By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
The Muppets have been going through a rough decade following the cancellation of their The Office-inspired show, The Muppets, by ABC in 2015. There are no new Muppet movies on the horizon, and their last two shows, Muppets Now and Electric Mayhem, were buried on Disney+ with an estimated marketing budget of two cans tied together by a string.
Making the current state of the Muppets franchise even worse is that Disney is removing MuppetVision 3D from Hollywood Studios, which is notable as it was the last project Jim Henson worked on before his death. That shouldn’t be too surprising, as Disney has also never released The Jim Henson Hour, leaving it stuck in the vault alongside Song of the South and Ernest Goes to Camp.
MuppeTelevision
The Jim Henson Hour was hosted by Henson himself, introducing every episode before going into MuppeTelevision, a modern take on the classic variety show with the gang in charge of a television studio. Each episode had a different celebrity guest, such as Louie Anderson and Ted Danson, with sketches that ranged from Fozzie becoming a weatherman to a faux nature documentary that turns into a war between butterflies and caterpillars. As a lifelong fan of the Muppets, even I’ll admit that this part of the show was uneven, and the new CGI muppet, Waldo, never caught on, but this did give us Bean Bunny, and it was only half the episode.
The back half of each episode of The Jim Henson Hour was either an episode of The Storyteller, which adapted classic folk stories, or a new fable for the show. These stories were darker and more serious than MuppeTelevision as they tried to retain the feel and tone of the source material, which made for a strange viewing experience for kids who wanted to see Kermit.
The Storyteller first aired in 1987 and won the Emmy for Best Children’s Programming for the episode “Hans the Hedgehog.” Today, you can stream the series to check it out for yourself.
The Mini-Movies
Not every episode of The Jim Henson Hour included The Storyteller, with one following Miss Piggy as she tries to interview celebrities in a segment that was later revived for the Covid-era Muppets Now, and three were hour-long movies: Dog City, Living with Dinosaurs, and Monster Maker. Dog City was a noir film narrated by Rowlf, involving Muppets involved in the mob and protection rackets, that would go on to become an animated Saturday Morning Cartoon in the 90s, while Living with Dinosaurs was a more straight-forward tale of a stuffed dinosaur come to life to help a child navigate their fracturing home life. While both of those are fun in their own ways, it’s Monster Maker that left an impression on me when I first watched it that I’ve never been able to shake.
In what I consider to be the second-best episode of The Jim Henson Hour, Harry Dean Stanton plays a special effects master who takes on a young apprentice, but one of his latest projects, the Ultragorgon, which looks like a mechanical dragon, comes to life. It doesn’t go on a rampage; instead, it becomes a mentor to the boy, offering life advice to get him through school and dealing with his father, but slowly, it takes a dark turn. The Ultragorgon, which Henson explains was brought to life by eight different puppeteers, was a massive piece of practical effect wizardry voiced by Dumbledore himself, Michael Gambon.
You can find both Dog City and Monster Maker on streaming as stand-alone films, without any of The Jim Henson Hour framing devices. However, the best episode of the series, which was released in 1992 as a stand-alone special, “Secrets of the Muppets,” can’t be found anywhere.
Henson pulls back the curtain and explains to kids how the Creatures Shop made the puppets for the show, how they are operated on set, the wizardry behind getting them to ride bikes, and then shows the puppeteers responsible for different Muppets, including Henson, as Kermit, introducing Henson, the puppeteer. It’s one of the most delightful hours of television that explains Hollywood magic to children without talking down to them, which Henson excelled at.
Disney Needs To Respect Henson’s Legacy
You can stream The Storyteller for free on Peacock, Amazon Freevee, and Crackle, while Dog City is on Tubi, and Monster Maker is on Tubi. It’s great that the mini-movies are accessible to audiences today, but MuppeTelevision remains lost to time.
Lost, too, are what I consider to be the heart and soul of The Jim Henson Hour, the segments with Jim Henson himself. Those aren’t available anywhere. Henson was a creative genius, and though his work lives on forever, Disney, the rights holder to the Muppets, is denying people access to the last series he worked on before he passed.
That’s why Disney’s announcement about the removal of MuppetVision 3D from Hollywood Studios bothers fans so much: it was Jim Henson’s final work with the Muppets. Since the company won’t release The Jim Henson Hour, his final series, there’s little faith that his last creative work will be honored and remembered in any fashion by the corporation. It’s great that the Muppets house band, Electric Mayhem, is taking over the Rock’n’Roller Coaster, but that has no direct connection to Henson.
If Disney is keeping the Carousel of Progress, the last ride at Magic Kingdom that Walt Disney worked on, Jim Henson deserves the same level of respect.
2024-11-25 16:17:47
