I always struggle with the best way to concisely say why I decided to do a list. There are certain things that I just enjoy, and I want to show people the best elements of those things and tell people what makes me enjoy them, but I can never explain what makes me choose that one thing to make a list about. Jim Henson is loved by so many people and there are so many reasons why. He entertained generations of people, taught them things, made them laugh and cry and gave them something to love and share with other people. I've spent my entire life watching Muppets because of the genuine joy they give me.
I haven't written anything for over a year now, though I've tried. I spent most of my time on this list worrying about whether or not it was good enough, and getting frustrated when I couldn't get things out the way I wanted to in writing. I would write and then stop and read more about the Muppet I'm on, then read something loosely related to them, then go and watch a Youtube video from Sesame Street, then watch a Muppet show segment. I guess that's the best way to show why the Muppets needed a list; when I get started watching I want to see one thing, then another, then another until I'm sitting with a big smile on my face.
I decided that I could use this space to write a long, sad entry about what Jim Henson and the Muppets meant to me and how much I miss having him around and making new, awesome things, but the best way is to not be sad - to never be sad - and show my love and appreciation for the things I like best. So here is Progressive Boink's list of the Top 50 Muppets. We hope you like it.
(ps - yoda is not a muppet so he doesn't count, look it up, chumps)
- Lindy
50. Slimey
Though there are a few mute Muppets in the Jim Henson Universe, Slimey is by far the best. He doesn't have anything special to communicate like the Honkers or Dingers, but with a few wiggles and nods there has been a lot the little worm from the bottom of Oscar's trash can has accomplished. He's the first worm on the moon and is treated to mud baths whenever he is feeling too clean. Slimey is part of the reason why I'm not scared of bugs. I would go digging under the rocks in my backyard to pull up pillbugs, worms, beetles and all sorts of other little creatures. Any one I liked I would keep temporarily in a little bug house my grandmother had bought me. I'd watch them crawl around and try to talk to them to see if any would look up at me and nod like Slimey did, but it never happened. It was probably because they had no necks.
In conclusion Slimey is a worm of contrast. Thank you.
49. Wayne and Wanda
The release of seasons of the Muppet Show on DVD has been great, and helps you remember tons of funny shit you might've forgotten about in the lifetime it's been away from television. The first season, however, does have its share of misses. For example, those houses that make terrible house-centric puns. It goes "HEY HOUSE, I HEAR YOU JUST HAD A CHILD, HOW DO YOU LIKE HIM" "YES, OTHER HOUSE, MY CHILD IS GREAT, YOU COULD SAY I A-DOOR HIM!" and then they all laugh like the fish on Pee-wee's Playhouse. Wayne and Wanda are a first season act and an extension of the houses thing, where they show up to perform a classy rendition of an ominously titled song like "YOU LOOK BEAT!" that starts off as a swing song and ends with somebody being beaten into submission with a club. It's not really any good ever, but every time they show up I'll go WAYNE AND WANDA YESSS, so when we got together to put this list up my first thought wasn't Kermit or Fozzie or Big Bird, it was Wayne and Wanda.
Wait until we do the greatest Final Fantasy characters list and I put the Pink Puffs in this spot.
48. Mew
I really believe that The Christmas Toy is one of the best Christmas specials ever made, and it makes me get all teary-eyed every time I watch it. Being Toy Story before Toy Story existed, it's about a stuffed tiger named Rugby who is the favorite toy in the playroom and is upset because he found out that on Christmas, he might get replaced by a better toy. He devises a plan where he will sneak downstairs and replace the new toy with himself so that everyone will continue to love him. The only probelm with this is that if a human sees any toy in a different place than where they were left, they become "frozen", or basically toy death. His voice of reason as he makes his trek to the Christmas tree downstairs is a tiny little musty cat toy named Mew. Poor Mew gets shunned often by the other toy for only being a cat's toy and for stinking of cat nip, which he can't help because, after all, he is only a cat toy.
