So, I'm just going to carve Rowlf out from the beginning; Jim Henson's favorite character to do and the one who had the best established life before The Muppet Show. I don't recall a lot of backstage bits for him.
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But there were a bunch of characters who had names and on-stage schticks who did not go on to become main cast members. I mean, Bunsen and Beaker, Doctor Teeth and the band... they took on more life outside the show than Wayne & Wanda or Marvin Suggs did, but still not core-core.
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So you've got Gonzo, the artiste, the daredevil/avant-garde performance artist. He can argue with Kermit about the artistic value of his increasingly esoteric and destructive acts. You've got Scooter, the nepotist. He brings nothing to the table but Kermit has to listen to him.
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Piggy, the diva. On a meta level: there were lots of female performers but they really only bothered to develop one of them which meant by default she became the leading lady of the Muppet theater in-universe, and she wanted to make the most of it.
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Fozzie, the struggling comedian, could both try out new material on Kermit and also express his insecurities/require pep talks. Sam the Eagle, the moral guardian, would object to the acts or push his preferred "highbrow" fare.
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If you watch the way the first season sort of falls together, I doubt they sat down and came up with specific show biz personality archetypes that could bedevil Kermit. It's probably more "We need to do something backstage. Who's there? Fozzie. What's he doing?"
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My point here again is that every single one of these characters endured long enough to endear and gain a life outside of The Muppet Show because the writers found a way for them to make life interestingly difficult for Kermit, but only one of them is remembered as "difficult".
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Backing this up: Rowlf's probably the Muppet most likely to be described as "easy-going", and he's also the cast member who had the longest established presence and (particularly in the UK, where he had a lot of extra musical hall scenes) a lot of name recognition.
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But none of them were anything to begin with, is my point. Wayne & Wanda remained devices because they had nothing to do outside their bit.https://twitter.com/RHBrotchner/status/1290737118327607296 …
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You could have done the basic Wayne & Wanda bit with Gonzo... so many of his acts were never even witnessed, or only witnessed in disastrous beginning or ending. And if he'd never shown up backstage? He'd be the mostly forgotten device.
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But so Rowlf, who basically had the equivalent of a contractual rider guaranteeing him work (even if a lot of it was cut from the US broadcasts) and his own previously established career, got to be completely above the backstage fray, and he's remembered as easy-going.
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Dang, that would be an interesting meta point to bring into a movie about the labor relations in the Muppet theater.
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