's from
• 1:11:02
  their Kill Bill. Yes, Mother.
• 1:11:05
  They're referencing specifically killed Bill because it's the,
• 1:11:08
  it's the, you know, the The camera takes a picture of their
• 1:11:12
  backs and they're facing it. And it's a, you know, it's a
• 1:11:14
  reference to that frame from Kill Bill.
• 1:11:18
  But and I'll talk about that a little bit more in a second, but
• 1:11:21
  the it just occurred to me. Now that may be the intended to
• 1:11:26
  do something with that. Maybe Kristin Chenoweth goes to
• 1:11:29
  that Chapel or they find her there or something.
• 1:11:32
  Maybe that, that just got cut for time.
• 1:11:34
  That might have made that like they come back for her.
• 1:11:36
  Maybe they came. Yeah, some something they, the I
• 1:11:40
  thought that it was just a photo op, like, they were out in the
• 1:11:42
  desert and they didn't plan to shoot anything there and they
• 1:11:45
  like, oh, but wait, Let's do, let's let's shoot a photo in
• 1:11:48
  reference to Kill Bill, but but if if they had intended to
• 1:11:53
  actually use that, for something that might have made this whole
• 1:11:55
  subplot about leaving her out in the desert actually work.
• 1:11:59
  But yeah, but as it is, it does not.
• 1:12:01
  I also they maybe they could have redeemed it by having Like
• 1:12:06
  a unexpected celebrity Cameo. Pull over and offered to give
• 1:12:11
  her a ride. I don't know who that would have
• 1:12:12
  been or even a, an unexpected Muppet character.
• 1:12:15
  Yeah, yeah. Like I don't know.
• 1:12:19
  Big Bird still walking through the desert on his way to New
• 1:12:21
  York or something. No, yeah, yeah, big bird walks
• 1:12:25
  but I yeah, he's still trying to break a public broadcasting, all
• 1:12:28
  these yes, that would never ever happen, but it would have been
• 1:12:31
  hilarious. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:33
  So, I don't know. Not much else to say about this
• 1:12:35
  storyline. I I don't like it.
• 1:12:37
  Yeah it's not great. Yeah this is an example of the
• 1:12:41
  just I don't know how much You know, Research into classic
• 1:12:49
  Muppet stuff. The writers of this series did,
• 1:12:51
  but this one it kind of feels like they didn't really do much
• 1:12:54
  at all. They just sort of relied on
• 1:12:55
  their vague memories, maybe of the Electric Mayhem, and then,
• 1:12:59
  just made them more unpleasant. And it looked at that's always a
• 1:13:04
  fine line with any franchise. Whenever you bring new writers
• 1:13:07
  into, you know, into an established franchise.
• 1:13:12
  Yeah, this is the you always have the question of.
• 1:13:14
  Ok. Well, how How much of the
• 1:13:17
  previous thing should we know about before writing this new
• 1:13:21
  thing? And, you know, you've got,
• 1:13:23
  you've got arguments from both sides, there are people say
• 1:13:25
  like, well I'll let you have to acknowledge everything and
• 1:13:27
  everything must be Cannon, but then you run into if everything
• 1:13:30
  is Canon, then you can't your kind of tied to, you know, stick
• 1:13:35
  you sticking to that. You can't really do anything
• 1:13:37
  new. We can't do anything
• 1:13:38
  differently. That's true.
• 1:13:39
  It's true. So I don't particularly think
• 1:13:42
  that that's a bad thing. But there's always going to be
• 1:13:46
  nerds like us arguing about whether or not they made the
• 1:13:49
  right decision, right? And the thing is, no, two nerds
• 1:13:52
  will have the exact same opinions, right?
• 1:13:54
  So, and they did. Yeah, they can never please the
• 1:13:57
  whole audience, and this was a big writing staff.
• 1:13:58
  So they may have had some of these same conversations, you
• 1:14:02
  know? And and then yeah well and you
• 1:14:04
  know Bill Preity was very involved in this.
• 1:14:08
  Yep series. He had written for the Muppets
• 1:14:10
  with Jim Henson. Yeah.
• 1:14:12
  Back in the 80s. I mean it had been a long time
• 1:14:14
  since he had actually worked. For the yeah, but he I don't you
• 1:14:17
  would think that he would have some insights.
• 1:14:19
  Yeah, I think he was probably present for a lot of the
• 1:14:22
  development of the show, but I don't think he maybe not so much
• 1:14:25
  after that. Yeah, I don't think he sat in
• 1:14:26
  the writers room with with any of them.
• 1:14:28
  I think he kind of and I talked to him a little bit while the
• 1:14:31
  show was was being developed. And I got the sense that he kind
• 1:14:35
  of, you know, passed this on to what was his name?
• 1:14:39
  I was the showrunner. Randall and Einhorn.
• 1:14:42
  Yeah. And then later Kristin Newman
• 1:14:46
  took over. But, but yeah, it was a fairly
• 1:14:50
  good-sized writers room, and most most episodes have like,
• 1:14:55
  five or six people. Credited as the writers of the
• 1:14:57
  episode. Yeah.
• 1:14:59
  Which is not unusual for television.
• 1:15:01
  Yeah. And it wasn't unusual for the
• 1:15:03
  Muppet Show. I mean, they, oh yeah, I mean
• 1:15:05
  all the writing staff is credited on every episode of The
• 1:15:07
  Muppet Show, right? Yeah.
