Today we’re forcing you to remember The Ewoks/Droids Adventure Hour, a Saturday morning cartoon series based on the popular Star Wars franchise, but taking place after Return of the Jedi, which aired on ABC from 1985 through 1987. It was that special time when the Star Wars movies had ended but George Lucas realized he could still milk this cash cow for all its’ worth by shilling it out to every other possible media (including a goshawful fighting game), SatAM included. So this is sort of both a Toons & Tunes as well as a Cartoon Couch, since most of our contemporaries have forgotten this series existed.
I won’t be doing full reviews on either show, since what I remember of both the Ewoks and Droids cartoons respectively, is that they were each a bit boring. Honestly, the best things about both shows were their opening theme songs. First up, the theme from Ewoks. This show was basically one of the many “cute, cuddly creatures living together in a community forest setting” cartoons created in the wake of NBC’s Smurfs, only set in the Star Wars universe. Give a listen:
Great, now I’m going to be hearing “E-E-E-E-Ewoks” in my head for the rest of the day. Still catchy, though.
Next up, the Droids opening. Droids was the more traditionally Star Wars-ey of the 2 shows, with R2-D2 and C3PO passing through various human masters and encountering sci-fi adventures along the way (just no appearances by any of the human characters from the movies, they’d want money for the use of their likenesses, after all) Unlike Ewoks, which boasted a single stand-alone story in each episode, the Droids episodes were each mini-serials, with the stories contained within 3 or 4-part sagas, but each ep still being a self-contained story with no cliffhanger endings. And again, the opening theme was the best thing about the show.
Droids was the slightly more ambitious of the 2 toons, so not surprisingly it was gone after a single season. The following year, only Ewoks returned as a stand-alone series entitled All-New Ewoks, with–drag!–an entirely different theme song:
Granted, this 2nd opening is more indicative of the sort of thing the Ewoks would perform (heck, it’s very similar to the some the ‘Woks were jamming to at the end of Return of the Jedi–which I’m sure was the idea), but I still like the first theme better. I don’t know much about Star Wars, but I know what earworms I like.
Neither Ewoks nor Droids set the world on fire, but trust me, there are worse Star Wars cartoons out there. Much worse.
Before Bob Odenkirk was making it big on shows like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, he was paired with David Cross on one the best sketch comedy shows in recent years, Mr. Show with Bob and David. I have no problem with comedians wanting to stretch their chops and become serious actors, though personally I don’t see what’s wrong with just bringing the yuks. Today’s 2 Funny is a double-shot: 2 of my favorite sketches from Mr. Show. First, “Dickie Crickets, King of the Megaphone Crooners”.
Next, “The Altered State of Druggachussets”, a full-on sendup of Sid & Marty Krofft’s H.R. Pufenstuf, poking fun at the common belief among wiseguys and stand-up comics that during their stint on Saturday morning TV, the Kroffts were high on something else other than life. (Note that both skits feature the man who would one day become the voice of SpongeBob Squarepants, Tom Kenny. This skit also features the voice of comic Jill Talley, whom Adult Swim fans may recognize as the voice of Sarah Dubois from The Boondocks. Both Kenny and Talley were regulars on Mr. Show, and before that appeared together on the short-lived FOX sketch comedy series The Edge. (In fact, during their stint on Mr. Show together, Kenny and Talley were married.)
Man, I miss shows like this. I wish HBO and other cable channels would give us more shows like this as an alternative to the endless swarm of “critically acclaimed dramas”, which quite frankly tend to look the same and run together to me. Forget zombie fighters, sexy vampires and thrones of gaming, give me more zaniness with comics mugging it up in kooky costumes. Good stuff, man, good stuff.
Most of us are familiar with Jim Henson’s groundbreaking and much beloved series The Muppet Show….
…and it’s for that reason that it’s NOT fit to be covered on The Couch. The Couch pays tribute to the lesser known, less celebrated, obscure and forgotten shows, so we won’t be covering The Muppet Show today. But did you know that Henson Associates tried rehashing the Muppet Show formula on 2 separate occasions? They did, first with MuppeTelevision in 1989 and again with Muppets Tonight in 1996. These are the shows we’ll be spotlighting today.
NOTE: Since by now nearly everyone’s familiar with the Muppet Show formula, both of these summaries are going to be very rapid-fire and abridged; I’ll only be giving brief overviews of each. Having said that….
IT’S JUICE TIME!
