Parents need to know that The Muppet Show is a vibrant mix of live action and puppetry that was created to entertain both parents and kids, which means the content is family-friendly to a fault. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the series has an approval rating of 69% based on 51 reviews, with an average rating of 6.52/10. This week, the Muppets basically just do the same gags as last week. 30 mins. The interviews bring out better celebrity collaboration, with RuPaul unsurprisingly exhibiting natural comfort opposite Kermit and Aubrey Plaza delivering expert awkwardness opposite Miss Piggy. Why, then, have the past 20 years been a saga of The Muppets Studio struggling to figure out how to use characters who already proved they can be used in almost any capacity? A faux variety series, each episode was a mix of two kinds of segments. In between the sketches, we see a harried Scooter frantically trying to upload each segment onto a Disney server, while other Muppets harangue him by video chat. Muppets Now will be produced by Muppets Studios. The backstage action, meanwhile, established the core Muppets as distinct, endearing personalities who, fur or forked tongues aside, wouldn’t seem that out of place on a workplace sitcom with an otherwise human cast. — are in their sixth decade of existence, but they have never been more perfectly deployed than in their first project together, the Seventies syndicated hit The Muppet Show. Those bridge segments — which I've been led to believe actually were shot in recent months — are the most frustrating part of the show because of how reliably they squander beloved characters as a superficial framing device. ‘Muppets Now’ Review: The Muppets Fruitlessly Search for Meaning in Lighthearted Quasi-Series When the Walt Disney Company purchased Jim Henson’s The Muppets in … Muppets Now, the new show that begins airing today on Disney+, is yet another attempt to bring Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo and the lot into the modern era. The whole business of rating that night’s show is an exercise in bad faith knife-twisting, just pure meanness. Described as The Muppet Studio's first "unscripted" series, Muppets Now has a healthy number of laughs, reasonable all-ages appeal and a handful of memorable moments through the four half-hour episodes sent to critics. Episode Reviews July 31, 2020: “Due Date” After a bit of a push by Scooter (and some consternation from some of the performers), Muppets Now goes live. AdChoices Most of the segments recur from one episode to the next: a lifestyle-influencer show with Miss Piggy, Uncle Deadly(*), Taye Diggs, and Linda Cardellini (the actors appearing as themselves); an unpredictable game show hosted by Pepe the King Prawn; a MythBusters-style science show (the first one even has an Adam Savage cameo) hosted by Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker; a cooking competition pitting Swedish Chef against his real-life peers; and a celebrity interview show called “Mup Close & Personal.”, (*) The flamboyant, Vincent Price-esque Uncle Deadly was an extremely minor character on The Muppet Show, but has grown in stature ever since the 2011 movie. Muppet Performers: Dave Goelz, Matt Vogel, Bill Barretta, David Rudman, Eric Jacobson, Peter Linz, Executive Producers: Andrew Williams, Bill Barretta, Sabrina Wind. Walter, the polarizing star of the 2011 movie, is only in one sketch. Muppets Now is actually quite entertaining if you can get past the really awkward moments. See Kermit's nephew as Baby Yoda in honor of The Muppet Show arriving on Disney+ With all five seasons arriving today, the streamer imagined how … The critical consensus reads, "Though Muppets Now's formulaic sketches fail to showcase The Muppets' chaotic charms, it's entertaining enough to suggest that with looser reins - and a lot more music - it could become the best reboot in years." The second episode features Miss Piggy being sat on by a larger character & she actually says "I can not breathe". Three episodes include a "Muppet Labs Field Test" segment with Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker destroying things in the process of exploring a single scientific concept, while there are multiple "Mup Close and Personal" interviews and several installments of a game show hosted by Pepe the Prawn. While it’s a substantial improvement on the characters’ last TV series, it ultimately misses the point of playing the music and lighting the lights. Want more Rolling Stone? The show constantly goes back and forth from being really funny and entertaining to feeling like an attack on millennials and internet culture. The sketches themselves, even in repetition, aren't bad. 6:45 AM PDT 7/29/2020 Whether there’s a business reason or not, Muppets Now definitely looks better if there’s no easy access to the original, superior antics of this group. (*) My friend Adam Bonin, an election lawyer who moonlights as a pop-culture commentator, had the best unifying field theory for all the Muppet films (and it applies to The Muppet Show, too): Only The Muppet Movie is “real,” and everything else is something the characters made under the “standard rich and famous contract” that Lew Lord signs them to at the end of that first film. The jokes mostly fall flat & the celebrities do not add much sparkle. Sign up for our newsletter. The mark of a good Muppet celebrity is a willingness to get down-and-dirty with the synthetic stars, while middling guests mostly tend to just smile and nod. The second episode has a very funny cook-off between Swedish Chef and the actor Danny Trejo (who also owns a taqueria), but star chefs like Roy Choi seem less comfortable bantering with the segment’s host (and one of the show’s new creations), a turkey named Beverly Plume (played by Julianne Buescher). The first were vaudeville-style sketches from the show-within-a-show, where the Muppets sang, danced, told corny jokes, and appeared in shows-within-the-show-within-the-show like Pigs in Space and Veterinarian’s Hospital. al. MUPPETS NOW is a series within a series about the Muppets putting on a show; this time it's a streaming series with a variety of different segments. Where The Muppet Show was spoofing Ed Sullivan, or Sonny and Cher, the largely improvised Muppets Now is riffing on YouTube and, to an extent, reality TV. Still, Muppets Now feels like it's using maybe a tenth of the brand's potential, failing to capitalize on what ought to be TV's deepest ensemble of scene-stealers. legend 0 - … Full of potential, despite a repetitious streak that wastes much of the ensemble. All rights reserved. Aubrey Plaza gets some big laughs as she suffers through Miss Piggy’s “Mup Close” interviewing style, while Taye Diggs is mostly used as a prop in his segments with Piggy. The Muppets — specifically, the comedy-variety troupe featuring Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo the Great, et. (*) One of my favorite Muppet Show subplots had Fozzie demanding a raise. There's a temptation to wonder if the recent COVID-19 quarantine is behind the decision to avoid packing the frame with multiple Muppets. Muppets Now largely succeeds at folding flesh-and-blood guests into its proceedings, and for the most part shows no wear from the bumpy ride the characters took to Disney+. Use the HTML below. Leaving aside the reality deficit here — no correspondent-driven show of this sort would be able to maintain a production schedule having so few different types of segments — the result is the world of the Muppets feeling small and insular, which should never be the case. Author’s Note: This review for Muppets Now is based on a screener provided by Disney+. ABC’s deservedly short-lived 2015 mockumentary series The Muppets was pretty much all backstage interaction, but with the characters all weirdly bitter and adult. But keeping all of the franchise’s stylistic and tonal elements in balance is hard. Kermit stalls and stalls and stalls, and finally placates Fozzie by agreeing to pay him 10 times his (nonexistent) salary — with Fozzie only realizing after the fact that ten times nothing is still nothing. The second took place backstage at the dilapidated Muppet Theater, where Kermit was forever struggling to manage the egos and anxieties of his co-stars, who in turn were often busy sucking up to that week’s very special guest (everyone from Ethel Merman to Elton John stopped by during the series’ five-year run).
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