There are very few things more difficult in comedy than ending a sketch in a way that’s both satisfying and hilarious. When a Monty Python sketch would go on too long with no obvious ending in sight, the troupe had a trick called “dropping the cow.” It works just the way it sounds. Rather than a scene coming to a logical conclusion, a phony cow would drop from the sky and land on the comics.
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Scene over. Problem solved.
Jim Henson had a similar philosophy, according to longtime Sesame Street writer Joey Mazzarino. Kids appreciate that comedy is violent, he told The Washington Post. That’s why Jon Stone, one of Sesame Street’s creators, would say, “When in doubt, throw a chicken.”
Cows, chickens — any barnyard animal will do. Henson saw how well the chicken chucking worked, concluding that there were two surefire ways to end any funny scene. Either the characters blow something up (including other Muppets):
Or they eat each other:
The Muppet Show could, in fact, get a little meta about that philosophy.
Waldorf: That’s one of the reasons I always thought the Muppets were weird.
Statler: Why is that?
Waldorf: They think explosions are funny.
Statler: Yes.
Waldorf: Explosions aren’t funny.
(Statler’s cigar explodes, sending him into a state of shock.)
Waldorf: Although, some of them are really quite droll.
“Seeing another person blow up is funny,” according to Mazzarino, a man who educated our children for decades. “That kind of peril, I guess it is a real part of our genetic code, to laugh at that.”
For Henson, it started before Sesame Street. Check out these vintage, black-and-white commercials for Wilkins Coffee. They might be Henson’s most elegant constructions of set-up to explosive punchline to ending:
Muppet Shape with Kermit Voice: You know, people who don’t drink Wilkins Coffee just blow up sometimes.
Muppet Shape with Rowlf Voice: Oh, that’s a lot of…
EXPLOSION!!!
Muppet Shape with Kermit Voice: See what I mean?
The second commercial in the series is a little more startling, with the Kermit-esque Muppet taking a wooden club to his pal who hasn’t yet switched to Wilkins Coffee. Subsequent 10-second versions feature all types of comic coercion, from mallets to malfunctioning parachutes to knocks on the head with coffee cans. Ten seconds of laughs, and we’re out.
And for the perfect example of Henson comedy that ends with both an explosion and characters eating each other? Check out this proto-Cookie Monster landing the comic double-dip: