Saturday, November 21, 2009

The Letter S, Part 1

There are a whole lot of important Muppets that begin with S, apparently. So I had to split it into two pieces.


Do you know the sound/Of Sammy the Snake?/Well, the sound of the letter S/Is the sound I make

Skeksis

A long time ago, the godlike UrSkeks, in an attempt to perfect themselves, literally divided into two parts. One was the four-armed Mystics, who took on the sorrows of the world and resembled hippie turtles.

The other half of the UrSkeks were the embodiment of their own evil, the Skeksis, a group of wicked vulture-like creatures who practice dark magic to protect the mystical dark crystal from being rejoined (which would in turn make the UrSkeks whole again).

In between casting evil spells and hating everything, the Skekis frequently talk like Yoda while bobbing up and down.

The Sinclair Family

In 61,000,003 BC, dinosaurs were exactly as you'd expect. There were giant lumbering beasts who lived in swamps and ate their young. But 1 million years later, they had evolved. Living like you and me, maintaining families, watching television, earning paychecks. They were humans, just larger and scalier.

Dinosaurs was, more or less, a parody of family sitcoms and also a full-on family sitcom. It concerned the Sinclair family, working man Earl Sinclair, a megalosaurus, and his wife Fran, an allosaurus (voiced by Lucille Bluth). Together they have raised a family of three children: Robbie, Charlene, and the baby named Baby.

While there were plenty of Henson-esque slapstick gags(the most popular being the fact that Baby Sinclair would frequently hit Earl over the head because he lacked a vagina and was thusly not the mother), Dinosaurs actually went deeper than that. It had satire and social commentary(an episode about war branded it as a pointless affair and the whole two-part episode was even touted as an "epic miniseries"). And just like in every other Henson project, it was able to retain heart and was able to make jokes for kids and adults without resorting to Dreamworks-style shit jokes.

Dinosaurs is like the baby, you gotta love it. Or at least try to because if you don't you'll get whacked with a frying pan or something.

Slimey

For the most part to be a Muppet, you need to talk. It's very hard to be a puppet throwing banana cream pies and running around, arms flailing, and not make noise. The wackiness necessitates at least some modicum of yelling. Slimey, however, is one of the few mute Muppets.

One of the few things Oscar loves in this world, his pet worm has always been his faithful friend. And despite his small stature and quiet nature, he's accomplished more than most other worms ever have, most famously taking part in a space program and being the first worm ever to walk on the moon.

When not being blasted to space, Slimey enjoys taking mud baths when he's feeling too clean and reading books, his favorite being the adventures of space hero Trash Gordon (played, of course, by the actual Gordon).

Obligatory adorable Slimey fact: The first time Slimey and Oscar met was when Oscar went to the park on a rainy day to see the mud puddles and found one with a lot of worms playing in it. He then saw a baby worm playing by himself, who saw Oscar and crawled up his shoulder and fell asleep. Oscar took the worm back to his trash can and named him Slimey. Awwwwww.

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