makeup retrospective: my muppet show lookbook

22-Jun-2025

On my first day of college, I had a huge gap in my schedule so I went to the library and stumbled across a huge big called Jim Henson: The Works - The Art, the Magic, the Imagination by Christopher Finch. I read it cover to cover, lingering over all of the behind the scenes photos of every major project that Henson worked on including, of course, The Muppet Show. This dawned the second wave of my now lifelong affection for puppet shows that has spanned not only Henson’s primary works (including Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock) but many other beloved shows from my childhood: Eureka’s Castle, Allegra’s Window, The Puzzle Place, Bear in the Big Blue House and many more. As an adult, I found regularly searches for skits on YouTube and eventually bought DVD collections so that I could watch full episodes. With a lot of these shows now available on various streaming services, I am looking forward to revisiting them in full and writing more extensively on this special interest - plus, it’s the perfect excuse to go back and rewatch all of Kevin Perjurer’s Defunctland episodes about the shows.

In 2022, I did a series of makeup looks inspired by a few of my favorite characters. At the time, ColourPop was poised to release a holiday collaboration series with Disney and I was less than impressed¹ by their color choices since it looked so similar to just about every other stream of collabs they were pumping out back then. Part of the reason why I didn’t vibe with their interpretation was the bright, punchy, saturated colors didn’t made me miss the desaturated tones of the original 70s show - something that was slightly more represented in theBalm’s Cast Your Shadow palette (plus, the cover art for that one? Inspired.) Miss Piggy even had her own collection with Ciaté London, though it was giving stronger Barbie vibes with its focus on hot pink. Though my own results at building quads were limited by the colors and finishes that I owned, I had fun with the project and would enjoy revisiting it now that I have grungier tones - plus, investing in more punk lipstick colors would be perfect for doing Gonzo more justice, specifically.

In revisiting this project, I mainly wanted to talk about these characters that I have loved over the years and share some of my favorite skits featuring them. So let’s start the music and light the lights for this look back on some of my favorite Muppets.

Life’s like a movie / Write your own ending Keep believing / Keep pretending We’ve done just what we set out to do Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers, and you!

Every iteration of Kermit the Frog has brought a different energy and I love all of them. On Sesame Street, he did interviews with the locals (humans and muppets alike) and could be kind and silly as well as totally exasperated. A few of my favorite sketches include Singing the Alphabet with Joey, The Mystery Box with Cookie Monster, and every single sketch with Don Music, such as this one where they rewrite Row Row Row Your Boat.

On The Muppet Show, however, the imagined vaudeville world has an older intended audience which lends itself to a more wise-cracking Kermit who can even veer into being a little mean-spirited as he loses his temper backstage trying to corral the odd assortment of performers coming on and off stage. I’ll share lots of his comedic moments in clips from other characters, but one of my favorite scenes with him is when Linda Ronstadt sings “When I Grow Too Old to Dream” with him. She looks and sounds incredible and Kermit’s verse is very sweet. A lot of people try to imitate Kermit’s voice and the caricature doesn’t do justice to how much heart Jim Henson put into his acting.

Of all the moments portrayed by Henson, my favorites are from The Muppet Movie - namely when Kermit gives himself a pep talk when starting to lose faith in making it to Hollywood and the “Rainbow Connection” reprise in the finale. I wrote an essay about the movie in undergrad that I dug up through a zip of old files; it needs a lot of editing, but I might revisit it one day because watching these clips again over a decade later still fills me with so many thoughts about dreams, failure, nostalgia, and found family.

Heeyah!!! There’s only room for one miss Piggy and that’s moi!

As alluded to in my introduction, I still tend to mentally associate Miss Piggy with classic Hollywood glamor from the original run of the show through the 90s where she donned voluminous curls, satin gowns, and bedroom eyes. It’s no wonder that she was an icon for drag queens and sparked many a thread comparing her looks over the years to Chappel Roan’s. My first experience with this diva was the bloomer-wearing little girl on Muppet Babies, and even though it’s not a cartoon that has aged particularly well, I do have fond memories of it. Even in this diluted cartoon form, the first thing that comes to mind when I think about Piggy isn’t about her glamor and fame, but that she’s so funny.² Much of her humor comes from the contradictions in her behavior: oozing confidence and deep jealousy, facade and vulnerability, class and brass. The oscillation from her batting her full lashes demurely at Kermit to karate-chopping him off the screen perfectly encapsulates this range.

