Transylvania Television Review
Let’s face it—we all love puppets. Anyone raised on Sesame Street has had that feeling embedded in them at a very young age. In the late 1970s, creative mastermind Jim Henson developed The Muppet Show as a means for adults to be entertained just as much as their offspring in a vaudeville-style variety program hosted by Kermit the Frog and featuring weekly guest stars ranging from Ethel Merman and Elton John to Roger Moore. Henson believed that both young and old had affection for puppets, and the success of his work on both Sesame Street and The Muppet Show certainly proved that fact to be true.
Two Minneapolis puppet aficionados, Michael J. Heagle and Gordon Smuder, have taken the groundwork layed by Jim Henson and created the very much “not for kids” webseries, Transylvania Television. Set in a low-budget TV station in a solitary castle high above the Carpathian Mountains, the series follows a cast comprised exclusively of Muppet-style puppets, including vampire Count Voldomyr Le Shoc, orange yeti Furry J. Ackermonster, the bat Bat Fink and the dimwitted Dwayne Frankenstein.
Transylvania Television, also known as TVTV for short, was originally conceived as an actual television show for Minneapolis public access. The pilot episode thus sets the tone for the actual series and effectively introduces the characters and style of humor of the series. In it the fictitious TVTV has limited broadcast reach and low ratings, which forces Le Shoc to bring in some “fresh blood” in the form of Ackermonster.
“If at any time during this period we find you unfit to perform your duties, you will be terminated,” Le Shoc tells him after he is hired.
“He means ‘terminated’ terminated,” Bat Fink then clarifies to avert any misunderstanding.
While the pilot for Transylvania Television follows Ackermonster on his first day on the job, which is filled with numerous failures before ultimate triumph, the webseries proper is more skit comedy than sitcom and features short episodes centered on specific characters that can easily be watched out of order. In many ways it models itself after The Muppet Show—although it replaces the musical aspects of the original during its the first season with often profanity-filled dialogue instead. Transylvania Television also has a social satire side to its narratives, as exemplified by the five-part “Le Shoc Goes Online.” Through the course of the intertwining episodes, the Count switches from the old-school method of sending out snail mail to using e-mail and discovers such perils of the World Wide Web as downloadable viruses, Nigerian money scams, pornography and how quickly a social network site can go from being full of “cool” people to one populated by “ass-hats.”
“I realized that if I had to deal with fat virgins, blubbering vaginas, assholes, bitches, losers and trolls, I want to be close enough to kill them,” he tells Ackermonster when he finally jettisons the Internet and goes back to the tried and true.
“We realized that people reacted well to puppets swearing,” Gordon Smuder explained to Dark Lord Bunnykins's Blog. “They laughed but only until the shock wore off. Then it was kinda boring. We tried it in a couple of sketches and it worked, but not for long. So I’ve given a new dictate to the writers—if a puppet needs to swear, try to think of a better way to do it. Get euphemistic in its ass and come up with something that’s not only a funny replacement for a swear word, but something that’s just funny to hear all on its own.”
While similarities to The Muppet Show are obvious, Transylvania Television also owes partial debt to the short-lived 2002 FOX comedy Greg the Bunny. That series was more Sesame Street than Muppet Show, however, as it followed the backstage antics of the puppet actors on a fictitious television show called Sweetknuckle Junction. But although Greg the Bunny featured its puppets interacting with humans, something not seen on Transylvania Television, it did display the same adult humor mentality of the webseries. Supporting character Warren the Ape—who was given a spin-off series on MTV in June 2010—is a prime example as the puppet has an affection for drugs, alcohol and women.
Greg the Bunny and Transylvania Television also share the fact that both began life on public access television. “We wanted to host bizarre film clips that we had, that we’d edit into these weird montages,” the co-creator of the FOX show, Dan Milano, told Salon in March 2002. “Greg the Bunny was the host, because none of us wanted to appear on camera. Then we started using Greg to interview people in public, and we attracted all this fan mail. People just loved the puppet.”
Again, what’s not to love when it comes to puppets? While Greg the Bunny has Greg and Warren, Transylvania Television has its own collection of delightful characters. From Le Shoc’s old-school conservativism, to Bat Fink’s hip intelligence, to Furry J. Ackermonster’s “everyman” nature, to Dwayne Frankenstein’s loveable cluelessness, Michael Heagle and Gordon Smuder have crafted indelible personas that are likewise believable—even if they are puppets. The episodes of Transylvania Television, meanwhile, are sophisticated enough to stand up with the best skit-style humor on television.
“Our material isn’t developing an edge as an ‘in your face’ comedy, but it is developing an edge of its own: a little sly, a little satirical and most definitely smart,” Smuder explained to Dark Lord Bunnykins. “And if I have my way, our comedy will be ‘for grown-ups’ only because kids won’t get the humour until they’ve lived life a little more.”
Life, laughs and puppets—what more can one ask for from a webseries?
Anthony Letizia (November 5, 2010)
