Talk: Muppet Show Characters

Template:Talk

Spin-off characters

The category description says "More than 400 Muppet Show characters, from the original show and related spin-offs." There are many characters in here who never actually appeared in an episodes of The Muppet Show television series - such as The Zimmer Twins, The Bouncing Bananas, and LaVerne. They are here because they appeared in a "related spin-off" - namely The Muppet Show Comic Book, Bo Saves the Show, and The Case of the Missing Mother. So, to be clear, what qualifies something as a related spin-off? Is it mearly the presence of the Muppet Theater and the Muppets' fictional vaudevillian stage-show therein?

Would things such as The Muppets Go to the Movies, Muppet Classic Theater, It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie and Weezer's Keep Fishin' be considered releated spin-offs? Should characters that appeared in those productions (such as Pepe, Andy & Randy, Johnny Fiama, Bobo, and Eugene), also be categorized as Muppet Show characters? And if The Muppet Show Comic Book is considered a spin-off, should characters such as Pepe and Clifford be added to this category (as they've appeared in the comic too).

Or should we take this even broader than just featuring the theater and count productions such as The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence, Muppets Tonight, Muppet Robin Hood and Letters to Santa as "related spinoffs". It's simple when we limit things to only characters from the 120 episodes of the 1976-1980 television series; but with "spin-offs" what is the definition and were's the line? I just want to be clear. -- Brad D. (talk) 10:50, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a really good point -- I just responded on the Current events discussion about the character portals. I actually wrote that bit about "related spinoffs" without realizing that it wasn't quite true! Sorry, that was my mistake. I was assuming that we were treating this category the same way that we do Sesame Street Characters, and I'd forgotten that we weren't.

My feeling is that this should be a larger "universe" category, the same way that Sesame Street Characters is. Now that I look at it, the current system is pretty inconsistent. We include illustrated characters like Commander Melville (from Muppets at Sea) and the Ubiquitous Quilp (from The Muppet Show Comic Book). We're not sticking to the 120 episodes, the same way that we're not sticking to the 96 episodes of Fraggle Rock.

But we don't include Pepe, Bean Bunny, Johnny Fiama or Sal, who were all seen backstage at the Muppet Theater in Christmas Movie. I don't think that's right. -- Danny (talk) 20:40, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Should we go ahead and repost/merge the current events discussion and continue it here, or just discuss it at current events right now, to avoid having to go back and forth? (And then whatever consensus is reached could be posted here). The main inconsistency in the current system though is just illustrated characters, because it's a bugbear to create a subcat for every book or comic or newspaper strip and so on (that logic was part of what led to Miss Finch and so on being added to Sesame Street Characters as well as their respective movies, because we already had a flood of illustrated characters, some of whom even had distinct continuing careers in the books but never appeared on the show, but I didn't think much of it at the time). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 21:02, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

That's a good idea, so I'm gonna do a yucky cut-and-paste from Current events...

I like this idea, but I think Pepe the King Prawn should be taken out of The Muppet Show characters category, sinc ehe was never on that series. Maybe replace him with Beake,r Lew Zealand, or Crazy Harry. And I think something like this should also be done with songs, and maybe also Jim Henson Hour and Muppets Tonihgt characters. --Minor muppetz 16:34, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of that, with Pepe... I'd like to still keep him in the TMS portal, just because a lot of people are looking for Pepe. The portal links to "Muppet Show Characters" and not to "Extended Muppet Show Family Characters"... but people who are clicking on it won't know the difference, and might be expecting to find Pepe. Does that make sense?

