‘The Muppet Show’ Returns for a Cute and Nostalgic Special

Fifty years ago—even earlier if you count its two early pilots—The Muppet Show arrived to prove that a frog could host a variety show and that human celebrities could mix it up in sketch comedy and musical numbers with all manner of Muppets. To mark that big anniversary, ABC and Disney+ have produced a one-off episode of The Muppet Show, which comes encoded with the suggestion that there could be more on the way.

A screener of The Muppet Show was provided for review with a couple of “do not reveals,” including which specific songs are performed during the half-hour special. The guest star is pop icon Sabrina Carpenter, so you can narrow down at least one of the tracks. Also, if you saw the trailer, you know that the iconic The Muppet Show theme gets its moment to shine.

But there aren’t too many big surprises tucked into the narrative. Instead, this is an earnest attempt to recapture that Muppet Show magic—while openly acknowledging the audience is aware there have been attempted Muppet comebacks in the past.

“We are so excited to be back on the very stage where it all started, and then ended—and then is maybe starting again depending on how tonight goes,” Kermit says in his opening monologue, which is (naturally) interrupted by the heckling Statler and Waldorf, who alternate between lobbing insults and cackling at their own jokes throughout the program.

The structure will be familiar to any Muppet Show fan—as conflicts brew backstage, chaos bleeds into the acts themselves, with equipment snafus, last-minute casting changes, and Gonzo’s death-defying stunts causing mayhem on both sides of the curtain.

And while the performances and skits are enjoyable, the backstage scenes are when you really need to pay attention, because that’s where you’ll glimpse all the other random Muppet characters popping up in the background. With a cast of fan favorites this big, there simply isn’t room to give everyone adequate screen time.

That just so happens to dovetail perfectly with Kermit’s big dilemma: he has too many acts scheduled. Everybody wants to be in The Muppet Show’s big return! It’s the perfect gag to structure the special around, especially since it pushes Miss Piggy—who insists on having no less than two featured numbers—into one of her famous temper tantrums.

Speaking of, Miss Piggy fans will feast the most with The Muppet Show special. The script has a lot of fun playing her off Sabrina Carpenter—a Miss Piggy superfan who fully admits she’s modeled her own style after the purple-gloved diva. (Miss Piggy: “My attorneys and I have taken notice, and we will be in touch.”)

Even beyond this clever pairing, Carpenter proves the ideal choice for the tone this new Muppet Show is aiming for: kids can certainly enjoy it, but adults will pick up on the gently racy jokes (Kermit: “We’re still working out a few kinks”; Sabrina: “That’s all right! I love a kink”) that prevent the special from being merely a nostalgia-fest.

There’s a good bit of that, though. Along with the Gonzo sequence, The Muppet Show brings back a few classic skits, including a Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker lab snafu that goes way off the rails, as they always do.

The production values are top-notch. Kermit’s spindly green legs—once a rarely seen oddity of the Muppet realm—are on camera more often than not, and the show uses brisk editing and cuts to an audience populated with both human and Muppet guests to create the buzzing energy of a live show.

Still, not everything works. Executive producer Seth Rogen pops up for a quick cameo (and a funny crack about Muppet canon), but as much as we love Maya Rudolph, her bit involving a near-death experience is more weird than witty. We could also have done without the jokes calling out Miss Piggy for being old—she’s the same age as most of the other Muppets, after all, and she looks just as fabulous as ever.

By the end, the show-within-the-show manages to solve its problem of too many performers and not enough time—of course it does—but it also can’t resist giving Kermit a speech that feels aimed more at TV viewers than their studio audience: “Maybe we’re a little rusty, but we promised to do a great show for you, and I hope that you at least enjoyed some of it.”

That’s a little too on the nose, but it’s hard not to welcome the small-screen return of these much-loved characters all the same. If this really is just a stand-alone special, it’ll go down as an entertaining entry on the Muppets’ long timeline of TV and movie projects—far more successful than that Office parody that was attempted a decade ago.

But at just 30 minutes, it leaves you wanting more, and you get the sense, especially considering the choice of finale song, that its creators are hopeful that might happen.

The Muppet Show arrives February 4 on ABC and Disney+.

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