The thing with puppets is you can’t kill them. When their human operators shuffle off this mortal coil, the puppet remains – gathering dust for a few years, perhaps, but waiting patiently for another unholy union with a fresh human soul. [1]
Kermit the Frog is on his third human handler, and he doesn’t sound right. He doesn’t sound natural. He doesn’t sound like he wants to be there.
This isn’t the only problem with the new Muppet Show, available on Disney + as a one off comeback. [2] Miss Piggy doesn’t sound right either, though it’s less jarring than with Kermit.
The main problem is it all feels a bit safe. At its best, The Muppets Show felt genuinely riotous and mildly subversive. The whole thing felt like it could collapse at any moment, and the show was kind of both a homage to and a sending up of vaudeville, variety theatre. Fifty years on, the music hall stylings of the Muppets remain, with Scooter and Kermit still desperately trying to get the acts on from the comfort of their rickety old backstage. But what was once anarchic now feels pretty archaic.
The guest star, Sabrina Carpenter, is game, and clearly enjoys her time beating up puppets in a bar run by Sam the Eagle or exchanging passive aggression with Miss Piggy, her fellow diva. But Piggy feels a bit Gloria Swanson in this company: “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small”. Carpenter is no Debbie Harry or Elton John, and her lines about kink and shagging other people’s husbands are well delivered but lack the zest and heft required.
In fact, the writing is patchy across the board. “Pigs In Wigs” should have been a delightful parody of Bridgerton mania, but it meanders to an unsatisfying punchline. Even the Great Gonzo – my personal favourite muppet and spirit animal – feels more half-baked than usual in his doomed stunt role. Only a mildly terrifying electro-pop number performed by Rizzo and some rat sex workers felt genuinely on the edge of control.
Nowadays these puppets are the property of the Disney corporation, infamous these days for flogging beloved franchises into the ground. We should, I suppose, be happy that we haven’t been presented with a hard-hitting Fozzie Bear prequel about his prohibition days in the speakeasies of Chicago, or a sixteen part series explaining how the Swedish Chef was finally driven from Sweden.
As our Muppets swarm the stage for one last rendition of Don’t Stop Me Now – a cheeky request for a full series – it’s impossible not to be moved, which is a strange thing to say. These muppets are only puppets. But they’re puppets they have been an ever-present part of my life, and lord knows we need some uncomplicated, mildly cheesy family fun these days.
So it’s the worst diss of all to say that the Muppets comeback is, at best, okay.
[1] Rod Hull may be dead 27 years, but Emu still lurks in the shadows, waiting to be reborn.
[2] This feels a waste of resources given they built an entire new Muppets theatre. Plus there are a lot of Muppets – too many to fit in one half an hour episode. I hope they give it a full series, despite its flaws. You don’t like to see unemployed Muppets on the streets.
jamesofwalsh 
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