The Muppet Show - Recurring Skits

Recurring Skits

• An Editorial by Sam the Eagle - Sam the Eagle gives an editorial on a specific topic which ends up occurring during the editorial.
• At the Dance – The sketch was a regular during the first season but was used less frequently from the second season onward. Muppet characters circulated on a semi-formal dance floor offering rapid fire one-liner jokes and come-backs as the couples passed in front of the camera.
• Bear on Patrol – Fozzie is an unlucky police officer and Link Hogthrob is his incompetent superior who always get into the silliest situations with the criminals brought in. The voice of the announcer was performed by Jerry Nelson.
• Fozzie's Act – Fozzie Bear gets on stage and performs his famously bad jokes. Statler and Waldorf heckle him, in a perpetual rivalry. The sketches became less frequent as Fozzie's off-stage presence became more prevalent. In one first season episode however, Fozzie turned the tables on his rivals with help from Bruce Forsyth and they waved the white flag in surrender.
• Muppet Labs – Segments featuring the latest invention from Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, with his assistant, Beaker, getting the worst of its inevitable malfunction. The character of Beaker was introduced in season two; during the first season Bunsen hosted Muppet Labs by himself, but the writers soon realized that another character was necessary to show Bunsen's failings.
• Muppet News Flash – The Muppet Newsman gives a newsbrief only to have some disaster befall him (typically the same disaster he was just describing), or another strange scenario: such as the time that he ran on, stated "There is no news tonight.", and ran off. In the first season, the Muppet Newsman read out news items that occasionally featured the guest star for that week playing a character that was somehow involved in the item. Muppet News Flashes often used absurdist humour; in one sketch, the announcer stated that the Atlantic Ocean had been kidnapped. Another example is this statement: Reports are coming in from all over the world that Television News Reporters are blowing up. These unlikely rumors are... KA-BOOM! A third example, a cross-over with the Swedish Chef, has the Swedish Chef open and cause a wine bottle "explosion" (if a bottle is shaken too much before opening it for the first time, fizz will shoot up and out of the bottle) and flies through the air, classified as a UFO by the Muppet Newsman. As the scene goes, he was reported directly above the Muppet News Room and he landed on and crushed the Muppet Newsman.
• Pigs in Space – Parody of science fiction programmes like Star Trek, but also 1930s sci-fi serials. The spacecraft is called USS Swinetrek and the title voice-over is a parody of Lost in Space. It features Captain Link Hogthrob, Miss Piggy as first mate, and Dr. Julius Strangepork (the name a takeoff on "Dr. Strangelove"). Usually, the sketches would involve the long-suffering Piggy putting up with the wacko Strangepork and the brain dead Link treating her as an inferior because she is a woman. The early sketches also usually featured odd introductions for all the characters, such as calling Link the flappable captain, Miss Piggy the flirtatious first mate, and referring to Dr. Strangepork as 'describable.' Strangepork usually got the most unusual description out of the three during these introductions, as he was the oddest member of the group. This portion of the introduction was dropped during season three, and the announcer would simply claim it was 'time for...Piiiiiigs...iiiin...spaaaaaaace!'
• Swedish Chef – Cooking show parody. It consists of the Swedish Chef, who speaks mock Swedish, semi-comprehensible gibberish which parodies the characteristic vowel sounds and intonation of Swedish. He attempts to cook a dish with great enthusiasm, until the punch line hits. A hallmark of these sketches was the improvisation between Jim Henson, who performed the Chef's head and voice, and Frank Oz, who was his hands. One would often make something up on the spot, making the other puppeteer comply with the action. Famous gags include "chickie in du baskie" ("two points!"), meatballs that bounce, chocolate "moose", attempting to cook Kermit's nephew and perhaps most famously, repeatedly adding pepper to a recipe. The chef was frequently seen chasing a fraught-looking chicken around the set whilst stating 'Yur puurt der chir-ken in der bewl' or words to this effect.
• Veterinarian's Hospital – Parody of the soap opera General Hospital and other medical dramas, consisting of Dr. Bob (Rowlf) cracking corny jokes in the operating room with Nurses Piggy and Janice, much to the bemusement of the hapless patient. Each instalment ends with Dr. Bob and his nurses looking around in puzzlement as a disembodied narrator tells viewers to "tune in next time, when you'll hear Nurse Piggy / Dr Bob / Nurse Janice say....", whereupon one of the three 'medics' will prompt a corny response from one of the others. On a number of occasions, the "Veterinarian's Hospital" sketch would crossover with the cast or set of another, such as "At the Dance" or "Pigs in Space." On one occasion, Dr. Bob was the patient while the guest star (Christopher Reeve) played a doctor going to operate on Dr. Bob. In the first season the narrator was usually voiced by John Lovelady, but Jerry Nelson performed the role in both the Harvey Korman and Rita Moreno episodes, before taking over the role permanently from the Phyllis Diller episode. In the introduction, Dr. Bob went from "a former orthopedic surgeon" to "a quack" who's "gone to the dogs."