Jim makes The Muppet Show in the 1970’s, shaping the show as a vaudeville comedy act. Meanwhile, Jim gets experience seeing the first season of Saturday Night Live up close and sees Lorne running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to put on a show using live actors.
Obviously, Kermit is a self insert character of Jim himself. But, could Jim have included a bit of Lorne into Kermit at the time to portray a show runner at wits end due to his cast?
I’m sure kermit drew some inspiration from Lorne and probably many other people that Jim knew
I kind of think of Kermit as almost a stock character.
I’m sure someone with some sort of Clown College degree (meaning actually professional clowning education, not something goofy and useless like, you know, a Harvard law degree or what-have-you) could probably chime in about how Kermit exhibits some aspects of one or more of the stock Commedia dell’arte characters or something along those lines.
Unfortunately that sort of high-level comedic theory is beyond my education, but I’ll do my best
He’s the everyman, the straight man, he’s you
He’s the embodiment of when your friend was supposed to come pick you up a half hour ago and they’re nowhere to be found and not answering their phone
Or when you’re trying to schedule your next D&D session but 2 people have scheduling conflicts you’re trying to work around, one guy ghosts you and you’re not sure if he’s coming or not, another wants to bring 3 friends and a dog for some reason, and the last one is just blowing up the group chat with his insane homebrew magical gunslinger succubus character idea and their 14 page backstory.
He’s you when you’re the only one who did their part of the group project and you’re fumbling your way through the presentation you cobbled together on your lunch break
He’s when your girlfriend is upset with you and you don’t know why
Or when you look around and it seems like everyone around you is an idiot, an asshole, or maybe just clinically insane.
And he puts up with it because despite all their flaws and quirks, these are his friends and he wants to spend time with them and help them to achieve their dreams, and they all feel the same about him, and he’s not perfect himself, he’s got his own weird bag of insecurities and neuroses that he carries around with him. He yells, he loses his patience, he can’t always get a word in edgewise, he runs around flailing his arms and screaming like we all want to do sometimes, he gets depressed and thinks that everything is fucked, but with a little help from those crazy assholes he loves he pushes on and usually things work out alright in the end, even if they didn’t quite go according to plan.