Especially because she had already arranged for Doc to take care of the house while she was gone. He wouldn't have had a very pleasant Christmas with those guys.

I bet Dick Cheney liked it.

Berle's boring performance of "The Entertainer" is totally worth it because it sets up Miss Piggy's rendition.  Was this the only time a song was performed twice in the same episode?

You are correct, according to "Memoirs of a Muppets Writer," the book by Muppet Show writer Joe Bailey that just came out recently. He says Berle was enthusiastic about doing a bit where he got heckled by Statler & Waldorf, and brought pages and pages of his own material.

For years I just assumed that Rich Little was good at his job because he was the most famous impressionist in show business. Then I saw this episode of The Muppet Show as a discriminating adult, and questioned everything I thought I knew.  His attempts to impersonate the Muppets are especially cringe-inducing,…

Actually, the most troubling thing about the performance of the song in the movie was that Sam the Eagle was involved. Okay, so they needed a character with a low voice to do the bass part, but would Sam really ever lower himself to the point of doing a barbershop rendition of a grunge song? He's way too high-culture…

Muppet Characters Whose Names Sound a Bit Rude:

It's there, but it's pretty poorly staged… One of the few misfires of the movie. The four Muppets seen above sing a barbershop quartet arrangement of the song while shaving Jack Black, but the camera keeps cutting and Jack Black keeps yelling, so it's almost impossible to recognize the song if you only see the movie…

I've had a co-worker excitedly describe his favorite "hilarious" gags from Family Guy, which were usually references to other pop culture things that said co-worker had never even seen.  That freakin' show.

Aren't we blaming everything on solar flares today?

It's disheartening, isn't it?  There's a store devoted to Murphy beds in New York, and every time I pass by it I let out a sad little sigh.  Someday my bed will part of the wall… Someday.

Oh.  Well then, I stand corrected about Hinkley.  And I guess he won't be writing any memoirs any time soon.

I think part of that is the fact that Jason Segel and Nick Stoller took their cue for Kermit's characterization from the movies, where he was much more of a noble protagonist than a beleaguered, hilarious straight man.

I ordered my copy last week, and I can't wait for it to arrive… Muppets fans have been wishing for a book like this for years.  I hope it inspires the other surviving writers (Jack Burns, Marc London, David Odell, Don Hinkley and Chris Langham are all still alive) to do the same.

He did have that interview with Kermit ("They are food!  Eat drum, eat cymbals!") and the Rita Moreno "Fever" number with Rita Moreno in season one. But yeah, he would only become a bigger star in season two.

Brilliant!

I think the voice is the primary reason I find that bit so unsettling.  It's not like any other character Oz ever performed, and it's almost like his normal voice, but higher and breathier.  It's just a strange number all around. I think I may have avoided gingerbread for a while after the first time I saw it.

It really is one of the best things ever on the show.  And remarkable that Juhl wrote it himself… It sounds convincingly like something you would find in a musty old book somewhere.  Also, I love the moment where he takes his hairpiece off.  Was he in the habit of doing that publicly?

Once you accept the fact that it is not actually a show about a guy meeting his kids' mother, it's pretty entertaining.

That's a really good question. He was a likable character, and the Muppets welcomed him into the group at the end, but what purpose would he serve in a new movie? The storyline he was created for had its beginning, middle and end in the film, so all you're left with is a nice, nerdy guy who can whistle.  But maybe…