Advent Calendar House: The Muppets Valentine Show

February 13, 2019 Mike Westfall 00:48:57 0 Comments

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.

In a scene from The Muppets Valentine Show, Mia Farrow dances with the giant Muppet Thog.

On this episode

Mike Westfall (@fallwestmike), your typewriter-bound host wearing sunglasses indoors whom you’ll never see again.
Brian Arnold (@phillyradiogeek), from Me and You and a Blog Named Boo.
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.