Weekly Recap: The Muppets, S01E04
By Rob Kerr, Visual Media Director
There’s been a lot of weird talk about this new incarnation of The Muppets being more “adult,” dealing with situations they never would have encountered in previous outings. That’s definitely true on some fronts, but at the same time the Muppets haven’t really changed much at all. If anything, the characters have been boiled down into simple caricatures of themselves: Miss Piggy is a self-centered control freak always on the brink of an outburst; Kermit is a bundle of nerves that just barely manages to hold everything together; and Fozzie is an incredibly sub-par comedian that is really good at getting caught in bad situations.
In this episode, Piggy learns that the crew of her late night show goes drinking every night after the show without inviting her, and promptly demands that she is asked to come along. What started off as a terrible night quickly turns out to be a blast, as The Office star Ed Helms shows up and makes Piggy’s constant complaining much more tolerable. This leads to my personal highlight of the episode: Swedish Chef absolutely killing a karaoke rendition of The Sugarhill Gang’s classic hit “Rapper’s Delight.” As the night goes on, Piggy tells the crew to blow the next day’s show off so they can stay home and nurse their hangovers, much to Kermit’s chagrin. In order to prevent this from happening again, Kermit convinces Piggy that she is above the crew and should thus make herself as unapproachable as possible, an idea she readily adopts. By the end of the episode, Piggy is right back to her boastful, self-absorbed self.
And that is my biggest issue with this version of The Muppets--every time the characters are given an opportunity to show some kind of development, they inevitably decide that they were better off before and fully embody the caricature originally outlined for them. For a show claiming to be more adult, I would like to see that reflected in the characters as much as it is in the jokes. The only character that seems to show any signs of change is Fozzie, who spends a good bit of the episode pondering the fragility of life after shooting an audience member in the face with a t-shirt gun. The show is definitely funny, pulling jokes you wouldn’t expect, but the characters leave something to be desired.