On The Muppet Show, she was equally funny on stage as her boisterous backstage personality. She portrayed a nurse on Veterinarian’s Hospital alongside Rowlf (Dr. Bob) and Janice and the group never fails to make me laugh. The medical parody opens with Piggy doing a physical version of a non-sequitur - one time even puppeting a smaller pig puppet before throwing it off haphazardly over her shoulder never to be seen again. Frank Oz, Henson, and Richard Hunt (in order of the characters listed earlier) also have a great synergy with their characters, alternating between who will be the straight (wo)man and comic so that each gets a turn to joke and laugh. As an example, I chose this segment where the patient du jour is a rotary telephone.

The other great staple is Pigs in Space, a Star Trek/Lost in Space mashup following Captain Link Hogthrob (Henson), Dr. Julius Strangepork (Jerry Nelson), and Piggy as the first mate. A clear commentary about “The Girl” character in genre television, Piggy is often overlooked by the men aboard but firmly stands her ground verbally and physically, often garnering the last laugh. In this clip, Link and Julius decide that Piggy is literally expendable (as in, they plot to remove her from the ship) and it doesn’t go nearly as planned once she catches wind of it. Combined, these two show the two poles in which Piggy works within an ensemble: she can synergize with others when it suits the vibe, but more often than not she is going to stand out.

There’s not a word yet / For old friends who’ve just met

After the Muppet Babies reboot came out on Disney Junior in 2018 with an episode featuring Gonzorella, there was a lot of pushback with claims that they were “pandering” to LGBTQ audiences and “sullying” the spirit of the Muppets. That’s absurd to me. When has Gonzo ever conformed to labels of any kind? That’s the appeal. He can be whatever he wants to be and so can all of us.

On The Muppet Show, however, Gonzo’s performances were peak absurdist performance art, such as eating a tire to “The Flight of the Bumblebees” and death-defying stunts like riding a motorcycle into the balcony between Statler and Waldorf. He’s the misunderstood artist who will pursue his dreams until his dying breath. While Fozzie might get mocked off-stage with heckles and vegetables, Gonzo will huff off-stage saying that they just don’t “get it” and or pick himself up after having he’s blown up or launched off-stage.

It’s interesting to me how, like Miss Piggy, Gonzo was reworked fairly drastically to have a much more crystalized personality. Starting off as a generic, gruff background character (known as Frackle) became the Gonzo the Great that we know and love today who has a wide-eye love for life (and a certain chicken.) He’s a weirdo, free spirit, dream chaser, slightly unhinged, and endlessly curious. His song “I’m Going to Go Back There Someday” in The Muppet Movie chokes me up every time I listen to it and his role as Charles Dickens in A Muppet Christmas Carol narrating the story to Rizzo is perfection.

Speaking of slipping, are you guys familiar with the Banana Sketch?

Fozzie is an absolute delight. He’s a fuzzy, huggable bear donning a comically small pork-pie hat and oversized polka-dot bowtie who occasionally totes a rubber chicken. He’s the perfect best friend to Kermit because they complement each other so well: tall and small, hammy vs dry humor, optimists struggling to hold onto the light. Similar to Gonzo, Fozzie mostly struggles with his on-stage routine due to being heckled by Statler and Waldorf who laugh raucously at their own jokes but not his. The two old men are fantastic characters, but they, ironically, wouldn’t be nearly as funny without Fozzie. That’s the bit. He enters stage, they complain, he tells his joke, they heckle and laugh, and Fozzie walks away in dismay while they get in their last comments. No matter how many times this happens, however, Fozzie always goes back out there hoping for at least one joke that will garner a laugh out of the audience. And it’s this optimism in the face of rejection that makes him so charming.

If I had to describe my sense of humor to someone else, one of the videos that I would send to them would be the Cowboy Time sketch from the first episode. Understandably, Frank Oz hasn’t quite settled into his voice with Fozzie who sounds a lot deeper and gruff than he will end up, but this scene is packed with puns, visual gags, and reversals. We have Rowlf tickling the ivories to set up the entrance of Kid Fozzie, who orders the saloon to “reach for the floor” because “this is a stickdown” - a clear reversal of “reach for the sky; this is a stickup.” Everyone in the room makes fun of him until new information about the props he is carrying causes them to panic. Every turn of this makes me laugh; it’s the right combination of stupid and fun. Plus, the moment when Fozzie grabs onto Rowlf in fear feels like such a classic Fozzie decision that it feels like a sweet glimmer into who this character will become over time.

