Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Initial Thoughts Regarding "The Muppets"

As you may or may not know, a brand new primetime series staring the Muppets made its debut last night.  I watched it, let it simmer over last night, and my initial knee-jerk reaction is that it's... it's pretty good.

The idea is classic Muppets: it's a show-within-a-show.  This time, Miss Piggy hosts her own talk show and the other Muppets scramble behind he scenes to get everything rolling.  We seem to be back in the classic "Frog; 100, Chaos: 99" formula, which is very encouraging.  There are cute subplots involving Fozzie and Scooter and a few poignant scenes as well.  the latter is especially encouraging; the old "Muppet Show' was as much about weirdly sad or genuinely touching moments as it was about explosions and anvils.  (There is also no sign of Walter in this first episode.  Interesting...)

The "roving camera" format is unusual, but seems to be working well so far (it makes a lot more sense when you realize it's just the modern version of the previous Muppet series' stationary camera capturing the activity behind the scenes).  Denise is... certainly a thing; I'm hoping she turns out to be a more interesting character.  And while this is the first episode, and I understand they're finding their footing, I'd have liked a lot more segments with the Muppets interacting with the guests.  That Imagine Dragons weren't accompanied by Muppet dragons during their end-credits number is a damn shame.

At the end of the day, we've got the Muppets on television on a regular basis again.  That is priceless.

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Sketch of the Day!

7.3.15 - Cow Studies

Cows!!!