The show's premise sees a colorful puppethistorian known as the Professor presenting a game show about one or two distinctive persons or events from history.[2] The two contestants answer questions, and the Professor gives them points; the contestant with the most points wins the title of "History Wizard" and a hat. Before season six, the contestant with the most points won the title of "History Master" and a small trophy.[3][4]
The show received an Honoree Award at the 2022 Webby Awards for a Science & Education Channel.[5]
Format
The show begins with the Professor, a blue puppet, greeting the guests from a puppet theater stage.[6] The contestants are almost always Ryan Bergara and another special guest. The Professor then tells a story about a historical event or figure. He stops every few minutes to ask the two guests questions; whoever answers correctly, or as close to correctly as possible, receives points (referred to as "jelly beans").[4][7]
The scoring is relatively loose, and a contestant may be awarded more than one point, or just half a point, for their answer, as well as extra points being awarded as the Professor sees fit. The show presents parts of the story and answers to some questions through reenactments of scenes using paper cutouts of people from history. The prize is a small plastic trophy containing jelly beans or another small prize. The Professor refers to it as the 'coveted cup and title of History Master.'[8]
The Professor encourages the guests to tell jokes and is often more attentive towards the guests than to Bergara, often awarding points to guests with jokes. Before the end of the show, the Professor leaves to "tally the score" using "our complex victory algorithm," and another puppet or puppets come onto the stage and sing a song about the historical event.[7]
For the first four seasons, the Professor claimed that the algorithm awarded the cup and title of "History Master" to the guest contestants, regardless of who actually acquired more points.[a] In season five, this trend was inverted, and Bergara won almost every episode (with the exception of episode six) regardless of his point total. However, due to a "supply chain issue" in sourcing the trophies, Bergara instead won a Puppet History-themed moisturizer every episode (except episode 5, when a "Yankee Dodge"-flavored vape was presented as prize). This is later revealed to be a plot by the Professor, later revealed to be an evil holographicdoppelganger, to steal Bergara's flesh and use it as a body.
In season six, the algorithm machine was destroyed and replaced by the Professor's adoptive dinosaur parents who serve as judges and hand out hats as prizes, referred to as the "coveted cap and title of History Wizard". The guests receive a hat with the words "history wizard" written on it, while Bergara receives a hat saying "beef," with misspellings thereof. In season seven the prize was changed from a hat to amnesiac pills called "Phorgedytol", referred to as the "coveted capsules and title of History Wizard", this is later revealed to be a plot by Elmer Walter Williams and Dr. Hoagy Sprat to make them ignore Elmer's murder of the character, "Estranged Producer Shane Madej" (played by himself).
Cast and characters
Shane Madej as The Professor, a blue puppet and host of the show. The Professor originated as being more or less the same person as Shane, but was given independent characterization from season 2 onwards and in season 5 was revealed to be a separate character from him.
Madej also voices Evil Hologram Professor,[9] a holographic clone of the Professor, during the fifth season.
Madej also portrays a genie that pursues the Professor through time and space (season 1–5).
Madej also portrays a variety of other puppets throughout the series. Each episode features a new puppet, based on the subject in which they perform a song based on the event. It is revealed these puppets are the reason the genie pursues The Professor, as his time traveling antics alter the spacetime continuum turning various inanimate objects and animals into singing puppets.
Madej also portrays a variety of puppets made of paper cutouts attached to popsicle sticks, representing various historical figures in reenactments.
Madej also portrays a trio of horses named Stanley Melvin Murphy, Elmer Walter Williams and Dorothy Ruth (season 3-7). Dorothy Ruth is a lipstick-wearing horse with a 40's noir detective persona and was married to Stanley until his death in the season 3 finale during the Great Molasses Flood. Elmer is an villainous mustached horse attempting to pursue a relationship with and marry Dorothy Ruth, who is the central antagonist of season 7.
Madej also portrays himself during the fifth and seventh seasons. He is shown as the "estranged producer" of the show who hired The Professor and Ryan before being "murdered in the street like a dog" by Elmer.
Madej also portrays God and Satan, two puppets in charge of handling the afterlives of the other puppets. God, shown as a purple humanoid with one eye, is known for creating "everything, like Jupiter and Tupperware and Diet Coke and teddy bears." Satan, shown as a red horned humanoid, plotted with Bergara and the genie to get rid of The Professor in season 4.
Ryan Bergara as himself. Ryan, or "Beef Boy" as he is commonly called, has had a rivalry with The Professor and attempted to kill him in season 4, but from season 6 onwards they are good friends.
Joyce Louis-Jean as Dinosara (season 5–7), a Tyrannosaurus rex and the adoptive mother of The Professor.
Garrett Watts as Dinosir (season 5–7), a Pteranodon and the adoptive father of The Professor.
Sam Reich as Dr. Hoagy Sprat (season 7), a balding pale green humanoid puppet from the Department of Puppet Safety. Without the rest of the cast even realizing, possibly under orders from Elmer, Sprat "retires" the musical puppet guests by killing them with "a thousand tiny lasers" from the "retirement machine" which sends them to purgatory. [10] Notably, "Hoagy Sprat" is an anagram of "Pythagoras", the ancient Greek philosopher covered in the first episode of season 7.
