Mr. Welles abandoned the standard "softball questions and anecdotes" format for an audience Q&A. This allowed for the kind of uncomfortable moments you don't often get on network television. Most notably, an African-American man asks Burt whether he considers himself a star or a superstar, and gets the response, "Only a black man would ask that question." An inexplicably racist(?) non-sequitur which is met with guffaws from our madman of a host.

"I'd better laugh too, otherwise it'll look like black people have no sense of humor!"

The weirdness keeps on coming with his next guests: Jim Henson and Frank Oz, accompanied by Kermit, Fozzie and Sam the Eagle. Instead of doing fun, harmless, Muppet-related interview questions, Welles turns a conversation with a frog puppet into a desperate defense of why he's now doing television, "the one theater [he's] never really worked in." He's Orson Welles, and he invited Jim Henson onto his show so he could defend himself to a puppet. Is that clear to everyone? That's a thing that happened. The 70s were weird.

He used to be a legitimate actor. Kermit we mean, not Orson Welles.

The final guest is Angie Dickinson, star of hit series Police Woman and a minor sex symbol of the time. You can imagine the show's producer planning the segment. "OK, so we'll trot Angie out for some questions about the show, throw in some mild flirtatious innuendo and call it a day? No, Orson? You'd rather have her do some magic? Well she's not known for that, but ... OK, that could be fun and sexy too, maybe she wears a sparkly little dress and you cut her in half- what's that? Strap yourself into a throne with a blindfold? So you can narrate an ominous game of Russian Roulette that will haunt the kids who tuned in to see Kermit for the remainder of their natural lives? Well, you're the genius!"

His dates typically ended this way, too.

The characters of Superman's world were assigned new dog-appropriate names. Clark Kent became "Bark Bent," tough-as-nails newspaper editor Perry White was now "Terry Bite" and the iconic Lois Lane was naturally re-dubbed ... "Pamela Poodle." Because finding a name that resembled hers at all (like, say, Doris Dane) was less important than reminding everyone that poodles are the girl dogs. Jimmy Olsen's role was filled by a nameless, cheeky mouse living in Bark Bent's desk, obviously.

A piece of advice that the show's creators should have taken to heart.

The episode's story centers on the escape of Professor Sheepdip and his plan to destroy the Daily Bugle building with the help of his idiot henchman, Wolfingham. If you're wondering whether the name "Professor Sheepdip" is a play on the moniker of any famous Superman villain, then you haven't been paying enough attention. That question becomes less important when you see Professor Sheepdip test his new invention: a liquid that explodes with the force of a nuclear bomb.

You're never going to grow up, kids!

Yes, a mere 13 years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the creative team behind The Adventures of Superpup felt it appropriate to show their whimsical villain setting off a mushroom-cloud explosion. And where is our hero in all of this? Alarmingly absent for the most part. Superpup doesn't even appear until more than halfway into the episode; prior to that we just get Bark Bent whining to his desk-mouse about how he doesn't know what to do. Which is odd, because he is well aware of the villains' last known location, and could totally fly there and get them. After all, the opening sequence informs us that he's "able to fly around the world faster than you can say Superpup!" Of course, it's hard to imagine why anyone would say, "Superpup," except perhaps in the sentence, "What is this awful Superpup pilot you've produced -- no of course we can't show it on television."

The low energy, uncomfortable Stooges live together in a crappy apartment where they prepare to go make a television show. That would put the pilot in the realm of meta-showbiz comedies, alongside Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Larry Sanders Show and The Paul Reis- already canceled? Get out, that was like, two episodes. Wow, OK.

Anyway before the Stooges can make their show, they're kicked out of their apartment for cooking, because the landlady doesn't allow that. They go look at another place ... which also doesn't allow cooking. (Apparently this was a major stumbling block for renters of the time.) Finally they wind up at Creepy Manor, owned by Professor Dolottle (does he talk to animals, you ask? No, dumb question.). At first you assume Dolottle, living in a place called Creepy Manor, must be a stock Vincent Price-type "spooky guy" with a haunted house. Wrong! He is more of an arms dealer, having invented his own missile carrier (though the carrier plays no role in the plot and is never brought up again). Oh, and somehow his stance on cooking in the house goes unaddressed. Also, aliens. Wait, didn't these guys need to make a TV show or something?

"This looks like a promising plot development. Now let's never speak of it again."

It may seem unfair, even dumb-assed, to talk about story logic in The Three Stooges. Story was never the focus, but still, this one is supremely nonsensical, and that is amplified to the limit by the fact that they AREN'T EVEN DOING THE THREE STOOGES STUFF. There are some half-hearted stomach jabs and forehead smacks, but mostly they're just three kind of dumb guys wandering from one location to the next. It's pure, unfiltered strange, performed by guys who barely seem interested. We know this makes us terrible role models, but violence really could have saved the day on this one.

"Wwwwhy I oughtta ... retire? Hey guys, maybe we should retire."

In the pilot, an alien named Paragon takes over a fry cook played by now-deceased character actor Vincent Schiavelli. One of the pilot's finer moments comes when Paragon calls a truck stop waitress a "worthless monkey whore" then slams her into a jukebox, which kicks right in with the "doot doot doot!" of Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life." (Pretty sure nothing like that ever happened on Friends.) The whole thing culminates in a big strip club battle, Paragon is defeated and Jack escapes the clutches of Ron Silver to live another day.

And sadly, we'd never know how this guy would fit into the series.

The show's comedy pedigree was hefty: Ben Stiller, fresh off There's Something About Mary, directed the pilot and brought it to the networks. The script was written by Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab, who went on to found channel101.com and co-create The Sarah Silverman Program. These days they spend a lot of time at NBC, where Dan Harmon runs Community, his creation, and Rob Schrab is a regular director at Parks and Recreation. Ben Stiller in his prime, two soon-to-be-huge comedy writers, Jack Black and Owen Wilson, all working on the same show, and it never made it to the screen. FOX picked it up, but the network changed its tune when it saw the produced episode, and we'll never know why.

"Fat, solar-powered former astronaut fights evil with his talking motorcycle? Sounds suspiciously like originality to us."

We'll also never know what other acid-fueled adventures were in store for this man and his easily-pushed-over machine. A show like this might have flourished as the centerpiece of an Adult Swim lineup, but that stoner showcase wouldn't appear until 2001. This could be a case where the show met its best possible fate -- as a weird, too-clever pilot that never got a chance. A nugget of astronaut Jack Austin's wisdom sums it up nicely: "If fate makes you a motorcycle ... you become a motorcycle."

If fate makes that bike Owen Wilson - eh, roll again.

For more shows that made it past the pilot and then turned nutty, check out 6 TV Shows That Completely Lost Their Shit and Bridalplasty: The New Reality Show That Proves We're Doomed.