The Muppet Show Season 3 / 2008
I am not old enough to remember or even be alive when The Muppet Show was being aired for the first time. I used to watch some of the episodes that they showed on Nick at Nite or TV Land, but I was a little young to get some of the jokes. Being able to pick up this DVD set really put it into perspective how great this show really was. First, the episodes themselves are not the blurry, often time fuzzy efforts that were taken straight off of video tapes, but have been digitally remastered to have a sharpness that only members of the audience were able to originally see.
This set features the episodes that were created in the 3rd (and chronologically) middle season of its run; as such, the 24 episodes present on this set are some of the strongest that were created in The Muppet Show’s 120 episode run. Alice Cooper, Raquel Welch, Harry Belafonte, Sylvester Stallone and Roger Miller are all guest stars of episodes, while a number of stars (Jean Stapleton, Danny Kaye, Elke Sommers) were big during their own period. Despite the fact that all the episodes together clock in at around 10 hours, there are a number of bonus bits and pieces that make the value of this set even better. This means that there is “Muppets on Puppetsâ€, a 1969 documentary that showcased the creators of the Muppets at a time when their felt-faced characters were not the biggest thing since sliced bread.
Understanding that the episodes from this season took place in 1979 and 1980, it is interesting to look a decade earlier into the Muppet history and see how things had changed from the documentary to the current day. “A Company of Players†provides further information for individuals that wish to know about the inner workings of The Muppet Show, acting as the perfect highlight to the points already put forth. Finally, and something that I’ve not seen too much of on other DVDs,
Rating: 8.0/10
