Here's another one from George Lucas' Secret Vault of Star Wars Atrocities, this 1980 edition of The Muppet Show, starring Mark Hamill! Now, unlike the Holiday Special, this one's bad in a cute sorta way. In other words, you probably won't want to blow your head off after you watch it. But you still should have a pretty decent sized headache...

Before we get to Mark, you have to understand that, after all, this is the Muppet Show. It's not exactly your picture of sanity to begin with. It's a comedy variety show starring stuffed animal puppets who have more punchlines than you could've ever dreamed physically possible. Even passerby cameo sheep muppets are throwing jokes around like they had some giant comedy quota to meet.

It gets weird though...in one skit starring Kermit, all the muppets are doing their thing, when out of nowhere 3P0 and R2 walk onto the set and start babbling, with every last one of their lines followed by a huge laugh track. Even R2's comments get a laugh track, and all he's doing is beeping. So either this type of comedy is too high-brow for me, or the laugh track simply makes no sense. If you see it, you can decide for yourself.

At one point, Mark Hamill sans Skywalker gear starts doing Muppet impressions. I guess you could say this is where every Hollywood producer made a note never, ever to hire this guy. Then he starts singing. I swear, I feel like I'm in some alternate reality watching this, because the only two things I can ever remember seeing Mark Hamill do are swing a lightsaber and judge Howard Stern contests on PPV specials. Seeing him sing and do impressions on the Muppet Show is kinda chilling.

Okay, I'll level with you. As I write this, I'm watching this for the first time in a long time, and I've completely forgotten how nuts it really is. In other words, Mark just started dancing with one of those styrofoam hats on, complete with cane and piano music.

Later, we get a Star Wars parody with muppets playing various characters. This actually ain't too bad. I don't think I can laugh at it, considering how I've been taking finals all week and I haven't slept much, but it's pretty interesting to see Luke do something other than whine about how incest is frowned upon. It all climaxes with Gonzo dressing up as Darth Vader and commenting about how he loves Luke's outfit. Okay, so maybe this ain't so bad after all...

WTF?!! Alright, now it's no longer a topic of debate. You have to see this. Kermit just told C-3P0 to participate, and after some hesitation, the Droid starts dancing around with more agility than an olympic figure skater. This just went from being one of the worst things I've ever seen to probably the best thing of all time.

Overall, this was definitely a pretty cute trip down memory lane. The show's only about 23 minutes long and availible on VHS and DVD on The Best of The Muppet Show Volume 2 along with two other classic episodes.