Line #44 YMMV/TheMuppetShow


1	* AccidentalInnuendo: Rowlf and Sam sing a song from ''Theatre/TheMikado'' titled "'''Tit''' Willow", about a "'''dick'''y-bird" that sings before plunging himself to his death. The song is full of HaveAGayOldTime.
2	* AdaptationDisplacement: Twice over for "Mahna Mahna". Written for the notorious Italian "documentary" ''Film/SwedenHeavenAndHell'', before Creator/JimHenson [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids decided it would be the perfect material]] for an early ''Series/SesameStreet'' skit. Even so, the song is more strongly associated with ''The Muppet Show'' than with ''Sesame Street''.
3	* {{Adorkable}}: Scooter. He wears glasses, looks cute, is smart, and a total geek.
4	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
5	** Is Professor Honeydew ''really'' as absent-minded as all that, or does he know full well he's hurting people (Beaker especially) and just doesn't care? The fact he often follows his actions with that little giggle isn't in his favor.
6	** Similarly, Scooter's {{Nepotism}} in early episodes is kept fairly ambiguous, with it usually unclear if he's tacitly blackmailing the staff into hiring him, or genuinely just totally naive to their fear of his uncle (their boss).
7	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Lots, given the sheer number of musical guests over the years (and actors who happened to have [[TheCastShowOff hidden musical talent]].
8	** "Hey There Good Times" from the Creator/LeslieUggams episode.
9	** Kermit's rendition of "Lydia the Tattooed Lady".
10	** Scooter and Fozzie singing [[Music/RandyNewman "Simon Smith and His Dancing Bear"]].
11	** "Mahna Mahna".
12	** "Turn the World Around" (This was Creator/JimHenson's single favourite musical act. In the episode, even Statler and Waldorf couldn't help but sing along).
13	** "[[Music/AliceCooper Welcome to My Nightmare]]"
14	** "Halfway Down the Stairs"
15	** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGOuDRViTGw The theme song]], of course! It's an incredibly catchy, jaunty and upbeat big band piece that is truly sensational, inspirational, celebrational and especially, Muppetational. It's no wonder that the theme would [[BootstrappedTheme become the theme song of The Muppets as a whole]].
16	** If a song was on it more than once, chances are it's this, such as "The Entertainer" or "In the Summertime".
17	** Floyd's cover of "Big Noise from Winnetka", shown [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QijHj2oYX7M here]].
18	* BizarroEpisode: As much as the general weirdness would seem to defy the concept, there's still a few that stand out:
19	** Steve Martin: Kermit accidentally booked Martin for the night the show is cancelled to audition new acts, and he just hangs out while they're going on.
20	** Cloris Leachman: The pigs take over the show, resulting in pig versions of all the characters.
21	** Loretta Lynn: The theater is being fumigated so the show is done at the railroad station.
22	** Glenda Jackson: A pirate crew, led by Jackson, take over the theater and sail it out to the ocean.
23	** Roger Miller: The cast come down with cluckitis, which turns them into chickens.
24	* CommonKnowledge: The Disney+ release got a ton of accusations of "banning" the numerous episodes featuring bits that are now considered to fall into ValuesDissonance. In fact, while there were several edits to the episodes, they're all due to songs that Disney (yes, even ''Disney''!) is unable to secure the rights to. The only change to the offensive material is putting an unskippable disclaimer at the start.
25	* CoveredUp:
26	** [[http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Original_songs_from_The_Muppet_Show Only thirteen songs, including the theme, were written specifically for the show]], and while plenty of the other songs the Muppets did were already popular ("[[Music/TheVillagePeople In the Navy]]" or "[[Theatre/TheKingAndI I Whistle a Happy Tune]]"), a great deal more were from obscure vaudeville and novelty records, leading to this.
