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Comment by jpm_sd | Hacker News Reader

I adored the Muppet Show as a kid. Tried watching it with my daughters this weekend, since it just became available.

"Dad, this is weird. This is really weird. It's not even a show! Just weird little scenes!"

["not even a show" = no connective plot]

These kids have all kinds of precision-engineered laser-guided entertainment aimed squarely at their cerebral cortex. They don't need the Muppet Show like I did, I guess.

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I think this is just a general change in entertainment. When media out was limited to fewer shows being created and the audience so much broader it was necessary to try and throw "something for everybody" into each show.

The Muppet Show is kind of the height of this with celebrities, silliness for kids, sly asides for adults, etc.

I'm not sure the Muppet Show was that; the very setting was a behind the scenes look at the operation of a live variety show of yesteryear, and iirc everything fit into that theme?

I was coming at this a little differently. Imagine that there's 75 jokes in the show. Muppets would maybe distribute them like:

- 25 for adults - 25 for kids - 25 site gags for toddlers

And media now is like: that should be 3 separate shows.

As if today's extremely successful entertainment didn't build exactly on the "something for everybody" idea. Take the insanely popular movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe as an example. Has mainstream media really changed in this regard?

What's interesting is that the "Variety Show" format that the Muppet Show lampoons/mimics was a common thing from vaudeville through the 1970s, but has basically died as a format since I would guess about the mid-80s.

And I hadn't noticed, really. I do miss the old "variety" style holiday specials that Major Celebrities used to do. There have been a couple (ironic?) one-off stabs at revivals, but nothing sustained. (Stephen Colbert did one; so did Lady Gaga and Bill Murray.)

The movies that came out a few years ago are great. My daughter liked them (at least until something else came along and stole her attention). Great songs and a quirky humor where they break the third wall again and again in true Muppet Show style.

It’s called breaking the fourth wall. Although, to be fair, the Muppets often break the third wall too. Normally with a cannon.

Haha, you're of course right. FOURTH wall. Maybe I was thinking about radio.

You’re right... they broke radios too!

(Can you tell I've been watching these with the kids this weekend?)

Did you try to watch “Earth to Ned” with them? It’s a modern muppet take on talk shows, also on Disney+. It is also weird, but maybe in a more approachable format.

My kids have loved both, but the Muppet show a bit less when they don’t know who the guest star is. Thankfully, there are a few guests whom they recognize (Julie Andrews, for example).

Maybe try the 2015 series where they're making a TV talk show? It was fun and your kids might find it more relatable:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muppets_(TV_series)

The show also emphasized the guest stars, who even for me are often a generation out of recognizing, so there's no way my young children have any idea who they are. If they were modern celebrities your kids might have more patience for them.

So imagine how it was for us in France, we had no idea who the guests were and there was nobody who could tell us.

When I watched the show as a kid I did not know they were supposed to be famous, I though they were just people from the street.

> When I watched the show as a kid I did not know they were supposed to be famous, I though they were just people from the street.

I love this :-)

"...Just weird little scenes!"

Does this not describe YouTube too?

At least all Youtube video's have a common thread of promoting VPN, with little bits of humor or information in between.

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