• 1:15:08
  Well, yeah, although that was a little more, like, it was, those
• 1:15:11
  more sketch comedy than right? Yeah.
• 1:15:13
  One writer would right. Yeah, one sec.
• 1:15:15
  One writer would write another site, right?
• 1:15:17
  But yeah, yeah. So that's everything I have on
• 1:15:22
  this episode. Have any final thoughts just
• 1:15:27
  like little little things that you know, as I'm always looking
• 1:15:31
  for a little kind of in jokes to include on the wiki one thing
• 1:15:35
  that I found this time going backwards in the scene, When
• 1:15:41
  Kermit goes to the up late writers room to get some
• 1:15:45
  suggestions for Denise's birthday gift.
• 1:15:48
  If you if you look at the what's written on the Whiteboard?
• 1:15:50
  I think it probably changes in every episode but in this
• 1:15:53
  particular one there's a joke in there about it's apparently a
• 1:15:58
  list of sketch ideas for up late with Miss Piggy.
• 1:16:01
  And one of them is just as Edward Scissorhands opened a
• 1:16:04
  daycare center fails. Wow.
• 1:16:08
  Uh no not only That I think is kind of kind of a funny joke.
• 1:16:12
  It's not hilarious but you know, it's amusing enough but it's
• 1:16:15
  also the first time I think the Muppets have ever referenced
• 1:16:18
  Edward Scissorhands. So that would imagine.
• 1:16:21
  So yeah, I like that because it's not just like, Edward
• 1:16:26
  Scissorhands attempts to open a jar of pickles and failed.
• 1:16:29
  Yeah. That you know, Edward
• 1:16:31
  Scissorhands opens a daycare center is not.
• 1:16:33
  It's a step further into absurdity.
• 1:16:37
  Yeah, well it's the full thing of the Whiteboard reads, Edward
• 1:16:41
  Scissorhands open to daycare center, comma fails, which we're
• 1:16:46
  talking like that. But, and yet, we never really
• 1:16:48
  see the sketches that they're doing on the show.
• 1:16:52
  There are, there are a few little glimpses later in the
• 1:16:53
  series. But yeah, yeah, we get it.
• 1:16:55
  They talk about this as if it's more of a variety show.
• 1:16:58
  But we see very little of that kind of stuff.
• 1:17:01
  Yeah. And and I was okay with them
• 1:17:03
  focusing on the behind the scenes stuff, but I would like
• 1:17:06
  to have seen a little bit more of the stuff that they actually
• 1:17:09
  produce for up late. Miss Piggy.
• 1:17:10
  Yeah. If only to see more of the
• 1:17:12
  Muppet characters performing on stage.
• 1:17:13
  Yeah. And I think we would have gotten
• 1:17:15
  more of that if the show had continued because certainly,
• 1:17:17
  when Kristin, yeah, men, they had already started moving that
• 1:17:21
  direction anyway. I think of season 2 probably
• 1:17:23
  would have upped the ante on that.
• 1:17:25
  I think you're right. But the, this the second bullet
• 1:17:27
  point on the Whiteboard, I think is funnier and it just reads
• 1:17:32
  Court. Expand Indie feature film
• 1:17:34
  titled, wisdom of whiteboards semicolon.
• 1:17:38
  No one notices. Which I think is a, huh?
• 1:17:41
  Which I think is very meta, kind of joke to throw in there
• 1:17:44
  because, yeah, I don't, I don't remember anybody ever mentioning
• 1:17:48
  that joke back when we were talking about it when it was on,
• 1:17:50
  I know I never noticed it and I only noticed it this time
• 1:17:53
  because I was specifically focusing on just this episode 4
• 1:17:56
  for the podcast that that feels like a writer or writers
• 1:18:00
  assistant or PA, or somebody just like, oh we gotta have
• 1:18:03
  something on this white board quick.
• 1:18:04
  Come up with something. Yeah.
• 1:18:05
  And they just, that's the but they threw up there.
• 1:18:07
  Yeah, I like that. I like it a lot.
• 1:18:09
  It's good. Huh?
• 1:18:10
  All right. Well, if that is all then we
• 1:18:13
  will wrap things up for this week.
• 1:18:15
  Everyone, please make sure you check out tough pigs.com on the
• 1:18:19
  internet, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
• 1:18:21
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• 1:18:26
  tough pigs form, which is linked on the front page of tough
• 1:18:29
  pigs.com. Our theme music, I should say
• 1:18:34
  because I think I have forgotten up to this point is by Stacey
• 1:18:37
  Rosen, thank you very much, Stacy our logo.
• 1:18:40
  By Johannes. Thank you to Joe you can find me
• 1:18:44
  on Twitter at me Ryan row and Scott.
• 1:18:47
  Where can people find you or the stuff you're working on on the
• 1:18:50
  internet primarily editing on the wiki?
• 1:18:53
  But I also tweet for the the Muppet Wiki to our account which
• 1:18:56
  is just that Muppet Wiki so follows their and is that you on
• 1:19:00
  the Muppet Wiki Facebook also? Yeah.
• 1:19:02
  Yep there you go, follow all of those things and listeners.
• 1:19:06
  If you don't mind please give us a positive review on a podcast
• 1:19:09
  or whatever tell. All your friends about the show
• 1:19:12
  and join us again next week, when Joe will be back and
• 1:19:17
  talking about the episode pigs in a blackout.
• 1:19:20
  So, until then, thank you and good night.