His little wheels carry him along the way where he helps save Rugby from being frozen and restores normalcy before he is accidentally caught out of place and frozen himself. I can't not cry a little when Rugby breaks down sings to Mew about how much he misses him and ends up returning him and the other frozen toys by proxy back to normal. I know there are a lot of people who love Emmet Otter and I know I still love a Muppet Family Christmas, but the Christmas Toy is by far the best.
47. Elmo
Oh, don't get me wrong, Elmo is Scrappy-Doo covered in shaggy red felt, and I want to hunt him down and strangle him to death too. But when we started this list, we promised to respect our personality leans but try to keep some level of objectivity. That's where Elmo comes in. He's important to about six generations of little kids now because every current episode of Sesame Street is 5% old Bert and Ernie sketches, 5% of Cookie Monster sternly suggesting that kids should eat their vegetables but not too sternly because we don't want to frighten the kids or provide them with a situation requiring decision or choice, and 90% Elmo, girl Elmo, and the gay Jewish Lisping Child Bear standing around, gesturing with their hands, and screaming about themselves. The movies aren't about Muppets anymore, they're about how Elmo is Cinderella or Princess Aurora or Mulan or some shit and how special guest star Additional Elmo deals with that.
Elmo is important, though, and back when he didn't say much he was cute. He's also made a ton of money for the Muppet camp thanks to the yearly Christmas blitz where your child decides he wants a robotic doll of Elmo from Sesame Street acting in a way foreign to Elmo from Sesame Street, for absolutely no reason. Tickle Me Elmo, Hokey Pokey Elmo, Chicken Dance Elmo, and Let's Pretend Elmo have all made parents go broke and insane to satiate their child with something that cannot possibly keep their interest into January. I wanted and got an expensive ass Laser Tag set when I was a kid. Later that day (Christmas Day) I realized how useless it was when you're an only child and the only people in your neighborhood who'd play it with you would also steal it, and ended up strapping the sensor to my front porch and diving around shooting at it like a mongoloid for about 20 minutes. Then I put it down, went to climb a tree, and never played with it again. Hey parents, guess what? Sometimes it is okay to disappoint your child.
46. Telly Monster
And I am Teeeeeeeelly YOU! I'm not GO-innnnnn
Telly Monster was first created to be a character with spinning eyes, antenna sticking out of his head and an obsession with television. After a few appearances from him, the eyes, antenna and one-note personality was dropped and he became the sweet, but often easily worried and frustrated monster that he is today. Telly is an awesome muppet because he is a fan of other muppets. He tries his hardest to be friends with Oscar, even though Oscar never really wants a friend. He's musically talented as well, being the only Muppet who can play the triangle, the tuba and bassoon.
Telly is the only Muppet to duet with Itzak Pearlman, he's a charter member of the Grouchketeers and has his own hosted segments. He is also one of the only non-Big Bird, Bert, Ernie or Cookie Monster monster to survive to new segments with Elmo and his brand of thugs. That means that somebody loves Telly. Maybe you should too.
45. Rizzo the Rat
The 1969 film "Midnight Cowboy" is about a naive male prostitute and his sickly friend who struggle to survive on the streets of New York City. In the film, Dustin Hoffman's character is named Ratso Rizzo. In 1972, a bunch of rat puppets were created for The Muppet Musicians of Bremen, a syndicated television special about the trials and tribulations of a Negro donkey. Muppeteer Steve Whitmire became fascinated with the rats, made one into a recurring character, and Frank Oz remembered a movie where a guy was named "Ratso," and two and two were put together.
Rizzo first appeared with Christopher Reeve on the Muppet Show, had roles in the Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan, and helped Gonzo narrate The Muppet Christmas Carol. More recently he can be seen desperately bobbing up and down in the background while the Hispanic stereotype shrimp and the Jamaican stereotype purple catfish anteater man from Muppets Tonight mug for attention on direct-to-DVD specials about how you should buy Ashanti's new album.
44. Two-Headed Monster
The Electric Company was a more urban version of Sesame Street with a segment showing the outlines of people's faces as they said segments of a word, and then combined it together. Sesame Street did this by having a puppet with two heads and two different performers fight about segments of a word so that they could be goof off and be funny at the same time. I don't remember learning phonics from the Two-Headed monster, but I remember a big purple monster with two heads yelling at each other in half gibberish about how to wear shoes.
