I’ve loved The Muppet Show since it first premiered in 1976, so when it became available on DVD in the Oughts, I bought each season as it came out. Then when season 4 was announced I put it on my Amazon wishlist and waited. And waited. And waited. And surprise surprise, it never came out, probably because Disney now owns the show, and they have a long history of simply stopping series in the middle if they don’t feel like they made enough money on the previous seasons. It’s absolutely true that shows which predate the home video revolution of the mid-’80s are often delayed due to having to re-negotiate the music rights, but that delay is rarely more than a few years. And once “streaming” became a thing, I knew I could kiss any chance of an official release of the 4th and 5th seasons goodbye. I’ve periodically tried to find bootleg sets online because I’ve had excellent luck with bootlegs of other hard-to-find shows, but nope; it seemed I was destined to never see them again. Then one of my generous gentlemen (who happens to be an IT guy) sent me the video in Sunday’s Links column, and in the process of thanking him I told him of my love for the show, and asked that if he ever saw the bootlegs available he would grab them for me. He responded by asking me to take a picture of the back of my DVD player, and a couple of weeks later what should arrive in my mailbox but the last two seasons on DVD! He had located them online, stored them in MP4 format, and saved them to DVDs for me! The picture was to be sure my machine could play the MP4s, and it can! So now I’m rather childishly excited about watching them, and as soon as Grace and I finish the dinnertime series we’re currently watching we’re going to start the Muppets from season 1. And I wanted to let my gent know how very happy I am about that.
