"Incidentally, this show has been pre-recorded."
"Presenting...the end of sex and violence on television!"
The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence, was first aired on March 19, 1975. It was one of two pilots produced for The Muppet Show, the first being The Muppets Valentine Show in 1974.
In this half-hour variety special, the Muppets parody the proliferation of sex and violence on television. In between its many nonsensical sketches, the Muppets prepare for the Seven Deadly Sins Pageant.
Songs and sketches
- The Conference Room: Nigel, Sam, and Floyd play different games before being interrupted by different deadly sins.
- Mount Rushmore: The stone presidents trade jokes.
- At the Dance
- The Wrestling Match: The San Francisco Earthquake displays his winning tactics.
- The Swedish Chef demonstrates how to make a submarine sandwich
- The Electric Mayhem sing "Love Ya to Death."
- Statler and Waldorf sit in their den and talk.
- Birds in the Trees: Male birds try to attract females in a jazzy skit.
- Theater of Things: The pencils get a new ruler.
- Aggression: Featuring two stalks, fuzzy hook-nosed creatures, interacting with two heaps, tarantula like monsters talking in gibberish.
- Films in Focus: A review pans the film Return to Beneath the Planet of the Pigs.
- The 7 Deadly Sins Pageant, which ends up being cut short by the credits
This pilot has examples of
- The Cameo: Bert, Ernie, and Kermit from Sesame Street appear during the "At the Dance" sequences. Rowlf from The Jimmy Dean Show also makes an appearance in one of these sketches, as well as a background Muppet in the Wrestling Match segment.Rowlf: I used to be on Jimmy Dean but nobody remembers me anymore.
- Early-Bird Cameo: One of the female pigs is Miss Piggy as a more generic pig.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: This pilot is much different from the series that would emerge from it.
- Instead of Kermit the Frog, the host is Nigel, who would become the series' band conductor. Kermit himself only makes a cameo in the At the Dance sequence and the Wrestling Match.
- This special sets its host segments in a conference room instead of a vaudeville theater, with the segments taking place in different settings instead of the stage.
- The format is different, jumping across various segments instead of host and backstage segments bridging them together.
- Statler and Waldorf aren't hecklers on a balcony, but rather two elderly gentlemen seated in a lounge, with Statler on the left and Waldorf on the right, rather than the other way around; they're also far less energetic than in the series.
- The Swedish Chef's segment is named Järnvägskorsning (Swedish for "railway crossing"). This name was abandoned due to being too difficult to remember or pronounce.
- Miss Piggy has a more generic design, with beady eyes and hooves.
- This special (along with some of Henson's other projects at the time) used many of the same crew from Sesame Street, including Jon Stone, Joe Raposo, Norman Stiles, Fran Brill, and Dick Maitland. It was also filmed at Metrotape East in New York instead of ATV Elstree Studios in the UK.
- Gonzo is a background Muppet.
- Dr. Julius Strangepork, who would later become the Swinetrek's scientist in the Pigs in Space sketches, is known as Dr. Nauga here, and he's among the medical doctors seen in the Return to Beneath the Planet of the Pigs sketch.
- Some of the characters have different performers: Miss Piggy and Janice are performed by Fran Brill (Frank Oz and Eren Ozker would fill those roles in the series, with Richard Hunt taking the latter role in 1977), Richard Hunt performs Crazy Harry (John Lovelady would perform the character in the first season, and Jerry Nelson would take over in Season 2), and Statler is performed by Jerry Nelson (whose limited availability in the first season resulted in Hunt taking his role; Nelson retook the role after Hunt died in 1992).
- This version primarily focuses on the Muppets and does not have a human guest star, like The Muppet Valentine Special did a year earlier with Mia Farrow.
- Fun with Subtitles: The Swedish Chef's dialogue is in mock Swedish, but the subtitles are written in Chinese.
- Human Knot: The two wrestlers do this to themselves, so much that they end up a tangled ball of twisted limbs.
- Identical Stranger: Bert's dance partner in At the Dance looks just like Ernie, even laughing like him! Lampshaded by Bert when he says that she looks familiar.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The movie critic character is meant to be a parody of Gene Shalit.
- Painting the Medium: During the end credits, the camera pulls back on the chaos to reveal the puppeteers.
- Pokémon Speak: The "For the Birds" sketch has bird characters that only say one phrase, there's the "Whadayasay Bird", the "Forcryingoutloud Bird", the "Ohreally Bird", the "Ohboy Bird", the "Youknow Bird", and, finally, the "Righton Bird".
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Throughout the story, more Muppets representing one of the Seven Deadly Sins show up for the Pageant...only for Nigel to call it off because they've run out of time.
- The Stinger: After the credits roll, Sloth, the seventh deadly sin, arrives late.
- Take That!: The film that the Gene Shalit Muppet jeers is called Return to Beneath the Planet of the Pigs, essentially a takedown to the many sequels the franchise was putting out.
- The Unintelligible: The "Aggression" sketch is told entirely in gibberish.
