Bonus Episode: Love and dynamite are in the air as I introduce 2 guests to 1974’s The Muppets Valentine Show, an early pilot of what would eventually become The Muppet Show, guest starring a pregnant Mia Farrow.

On this episode

1. Mike Westfall (@fallwestmike), your typewriter-bound host wearing sunglasses indoors whom you’ll never see again.
2. Brian Arnold (@phillyradiogeek), from Me and You and a Blog Named Boo.
3. Joey O. (@ImGonnaDJ24), from Y-Not Radio and Words with Nerds.

About this special

• Muppet Wiki’s entry on The Muppets Valentine Show.
• It’s on YouTube.

Topics and tangents

• Jim Henson’s Red Book entry about getting this pilot green-lit by some guy at ABC named Mike Eisner. Yep, that one.
• Hey, fellow kids, remember typewriters?
• We quickly touch on Crazy Harry’s original incarnation as “Crazy Donald” and then immediately drop it.
• Before Miss Piggy, Kermit loved Miss Mousey. Corporate foreshadowing!
• George the Janitor is simultaneously UHF’s Stanley Spadowski and WWE’s Perry Saturn.
• George and Mildred took a back seat after this pilot, but were regular partners on The Muppet Show’s “At the Dance” sketch.
• The morose Muppet Droop had a quick cameo, alongside a bunch of other Muppets, in the Cosby Show episode, Cliff’s Nightmare.
• The first appearance of Kermit the Frog riding a bicycle.
• You gotta know what a crumpet is to understand cricket.
• Mia Farrow sings Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms, a 19th-century love song I remember better from the recurring Looney Tunes musical bomb gag.
• The first time I remember hearing the word “sex.”
• Brian on the Candy Apple News Company, which you can now see an episode of on YouTube.

Previous episodes of this podcast mentioned

• S1, E2: A Muppet Family Christmas
• S2, E16: Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas
• S2, E24: Christmas Eve on Sesame Street

You can visit the Advent Calendar House on the web at adventcalendar.houseand on Twitter @adventcalhouse.