Rowlf the Dog

Rowlf presides over the piano in the corner of the Muppet Show's chaos, a shaggy dog with droopy ears and a musician's cool. He's unbothered by the theater's madness, dryly amused rather than swept up in it, dispensing deadpan wisdom and the occasional song while everyone else runs around him in a panic.

He's the still point in a show built on hysteria, and Henson performed him that way deliberately — loose-limbed, low-key, funny in the pause rather than the punchline. The voice is Henson's own, warm and unhurried, which gives Rowlf an easy sincerity no other Muppet quite has.