Another favorite of mine is the Banana Sketch running gag. In a rare moment, Fozzie tells a joke that makes everyone, including Statler and Waldorf, laugh, but Kermit can’t seem to get anyone to explain the joke to him. Why? Because even thinking about it makes them laugh too hard to repeat it. This gag reminds me so much of my younger brother who would often start laughing so much trying to recount jokes that he would struggle to get to the end of the story. That’s part of what makes Fozzie so endearing to me; even though his actual jokes aren’t very funny, he has such a familiar energy to me that I can’t help but love him.

My own mother turns down her hearing aid when I play this song [“You and I and George.”]

Though not quite as old as Kermit, Rowlf is one of Henson’s oldest puppet characters predating the Muppet Show for appearances in commercials and The Jimmy Dean Show. Compared to the intense anxiety that Don Music struggles with at Sesame Street while trying to finish a composition, Rowlf is cool and confident at his piano. His recurring role as Dr. Bob remains one of my favorites, as he easily comes up with more puns than Fozzie could dream of forming, and his warm, gravelly voice never failed to make me smile during the musical segments.

Indeed, the music is truly where Rowlf shines as character. I wholly buy into him playing the keys and he can really work the room in the way of classic lounge singers like Sammy Davis Jr - making you laugh and snap your fingers. One bit features Scooter repeatedly interrupting the climax of “It’s Not Where You Start, It’s Where You Finish” because his uncle wants Rowlf to extend the scene for time. Another classic is his take on A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh poem “Cottleston Pie”, which is just sweet and nostalgic, how the acting in “The Theme From Love Song” makes me completely forget that Zoot and Rowlf are not in fact playing their respective instruments.

One of my favorite videos of Rowlf is from an interview Jim Henson gave alongside the puppet on the Arsenio Hall Show. He woofs back at the audience, talks about why he is wearing a sling as a live hands puppet, and sings “You and I and George” (a classic in his repertoire.) The audience adores him just as much as Kermit from the first half of the interview and it demonstrates my favorite thing about puppeteers doing talk show interviews: even when I see their mouth moving and making the sounds, watch their hands moving the rods or where their arm is inserted into the back of the fabric, the muppet has my 100% undivided attention. I can’t help it. There’s just something magical about this creature being brought to life.

Saying goodbye Why is it sad? Makes us remember the good times we’ve had Much more to say Foolish to try It’s time for saying goodbye

I have such a soft spot for Scooter, partially because I relate to him a lot. He’s so eager and enthusiastic about being part of the show even if he is mostly backstage making sure people are ready to go on for their performances, running errands (such as “going for coffee”), and keeping Kermit up-to-date with last minute changes. But just like all the other starry-eyed dreamers, deep down, he also wants to appear before the audience and earn his roses. Many puppeteers said in interviews that Richard Hunt was so much like Scooter when he first started working and that makes the character all the more sweet.

With a little nepotism from his uncle, who owns the theatre, Scooter manages to get a spot on stage performing a cover of “Six-String Orchestra” - fittingly, a song about a young musician with dreams about stardom despite still learning how to play a guitar. The set design is a very fun teen’s bedroom and the special effects to show the shaded impressions of the Electric Mayhem looks really cool. Another sketch I love is “Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear”, which he performs alongside Fozzie (who wanted on-stage but didn’t quite sign-up for a music number…) It’s a fun, toe-tapping song that demonstrates Hunt’s great singing voice. The two performed the song again together at Jim Henson’s Memorial and the way Hunt and Oz ad-lib seamlessly despite how emotional both were is incredible.

The moment that stands out to me the most when I think about Scooter is his verse in “Saying Goodbye” from Muppets Take Manhattan. It’s been a long time since I last watched this movie so I’m overdue to see it again, but watching the cast part ways from one another after a failed attempt to make it on Broadway always made me so sad. Since I had recently graduated from high school, it felt all the more bittersweet to think about all the ways in which people come and go in your life. Scooter’s verse felt especially poignant to me.

There are so many other great characters, but I chose these six for my lookbook series thinking about color schemes, personality, and the joy that they have brought to me over the years. But I could write on and on about Muppets so this probably won’t be the last time I post about them!

Thank you for reading! ʕᵔᴥᵔʔ

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#The Muppet Show #makeup