27	** As mentioned above, "Mahna Mahna", first written and recorded by Piero Umiliani for the {{Mondo}} documentary ''[[Film/SwedenHeavenAndHell Svezia, inferno e paradiso]]'' (Sweden: ''Heaven and Hell'') in 1968. While the original wasn't as obscure as it's sometimes made out to have been (Umiliani's version got a lot of radio airplay in 1969 and reached #55 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, getting into the Top 40 on the competing ''Record World'' chart), the Muppet version is much more famous now. In fact, the ''Muppet Show'' version covers up earlier versions that Henson did on ''Series/SesameStreet'' and ''Series/TheEdSullivanShow''. And ''The Muppet Show'' led to RevivalByCommercialization for Umiliani's version, which made the UK Top 10 in 1977.
28	* CrossesTheLineTwice:
29	** Fozzie making a joke about the [[UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic Titanic]]? Terrible. Waldorf mentioning that Statler still has the dress he wore so he could sneak into a lifeboat? Hilarious.
30	** Some of the Swedish Chef sketches when he's trying to kill live food in over-the-top ways. Or the sketches where the food fights ''back''.
31	*** In one sketch, he tries to make frog legs... from Robin the frog, who screams out in help before Kermit intervenes.
32	** Miss Piggy fighting and attacking guests, particularly the females, in jealous rages. Including one instance where she actually tries ''biting'' a guest. Now imagine if that were a real person doing that. But since it's a Muppet attacking a person...
33	** There are a few bits where Wayne and Wanda sing (the duo can be counted for a lot of these moments.)
34	*** They're singing "Goody Goody", and Wayne punches Wanda in the face after singing about someone who knocks you off your feet. The curtains close as she stands up and gives him a murderous DeathGlare.
35	*** In another, she sings while he performs the "saw-a-woman-in-half" trick. Just as he reaches her middle, she stops singing to scream because he botched the trick.
36	*** Vincent Price's visit features "Bewitched, Bewildered and Bothered", with Wanda actually starting out well...only for smoke to appear and replace her with a monster. Wayne's reaction, to say, "Bewildered and bothered," indicates that it wasn't part of the show.
37	** "You Are Always Welcome at Our House" boasts this attitude when Marisa Berenson dresses as a little girl and romps around a house set. She explains how she and her family treated guests coming for various reasons by inviting them inside, knocking them out, and tying them up in various rooms all around the home. This should be NightmareFuel and you can hear the audience giving nervous laughter, but then the kidnapped victims sing along while tied up! Then it goes straight back to ridiculous, especially when viewers realize Creator/ShelSilverstein wrote the song.
38	* EnsembleDarkhorse:
39	** For a Muppet that only appears once in a blue moon, Crazy Harry is real popular with fans.
40	** [[{{Dracolich}} Uncle]] [[TokenEvilTeammate Deadly]]. He didn't appear much (only in a few episodes, musical numbers and the "Muppet Melodrama" sketches), but he became somewhat popular, especially after his major role in [[Film/TheMuppets2011 the 2011 film]].
41	** While on the subject of Muppets originally performed by Jerry Nelson, Lew Zealand, a clown-esque character whose main (and only) schtick is throwing boomerang fish. While such a concept is certainly odd and even tedious, Lew does his act with such goofy gusto that it's hard to hate him.
42	* FirstInstallmentWins: While it's certainly not the first Muppet TV show, it is the first one to feature the current Muppet ensemble cast we know and love now and as far as shows featuring them go, it's undeniably the most beloved and successful out of the bunch, with later series such as ''Series/MuppetsTonight'' and ''Series/TheMuppets2015'' being less successful and having a more divisive reception.
43	* FranchiseOriginalSin: One of the big complaints among fans is that ''Series/MuppetsTonight'' had too much focus on new characters over the old characters. Some of the writers have defended this by pointing out that ''The Muppet Show'' introduced new characters all the time. The difference, however, is that while Muppets had been around for years, ''The Muppet Show'' is the show to establish and introduce a particular group of Muppets as The Muppets, many characters had appeared in earlier productions but aside from maybe the ''Series/SesameStreet'' Muppets (who were rarely a part of this show), there weren't many characters the general public would expect to see. Contrast to ''Muppets Tonight'', which came after the Muppets had not only done this series but also five feature films, [[Series/TheJimHensonHour another series]] (which also had more focus on new characters than old), and many specials and guest appearances, often with the same core cast.
