IT SUCKS when great shows are on the platforms of fuckass companies, but here we are.
The Muppet Show reboot was a direct hit of nostalgia, dopamine, and earnest joy that I needed and I was more and more charmed the longer I watched.
I’m old enough (ahem) to remember the original Muppet Show, and this reboot is faithful to the format while updating with jokes, references, and the presence of Sabrina Carpenter, whose resemblance to Miss Piggy is played perfectly, and who is somewhat of a Muppet herself.
Some folks just have Muppet energy. Carpenter has Muppet energy. Off the top of my head, Daniel Radcliffe, Robert Pattinson, the late Catherine O’Hara – they have Muppet energy. Eugene Levy pretty much is a Muppet, per my husband – that tracks. (Honestly this show might have been engineered in a lab for Adam. There is nothing, he says, that he has loved longer than the Muppets.) John Leguizamo, Bowen Yang, Biz Markie…Tim Curry has Big Muppet Energy, which is why he rocked so hard in Muppet Treasure Island.
These are performers who don’t take themselves too seriously, and who are seriously talented. (The “performers with Muppet energy” game is going to be playing nonstop in my house today.)
Carpenter was a perfect first guest and I liked pretty much every sketch she was in.
I don’t know whose idea it was to have her sing “Islands in the Stream” by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers but this was a God tier decision for a Muppet Show sketch. It plays off Carpenter and Miss Piggy’s similar aesthetic to Dolly Parton, for one thing.
And it was vintage (1983) but still lovely to listen to, and there is plenty of room for visual comedy because the song is replete with cheese and earnestness.
I think it’s in Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs due to the lyric, “I set out to get you with a fine toothed comb.” What the hell does that even mean?
While the Kermit voice is quite different, nothing else felt disconnected to the original – there were even Muppet characters I hadn’t seen in years, like Rolf and Beauregard. It’s a 30 minute sketch show with on stage and offstage plotlines, and it has the sharpness of SNL in its most impressive years, but trades skewering humor with bite for more wholesome and cheerful optimism, mixed with slightly bewildered theatre kid perseverance.
I hope it gets picked up, and I hope the same attention to tone and the relentless embrace of nutritious fromage remain.
So, yeah, if you’re looking for something nostalgic, charming, silly, and wholesome to watch tonight, you might really, really like The Muppet Show reboot. This is especially true if you grew up with the Muppets in one of their many showcases, and most especially for those of us who have enduring fondness for the original.
I was thinking earlier that just when I decided to never give Disney money again, they do the _one_ thing that could make my resolve waver: they reboot The Muppet Show. As in: not a sitcom version, not another feature film.. the ACTUAL Muppet Show. Oh, resisting this is going to be so hard.