[The Muppets] #102 - Hostile Makeover

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The Muppets continue “Up Late with Miss Piggy” with a battle between a bear and a newscaster over cookies, Miss Piggy has a date and Fozzy is a thief? Quite a lot of storylines already stuffed into the second episode of the series and it seems to be slowly building up more and more with its concept. Yet was the episode worth our time?

Here is once again the spoiler warning, so if you haven’t seen the episode yet than be warned as this review will contain spoilers! So, with that out of the way let us continue!

The main plot focuses on Miss Piggy trying to find a date for the People’s Choice awards, but due to Kermit purposely getting her and Josh Groban to sing together ends up not only calming her down, but creating his biggest enemy. I am really enjoying the way they handle their celebrity cameos and even how the structure of the show with Piggy being a TV show host makes their relationships quite interesting. While it is far from the original concept, it is quite effective and fun to see various characters from the original show returning, like the newscaster, who seems to be working at another place, which could explain my favorite characters absences.

Furthermore, they way Groban is influencing the show is quite fun, as we not only see the stress that affects Kermit, but also how the band is getting annoyed by them having to play acoustic instruments and how it affects Miss Piggy. The payoff at the end is great even if I wished they expanded this concept over a few more episodes, as it does solve itself quite fast at the end of the episode. Still, it is a small complaint considering that they go full force with the band writing a song titled “Dead Inside” and Miss Piggy describing a history author as lazy. Also, it seems that Miss Piggy has a vendetta against libraries? It was an odd joke, but it still was quite funny.

I do love the fact that as much as they hate the episode changes, they still want Piggy to continue dating Groban because it seems most of them are breaking down. Makes you wonder if the season finale will feature everything trying to find a way out of the show? Their reactions to everything was hilarious and a specific scene with Miss Piggy having a hot stone massage and the Swedish Chef’s reaction was hilarious. Also another short cameo by Laurence Fishburne, showing that they literally are all sharing a lot, which makes me hope we see Clark Gregg make a cameo sometime soon, was hilarious and even had a great punchline.

I think Bobo has become my personal favorite character in this show so far. There are many smaller subplots that are handled as running gags and each one hits with a bang. Gonzo’s mother is on a trip and he believes all messages he receives are actually spam, making for some hilarious comments and then there is poor Fozzy trying to get a gig together with Jay Leno, who is our big celebrity cameo besides Josh Groban in the main plot, but realizes he has a slight problem with taking things as memorabilia, which is technically him just stealing things. While these subplots are quite a lot of fun, I confess that Bobo trying to sell the cookies from his daughter has a great flow through the episode. Him trying to get people to buy it, the newscaster constantly getting in his way and in the end realizing that the band might be the perfect source of income for his daughter, which he caps off with the fantastic line: “Screw the mountain bike, my daughter is getting a Prius!” The comedic timing was great on this subplot and kind of overshadowed the others in my opinion.

My biggest complaint though is still the absence of Rowlf the Dog, who isn’t even anywhere in the background. I am hoping that he might in fact appear later on in an interesting subplot and there is a reason why he is absent. He even had a great scene in the film, so hoping we will see him make a return sometime in the future. For now, I guess Jeff Groban was a fine enough piano player to replace him for the time being. Don’t worry, I am just joking. Only thing I hope they don’t do is only focus on Kermit and Fozzy storylines, as the first episodes only really focus mainly on them with most everything else being a running gag, but I want to see other Muppets get more spotlight.

Did you see the episode? What did you think of it? Leave a comment below!