I totally agree about making portals for songs, JHH characters, MT characters, etc. I really like these portals; I'd like to have more of them. -- Danny (talk) 20:02, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't really like having Pepe there either (and had meant to bring it up), unless we were to recategorize him as a Muppet Show character (Brad brought this issue up a bit at Category talk:Muppet Show Characters), but I agree that casual visitors may not think to look for him under Muppets Tonight either. How about just adding him to the Category:Muppet Characters portal in place of someone else? I think people are really more apt to look for Pepe there than under The Muppet Show anyway, and it works as a of cross-section of major characters from the various universes leaving the more expansive columns to the individual show/universe categories. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 20:13, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd like people to be able to click from the main page to a portal that has Pepe on it. His page is #23 on the most-viewed characters list, ahead of Sweetums, Rowlf, Bunsen and Scooter.

If the "Muppet Show" thing is a problem, then I'd suggest making the "Muppet Show" category more expansive, to include characters in the larger Muppet Show universe, the way that we do with Sesame Street Characters.

For example: Miss Finch and Grizzy are in Sesame Street Characters, because they're in Sesame Street movies; Cosmic Fish and Gil aren't in Muppet Show Characters.

For illustrated characters: Filthomena is in Sesame Street Characters; Flutterbugs are in Fraggle Rock Characters; Commander Melville and the Ubiquitous Quilp are in Muppet Show Characters.

In every case, we've chosen to include the larger "universe" characters in the main character category -- whether they appear in movies, storybooks or comic books. The only characters that are treated differently are Pepe, Bean Bunny, Clifford and Johnny Fiama -- characters that I think have just as much right to be in Muppet Show Characters as Commander Melville or the Four Little Hop-Toads. What do you guys think? -- Danny (talk) 20:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I was opposed to thusly categorizing Miss Finch and Grizzy myself at the time (or Commander Melville and others) and still think it's useful to maintain a distinction of what shows/movies they originated in, especially since we get into things like Nicky Holiday and such; there aren't enough human characters in the two Sesame movies or the odd special to make that an issue, but there's a ton with the Muppets. However, those pages now include both, plus the standard Muppet Characters. So if we could find a better label for the category but still not incorrectly imply that characters originated on the show (which I admit seems more of an issue with puppets, where false assumptions can be made, than with those clearly labeled as picturebook characters, plus we knew that a "Muppets Go to Sea Characters" category would be pretty useless), I'd be fine with that. Otherwise, we'll have to discuss again which characters would fit in or not. Just those who appeared in subsequent movies/shows/specials ala Pepe, Bean, or Clifford, or would we add in Leon and Digit and Kermit's Swamp Years characters and so on? It really is a lot easier to deal with Sesame Street (which is used as a kind of universe label in a way that "Muppet Show" isn't) than with Muppet stuff in a "universe" fashion (my own preference at this point probably would be a "Muppet Illustrated Characters" category to handle Melville and any new comics characters and so on), but it could work as long as we lay out exactly how far we'd go with it or, outside of the one-off illustrated characters, just add in those who later became part of the "Muppet family," so to speak. I'd be more comfortable with the latter (though it still seems misleading to have them in The Muppet Show as well as Muppets Tonight category; I really think Muppet Characters, in addition to listing all Muppets, should be our more expansive portal). So that would more clearly be Pepe, Johnny Fiama, Sal, Bean, Bobo, Clifford, Dr. Phil Van Neuter maybe and so on but not bothering with wholesale recategorization of every Muppets Tonight and Jim Henson Hour character, or Gil and Bill and Doc Hopper and Ghost of Christmas Past. That sounds workable to me. I hope we can get Scott to weigh in on this (he tends to have a handle on the universe stuff). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 20:53, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that there isn't a good word for the group that includes Piggy, Fozzie and Gonzo but doesn't include Big Bird or Gobo Fraggle.

Basically, the two options are "Muppet Show characters" and "Muppet characters". Outside of TMS, they're referred to as "the Muppets" (on screen, in print and in the press). So the logical place to put those characters is in a category called Muppet Characters.

Unfortunately, that also happens to be the generic name for all of these puppets, so our Muppet Characters category also includes Big Bird and the Fraggles.

So it's easy to say "Sesame Street Characters", and have that include Big Bird, Elmo and the Cereal Girl, and that group makes sense to us.

