One of my hobbies is watching older television shows on DVD. One of the programs I have in my collection is "The Muppet Show". What does this have to do with soaps? The answer in two words: Veterinarian's Hospital.
The Muppet Show parodied many genres as part of the program, musicals, science fiction (Pigs in Space), the news (Muppet News Flash), cooking shows (the Swedish chef), cop shows (Bear on Patrol) and of course soaps with Veterinarian's Hospital. That parody was my first real exposure to soaps other than if I caught a bit of daytime instead of napping.
Veterinarian's Hospital had an unseen announcer who stated how the doctor has gone to the dogs and had an organ music score. It was a sketch in which Rowlf, a dog was a doctor, along with his nurses Miss Piggy and Janice from the band donned hospital scrubs and stood over a patient wearing a green blanket making corny jokes. At the end of the segment, they did a mock preview of a coming episode.
The last sketch of this type in season three (unfortunately season four is not yet available on DVD), which I just recently watched had the entire Muppet family turn into chickens after sneezing (as they were suffering from cluckitis) in the span of an episode. Imagine an operating room with chickens standing around another chicken in a gurney trying to make a "fake" medical diagnosis. Total mayhem, but totally hilarious. At the end of the episode, where virtually everyone except the special guest Roger Miller, was a chicken, it was revealed that the illness would just go away in a few days.
The Muppet Show was the first television program that I loved, as I was so young I can't recall even loving it. The once a week broadcasts excited me, as I would toddle to the television just to see it. Watching it again as an adult with a very different set of eyes is a revelation. It explains much of how I watch television today, from the snark (see the old guys in the balcony, my buddies Stadler and Waldorf), the interest in varied couples (as my first would have been between a pig and a frog, Miss Piggy and Kermit), and genres (watching or sampling just about anything from the news, to game shows, to soaps to science fiction.)
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