The Hoard Potato: It's Time To Meet The Muppets
I watched the first episode of The Muppets last night.
First impressions: where the classic Muppet Show had backstage wackiness, The Muppets, thus far, has backstage wangstiness.
This is not to say I’m not interested to see where they take it. They haven’t lost me yet. They’re just patterning themselves on sitcoms that I already don’t watch, and, well, it’s hard to parody shows that are already parodies. I'm not going to whinge about dragging "children's icons" into the morass of "adult humor"; I am well aware that the Muppets have always relied on multi-level appeal and getting crap past the radar.
In their quest to make the characters more "sophisticated", however, they seem to have thrown out the subtlety and slyness that really was sophisticated. Worse, they've taken characters who used to be lovable because of their flaws and are busily making them unlikable despite their virtues.
Seriously, if they want to take a cast of over-the-top archetypes who indulge in broad slapstick and introduce sophisticated, emotionally-intense story arcs that appeal to an adult audience, they’d be better served by following the lead of the current crop of Precious Cinnamon Roll cartoons, rather than stuff like 30 Rock or The Office.
If the Steven Universe writers had written the Kermit/Piggy break-up, it would have been heart-wrenching. It would have pulled you closer to both characters, rather than feeling alienated from them because of their pettiness.
I am going to give it a few more episodes to see where they take this.
First impressions: where the classic Muppet Show had backstage wackiness, The Muppets, thus far, has backstage wangstiness.
This is not to say I’m not interested to see where they take it. They haven’t lost me yet. They’re just patterning themselves on sitcoms that I already don’t watch, and, well, it’s hard to parody shows that are already parodies. I'm not going to whinge about dragging "children's icons" into the morass of "adult humor"; I am well aware that the Muppets have always relied on multi-level appeal and getting crap past the radar.
In their quest to make the characters more "sophisticated", however, they seem to have thrown out the subtlety and slyness that really was sophisticated. Worse, they've taken characters who used to be lovable because of their flaws and are busily making them unlikable despite their virtues.
Seriously, if they want to take a cast of over-the-top archetypes who indulge in broad slapstick and introduce sophisticated, emotionally-intense story arcs that appeal to an adult audience, they’d be better served by following the lead of the current crop of Precious Cinnamon Roll cartoons, rather than stuff like 30 Rock or The Office.
If the Steven Universe writers had written the Kermit/Piggy break-up, it would have been heart-wrenching. It would have pulled you closer to both characters, rather than feeling alienated from them because of their pettiness.
I am going to give it a few more episodes to see where they take this.