I think it also makes sense to have a category that includes Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Pepe, Bean Bunny and Clifford. All of those characters are part of "the Muppets", as distinct from the Sesame or Fraggle characters. If Miss Piggy smacks Bean Bunny with a door, then it flies in the face of common sense to say that they aren't part of the same character family.

Similarly, if French Bread is in that category, then I don't think it makes sense to exclude the Sandwich, or Disagreeable Sandwich for that matter. Muppet bread is Muppet bread. We don't make a distinction in any of our categories between major and minor characters, or between recurring and one-shot characters. (We do with sketches, but not characters.)

So I think the problem is that we're stuck either with "Muppet Characters" or "Muppet Show Characters". We already use Muppet Characters to mean something else, so Muppet Show Characters is the only logical place to put them. -- Danny (talk) 21:15, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

We do make a distinction with Muppet bread that appeared on Sesame Street, though, even if they're not all that different, and between Muppet balls that appeared on The Muppet Show, Sesame, or Mopatop's Shop, and on and on. I think merging in every single character would just confuse things, and as I said, there's the issue with human characters and so on. And there's no question that The Ghost of Christmas Present isn't part of the same family; we can write those off from the adaptation specials as being different, but I feel the same way about that sandwich. However, Bean, Pepe et. al are indeed part of the family, as I said, so I think it makes more sense to define those that fit that definition through more than one appearance and include them and clarify the category definition ("characters that are part of The Muppet Show family or from related print appearances") than cram in every JHH, Muppets Tonight, and From the Balcony character, as I said. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 21:27, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I feel like this is a conversation we had years ago, and it hinged on that problem that we don't have a good name for Muppet Show universe characters, since Muppet Characters is taken. Danny's right that, if we let LaVerne be a Muppet Show character, then Bean Bunny should be, too. After all, he was in Muppet-Vision and VMX, both of which are set in the Muppet Theater. But then what about Clifford? He's arguably had a bigger role within the Muppet universe family than Bean in recent years, but I don't recall him ever being tied to the Muppet Theater. And if he does show up in The Muppet Show Comic Book, do we really want to stretch our categories that thin by including him on a technicality like that? I mean, we don't include Rowlf in the Sesame Street Characters category.

I guess what this boils down to is we could either:

1) Include only Muppet characters who appeared on the 120 episodes of The Muppet Show and create a separate category for Muppet Show Illustrated characters.

2) Include characters who did not appear on The Muppet Show but who did appear in related media in which the Muppet Show or Theater was mentioned (various Muppet books and comics, MuppetVision, VMX, Keep Fishin' music video, etc.), since it can be argued that continuity suggests the Muppets have done more than just the 120 "Muppet Shows" that were televised. This would make it more like the Sesame Street characters category. Of course, we may end up with Howard Tubman in the category but not Clifford.

3) Include Muppet characters who have reached a level of prominence within the Muppet Show universe by some other rule (i.e. create a minimum # of major appearances within the Muppet Show universe). The problem I see with this is figuring out exactly where to draw the line.

4) Wing it. The problem I see with this one is that we may end up having fights over whether some character (say, Dr. Phil van Neuter or Digit) really belongs in the broader Muppet Show universe.

5) Eliminate the Muppets Tonight and Jim Henson Hour categories and merge everything into Muppet Show characters.

I'm leaning towards #2 for the moment. It's still a little flawed, but at least it's structured. I really think we should come up with some kind of concrete distinction so as to avoid arbitrarily including one character over another. -- Peter (talk) 22:03, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I think that's a good summary of the different options. I'm leaning towards #5, for the sake of simplicity. I think anything that involves drawing particular distinctions like number of appearances or the setting is going to end up being arbitrary.