MUPPETELEVISION
MuppeTelevision regularly occupied the first half of The Jim Henson Hour, a short-lived television series that aired on NBC in 1989, modeled after the old Walt Disney Presents specials. It was an updated version of the classic series The Muppet Show, the new twist being that the Muppets were now running an entire cable television network rather than a single variety show. The Muppets broadcast their network’s programming from a unique control room called “Muppet Central”. The station was capable of picking up television signals from throughout the universe, and it was up to Kermit the Frog, who served as director, to decide which shows the viewing audience would see. Most of the acts were viewed on television monitors, while backstage antics happened in the Muppet Central control room. Just about every act would be introduced from the control room, in contrast to the previous Muppet Show, where characters would come on-stage to introduce acts. Regulars included past favorites Kermit the Frog, The Great Gonzo and Link Hogthrob in addition to new characters Digit (a malfunctioning robot), Leon the Lizard (who insisted that he and Kermit were related; he constantly called Kermit “Cuz”), Lindbergh the Kiwi, Vicki (a young intern who was a fan of the original Muppet Show when she was a kid, making us all feel old), Clifford, Waldo C. Graphic (the first computer generated Muppet), and Jacques Roach (a parody of Jacques Cousteau). Also appearing as a series regular was Bean Bunny, who had previously starred in the HBO TV special The Tale of the Bunny Picnic, parodying the treacly cuteness he was originally created to embody.
Not just a Muppet, but a Muppet in 3-Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
The house band for MuppeTelevision was called Solid Foam, taking the place of the psychedelic Electric Mayhem band that had appeared in most previous Muppet projects. The band included:
-Digit on keyboard
-Flash on saxophone and vocals
-Clifford on bass guitar and vocals
-Beard on guitar and vocals
-An unnamed Female Drummer
Here’s Solid Foam in action:
Among the recurring segments on the show were “Bootsie and Brad”, a Barbie-esque fashion doll and her clingy Ken-like boyfriend, played by human actors Jennifer Lee and Andrew Wilson, and “Merlin the Magician, M.D.”, a variation on the “Veterinarian’s Hospital” sketches starring Rowlf the Dog as a very Dr. Bob-esque Merlin, using his magic to cure people’s medical problems, making jokes and slinging puns all the while.
MuppeTelevision also tends to get interrupted on some occasions by an illegal TV station called Gorilla Television run by Ubu the Gorilla, Chip, and Zondra.
“Give an ape a typewriter and he’ll come up with a new script for Hamlet…with lots more references to bananas! That was a MONKEY JOKE!”
Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggy appeared only intermittently, as their performer Frank Oz was busy with a directorial career. Now I’m neutral towards Fozzie; he’s never been my favorite Muppet but I have no qualms with him, however the lack of Miss Piggy didn’t cause me to shed a single tear. I’ll say it: I’ve never been a huge Miss Piggy fan. Miss Piggy has always been one of those characters that I never really liked but just tolerated, like Big Bird (urgh, don’t get me started on that feathered moron). As a kid, it was my opinion that Miss Piggy was an overbearing, over-hyped, scene-stealing, temperamental [RADIO EDIT] who just took screen time away from better and more deserving characters who unlike Miss Piggy, were actually team players.
…But I mean that in a good way. Moving on…
MUPPETS TONIGHT
Muppets Tonight ran on ABC from March 8 to July 14, 1996, with reruns on Disney Channel from 1997 to 2000. As of 2015, it is (as of this writing) the last television series to star The Muppets characters. The premise of Muppets Tonight was that Clifford (one of the band members of Solid Foam from MuppeTelevision) was the host of a variety show on KMUP (mainly because no one else wanted the job). Most of the shows stuck closely to the Muppet Show format of various skits interspersed with some sort of backstage story (usually a crisis). The show featured a laugh track, similar to the one used on The Muppet Show. One big difference between the two shows is that on Muppets Tonight, it was much more common for audiences to only see half of an on-stage act (especially musical numbers), as many acts would begin and shortly afterwards would cut to a backstage scene (or a comment from Statler and Waldorf). Another difference is that while each episode of The Muppet Show only had one or two featured guests, and no additional humans appearing on-screen, many episodes of Muppets Tonight often featured cameos by celebrities in addition to the featured guest star. Some of these celebrities also took part in episode subplots. Also, while it was rare for any scenes on The Muppet Show to take place outside of The Muppet Theater, many episodes of Muppets Tonight had scenes taking place outside of the station.
Trivia Time: On Muppets Tonight, Clifford was featured with Muppet eyes in place of his usual sunglasses, he went back to wearing sunglasses in later Muppet projects as revealed at MuppetFest.
“Yeah, the shades thing. ABC suggested I remove ’em ’cause they thought it looked like I was hiding something. Plus, I got tired of kids comin’ up to me and asking if I was that Cyclops dude from the X-Men.”
New Muppet characters included Miss Piggy’s very, very, very stupid nephews, Randy and Andy, Pepe the King Prawn (making his debut here) and his buddy Seymour the Elephant, elevator operators in the first season and commissary workers in the second, who are constantly hoping to become performers, but their efforts always seem to suffer a mishap of some kind, Johnny Fiama, a Sinatra style crooner who lives with his mom, and Sal Minella, his hot-tempered monkey bodyguard. Among the regular sketches were “Bay of Pigswatch”; “Pigs in Space: Deep Dish Nine” (a spin-off from The Muppet Show’s “Pigs in Space”); “EIEIO-R”; “Tales from the Vet”, and “Great Moments in Elvis History”.