B got Sesame Street: Old School as a Christmas present this year and at the beginning there is a disclaimer about how the old episodes don't meet the needs of most modern children. It makes me think about old segments like this, and while it may not have taught a whole lot, it certainly beats some middle aged woman dressed like a doll talking down to kids and having tea with dustbunnies.
Also, B thinks these guys look exactly like the Bushwhackers.
43. Lew Zealand
British comedian Chris Langham was trying to think of an act for the Muppet Show, came up with the worst idea he could think of, and blurted it out. "Lew Zealand, boomerang fish thrower." Kermit was being tricked into real marriage by Miss Piggy via a shady "marriage sketch," and it was the timely bass toss of Lew that prevented that godless union of ham and phib. Honestly, Miss Piggy and Kermit having a relationship did more to damage my views on interracial marriage than a childhood growing up in backwoods Virginia. She's just so much bigger than him. It's like when the frail, meth'd out trailer park guy on Cops hooks up with the fat lady who can't escape her own basement from pre-boot camp Jenny Jones. It just doesn't look right. Now I can't let my blonde friends show up to dinner with a black guy and not start getting furious about the Muppet Show.
Anyway, Lew Zealand is great, especially for the filming of dramatic scenery, and only becomes a nuisance when he shows up on the Internet to discuss how stupid America is.
42. Bean Bunny
The Muppetverse, pre Zero Hour, consisted of thousands of dimensions, but two that really mattered: Sesame Street Muppets, and Muppet Show Muppets. One had Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Grover. The other had Kermit, Piggy, Gonzo. Eventually Elmo became Elmo Prime on Sesame Street and usurped the glory of the show to be his own, and eventually he will rip Gordon in half and get dragged into the speed force. Bean Bunny was an attempt to Elmo the Muppet Show Muppets. He was super cute and was pushed down our throats, taking the place of established Muppets like Rowlf and Scooter in shows and stage performances and even showing up at the end of Muppet Babies, effectively becoming a plush rabbit Cousin Oliver and killing a show that had been on Saturday morning for like 80 years.
Even the Muppet creators dislike Bean Bunny, and, after his Randy Orton babyface world champion push, became relegated to background roles and subjected to Muppet Violence. Bean Bunny makes this list because Emily thinks he is adorable, and because he really wasn't that bad.
41. Prairie Dawn
Elmo is the most popular character on Sesame Street. Kids get their parents to buy them Elmo toys, Elmo books, Elmo shirts, Elmo CDs, Elmo DVDs, Elmo shoes and Elmo cakes for their birthdays. They show up to zoos and ask to see Elmo instead of elephants or tigers. Somewhere down the line someone decided that since Elmo is a boy, little girls can't relate to him so they created Zoe for gender balance. That's right. Sesame Street, a show that has always had black, whites, asians, hispanics, muppets, cows, birds, bears, and chickens and things was worried that there wasn't something for girls.
Many years before Zoe was even imagined, Prairie Dawn existed. She was a little pink girl who wore picnic table dresses and liked to put on plays. She was mature and wanted to be a journalist and a writer. She had something to her rather than just being a tan colored Elmo puppet with eyeshadow and jewelry and a tutu on. Remember that someday, when you're flipping through the channels and stop on PBS to find Elmo and Zoe and a retarded bear floating on a CGI background, one of those floaties should be Prairie Dawn, sitting at a piano, trying to get Cookie Monster to say his lines and get over his stage fright and dramatically announce that he is a rain cloud.
40. Link Hogthrob
Before Zap Brannigan was Zap Brannigan, Link Hogthrob of "Pigs in Space" was Zap Brannigan: an exaggerated, butt-chinned, blonde parody of William Shatner's James Kirk. Link piloted the "Swinetrek," which could've been more cleverly called the "PIGGED SPACE MOBILE," and exacerbated problems with First Mate Piggy. Piggy's character has always been a low-self esteem narcissist, so Link's machismo and ignorance gave her about 45 hundred opportunities to karate chop something. Link carried the Shatner parody onto other aspects of the show as well, when his singing talents were discovered. His greatest hits included a solo of "Sonny Boy," "Sea Chantey," and the bad ass "I Talk to Trees."
Brian Henson, on Link Hogthrob:
"As a kid, whenever my dad did some stereotypical fatherly chore, like carving the Thanskgiving turkey, that would be the voice he would use. I guess when the character of this pompus, not-too-bright pig came along, he figured well that voice would fit just perfectly."
It did. Pigs in Space gave way to the far superior "Bear on Patrol" segments, which could've just been the words "BEAR ON PATROL" written on screen and still been awesome. Link's dimwittedness would cause physical trauma for Patrol Bear, and yep, that's your plot. A bear policeman has difficulty doing his job properly. Good times.
39. Scooter
There's a book by Christopher Finch called "Of Muppets and Men: The Making of the Muppet Show" that explains a lot, especially about the Muppet Babies. The question I always had was, WHY are the Muppet Babies all in foster care? Nanny is clearly not the interspecies erotic mother of a dog and a frog and a stuffed chicken. So why do they end up in a nursery with more imagination than toys and more time together than with a guardian? In that book, indeterminately-origined Scooter, the Muppet Show gofer and 1980s child show character type "computery one," says that his mother was a parrot and that he doesn't know his father. So is that the true origin of the Muppet Babies? That they were the offspring of human raped animals that somehow became pregnant? Like, some guy was fucking a pig and when he left, the pig gave birth to a man-pig? I can imagine those creepy mistakes being shuffled off into some government lab and experimented on. Come to think of it, that would explain why they were always hallucinating and confusing fantasy with reality. It would also explain why you never saw Nanny's face. It was like the Danger Room in the X-Mansion, and the reason you only saw the nursery, hallway, and tiny glimpses of other, imagined rooms is because the true exterior of the place is all mirrors and staircases and looks like CTU.
Scooter's sister Skeeter, now only good for lesbian jokes in online Muppet Babies retrospectives, does not appear on the Muppet Show, which, although produced a decade before, occurs chronologically after the Babies. What happened to Skeeter? Where did she go? These are the questions we should be asking instead of the asinine ones about Bert and Ernie being gay. They were puppets on a kids show, of course they weren't gay, stop overanalyzing it.
38. The Worm
The Worm from Labyrinth is best described in character and purpose by our own Emily Rowley in the critically-acclaimed article, "Hoggle Hates Fags." In it, she writes:
Once inside, Sarah can't figure out which direction to go. The life with God or without Him both look the same. She doesn't yet trust the word of Jesus. She treads in one direction, along the straight and narrow, but after her dalliance with the homosexuals, she's frustrated at being forced to go "straight." She's finally shown the way by a little worm, meant obviously to be seen as a phallic symbol. Why, he even has a quaint little cockney accent. The little penis shows Sarah which way is the right way, and even tries to prevent her from a path that leads to Satan.
I wanted to put that there because Lindy put me in charge of writing about The Worm, and the only thing I can even process when I see the words "The" and "Worm" next to each other is
W
O
R
M
hoof hoof hoof
hoof hoof hoof
HOOF
*cheers*
37. Lefty
hey mac
psst
There aren't enough shifty salesmen on shows anymore. Maybe it's because Columbine ruined wearing trenchcoats casually for all bootleg rolex salesmen, but I never see a show anymore where a man in a fedora and a long coat calls someone over to open it up and show off their illegal wares.
Interesting fact: Lefty's name on Sesamstrasse, the German counterpart to Sesame Street, is Schlemihl, a Yiddish expression for a habitual bungler.
36. Treelo
One of my favorite nonsense characters from when my sister watched Sesame Street was Baby Natasha. She didn't do anything other than just sit and babble, so years later when I discovered that Bear in the Big Blue House had a babbling rainbow lemur, I was easily convinced of its greatness. The wonderful thing about Treelo is that he's on a Eureeka's Castle-esque educational show where everyone teaches something, but he does absolutely nothing. He sits and hangs out and collects feathers and talks in gibberish.