When you get down to it, what's the real difference between the Muppet Theater and KMUP? The theater that we see in Christmas Movie isn't necessarily the exact same theater that we see in TMS. We don't see where the Muppets perform in Letters From Santa or The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. If the Muppets in Letters From Santa are off-duty from performing at (a) Muppet Theater, does that make Pepe a TMS character?

Etcetera. I think it's simpler and makes more sense to say -- characters that appear with Kermit, Piggy, Fozzie and Gonzo are part of the same character family, not counting obvious crossover characters from other shows. ("Obvious crossover" = somebody saying "Look, it's the Muppets from Sesame Street!", as they do in the Marty Feldman episode.) This includes Muppet characters from movies, TV shows, specials and what have you.

I think the question of human characters is easily dealt with. We don't say that Peter Sellers is a Muppet Show Character, because he's a guest star. Ditto Luke Skywalker and Emily Litella. We can say the same for Doc Hopper and Rachel Bitterman. In the Muppet universe, humans are guest stars. -- Danny (talk) 22:20, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I just realised that Category: Muppet Show Characters includes a few locations, such as The Attic, that were not in any episode. --Minor muppetz 22:23, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea of a broader category - but I'm not sure I like calling characters that never appeared on The Muppet Show a "Muppet Show Character". I consider the Cosmic Fish, Mad Monty, Ghost of Christmas Present, Digit, and Dr. Phil van Neuter to be in the same family/universe as Kermit, Fozzie and Gonzo but I don't consider them Muppet Show characters as that title refers to the specific show (not the overall brand the way Fraggle and Sesame do).

I think creating a grouping for that family of characters (Kermit/Fozzie/Gonzo/Piggy) would be do-able. I think with the sale of The Muppets to Disney the distinction becomes a little easier (Muppets Tonight: Yes -- Emmet Otter: No) we really want to capture the Muppets Studio Characters - mainly its the ones owned by Disney now.

There are a few grey areas (early pilots, Tales from Muppetland, The Jim Henson Hour, Muppet Meeting Films, Muppet Workshop, some of the real minor background characters, etc.)... but I think overall it could be worked out.

I do like having the individual show categories for The Muppet Show, Muppets Tonight, From the Balcony, Muppet Treasure Island, and Play-Along Video Characters (the same way we have the all-reaching Sesame Street uniserse category - plus a categories for characters from Elmo's World, Sesame specials, direct-to-videos, each film, stage show, etc.) I'd hate to loose our individual groupings of The Muppet Show and Muppets Tonight characters due to a merge of the whole Muppets Studio universe and think a new all-encompassing category for the characters from Muppets Studio's The Muppets™ franchise would be better.-- Brad D. (talk) 23:41, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Also I understand not making Peter Sellers or Steve Martin Muppet Show Characters (Sheryl Crow and Stevie Wonder aren't Sesame Street Characters); but Bob and Gordon are Sesame Street Characters, why not Doc Hopper and Nicky Holiday as characters from the Muppet universe?-- Brad D. (talk) 23:41, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I think we should have TMS characters, MT characters, JHH characters etc. separate. Like Brad I would hate to lose that distinction and only have one big category, and I think it's nice to have a place that is just the characters from the 120 original episodes. In which case having an illustrated characters and a specials characters category would keep everything neat and tidy.

However I also think adding a broader catchall/toplevel category for the "family" makes sense and I see no real reason why we couldn't have that also. Then make the individual show categories subcats so people who want the specific info can find it, and put the general portal with Pepe and Clifford into the catchall area.

What I can't figure out is what to call the catchall category, but I think that's a problem even if we do lose all the subcats; if we merge everything it shouldn't be called "The Muppet Show Characters" because that's not what it is. -- Wendy (talk) 00:15, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Hey, why not make a "Muppet Studios Characters" category? --Minor muppetz 01:32, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I could get behind a "Muppets Studio Characters" category for Kermit, Fozzie, Gonzo, Piggy, Bean, Clifford, Pepe, and others. -- Brad D. (talk) 02:22, 30 May 2009 (UTC)