44	* FridgeBrilliance: Creator/DannyKaye and Miss Piggy get into a huge argument right before they're supposed to perform "[[Music/IrvingBerlin Cheek to Cheek]]", with the result that most of the performance is them singing this romantic duet with forced smiles and clenched teeth. What makes it brilliant is that "Cheek to Cheek" was originally a Creator/FredAstaire/Creator/GingerRogers song, and the sketch not only plays off that pairing visually (with Kaye as the suave older man and Piggy as the younger blonde), it ALSO evokes the [[CommonKnowledge popular belief]] that Astaire and Rogers supposedly hated each other off camera, despite their great screen chemistry.
45	* GrowingTheBeard:
46	** While Kermit and the rest of Henson's non-''Series/SesameStreet'' Muppets were successful early on, it was this show (Alongside ''Film/TheMuppetMovie'' later on) that would completely solidify Kermit and the Muppets into the beloved and iconic HouseholdNames they are now.
47	** The first season is a little slow, as mentioned on the main page under EarlyInstallmentWeirdness. But the pacing and a lot of hallmarks of the show came about in the later seasons. [[ChewToy Beaker]], for example, didn't appear until season 2, so not only did Muppet Labs have a duller looking set, lack its introductory jingle, but it was ''Bunsen'' on the receiving end of all his inventions going wrong. It was also in the second season when Rudolf Nureyev made his appearance on the show, which changed the producers' job of finding willing guest stars into picking and choosing guest stars. Season 2 is also when Frank Oz and Dave Goelz really start getting a handle on Piggy, Fozzie and Gonzo, cementing them as the most important and popular Muppets after Kermit. Much of this can also be attributed to the replacement of season 1 head writer Jack Burns with Jerry Juhl, who would go on to act as head writer for the rest of the show (on top of writing most of the Muppet productions until 1999's ''Film/MuppetsFromSpace'') and played a key role in refining the show, as well as its characters, humor and pacing.
48	* HarsherInHindsight:
49	** "NOTHING can stop him [[[Franchise/StarWars Chewbacca]]]!" [[Literature/NewJediOrder Tosi-Karu]]!
50	** One episode had Creator/KrisKristofferson and Rita Coolidge as co-guest stars. Miss Piggy drops hints to Kermit about how they're a example of a showbiz pair who are happily married. Too bad Kris and Rita would end up divorced less then two years after the episode aired...[[note]]In fact, of the three married couples that did the show, only Roy Rogers & Dale Evans stayed together; Shields & Yarnell divorced as well (although they did continue to tour together occasionally until the latter's death).[[/note]]
51	** It's incredibly uncomfortable seeing staff writer Chris Langham as a guest, when he was arrested for possession of child pornography decades later. And now, even Creator/DisneyPlus [[BannedEpisode doesn't want you to see it]].
52	** As noted in the TearJerker page, the Creator/LolaFalana episode sees Gonzo leave the Muppets to become a Bollywood movie star, with his big exit song, "My Way", cut short when the weight of losing everyone finally hits him and he says a tearful goodbye to Kermit. This could be the forerunner to two events involving both Gonzo and his performer, Dave Goelz: the 1999 film ''Film/MuppetsFromSpace'' sees Gonzo nearly leave the Muppets to reunite with his family, while in the current day, in a cruel twist of irony, with Henson, Hunt and Nelson dead, Oz semi-retired and Whitmire fired, Goelz is the only original Muppet performer who remains active, with all of his closest friends having left him instead of Gonzo leaving his friends.