Treelo is also a bit of a dreamer. He spends most of his day wishing his was taller, a baller and had a girl who looked good. He would probably call her.
35. Skeksis
I stand by the fact that the Dark Crystal is better than the Labryrinth, and the reason I say that is foam purity. While both are kind of awful Tolkien-esque fairy tales, The Dark Crystal is purer because the whole thing is just puppets. The Labyrinth is humans and puppets and ends up making the puppets look odd and out of place. The Lord of the Rings movie fails with this in the first installment where all of the evil creatures are played by humans until they run into the Shrek cave troll who is constantly in motion like he's a Final Fantasy monster waiting for his turn in battle. The contrast between real and digital looks cruddy and it makes it stick out. The Dark Crystal is lame, but it's all puppets, so either it all looks awful, or it all looks okay and there is nothing that really sticks out. The Skeksis are creatures that look like decaying vultures and are supposed to be evil, but spend most of their time hanging around a castle ducking up and down and saying "hmmmmmMMMMmmmM?" to one another. They were initially designed to be like the seven deadly sins, but unfortunately there are ten of them. In comparison to the other creatures in the movie, the Skeksis are the best. When you're competeing against elf things that look like the Olsen Twins, Wishniks and hippy man-dinosaurs, it's not hard to come out on top.
There are sequels to the Dark Crystal being drawn as manga comics. The Skeksis in them are instead portayed as white haired skinny men who spend most of the time squinting off in the distance. They also had a pop hit on eighties radio about ejaculating onto Eileen.
Skeksis Midnight Runners? Oh screw you too.
34. Ernestine
One of the major qualifiers for this list is our ability to say the Muppet's name and follow it up with "HA, AWESOME, YES." Ernestine is a big one for me. She's Ernie's baby cousin, and every time someone has mentioned her existing over the last twenty years I have gone "ERNESTINE, HA, YES, AWESOME."
Ernestine has two great sketches:
1) The one where Ernie talks to her and points out their differences, which is right there on the cuteness scale between Prarie Dawn's stage play about ecology and Kermit telling the A B C D Cookie Monster girl that he loves her.
2) The one where he tries to get Ernestine to say "Ernie," and she won't, and ends up shouting BERT~! when Bert shows up.
We remember Sesame Street for being educational and for being a stupid kind of funny, be it kid funny or adult funny, but the show was at its best when it was being cute and sincere, and not making a big deal about it.
33. Forgetful Jones
who the fuck is forgetful jones
32. The Koozebanians
Commentary by Mike
"They're gonna have sex!"
It was the first time I ever remember hearing the word "sex." I was with some older kids who belonged to friends of my parents, watching the Muppet Show, which I felt at the time was like the more sophisticated, "grown up" Sesame Street. I felt sophistication at age three. Even Kermit's news assignments had a more grown-up feel to them. On Sesame Street, he was interviewing the Three Little Pigs and Old MacDonald. Here, he was reporting a human-and-other-sentinent-creature-interest story on the miracle of life on the planet Koozebane, which despite playing unexpected host to its fair share of eager explorers, managed to maintain its mystery as one of the undiscovered wonders of space. It was also the reason why Batman's back got broken. 'Kooze bane.
Quite a number of alien species that called Koozebane home made close encounters with Kermit's news team and the Pigs in Space, but none commanded the attention that the first televised coverage of Koozebanian mating season did. Our frog on the scene whispered into his microphone with a sense of urgency and excitement in his voice, explaining the courting rituals of the male and female "Koozebanian creature" as they happened, Jerry Nelson's female laughing wildly in flirtatious reaction to the loud, Cookie Monsterish yell of Frank Oz's wide-mouthed male. Then, after a wild display of dancing and screaming at each other, the male decided it was time to make his move. The female responded to his "GALLEY-OHHHHHHHHH!" battle cry with a rousing consentual "HOOP-HOOP!", and Kermit's eyes lit up.
