Y’all know that I’m a Muppet freak. And I have been since I was just a pup. Many people think that Muppets are just entertainment for kids, and either your kids outgrow them or society does and it’s time to move on to more violent ventures. I don’t agree with that. The Muppets were first introduced as entertainment for adults on The Ed Sullivan Show, Jimmy Dean Show, and other programs, and although they were usually appropriate for the family, they weren’t expressly for children. “The Muppet Show” was more of a comedy than a kids show, and yet they’re labeled as kiddie fare by most people. It was a source of frustration for Jim Henson, and it is for me too.

I don’t know where I was going with that, it was just something I had to get off my chest. Sorry. The subject of this review is actually a Christmas Special televised in 1977, just after The Muppet Show had started its run, and even though it has a leisurely pace, it’s appropriate for children—perfect for families to watch together.

The program is “Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas,” and I watched it yesterday all the way through for the first time. I’ve made two other attempts, but turned it off early in the program. My mistake—the real gems of the piece come after the first fifteen minutes of the show. This is touted as a Muppet production, but if you’re looking for Kermit, Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie Bear etc., you’ll be disappointed; Kermit is pictured on the cover of the DVD, and is billed as “narrator,” but he’s in less than five minutes of the fifty-minute program.

The story follows Emmet Otter and his Ma, as they try to scrape together enough money to buy each other nice presents for Christmas. They live a simpler life, somewhere in the back woods of the United States, near a little town called Frogtown Hollow. Emmet is a sweet little boy otter, and is friends with a porcupine, beaver, and other creatures. The climax of the program is a talent show, with the award being fifty dollars, which would go a long way in the Frogtown Hollow economy.

The story is by Lillian and Russell Hoban, authors of the “Frances” books, and the adaptation from their stories is faithful. The puppets are more realistically animal looking than the Muppets you probably remember from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, and you can’t deny they’re dang cute. The sets are elaborate, although there are places that either the low budget or the experimental puppetry show.

Coming relatively early on in Henson’s never-ending quest for new puppetry technology, there’s more marionette puppetry in “Emmet Otter” than in any other Muppet production. This includes Kermit’s first time on a bicycle, which is good, but unintentionally funny as you can clearly see the strings/wires connecting him to the rigging above him. He’s stiff and doesn’t look as natural as he does riding bicycles in The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper. The other time you really see the strings is when Emmet and Ma go to the Otter Slide and go down it…when they do, the strings are again so obvious that I winced…but it was almost 30 years ago, and I’m willing to let it go. There are some other things that it looked like they were experimenting with that would become part of later Muppet movies--how to do puppetry in water, radio control puppetry, and other experiments.

These minor quibbles don’t diminish the greatness of the story. I mentioned before that I stopped watching early on last time—if you can get past the first 20 minutes, you’ll be wrapped up in Emmet Otter’s world, and this is largely due to the rich performances of the puppeteers. No one deserves more credit than Jerry Nelson—one of the unsung heroes of the Muppets. Jerry is the man behind (or underneath) The Count, Herry Monster, Sherlock Hemlock, and other characters on Sesame Street, Gobo Fraggle on Fraggle Rock, and Robin the Frog, Floyd, Crazy Harry, and Lew Zealand on The Muppet Show. He performs Emmet here, and although the voice is somewhere between Gobo and Robin’s, he gives that little furry puppet a personality and warmth it wouldn’t have had in other hands. I love Jerry Nelson. He’s great.

The songs are the ultimate expression of the characters’ feelings in “Emmet Otter,” and there are several numbers that will stick with you long after the program has ended. My two favorites are “When the River Meets the Sea,,” which you may know from the John Denver & the Muppets Christmas Together Album…the other is “Bar-B-Q” which will stick in your head as much as “the sauce mama makes just stays there forever if you dare to get it under your naaaaails!” The songs are from Paul Williams, who later wrote the songs for The Muppet Movie and The Muppet Christmas Carol…and they’re some of the best the Muppets have ever gotten to sing.

If you’ve never seen this, I recommend hunting it down—after I got past what I considered the primitive puppetry, I found a gem of a Christmas special that I’ll be watching year after year.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD