Zoom's 7th anniversary: LIVE! from Boston

When it came time to create a 7th anniversary special for Zoom, the producers wanted it to be a truly special special, so they set out to do something they had never done before: a live broadcast! Thus, on January 5, 2005, at precisely 7:00 PM Eastern time, the nation watched as ''Zoom Live! ''went on the air.

I rewatched ''Live! ''recently, and man, I gotta say: It did not go well. It’s fascinating to watch, but as it turns out, working with puppets on television involves a lot of technical challenges, and doing Zoom without the ability to do multiple takes was, like, really hard.

The concept is pretty good: The cast of Zoom is putting on a variety show! But it probably wasn’t a good idea to open the show with an high-energy monologue by a noisy, energetic, and cheerful Kyle. Because after his loud shouts, Kyle ended up losing his voice for 55 minutes.

It doesn’t get much better from there. Just as Francesco starts to sing a live rendition of "Moon River", he drops the golden moon prop into a trap door, and for the remainder of the number, you can clearly see a crew member sticking his arm in the trap door, searching in vain for the lost moon. Later, a boy's eye falls off. Emily enters a scene with toilet paper stuck to her foot, and a counting-to-7 segment with Taylor goes horribly awry when she forgets what comes after 3.

The boy's other eye falls off. Shing-Ying's juggling act is a bust because her hands are incapable of holding things. After a commercial break, Nick and Noreen are forced to vamp awkwardly when Sarah G. 11, of Reading, PA misses her cue, "So, uh, can't do your interesting show on your own because you need viewer submissions. Right?" Or maybe that one was supposed to happen?

Intended guest star Criss Angel never shows up. He's stuck in traffic! Luckily, it was nice of Will Kindrick to stick a coin in Kyle's ear and then get it out. It's one of the highlights of the special!

And I’m sure it seemed like a great idea to have the Zoomers sing R.E.M's song "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I feel fine)" but after just a few lines, everyone is clearly exhausted.

Somehow, they managed to get through the whole thing, even though the show ran long and they had to cut the alphabet song short after I. But when you watch this thing, it’s pretty easy to see why they’ve never attempted it again in the intervening Season 8.

Hey, I wonder if they ever found that golden moon?