53	** The episode hosted by Creator/ZeroMostel contains a skit where he recites a poem about his fears, ending with his greatest fear: something for which he himself is only a fear that can be erased by that realization, upon which he vanishes into thin air. Mostel died suddenly before the episode aired, which must have made the scene pretty eerie.
54	** And then there's the scene in Creator/PeterSellers' episode where Kermit finds him dressed in a bizarre mix of costume pieces in his dressing room. ("I was trying to do Queen Victoria, but I've forgotten what she looked like.") When Kermit responds that it's okay for him to be himself on the Muppet show, Sellers replies, "That would be impossible. There is no me. I do not exist. There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed." The scene has since been quoted many times as summing up Sellers' view of himself as doomed to be seen [[IAmNotSpock only as his various characters and not his true self]]. In fact, he contributed to the sketch in lieu of the show's usual scene of the guest star out of character backstage, due to his discomfort at being seen out of character.
55	** One of the show's best moments was Music/HarryBelafonte singing "Turn the World Around" accompanied by Muppets inspired by African masks. The song is upbeat, but it's hard not to cry when you know that Belafonte performed the same song at Henson's memorial. The lead-in to the song—which talks about how life is very brief but we can change the world if we care about each other—only makes things worse.
56	** In the Music/AliceCooper episode, Bunsen enlarges a virus to make it easier to study (Beaker, of course, gets overwhelmed by it.) The virus is specifically mentioned to be a streptococcus virus. Henson would die of a streptococcus infection a decade later.
57	%%** Henson singing [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJHVUWwUCeA "Time in a Bottle"]].
58	* HilariousInHindsight:
59	** A real-life example. When the series first started, it was a real struggle to obtain guests. The prospect of appearing with "puppets" seemed embarassing, so to get guests, personal favors had to be made/called in. Rudolf Nureyev's second season appearance reversed this. Now, it's hard to believe that any actor wouldn't want to be involved in a Muppet production, considering it's a clear sign you've hit the big time as a star to be invited to clown around with Kermit and the gang.
60	** In one episode, a moose named Mickey becomes popular with most of the gang, even leading to them singing "[[Series/TheMickeyMouseClub M-I-C-K-E-Y]]" and wearing special hats. Kermit objects to this and wants nothing to do with Mickey Moose or friend Ronald Duck. Flash forward to 30 years later and, [[Creator/{{Disney}} well...]]
61	** Similarly, the cast's rendition of "[[WesternAnimation/{{Pinocchio}} When You Wish Upon a Star]]" as the finale of the ''Star Wars'' episode. Besides the obvious, Disney now owns the Muppets, Creator/{{Lucasfilm}} AND [[Creator/TwentiethCenturyStudios Fox]]! It's also oddly reminiscent of Disney's newest VanityPlate, which was displayed at the beginning of [[Film/TheMuppets2011 the 2011 film]], and ''Film/MuppetsMostWanted''.
62	*** In a similar, but more ironic example, the two following episodes had Creator/LyndaCarter and Creator/ChristopherReeve playing [[Franchise/WonderWoman their]] [[Franchise/{{Superman}} respective]] Creator/DCComics characters. In 2009, Disney bought DC's biggest competitor, Creator/MarvelComics.
63	** The ColdOpen of the Music/{{Liberace}} episode showcases a living piano with razor sharp teeth. One can imagine that a ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' designer saw that episode, and realized the piano's potential as an [[NightmareFuel invincible enemy that would traumatize children who played it for life]].
64	** One that crosses over a bit with HarsherInHindsight: Before his performance of Creator/AAMilne's "Cottleston Pie" in the UK version of the Florence Henderson episode in Season 1, Rowlf compares Literature/WinnieThePooh to Fozzie Bear. At Jim Henson's funeral, Creator/FrankOz would perform "Cottleston Pie" as Fozzie.
65	** In ''The Muppets' Valentine Show'', the first pilot, it's mentioned that guest star Creator/MiaFarrow flew in from England. ''The Muppet Show'' would end up being produced in England, requiring most of its guest stars to fly to England.
