The Muppet Show Season 1 Episode 7
Miss Piggy’s first use of the word, “Moi”. When Kermit notes, “Jealousy doesn’t become you.”, Piggy replies, “Jealous? Moi?”
Much has been made in interviews and articles about how Miss Piggy went from chorus girl to taking the writers by surprise as to how she was becoming a star and her role was elevated in the second season. This episode shows how this story has become slightly exaggerated. The first part is true. About Miss Piggy’s starting out a chorus girl (though some magazines said the whole bit about Piggy’s declaring her love for the frog was improvised on the spot when this was obviously scripted). But the writers knew early on in the first season that Miss Piggy was destined for main character status, even if they may not have known HOW MUCH the audience would love her.
In this episode, the whole show is built around her pursuit of Kermit and jealousy of Florence. Miss Piggy would also be a major player in other episodes of the first season. A more accurate (but less tailored to sound-bites) version of events is that Fozzie was initially thought to be Frank Oz’s main character; the “second banana.” After the pilot episodes (Prowse and Stevens) were taped, the writers saw potential in this supporting player, Miss Piggy, and her part was increased to core character status.
Between the two seasons, the staff recognized that Piggy was due to replace Fozzie as Frank’s main character and Kermit’s “costar” (both due to the strengths of Piggy’s character including the advantage of being a strong female character, in a male dominated cast and her being in love with the “male lead”. The weaknesses in Fozzie’s character, the “bad comedian” angle wasn’t working as an effective hook to make him an endearing character. Piggy was featured heavily on stage and in backstage plots while Fozzie was de-emphasized as the writers tried to explore his possibilities as a rounded character “off-stage” as opposed to the the one dimensional “bad comedian”.
Serie: The Muppet Show
Episode Title: Florence Henderson
Air Date: 1976-10-17
