The Muppet Show is Alive

If you’ve ever seen the Muppets Show, then you probably know that the show had a lot of surrealistic moments, but few compared to the final episode that the late Jim Henson had rolled up his sleeve. As someone who worked for ATV Elstree, the production company, I personally became very confused and a little scared when I actually went ahead and watched what was called “Episode 121” by a few of the executives that abruptly pulled it from the air after the first few minutes were shown to audiences. Rumors were that the studio immediately started getting some weird calls about how the episode was really freaking viewers out. The episode is partially the reason you often see a “blue screen” when you tune to a channel where the programme has been taken off the air. The humour was a little off, and admittedly, even as a seasoned professional in the industry, I’m honestly not sure what Jim Henson or any of the people in the studio at the time actually expected audiences to think about the episode.

What I can tell you is this: I’ve seen it, and it is quite disturbing, almost to the point where I don’t even want to talk about it. See… Jim used to have a big writing board in the back where we’d storyboard the next weeks’ episode, but here he had just written the words “Kermitt is Real” in permanent sharpie, permanently destroying the board. I never saw him after that, as he had left the studio…never to return again.

I took the tape home one day because it was my last day on the job and I knew they wouldn’t be able to say anything. Someone had broken the little tabs at the top of the VHS, ensuring no one could ever tape over it. The whole thing plays like a bad dream. I may upload it one of these days.

The first thing you notice is that no audience is cheering, I mean it’s slowed down, so the “perceived audience” that would cheer when Kermit opens the “O” at the beginning of every episode was subdued, grainy, and a little dark. “It’s the muppet show!-“ Then it sort of cut off, as Kermit realized no one was clapping.

He had always expected clapping. Normally the sign would pull up and Kermit would be whisked to the top of the screen, but here…Kermit started to scream, as though he was suffering from severe agoraphobia. The muppets in the audience were also missing, and only one curtain opened…Normally, the two grouchy, older gentlemen, Statler and Waldorf, would make some cheeky comment, but here…

“That kermit’s going to have to seriously rationalize killing himself after he dances with the frog legs!” It was Statler… “Indeed Statler, and I’m in the mood, for some frog legs!” You see Waldorf take out some frog legs, dancing because they’ve recently been salted. The audience laughed really, really loudly at the quivering, dancing frog legs.

I started to feel a little sick. This wasn’t the Muppets show I had grown accustomed to. Just what the HELL was Jim Henson studios doing at this late hour? The audience abruptly stopped laughing and the scene cut to Kermit the Frog in his “dressing room” so to speak… one of the ideas was that they were the starts of the show, so they would often have scenes and jokes occur in the dressing room.

But here… you see Kermit pick up a notecard, getting ready for a joke. The card just says “I own your dreams- and the camera zooms in on it for a good full minute. The lack of a laugh track was really starting to get disturbing, as you could hear the dead air and people actually breathing on-set, even Kermit started to look a little funny in the head.

“Oh oh- look- A mirror!” Kermit picked up the mirror, and the camera man zoomed into the mirror, it was one of those old-style hand mirrors. “Heh…don’t wanna be vain.” He waited for a laugh, but that wasn’t really a joke. Kermit picked up the mirror and put it to his face.

He… he touched his eyes. It was kind of creepy, to be honest. You see the puppet hand knock on the hard, plastic eyeball… “No lids…” Kermit said. “How can I sleep if I have no lids? How can I… DREAM if I have no lids?” You see him struggle to pick up some pieces of tape and put them over, and grabbing a green sharpie to draw lids on, but he notices something more disturbing as he incidentally lowers the mirror to the floor…

He was…naked. Yes, all of these years and Kermit just now noticed that he was both naked and had no genitals. He shuddered. All of a sudden he started to shiver, as though the room felt a little cold. He started to pick up some dirty newspapers off the floor and glued them to his naked body before a large human hand came up from the desk and pulled them away.

The audience laughed really, really loudly. So loudly that I thought the VHS tape player might get damaged, or even break… and then it happened. The hand came up again holding a spray bottle, misting Kermit’s eyes to represent tears.

You see Kermit pacing back and forth for a few minutes until the audience stops laughing, the cloth of the puppet had absorbed most of the liquid, so instead of tears his eyes just looked droopy and dark. Now keep in mind that this show originally aired in 1981. He points the mirror down now, and there is just a long pause.

You seem him pick up one of those older style telephones, and it’s quiet for a moment. “Okay Kermit!” It was miss piggy. “Kermit- Kermit-“ “I- I have to tell you something.” It was Kermit. There was a long pause. “I… have…” “Yes?!” Another long pause. “ I have… no ass.” There was another long pause now. “It’s inside me…I can feel it touching my intestines, you know I haven’t been out in weeks? Years? What’s even out there?” He just leaves the phone on the floor, dangling. He’s starting to look a little disheveled, as his eye drops to one side. Kermit walks over to a mirror where a beautiful blue sky is painted onto the mirror in the studio. No fields, no trees, just a beautiful, big blue sky. “I haven’t seen the night in years.” Kermit said. “This day’s just been going on for years. And my color is blue.” You see him pick up a baseball next to a catcher’s mitt and a Louisville slugger saved for a later sketch regarding the popular American pastime.