66	** The technique Henson and Oz used to operate the Swedish Chef was also a game on ''Series/WhoseLineIsItAnyway'' called "Helping Hands", letting the audience see firsthand just how much dexterity was required. This technique predates both shows.
67	** The name of the ship in the ''Pigs in Space'' segments, [[WhereNoParodyHasGoneBefore which spoof]] ''Franchise/StarTrek'', is the USS Swinetrek. Thirteen years later, ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'' had a ''Star Trek'' parody called "Swine Trek" that had Orson, a pig character, in the lead role.
68	** One Swedish Chef sketch featured a turtle, in retaliation for Chef trying to make him into turtle soup, sprouting a pair of cannons out of his shell, and blasting Chef with them. [[VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue Game Freak invented a similar turtle in the 90s.]]
69	** Creator/RichLittle's visit features the "Glow-worm" sketch, which was performed on several variety shows with Kermit[[note]](see NightmareFuel/TheMuppetShow for more information)[[/note]], only with Lenny the Lizard replacing him. Several episodes later, in the one hosted by Creator/SteveMartin, Lenny tries to replace Kermit again, this time by auditioning to be the new host of the show.
70	** "Bein' Green" is a song about how [[WebVideo/DontHugMeImScared green is not a creative color]].
71	** The Gilda Radner episode, where Muppet Labs creates a permanently strong adhesive that gets everyone stuck to something, now may bring to mind the plight of Tessica Brown, aka [[https://nypost.com/2021/02/10/tessica-brown-shares-how-her-gorilla-glue-saga-went-viral/ Gorilla Glue Girl]].
72	** The Loretta Lynn episode, where the show is moved to a train station, seems quite prophetic of how the 2021 Oscars did the same thing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
73	** The sketch where the Swedish Chef encounters a bunch of Spanish lobsters. That’s right! The Muppets had Spanish crustaceans before they met Pepe!
74	** In the episode with Johnny Cash, Big Tiny Tallsaddle mistakenly thinks Fozzie is named Kermit, and when Kermit says he'll go introduce Fozzie Bear, a confused Tallsaddle says "Fozzie and Kermit Bear? What is this, a brothers act?" In [[Film/TheGreatMuppetCaper the next Muppet film]], Kermit and Fozzie would play the role of identical twin brothers.
75	** Creator/FlorenceHenderson guested in a Season 1 episode. As it turned out, a few months later she'd co-star in a much less successful comedy-variety show centering around a core group of characters, with celebrity guests, puppets and a ShowWithinAShow structure: ''[[Series/BradyBunchSpinoffs The Brady Bunch Variety Hour]]''.
76	** In the ''Franchise/StarWars'' crossover episode, the "Rama Lama Lama Lama Ding Dong" number features a cream-coloured ship with purple eyelids, making them look uncannily like [[Anime/HealinGoodPrettyCure Latte]].
77	** Swedish Chef was saying "What the hay" decades before ''WebVideo/MyLittlePonyInANutshell'' made it cool.
78	* HoYay:
79	** One Muppet Labs sketch involves Bunsen's milking machine giving Beaker long, curly hair (somehow), with Bunsen's response being to call Beaker "hauntingly attractive" and put his head on his shoulder and sigh.
80	** Rowlf and Fozzie make a pretty popular pairing, seeming to stem from their enjoyable onstage chemistry, particularly in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlpPEDuwO3w English Country Garden]] number.
81	** In two obscure [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw-W48n06Lw "Muppet Melodrama"]] skits, Wayne plays a hero who's supposed to rescue Miss Piggy from Uncle Deadly, but instead ''really'' hits it off with Deadly and forgets all about his damsel in distress. In fact, Piggy is doomed to die because Wayne decides to ''assist'' Uncle Deadly after the two share a series of heavy compliments.
82	** Gonzo was also ''very'' appreciative when Scooter was turned into a chicken by the rare and bizarre disease cluckitis.
