Ben and Pete get lost in a circle in a spiral, in a wheel within a wheel, as they talks about the strange edits that Disney has imposed upon their hosting of the Don Knotts episode of The Muppet Show. They also warily wander the circumference of the topics of relatives, the proper reaction to the cuteness of dogs, and whether the episode has gone on for so long that they might as well start over.

Sources and References:

The use of Sammy Davis Jr.’s version of “Sweet Gingerbread Man” in the Disney+ Hawkeye inspired this fanvid of scenes over the music, and the alternate version use in Don Johnson’s film debut in The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart can be listened to over the footage it soundtracked. Michel Legrand and Alan and Marilyn Bergman’s “Windmills of Your Mind” is performed by Noel Harrison over footage of a glider filmed in Salem, New Hampshire, before becoming fairly omnipresent with the Dusty Springfield cover. While Ben resisted referring to “The Screaming Thing” as such, it is how he is catalogued in the Fandom page, which at least makes sense from Statler and Waldorf’s dialogue.

As Pete points out “cuteness aggression” is a real thing, but for those of us who don’t have it, one of the most amusing parts of it existing is the variety of images in the article thumbnails about it. One can just imagine the conversations about what constitutes “cute” in their reader demo, and one can speculate as to whether they discussed if they had a responsibility to not use an image that would provoke an aggressive response for any sufferers who were Googling. Being a “dog agnostic” is a much sparser Google search, with a greater number of false positives.

Reference to Don Knotts hating the ventriloquist dummy he used early on in the comedy act he developed in the armed forces occurs in this interview with his daughter about her recounting of his life and career, and references to the Muppets in that book is shown in this Google Books search in all their minimalist glory. Pete correctly noticed that the alternative biography that wasn’t Knotts’ childhood came from the Wikipedia entry of the founder of Dunkin’ Donuts.

Regular listeners know that Ben is traditionally a Great Muppet Caper stan, while Pete stumps for Muppets Take Manhattan. Ben, however, wishes it to be known that while the connections between Don Knotts and Jim Henson through the The Muppet Movie using Milton Berle and Caper using Peter Falk are equidistant, that he doesn’t know why Connect The Stars chose the Caper link as the “best” way to make the connection.

The Wikipedia entry about “Lullaby of Birdland” provided Ben with the information of the split writing and distribution rights for the number, which led to his speculation as to the rights issues that may have resulted in it being excised from the Disney+ edit of the episode. SecondHand Songs has the first recording of the song with vocals by Ella Fitzgerald in 1954, which Ben thinks might be the most famous version of the song (but secretly prefers the less orchestral Sarah Vaughan rendition…), but mentioned specifically a piano and bass performance by George Shearing with Neil Swainson as an instrumental ideal of the tune. And While Ben doesn’t seem to think that Mahna-Mahna is cribbing from “Lullaby of Birdland” in his scatting, the reason why the Muppet Fandom page does list it as having been sampled is because Shearing and Forster are credited as co-writers on The Muppet Show cast album in 1977.