And so did one of the older kids. "Uh-oh. They're gonna have sex!" The two Koozebanian creatures raced towards each other, head on at full speed. Or as full speed as you can run sideways with your arm up in the air and covered in a horny Muppet. The sacred Galley-oh-hoop-hoop mating ritual came to a climax as the two creatures butted heads and EXPLODED into a cloud of sparkles and smoke. A roar of laughter erupted among the older kids and me. They could very well have been laughing at the sex. I was laughing at the exploded aliens, but all our laughter turned into a unified "Awww" at the sight of four chirping Koozebanian babies as the smoke cleared.
And that's how I learned where babies come from. Throw in the fact that I'm adopted, and for at least five years of my life I was certain that my biological parents fucking exploded and turned into me.
31. Don Music
Don Music, moreso than the thousands of writer and musician characters who have appeared in movies and television over the course of my life, speaks to me honestly. Writers and musicians are often self-obsessed and consumed by the creative process. Woody Allen and John Lennon alike have written and sung respectively about the rigors of creation, and about how hard it is to open up your heart and speak to a bunch of strangers who don't know you or care about you. Those are the people who will judge you the most, and tell you what you did wrong, or could be doing better. And it's your art, you know? They tell you it's subjective and then tell you how awful yours is. It's damning and deafening. It makes you want to scream and bleed and bang your head into the piano.
Ah, there's the rub.
That's why Don Music speaks to me so honestly. He doesn't wax philosophic about poetry and he doesn't make music more important than it has to be. He has a bust of William Shakespeare, he has a bust of Beethoven. He respects and loves those men for what they've given the world, and wants to give the same. But he just... can't... do it. He can't. He sits at the piano to write a symphony and he sucks at it. I've been there. I want to write Of Mice and Men. I want to write the fucking Grapes of Wrath, but when I sit down to write all that comes out is wrestling jokes and bullshit. Don Music tries, fails, and bashes his head against the piano. That is life. That is true creative spirit. That is bohemianism in the form of Guy Smiley in a hippie wig.
Don Music is life.
30. Mr. Snuffleupagus
When Snuffy first appeared, the adults assumed that he was Big Bird's imaginary friend, thanks to a series of coincidences and near-miss encounters which continually kept Snuffleupaguses and humans apart. Big Bird would often try to find ways for Snuffy to meet the adults, but something would always cause Snuffy to leave before the humans could see him. And that's a good thing, because original Snuffleupagus is TERRIFYING. TERR RY FY ING. He was more lithe and hairy, and had angled yellow eyes that made him look like something from your innermost nightmares. A horrifying death mastadon emerging from your imagination to bite you to Hell. He doesn't have any of that funny "original Big Bird vibe." Original Big Bird looked (and sounded) like Jimmy from South Park.
Redesigned, Snuffy-we-know Snuffy got white eyes, eyelashes (for whatever reason), and a catchphrase: "Ohhh, dear." That's the classic armpit-of-an-elephant, Eeyore and Boo-Boo love child Snuffleupagus we know. It turns out "Snuffleupagus" is the name of his species as well as his last name, so we get a cool "Roosevelt Franklin goes to Roosevelt Franklin Elementary School" nomenclature vibe. They should've done that to everybody. Change Luis' name to "Luis Mexican Human Being." Snuffy is great for a lot of reasons, including the fact that he's a giant Muppet, and when you've spent half an hour looking at Slimey and Prairie Dawn and are suddenly confronted with something even bigger than Big Bird, it expands your perspective and lends credence to the idea that anything can show up, and anything can happen. That's important when you're a kid.
29. Crazy Harry
Crazy Harry is the unkempt, wild-eyed pyrotechnics expert for the Muppet show. Rarely seen without a plunger, he shows up at moments where a bang is needed. He was last
28. Red Fraggle
The Fraggles were a group of creatures living in the walls of old man's home who made the man's dog confused and spent their time shopping and arguing about the price. There are two things I remember about Fraggles:
1. They were on HBO and made me really sad that while I was lucky enough to have cable and the Disney Channel, my parents wouldn't pay extra to get HBO so I could see more Muppets.