83	* MagnificentBastard: "[[Recap/TheMuppetShowS4E14 Liza Minnelli]]": [[CausticCritic The unnamed critics]], played by Statler and Waldorf, are a duo who absolutely despise the shows the nameless theatre troupe preform. Seeking to end their shows for good, they go about stealthily and systematically murdering the cast members with guns, knives and poison. The two are only foiled when Liza O'Shaughnessy fakes her death, causing them to reveal themselves since they had no intentions of killing her. When O'Shaughnessy reveals she tricked them and has the two arrested, the critics take their defeat well, genuinely applauding her acting skills and even cracking a joke about their own imprisonment.
84	%%
85	%% For Memetic Mutation examples, the example can't just explain the quote's origin, but also how the meme is used (the "Mutation" part of the trope name).
86	%%
87	%% * MemeticMutation: A couple.
88	%%** Mahna Mahna!
89	%%** "You've never heard of the banana sketch?"[[note]]The Sandy Duncan episode has a recurring joke about an unseen [[NoodleIncident "banana sketch"]]. Everyone (including the guest) thinks it's hilarious, except for Kermit because he's the only one who hasn't heard it.[[/note]]
90	%%** "Did somebody say boom/bomb/bang?"[[note]]Crazy Harry's shtick[[/note]]
91	* MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales:
92	** Plenty of Swedish viewers love the Swedish Chef for just how over-the-top ridiculous of a stereotype he is. He even got a mention during an interval act when Sweden hosted the Series/EurovisionSongContest in 2013.
93	** It's pretty much an accepted fact that ''no one'' loves [[PatrioticFervor Sam the Eagle]] more than his fellow Americans.
94	* NarmCharm: "'Bein' Green" (AKA [[RefrainFromAssuming "It's Not Easy Bein' Green"]]) is a deliberately awkward, disjointed little song in which Kermit reflects on the fact that, being a frog, he's quite literally green, and the troubles this causes him--but in the end, he decides that plenty of other nice things are green, so it's alright. It should, by all rights, be absurd, or at the very least comedic. Except Henson's delivery as Kermit [[SugarWiki/HeReallyCanAct is so incredibly heartfelt]], it turned a silly little song about a frog's coloration into [[{{Applicability}} a beautiful message of self-love and accepting yourself]] and one of the ''the'' all-time classics of American folk pop.
95	* OlderThanTheyThink: Rowlf predates even the oldest of the regular Muppet cast by many years as a Henson solo act.
96	** Only if you don't include Kermit, who's got seven years on Rowlf.
97	** Most of the major characters came from earlier Muppet productions. Of the majors, only Fozzie, Scooter, Bunsen and Beaker were created specifically for the show.
98	* OnceOriginalNowCommon: The show was Henson's attempt to prove that his craft could be primetime adult entertainment, not just early morning children's programming. ''The Muppet Show'' was initially viewed as a raunchy, all ages show but time has caused many of the skits to seem less mature than when they first premiered and the Muppets themselves have become much more skewed towards younger audiences. As such, reruns and home video releases pretty much market the program as a children's show. Creator/{{Nickelodeon}} even went so far as to rerun the show on Creator/NickJr, their block for ''preschoolers''.
99	* OneSceneWonder:
100	** Mahna Mahna: That one sole skit on the first episode of ''The Muppet Show'' [[note]]Having been performed previously on various variety shows of the 1960s and 1970s, most notably ''Series/TheEdSullivanShow''[[/note]] became so popular, all three characters made appearances on ''Muppets Tonight'', and all the way into 2011's ''The Muppets''!
101	** Hugga Wugga's single skit is one of the most memorable ones on the show.
102	** Angus [=McGonagle=], the inexplicably Scottish gargoyle who is obsessed with showing off his FauxHorrific act of garrrrgling Gerrrrshwin gorrrrgeously (and uses it to torture [[Franchise/StarWars Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca]]).