He picks up the baseball and throws it out the window to a hideous crack. He has to try a few times because he has weak, frail, cloth frog arms. “Frog arms dancin’ with a little salt…” He says. “There’s no sky, no stars, no heaven or hell out there, but why in god’s name aren’t there any stars?!” Indeed, Kermit stares out of the broken window, revealing a starless, black night sky. It could’ve been a black piece of construction paper, but construction paper never looked that black to me before. “Where are we?” Kermit said. He gets a little scared, and, seeing an opening immediately drags his neck across the broken window shard. The hand quickly gropes him and drags him to the ground. A finger covered in what looks like ketchup draws a smear of a red line across his neck, making it looks as though he tried to slit his own throat. “Suicide attempt” a voice off stage mumbles, and Fozzy bear comes in holding a medical kit with a big red cross next to a large cutout of an ambulance that is clearly thin, two dimensional, and attached to a stick. “Eh, they weren’t fibbin’ when they told me to get the defibrillator!” No one laughed, dead silence and the sound of coughing. Kermit looked really disturbed now, I don’t know how a puppet looked disturbed but he looked freaked the fuck out.

Kermit leads Fozzie behind the ambulance and you hear a lot of mumbling, you can’t really make it out, but there are audible gasps. “So we’re gonna-“ was all I could make out.

The puppets appeared to be hatching some sort of scheme. The next five minutes are the most disturbing of all. Kermit is shown holding a cooking textbook that clearly depicts how to dissect a pig from snout to tail. Miss piggy is shown crying. “And your feet, miss piggy…. And your feet!” A jar of pickled pig’s feet is shown in highly graphic detail.

Miss piggy screams. “Look at these, most are just props.” He opens drawer after drawer and wardrobe, revealing that there are no clothes inside. “Even the ferns, Piggy. Even the ferns!” Indeed, they were just cheap plastic ferns, not the kind you water.

What happened next shocked me to the very core of my being and I will never forget it to this day. You see Kermit pick up a shiny, shiny penny. It was the “lucky penny” sketch. The sketch was pretty simple, for its time, Kermit finds a lucky penny but notices he is unlucky as several unfortunate events cause Kermit to question his sanity. I remember reading the storyboard, but Henson said it wouldn’t fly.

“Oooh, a lucky penny! Don’t drop the lucky penny!” “What you got there?” Fozzy bear, asked. “Is it a binary distribution?” “Yes, a lucky, lucky, good luck- penny.” What happens next is really disturbing. I had to freeze frame to figure out what was going on. “Heads or tails, it doesn’t matter!” Fozzy laughed. “Free will is an illusion and we’re all gonna die!” Kermit drops the penny, quickly producing a shard of glass he had stored in his rectal passage earlier. “That’s quite enough!” Yelled the puppet, acting of its own free will in a sense, since the man holding the puppet began to scream as the puppet literally slit his fucking throat. Miss piggy is shown wearing a chef hat and making a delicious meal. “They always loved mah crème’ Brule!” She… somehow managed to grab a lighter from one of the puppetmasters and quickly lit his fucking shirt on fire. A fire was growing in the background and a sense of panick enveloped the set.

The cast member screams as he is slowly immolated by the fire. Indeed, you could see the puppet masters in frame now. You just hear screaming as he is slowly burned to death, in the last few minutes he just starts screaming “kill me!” as the first degree burns are far too painful for what the show usually portrayed. This was before CG, so I have no idea how the director managed to pull this off.

“Cut- cut.” You hear a man walk out onto the stage, not yet realizing what’s going on. Kermit is short at two feet tall, but he picks up a banjo and bashes his fucking kneecaps in. The man falls over as all the supporting characters envelop the screen. A mob of fabric and cheap googly eyes begin biting, twisting and tearing the flesh off of the director’s skin. He just starts screaming as you see a puddle of blood begin to pool around the dying director.

A good five minutes pass and when all is said and done, there’s just a bleeding skeleton with some of the facial organs, bones and eyes attached. Kermit picked up a spray bottle and misted the lidless eyeballs, still attached to their sockets.

Fozzy mentions that Miss piggy could no longer take the truth and killed herself. A shot of her corpse hanging in the background is shown; she had hung herself with a prop hairdryer cord. Kermit is sad, but he walks over to where the old-style camera was being recorded and removes the tape. This means there had to be another director, as the actual tape is not the tape we’re supposedly watching. But who was the other director who was it?

Kermit seems a bit different in the second act. The fake surprise- the shock- Kermit knew all along. He knew all along that they were just filming this, that he was an actor, so he gave them a show. What kind of play doesn’t have an audience? He had to give them a show, he had to- he picks up the shard of glass and begins cutting the bodies open like a dead calf, smiling. He shoves a liver, kidney and spleen- but especially a heart, inside his cloth fabric body. Kermit looks a bit realistic now as he cuts off some eyelids and superglues them to his own. “Now I can dream!” Kermit said. He chops off the legs and affixes them to his own, growing a good two feet in the process, and takes off the clothes and puts a hat on. Kermit kept the collar though… he originally had the collar to disguise the seam between his head and his body.

“Follow your dreams!” Kermit says, courageously. “Life’s all about how we try to be human- we’re trying, to be human.” Blood begins to seep through and stain the green cloth fabric of the puppet costume.

The other puppets weren’t moving anymore. Some were dead and the others had left the stage. Kermit walks out the prop window, opens the stage door, and you just see a bright- beaming light…actual sunlight, as it envelops his deformed, bleeding puppet body. He’s shown pointing toward the sky with a crooked green puppet index finger, smiling and laughing at all that he’s seen and heard.

“You know, it’s not so much that I’m an atheist as that I have a sneaking suspicion I myself may be god!” You see the hideous creature ambling toward the parking lot and toward a corner shop as people start to scream, the bloody leg stumps falling out and the organs dangling because they’ve been stapled to the puppet cloth. Kermit is smiling, he’s almost human and he’s smiling quite a bit, holding his organs in with his fingers. The head droops a bit, the legs of the puppet break down and it’s still shown holding the shard of glass. You see the blue sky reflected in the shard of glass. The outro music plays and the screen fades to black.