The Professor
The Professor is a small hand puppet with blue fur and a white nose. He usually wears a safari hat and jacket and carries a satchel.[7] He wears glasses and a bow tie. Sometimes, he wears other costumes. For example, in the episode about Ching Shih, he wore a three-cornered pirate hat, and in the episode about the 1904 Summer Olympics he wears a women's gymnastics leotard. As shown in seasons 5 and 7, his name is most likely Concupiscence "Connie" McNasty.
Originally an educational game show, the show developed deep lore over time. From seasons 1 to 3, The Professor sometimes talked about his life through wrong answers to the multiple-choice questions. These answers say the Professor found a magic lamp that had a magical genie inside it. He wished for the genie to turn a "seemingly ordinary household object," revealed to be the Professor's satchel, into a secret time machine. The genie did so, but was also "a total prick about it." In other episodes, the Professor mentions visiting the past and meeting people from history. At times he talks about the genie chasing him through time, due to the effects from time-traveling bringing the various singing guest puppets to life.
In Season 4, the Professor declares he has placed a restraining order on the Genie, and there will be no genie lore revealed in the answers for the season. In the last episode of Season 4, the Professor goes back in time to the Cretaceous period due to a conspirancy involving Ryan Bergara, Asmodeus, Satan and the genie. A T-rex eats him. Words on the screen tell the audience that the Professor is canonically dead.[11] In the Puppet History Holiday Spectacular, many of the puppets seen earlier in the show acknowledge his death and sing a song in his honor.
It is revealed in season 5, the Professor is somehow alive, and the puppet theater is connected to a mysterious electronic box which he warns the guests not to touch or talk about. He is later revealed to be a hologram originally created by the cycloptic purple puppet version of God to deliver the Professor's eulogy, but elected by the puppets to host the show. The real Professor is revealed to have somehow revived, albeit much larger, and hatched from an egg laid by the T-rex that ate him, who is married to some kind of pterosaur.[7] The holographic Professor revealed his plans of skinning Ryan and wearing his flesh in order to rub the genie lamp and wish for world domination. [12]The two fought and Ryan rubbed the genie lamp to bring the Professor and his new dinosaur parents from the Cretaceous period just as the meteor is about to strike, and kills the hologram by defenestration. [13]
The Professor made a full return to host in the sixth season, with the hologram machine destroyed. [14] The genie is completely absent from this season.
"Murder of Shane Madej" Season 7 plotline
In the seventh season "some kind of drama" is shown to have happened between the sixth and seventh seasons, wherein the "estranged producer" Shane Madej (portraying himself) is shown warning the Professor about "treacherous forces" which could threaten his life,[15] before being "murdered in the street like a dog".[16] The culprit is eventually revealed to be Elmer Walter Williams, a horse who is attempting to marry Dorothy Ruth, wife of the deceased Stanley Melvin Murphy (another horse who died in the Great Molasses Flood), and his accomplice Dr. Hoagy Sprat of the Department of Puppet Safety, who lies about Elmer being his "right hand man. [17]
In the present, Dr. Sprat and Elmer are shown to have a machine used to kill the time-displaced singing guest puppets and the Professor's dinosaur parents without The Professor and Ryan noticing. An amnesiac drug called Phorgedytol is given out as a prize, presumably by Sprat and Elmer as a "sponsorship deal", leading Ryan and The Professor to forget about the earlier murder,[18] as well as the obvious presence of a small shrine commemorating Shane.[19]
Dorothy Ruth investigates the incidents and, after singing a dramatic breakup song to Elmer, eats pasta laced with the drug which causes her to forget that she broke up with him or that the show Puppet History even existed. The first hints are given that Elmer is the mastermind and that Sprat is his flunkey, as Elmer mentions how Sprat complained to him about killing the puppets [20] and watches slyly as the Professor's parents die in the machine.[21] Furthermore it is shown that Sprat is under the influence of Phorgedytol himself.[22] Ryan then discovers that the effects of Phorgedytol are reversed by taking the pill twice a day, and he and the Professor remember the murder of Shane, before discovering a seemingly brainwashed Dorothy celebrating her marriage with Elmer, and wonder what Elmer is plotting. [23]
The Professor and Ryan speak to Shane's ghost, only to realize that he has gone insane. Shane reveals that Elmer shot him, but reveals no further details about his own murder, only about his memories with other historical figures. Despite being aware of his death, he is a disbeliever in ghosts who is unaware that he or any other historical figures he has spoken to are ghosts. The Professor and Ryan suggest drowning Elmer in molasses, just like Stanley before him. [24]
Episodes
Season
Episodes
Originally released
First released
Last released
1
4
January10,2020(2020-01-10)
May22,2020(2020-05-22)
2
8
August14,2020(2020-08-14)
October2,2020(2020-10-02)
3
6
March12,2021(2021-03-12)
April23,2021(2021-04-23)
4
6
August27,2021(2021-08-27)
October3,2021(2021-10-03)
5
6
November11,2022(2022-11-11)
December16,2022(2022-12-16)
6
6
July7,2023(2023-07-07)
August11,2023(2023-08-11)
Notes
↑ For instance, the episode "Ziryab: The World's First Rock Star" had guest Zach Kornfeld answer no questions correctly and still win. However, the episode "Stealing The World's Most Expensive Necklace" ended in a tie, which Bergara still lost.
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