the mucking fuppets.

The only Muppets content I had consumed prior to a few weeks ago was a home-recorded VHS of The Muppets Take Manhattan. It's a banger, so of course it's not on Disney+, because TriStar^[1] put that one out, years before Jim Henson's death mid-merger with the Mouse.

Shout out to my Defunctland-centric YouTube algo and the hero Poseidon Entertainment for this explainer on "How Disney Mishandled the Muppets." (Bonus: Here's Frank Oz saying similar things in 2019.) Below is my rehashing of what I read on Wikipedia after one massive marathon of early Muppet Show recordings. (I wish they kept up the gifts of the Muppets modeled after the guest stars past the first two episodes. That was expensive, but hot dogs were like a penny back then. Grow up.)

Those close to Jim Henson assumed it was the Disney deal that killed him in 1990, not very scary complications from strep throat, and as a former multi-millionaire, I get it, man. Disney sucks ass. Put Muppets Tonight, the 90s Muppet Show revival, on streaming. Love Symbol-era Prince kills it. (For now, download various VHS transfers of the entire run here. It's better than D+ minimizing full screen upon a new episode. Fuck their UI. More like Useless I...Gave Up on This Joke.)

Henson was looking for custodians of new Muppet content like Muppets Treasure Island, which would ultimately release in 1996, and a massive expansion to Disney's Hollywood Studios. The only Muppet-related concept that remains at the park, if only for a little longer, is Muppet*Vision 3D, a show you can relive in all its blurry/furry glory in that Poseidon video above.

Today, you can scroll through D+ and see a variety of newish Muppets series, like one centering on Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, something stupid with Scooter (die) as the project manager of an in-show streamer called Muppets Now. Easily the best of the bunch, a mockumentary workplace comedy called the muppets. typeset in that godawful smol bean Courier, The Office uses. It's an Office homage like every show with a character doing constipated Jim face is. The difference is it doesn't suck cosmic amounts of shit.

Don't get me wrong: Comedy Central choosing to air The Office in between Seinfeld and South Park is nice background noise. It's a show about dumbasses set in a dumbass town, Scranton. (Once in Scranton, a bartender who moonlighted as the guitarist of Escape the Fate asked another employee to turn off "Not Good Enough for Truth in Cliché," the only good ETF song, because it was written by, and this is in scare quotes, "accomplice to murder" Ronnie Radke. I laughed into my drink. He gave me a look. Sorry you didn't write a problematic heater.)

The mockumentary format is more played out than your most annoying mutual's copy of Peripheral Vision. According to this piece by the NY Film Academy, Christopher Guest's This is Spinal Tap is the progenitor of the format. The Office oral history acknowledges their forefather, but it's been a while since I read it. The show does feature a bit of improvisation even if they don't namecheck Guest, and that's Spinal Tap's calling card across comedy.

But, man. Every comedy nowadays has an implicit documentary being filmed about its subjects. Sure, there's something like Parks & Rec directly aping The Office, with similar producers and whatnot. Take Abbott Elementary, a peerless entry in this genre, simply because the mockumentary device doesn't box in its premises. Or how about the very recent St. Denis Medical, which is boxed in by definition? Shit takes place in a single hospital wing. Something like Jury Duty splits the difference because the only person not in on being filmed is the central "non-actor" character, and they go do things like get soused at Margaritaville.

the muppets. aired on ABC in 2015 (for context, D+ launched with a very nerfed library in 2019) and was cancelled after one season. Contemporary assessments of the series complain that it ruined Miss Piggy (a lot of good external links in that piece), and The Hollywood Reporter's review calls out probably its most damning criticism: the muppets. is essentially a PR stunt. The other damning criticism comes from me: fuck your stupid periods in titles. (Life's so boring. has a period.)

For fun, I searched "Why do band names have punctuation?" This poindexter extrapolated so hard that the exclamation point fell out of Panic! at the Disco.

A month before the muppets. premiered, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy broke up. Explanations for this came from their body language (Muppet language?) during a press tour for one of the recent Muppet films, most likely 2014's Most Wanted. Bill Prady, OG Muppeteer and the show's creator, noted their "evasiveness" towards one another. The plot point was worked into a show, teased out in a press statement that "broke" the "hearts" of "millions."

Brother, that's a reach, and there are people reaching inside these pieces of felt.

I know I'm a Muppet novice, but I did watch The Muppet Movie last week, and I've also read every single Muppet's Wikipedia page. Flame me all you want, but the pig is mean as hell to the frog. That's not feminism, that's animal-on-animal crime, and I am pissed off about the social dynamics of puppets. Where did I go wrong?

Kermit isn't exactly in love with her. The marriage at the end of Takes Manhattan seems to either not actually happen or be part of the show-within-the-film. The Muppet Show and its subsequent Movie are more about Miss Piggy throwing herself at Kermie than the other way around. the muppets. doesn't flip this dynamic, either, except maybe in the penultimate episode, which may have been a last-minute stab at higher Nielsen ratings.

Like all Muppets media worth their weird teeth, this lowercase version is about putting on a show. This show is Up Late with Miss Piggy, a network program tonally identical to James Corden's, and Muppets wouldn't be squawking through "With a Little Help from My Friends" with that buffoon until 2018. Piggy is the self-obsessed host—seems like a "ruined" trait, huh, since she's usually very selfless and normal—Kermit is the producer, Dr. Teeth leads the house band, and Jack White shows up. (Plenty of other guest stars make appearances, including pretty solid ones from Christina Applegate and Josh Groban.)

The ensemble shines brighter than the nuclear foibles of Pig and Frog. Pepé the King Prawn has plenty of laugh-out-loud lines, Big Mean Carl is a standout Big Guy, and Fozzie Bear has a hot human girlfriend. You'd probably think that last bit sucks, and it kinda does, but it fizzles out in a Fozzie-fueled way with his classic groaners of one-liners. I would, too, lose my hot human girlfriend if I were a bear. (Not that kind of bear. I've been told I'm more of an otter.)

Also who the fuck is this? This Chip guy is in Muppets Tonight too, and he's so unsettling looking, like everything Canadian freak carnival Mr. Meaty. In fact, put his ass in that show and no one would notice. Look at those eyeballs. They're dead.

Just go watch it. It ends on a cliffhanger, with Mr. Prawn delivering the show's last line. I would have liked to see a second season, apparently set when Late Night isn't taping, with our reluctant lovers canoodling atop an elephant in Thailand.

Maybe that elephant looks like Gonzo.