Best of “The Muppet Show”: Bob Hope, Dom DeLuise, George Burns (1977) – DVD
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by Walter Chaw In a summer whose renewed interest in variety shows has brought us embarrassing spectacles ranging from a peculiar celebrity dance competition where ex-heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield does a Karloff in tuxedo pants to the hard-to-witness disinterring of moldy oldsters and one-hit-wonders croaking out their old hits and covering new ones, look back to the heyday of "The Muppet Show" and wonder how something like it ever made it to the air. The themes that Jim Henson's electric Kool-Aid acid trip tackles through its tacky sketches, instantly-dated guest stars, and cobwebbed musical interludes run the gamut from loneliness (a disturbing rendition of Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" in which a Muppet mutilates and pickles himself) to war (a version of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" sung by forest animals being terrorized by mad redneck hunters) to exotic burlesques that predict the melancholia lacing The Dark Crystal and the eternally underestimated The Muppet Movie. Running concurrently with Jimmy Carter's presidency (1976-1981), it's the product, as it can only be, of the Carter administration in the United States: all goofy good intentions, bad fashion, rampant hickism, and confusion.