“Muppets now”
When Walt Disney Company bought The Muppets from Jim Henson in 2004, it looked like a game made in paradise. The two corporations have connected with young people and adults for decades, so what better chance than to bring them together? (The story of Mouse House’s attempts to buy Kermit and his friends is a little more complex than that and less smiling.)
That said, since he owns the Muppets, Disney doesn’t know what to do with them. Apart from two feature films, the last released six years ago with false reviews and a mediocre workplace, and a short-lived sitcom with a complicated history, the Muppets have sometimes been relegated to short films and commercial opportunities. The arrival of Disney has left many enthusiasts to let the Muppets yet have the chance to entertain families in a suitable place.
It wasn’t until D23 last year that the public learned of Disney’s plans to use the Muppets. The brief “Muppets Now” exhibition wanders, doing little more than saying something will happen to Disney, and that the Muppets would do an exhibition again. A week later, an announcement through the company canceling a supervised Muppets assignment through Josh Gad and expected to come with music written through Oscar-winning duo Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, has left many wondering what “Muppets Now” would offer. Project Gad didn’t.
In the end, “Muppets Now” leaves the Muppets precisely where they have been for the past decade: still captivating but blocked through a company that continues to consider them irrelevant. In this case, the Muppets turned to the Internet, ironic given Disney’s push a few years ago to put them on YouTube, to post a streaming screen called “Muppets Now”. Each episode, lasting approximately 20 minutes, consists of 3 to 4 segments, ranging from a cooking exhibition with the Swedish chef to a lifestyle vlog presented through Miss Piggy.
The individual parts of “Muppets Now” are solid, which is unexpected given that two of the 3 accredited writers, Bill Barretta and Jim Lewis, have long been Henson’s partners. Each episode begins with Scooter preparing the episode and falls into trouble, such as Fozzie Bear appearing to provide viewing concepts or wants Animal to keep you awake.
These moments last about a minute at the beginning and end of the story and only remind you of the logistics of the exhibition itself. Pop-ups in the scooter manager (expressed through David Rudman) lead to funny jokes and will attract the attention of those who are familiar with the Muppets’ penchant for puns and word games.
But of the 4 episodes available, the show’s vanity is never authentic. Scooter and the other characters are presented on a PC screen in various Zoom windows, cutting off the sense of network and camaraderie by which the Muppets are known and reminding the audience that this is how the content is delivered today. Do young people care how the Muppets get here?
And the concept of a streaming series on an online page like YouTube is obsolete without delay, especially since Disney already tried this with the Muppets once. In any case, meta-narrative would have worked better if the team had been preparing a screen for a Netflix-style streaming service and solving the upheavals there.
An Internet series also makes Muppets feel like a much smaller player organization than they have been. Gone was the frame full of other puppets, and instead, we get one or two consistent with the segment, regularly damaged when patched, like the segments of “The Cat Room” from Miss Piggy’s Lifestyle series. It gives the impression that it has been a post-pandemic series due to the character limitation in line with the episode.
Miss Piggy’s segments are extremely vivid, as Piggy’s patented narcissism logo remains braised and fun. His special guests, in addition to Linda Cardellini and Taye Diggs, paint wonderfully with puppets and this, in itself, can seamlessly maintain his position as an Internet series.
Other vignettes may also be isolated, adding ‘Okie Dokie Kookin’ by the Swedish chef, the normal series of all episodes with Piggy’s. The Swedish chef interacts with a variety of prominent culinary masters, adding Danny Trejo. What makes this segment fun, beyond the Swedish chef’s antics, is the addition of the new puppet Beverly Plume, who becomes a character completely in flesh and blood in 4 episodes. Where the Swedish chef is simply crazy, Beverly is curious, funny and in an episode she becomes incredibly thirsty, say, from chef Roy Choi.
But the other series don’t paint because of their limited character. The exhibition of Pepe the Prawn’s game is fun, but it’s unclear whether they brought other genuine people to play contestants or actors, giving off a sense of sterilization. Muppets Field Test, a scientific exhibition presented through Bunsen Honeydew and his tormented assistant Beaker, is also embarrassed, not only through the legal entity of “Muppets Now” Joe, but through Disney itself.
A warning from Kermit and Joe From Legal precedes the episode, reminding young people not to see this at home. And from there, episodes bring clinical themes, such as how warmth works or how speed is achieved. But where the young men grew up watching Beaker get punched in the face with things, focusing on Beaker’s drawings seems like an attempt to minimize danger at best, or a budget constraint at worst.
Actually, “Muppets Now” may have been seamlessly in line with other Disney short series, such as “Forky asks a question” or SparkShorts. The confidence that it is a spectacle, in particular, never takes off, letting everything feel uncomfortable; is the ‘hello, expensive kids’ of the Disney world. That doesn’t mean “Muppets Now” is bad. It’s wonderful to see those characters back in action. “Muppets Now” is not a wonderful use of your talents, as always.
“Muppets Now” will be available at Disney.
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