Here’s the opening:
Not surprisingly, with the theatrical release of The Muppets in 2011 and its’ sequel Muppets Most Wanted in 2014, now fans are hoping that we’ll get a new Muppet series somewhere down the line. While overall I’d prefer to see studios make new shows and properties as opposed to this avalanche of reboots and relaunches, I wouldn’t be against such an idea, although if I can make a small suggestion: maybe in the future Henson Associates could consider not using the totality of the Muppet cast in every single new project. Maybe they could designate say about 3, 4 or 5 central characters and only use them in each project, while the others either take momentary rests or be used separately in their own projects. I understand that HA regards the Muppets characters as a troupe like the Marx Brothers, and that works fine, when there’s only a small number of them. Also, don’t just rehash the Muppet Show formula again. of these 2 shows, I preferred MuppeTelevision because it broke the mold more (plus I just like the high-tech, space age, intergalactic feel that show had), Muppets Tonight, while enjoyable, played things too close to the original formula. Don’t be afraid to change things and mix things up a little; if you just rehash everything, the franchise just gets old and that shortens the life span.
Earlier this evening, I read a post on Toon Zone from a member discussing the Nickelodeon animated series ChalkZone. I saw the original shorts on another late Nick series Oh, Yeah! Cartoons, and a small number of episodes of the series, and I can honestly say that the best thing about (aside from E.G. Daily as the voice of Rudy) was some of the music. Below are my 2 favorite songs from ChalkZone. The first of them is the shows’ hard rockin’ opening theme:
The second is one of the music videos stuck onto the end of the episodes to fill out the running time that I just happened to stumble upon one day. When I first heard this, I was genuinely surprised by how good it was. This song is so mellow, beautiful, whimsical and pleasant that I almost believe that it was originally intended for something else but instead ended up on ChalkZone. I like this song so much, in fact, that it came a hair close to being mentioned in Nerdvana. Here’s “Dream A Lot of Dreams”.
The recent Star Wars animated series Star Wars: Rebels which is currently airing on Disney X-D brought another animated series back into my memory: Star Wars Detours, an unreleased American computer-animated comic science fiction television series produced by Lucasfilm Animation in collaboration with Robot Chicken creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich. When asked if the series would have any action in it, Seth Green responded with “No more than the average Looney Tunes or Tom & Jerry!” I like that response. Star Wars Detours was announced at Star Wars Celebration VI in summer 2012. In March 2013, Lucasfilm postponed Detours while they reconsidered whether releasing a comedy series prior to the sequels “makes sense”. That September, Green said 39 episodes had been completed, with 62 additional scripts finished.
I should be covering this show on “Peeks” since it hasn’t made it’s debut yet. However, the series was produced prior to Disney’s purchasing LucasFilm in 2012, which postponed Detours’ premiere back until ??? All that we have of Star Wars Detours are previews and trailers which have been floating around on YouTube. Here’s one of them:
Naturally, because Detours was created and produced by Seth Green and Matt Senreich, I got a serious Robot Chicken vibe from watching this, even though this series was CG animated rather than being stop motion animated. It would have been interesting to see just how long this series could have milked the comedic take on Star Wars, especially since Detours was G-rated, unlike the TV-MA rated Robot Chicken. Naturally, upon learning of Detours creation, there came the usual whining and rating by hardcore Star Wars fans that a comedic take on Star Wars “Will ruin my memories of the original!!!!” Uh, no it won’t because that’s not how memories work. The original Star Wars movies aren’t going to disappear just because new ones are being made. The new ones will still be on DVD and on television. You’ll still be able to see them whenever you want to.
“This comedy series ruined my childhood!”
No it hasn’t. If you cease to love the original and it’s now not as special to you just because of a reboot that you don’t have to see anyway, then it can’t have mattered that much to you in the first place.
As for the query of how much sense a Star Wars comedy series before the sequels would have made, I must ask; How much sense did it make for Star Wars: The Clone Wars to have 3 seasons of events between Episodes 2 and 3? And I honestly have no idea when in the franchise’s timeline that Star Wars: Rebels is supposed to take place in. And it’s not like Detours would have been canon anyway. Just because a show is on, that doesn’t mean that you have to watch it.
It’s too bad that Star Wars Detours may never see the light of day now that Disney owns LucasFilm. While nothing that I saw on the trailers made me laugh out loud, I still would welcome a comedic take on the franchise, if it’s funny and well written, but then, I’m not a huge Star Wars fan to begin with, so I’m easy.
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