False advertising?

[Daffyfan4ever]

I have another question. (Which probably means I'll have to wait a week before I get an answer. I know I'm not very patient, but what are you going to do? Lol)

Anyway, I received volume 5 of "The Best of the Muppet Show" collection today and I was a bit surprised about something. The Vincent Price ep from the first season had the same opening as the Bob Hope episode. I was expecting to see it, the way I read it in the episode guide. (You know with Fozzie's joke about the vampire living in the split-level coffin, Vincent dancing with the monsters and Gonzo firing a gun at the 'O' in the Muppet Show logo) It was a good episode and all. I mean, I hear Vincent Price's voice every Saturday evening on "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo" and it was good to see him in live action. I also remembered reading about some of those sketches from that ep in "The Muppet Show" book, so it was good to see them performed.

But anyway, back to my originally question, isn't it false advertising to say that the episodes are uncut when they don't restore the original opening credits? Are all first season episodes available on video like that too?

 

[Drtooth]

I wish I could help you, but I have NONE of these Muppet tapes. From what I hear, someone screwed up somewhere, and some episodes may have identical openings because of the syndication carrier, or someone at the Henson Library!

 

[Daffyfan4ever]

Reply

Actually, what I was thinking is maybe they were saving money by not restoring the origianal openings. It might have costed a lot for them to restore the UK skits. Well, thanks for replying anyway. It usually takes forever for people to answer my questions, so I'm glad you responded even if you don't know the answer. Thanks again.

 

[BlueFrackle]

Daffy,

All of the new releases of The Muppet Show have Season One openings replaced with later season openings.

The Season One openings can be read about in the MC Episode Guide.
This is wear Gonzo hits the 'O', Fozzie tells a joke, and Kermit introduces the Guest.

See ya

 

[anathema]

Actually, what I was thinking is maybe they were saving money by not restoring the origianal openings. It might have costed a lot for them to restore the UK skits.

Unlikely The UK releases will have been taken from UK PAL masters, which have always been uncut. There's no way they'd be taking the US masters and converting them!

As with the US masters, the opening titles were replaced some time in the late 80s as far as I know, and these tapes form the current masters. The exact set of replacement titles varies from show to show, and usually the original 'zoom into Kermit' shot is retained (in part - in the original titles, Kermit closes the 'O' and the next shot is of the curtain raising sans frog, but this is cut from the re-edited version for continuity . The one exception to this I know of is (coincidentally) the Vincent Price show, where the shot of Kermit is lifted from a later season (with the more elaborate logo), and overdubbed with the dialogue from the original.

All the German copies of season 1 TMS I've seen retain their original titles. Season 2 and 3 shows appear to have a 'generic' set of the multiple-archway titles, possibly to avoid the need to translate and redub Statler and Waldorf's comments.

Some broadcasters still have copies with the original titles - I've got recent Disney Channel (Australia) recordings, about half of which have the correct set.

Hope this helps!

 

[Daffyfan4ever]

Reply

Yeah. Thanks Warrick and Anathena. I have read about the original openings in the episode guides. I guess I would have liked to see Gonzo bash the 'O' and get blown up or something like that. But I guess unless I move to Germany, I'm just going to have to live with the horn gags. Thanks again for that info.