…and with episode 3 I think Jacobson is back on his game. Very classic Fozzie in voice, personality, and mannerisms. One complaint: when he got hit with the tranq dart, he started saying “I’m Fozzie the… I’m Fozzie the…”
Fozzie’s name has always been Fozzie Bear, NOT “Fozzie THE Bear”.
It isn’t like Kermit the Frog.
It’s hard to explain. In the original show and in the classic movies, they’re real within the show but it was still as if their existence began at the start of the half hour and ended at the end of the half hour.
With the new movies and show, I feel like I could run into one of them at a supermarket in L.A. They do the boring parts of life too. I can imagine them having mortgages and spending a weekend binge watching Netflix and hoping their agent books them some additional commercial work, etc.
I love the muppets, but really don’t like this show. I’d rather they just aired reruns of The Muppet Show, which was actually interesting and funny and fun to watch. This is just a worse version of something Greg the Bunny did better.
How so? Just looking at the movies, in the first one, Kermit’s a frog in the swamp who decides he’s going to go to Hollywood to break into the movies, and on the way, runs into people (muppets) stuck in unsuccessful or boring careers (a standup comedian in a biker bar, a plumber, a beauty pageant winner, a lounge pianist, a used car salesman, etc), who he convinces to join him in his dream.
In the second one, Kermit, Fozzie, and Gonzo are newspaper reporters who go to London to follow up on a story about jewel thieves, where they meet Miss Piggy, who’s newly come to London to get her start in the fashion industry.
In the third one, the Muppets are recent college graduates who go to New York to try to get their musical produced. In each of the movies, the characters all pretty clearly had lives before the movie started.
I’m liking it so far. I can think of worse ways to spend 20 minutes each week.
I’ve seen comparisons to The Office but I see more as a direct copy of The Larry Sander’s Show, which is a good thing.
I heard the ratings haven’t been great though. I’d hate to see this show gone while crap like Two Broke Girls still exists.
I just got caught up with the show on Hulu (well, an episode behind) and thought they got better as they went. Didn’t laugh in the first show, but did in the next ones, and it was all worth it to see Swedish Chef do Rapper’s Delight.
I watched the afternoon Muppet Show when I was a kid, but only the first movie. This iteration of the show sits just fine with me. I’ll keep watching.
Although she got a fair amount of screentime, I felt Kristin Chenoweth was disappointingly under/misused in this most recent episode. I think she would have been a great guest star on the original Muppet Show – she’s funny, she sings, she dances, and (I mean this in a nice way) she even looks kind of like a human version of a Muppet – but her role in this episode seemed like it could have been filled by basically any celebrity.
I’m a big fan of Kristin, and I was excited to see her on the show…but I agree with you, she was underused (though very funny in her scenes). I saw her in concert here in Chicago two weeks ago, and she was, as you might suspect, extremely entertaining. She has a great sense of humor about herself.
I, too, had made the same observation about her being a sort of human Muppet.
I am old enough to have watched the original Muppet Show in prime time as a kid.
With that said, I don’t have too much of a problem with the material… I don’t feel like my childhood memories have been trampled.
However, there were a few things that stood out. First, Kermit’s voice. Kermit was originally done by Henson, and he basically used his normal speaking voice. This Kermit’s voice is too high, and it sounds like a woman trying to sound like Kermit. It just hits the wrong note. Most of the other voices are ok, some better than others.
I never cared much for Miss Piggy as a kid, and things haven’t changed. But the first thing I thought of when I saw this version was “that looks like Jennifer Aniston”, and I couldn’t shake that image.
These aren’t show stoppers, though.
However… the single biggest problem I had (and it is something that will probably keep me from watching regularly) is the visual style. I can’t stand the swaying, jumping camera. I don’t understand why this has caught on, but I find it too distracting. It “feels” a lot like “The Office”, and other insider sitcoms, (which I suppose was intentional), but the jiggle-cam is too much for me… I don’t recall “The Office” being THIS jumpy.
I would like to find the guy who “invented” the jiggle-cam, and beat him with a rubber hose. I don’t want to watch something that looks like it is a home movie shot by a drunk uncle with his hand-held super 8 movie camera. This thing gave me motion sickness.
I’m probably going to annoy the crap out of everybody, but I just have to say it. Steve Whitmire has been doing Kermit’s voice for 25 years, ever since Henson’s death, so it isn’t like they hired some newcomer off the street. Anyone who isn’t used to his voice by now is never going to like him. It’s like Jeff Bergman doing Bugs Bunny or Frank Welker doing Garfield. Someone has to carry on after an actor’s death, but the replacement is never going to be as good as the original for some people.
I agree. I have never liked his voice and never will. It isn’t his fault his voice sounds as appealing to me as listening to a piece of chalk on a blackboard, but I am not going to torture myself, either.
I don’t see why it matters that he has been doing Kermit for 25 years. His voice has never worked for me because he followed the guy who established Kermit as a character. I would feel the same way if he was the original voice and Henson followed him. Their voices are not close enough to me to make the transition seamless. I would not want to listen to Henson’s Kermit if Whitmire was the guy who brought Kermit to life.
I was in charge of the franchise, I would try to find someone as close to Henson as possible. I would do this for all characters, but especially one as integral as Kermit. I can live with a secondary character being a bit off, but not Kermit.
Curse you, Tony Scott!
I think Paul Greenglass does this quite a bit too… (Sorry if I have the wrong director here… But if not, curse you Paul Greenglass!)
