Elsewhere, Elizabeth Banks makes for a hilarious rival to Miss Piggy’s star in the pilot, as Josh Groban does the opposite and gets a bit too close to her for Kermit’s liking in episode two. His stint on the show also leads to some topical conversations on gender and female late night talk show hosts, and while admittedly we’re discussing a fictional pig hosting a fake talk show on a network sitcom, there’s something honest and true found deep in those jokes. Same goes for Fozzie’s attempts at fighting for equality and showing his normalcy to the parents of his new girlfriend, to increasingly disastrous results.
While that subplot is humorous, it does grow stagnant, the parents’ bored and ambivalent reactions to Fozzie’s repertoire coming too close to a mirror for the audience. The writers continue to pin him as the biggest side character with another lackluster arc in the second episode, and it already feels unfair after just forty minutes into the series. It’s easy to see that the show will only focus on a small group of a large cast of characters, but that group can be bigger than three or four, and Fozzie’s already wacka-wacka’d his way into grating territory by the end of episode two.
But you may not even notice that because of one, simple, delightful reason: The Muppets is just pure fun. The characters – both felt and human – are endearing, the jokes are fast, and the workplace set-up is near-bursting with expansion possibilities for the future. A big caveat, of course, lies in those afraid of change: the Statler and Waldorfs of the world who prefer their Muppets more classic, the ones who don’t carry iPhones and worry about working out or drop medical marijuana jokes. They will probably find it hard to look past the new incarnation’s meta-realism. For everyone else, for the Kermits and Animals and Janices: here’s the first laudatory television sitcom of the fall. Enjoy the show.