103	* OutOfTheGhetto: ''The Muppet Show'' is the puppet show most famous for catering to adults just as much as children, if not more. This was in fact Henson's entire motivation for creating the show, as he didn't want to be stereotyped as a children's performer thanks to ''Sesame Street''. Despite this, the Muppets tend to dip in and out of their "only for kids" ghetto in other media.
104	* RetroactiveRecognition: Creator/CandiceBergen was much more a model than an actress at the time, and likely got onto the show largely due to being the daughter of one of Henson's greatest inspirations, Edgar Bergen (who made it on himself a year later, when it had actually become a prestige gig). Now she's best known as Series/MurphyBrown.
105	* SelfFanservice: Dr. Bunsen Honeydew is [[https://sexypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dr._Bunsen_Honeydew inexplicably treated as]] a "Website/{{Tumblr}} sexyman" by some fans, who also like to ship him with Beaker.
106	* SmurfetteBreakout: Miss Piggy, one of the few female Muppets, was initially only a minor character, but her popularity skyrocketed and is now probably the most famous of them, alongside Kermit.
107	* SoBadItsGood: Much of the comedy comes from just how lousy is the variety show that the Muppets put on. Notably, Gonzo's stunts and Fozzie's jokes. ''The Muppet Show'', like ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' and the cartoons of Creator/JayWard, is a nigh perfect example of how it takes great intelligence and talent to create something so deliberately silly that it crosses the line into awesomeness.
108	* StrawmanHasAPoint: Let's be honest here. [[MoralGuardians Sam the Eagle]] ''is'' SurroundedByIdiots. It's just kind of easy to ignore his complaining because it's so evident that ''he's'' an idiot, too.
109	* ToughActToFollow: This show was so well-made and so beloved that future attempts at a regular Muppet series (''The Jim Henson Hour'', ''Muppets Tonight'', ''The Muppets'') were all short-lived, with a strong TheyChangedItNowItSucks reaction from the public (and mixed reaction from diehard Muppet fans). ScrewedByTheNetwork (for the last two) was also a factor.
110	* UglyCute: It's most apparent in the "monster" characters--''Sesame Street'' monsters such as Grover, Telly or Elmo tend to be more traditionally cute, but the monsters of ''The Muppet Show'' and related productions are usually designed to look more grotesque, and are still pretty adorable--but it's a widespread trope for the Muppets in general. In fact, any Muppet not specifically designed to be cute is likely to be Ugly Cute in some way. Animal and Gonzo are prime examples.
111	* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: Millennials and Gen Zers can learn a lot about late 1970s pop culture by watching this show. Although the show deserves some sort of award for managing to make the episode with "Mr. Topical Monologue" Creator/BobHope relatively timeless.
112	* ValuesDissonance: Due to the show being nearly half a century old, the Disney+ release prefaces eighteen episodes with a disclaimer warning viewers of outdated material that can be considered offensive. Gags involving ethnic stereotypes (particularly in the Creator/SpikeMilligan episode) and sexist comments (primarily targeted at Piggy), as well as a few other questionable things (like the numerous Confederate flags seen in the Music/JohnnyCash episode) can be found throughout the show's run. Thankfully, these aberrations are rare enough on the show that no episode or segment was deemed necessary to be cut (the Chris Langham episode was withheld due to unspeakably horrifying things he did ''decades'' after the show ended). Given its age, the jokes have held up admirably well for the most part; though viewers should be prepared for the occasional unpleasant gag.
113	* ViewerGenderConfusion: Beaker is indeed a guy, despite being pink and having a high-pitched voice,
114	* TheWoobie: Gonzo. Almost every song he sings is a sad one. ''And he sings them [[ShapedLikeItself so sadly]].''
115	----
116	-->'''Statler:''' It says we're ensemble darkhorses here?\
117	'''Waldorf:''' Yeah, we don't act ''and'' we're better than the rest of em!\

Context YMMV / TheMuppetShow