2. They had toys at McDonalds.
Every kid I knew owned at least one of the toys. I had three of the four myself and was so fascinated by these Muppets that I had never watched that apparently drove around in vegetable cars with what I thought were chocolate chip cookies for wheels. Upon closer inspection now, they don't seem to be cookies at all, but mushrooms. This would make more sense both with vegetable car motif and as far as practicality since not only would baked goods not make for sound tires, but they would not be readily available to Muppets that live underground with little green construction workers.
Oh yeah, Red was the one in the red shirt, I guess. She was pretty fast back when she was fighting Low Ki on the indy circuit, but now she's just brown and has cornrows and blows.
27. Earl Sinclair
When I was 11 and saw a commercial for a show called "DINOSAURS," I imagined it to be like Land of the Lost without all the running around or acting stupid. Dinosaurs were my thing when I was 11, because dinosaurs should be every boy's thing when he's 11. I waited forever for it to start, and when it did, it was guys in puppet suits hitting each other over the head with frying pans, and it was all set to hijinx music. You know, the kind that plays when Bulk and Skull are doing something. It crushed me. I wanted a show about Tyrannosauruses Rex bounding through the jungle to attack the unsuspecting herbivore. I got a Muppet with the voice of George Jefferson screaming in the style of Mr. Slate at his Muppet employee, who looked like Ronald Isley aka Mr. Biggs in a flannel shirt. It was terrible. My heart was broken in a way it would not be again until Disney's "Dinosaur" was released with a hyper-realistic dinosaurs and a beautiful trailer, but was really just about monkies making wisecracks about each other.
Earl makes this list because time is not always linear, and because Dinosaurs ended up being a really great show. In our memories it is NOT THE MAMA~! and some sitcom hornswoggle, but if you rewatch it as an adult you notice a lot more going on than you did when you were 11. Undercurrents and satire, social commentary and heart, and, most importantly, jokes for kids and adults without the "jokes for adults" being something perverted, or a donkey farting. Earl Sinclair had more emotion in his face as a man-sized Muppet than every face that ever appeared on Step by Step combined, and as you grow you learn that the true genius of Jim Henson is that he was a especially genius when you stop noticing. His genius seeps into you quietly and stays with you forever, regardless of whether or not you are the Mama.
26. Roosevelt Franklin
Matt Robinson, the guy who played Gordon (which is fucked up, because Gordon's name should be Gordon in real life), created and performed a character in the early 70s called Roosevelt Franklin, a really really terrible looking puppet who stood for a lot of really really good things. He was an inner city kid who liked to scat and rhyme and taught his classmates solid lessons about family, pride, and respect. He taught them that it was a bad idea to drink poison. He was a black kid (well, a purple kid, but a black kid) in a black neighborhood with some black friends, in a neighborhood full of yellow birds and green hobos. He gave some of the kids who watched Sesame Street someone to look up to, someone they could look at, say "hey, he's like me," and know that they don't have to give up what makes them uniquely black to be accepted in society. Black people like to sing the blues sometimes. So what? They talk jive. Sometimes they steal and lie and sometimes they have a lot of babies and eat watermelon. You know what? I'm as white as the driven snow and I love the shit out of some watermelon. Black people are just people, good and bad, and Roosevelt Franklin managed to say that in his own, simple, 1972ish way.
But some asshole had to write in a letter complaining that Roosevelt Franklin was a negative black stereotype, and they dropped the character. Black people couldn't have fun with their culture, they either had to be John Shaft or the cast of A Different World, and 20 years after they dropped him gangster rap showed up and now all the scared white people think the stupid black people are going to kill them. White people are asses for being scared and black people are asses for killing people. Black people are asses for being scared, and white people are asses for killing people. But the line is gone now, and we don't have anybody really saying "hey, guys, we're all people with different sleeves" because they're scared of being seen as no longer "of their race." This is all dynamically the fault of that one asshole who felt it necessary to write a letter to Viewers Like You and get Roosevelt Franklin taken off the air.
Roosevelt Franklin's mother was PROUD of him. I hope you can say the same about yours.
Also,
25-1, to be continued next week
