TVSquad

You can watch clips of the Jim Henson Company's Puppet Up! Uncensored improv shows on TBS' Laugh Lab site. New sketches will be added every Wednesday.

Puppet Up! Uncensored is an improved stage show from the Jim Henson Company that's essentially Who's Line Is It Anyway?, but with puppets. A Puppet Up! special was shown on TBS not long ago, and I found myself enjoying it, albeit intermittently.

Since I exist under the delusion that someone from the Jim Henson Company is reading this, I'm going to tell them how to make the show better if it ever comes back to television: only show the puppets, not the performers.

I understand that part of the supposed charm of the show is switching back and forth from seeing the puppets and the people manipulating them, but my personal experience was that every time the camera angle switched to the performers I was completely taken out of the moment. I don't want to see human beings on this show anymore than I want to see them on The Muppet Show or Fraggle Rock.

Someone might say, "it's a live show, how the hell else are they supposed to do it?"

My answer: you can still make it "puppet only" on television. Hell, I'd be cool with showing the performers before each sketch, but once the sketch is underway, put the camera on the puppets and leave it there. We all know those puppets don't move on their own, but part of the Muppet charm is becoming so engaged in their antics you forget there's a human arm inside those fuzzy bodies.

[via Muppet Newsflash]