‘The Muppet Show’ Review: Sabrina Carpenter Is the Ideal Host for a Promising Special That Reminds Us What the Muppets Do Best

“Isn’t it wonderful to be back in the theater again giving the people what they truly want?” Miss Piggy inquires early in The Muppet Show, a half-hour special premiering on ABC and Disney+ this week as a soft test run for full-fledged series return.

A quick refresher course on what Disney and the Muppets have been giving audiences over the past decade instead of giving the people (me) what they (I) truly want:

In 2015, there was The Muppets, an ABC sitcom built around a Miss Piggy-fronted talk show. The attempt to deliver something more grownup from the Muppets, complete with an ongoing estrangement between Kermit and Miss Piggy, had a tonally misjudged pilot, improved slightly and then was canceled.

In 2020, there was Muppets Now, an oddly spare “unscripted” series about the Muppets doing a digital series of reality elements overseen by Scooter. It felt closer to the original The Muppet Show format, only with a scattered assortment of characters and interactions. It had the aesthetic of COVID-produced series, even if it was shot pre-COVID. It lasted one season. You don’t remember it.

In 2023, there was The Muppets Mayhem, focused on Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. It had some funny moments and an impressive array of music industry guest stars, but it felt like a strained spinoff from a series — that would be The Muppet Show — that didn’t actively exist. It lasted one season.

In addition, there have been several one-off holiday stories and at least one animated reboot of Muppet Babies.

It seemed that the powers that be would do almost anything to avoid simply bringing back The Muppet Show, a fact that I’ve harped on in my reviews for … each of them?

So yes, Miss Piggy, I couldn’t be happier to have you back in the theater again giving the people what they truly want. Like much of my generation (and several surrounding generations), I have a Pavlovian “joy” response when the band strikes up the Muppet Show theme — exactly the sort of reaction that deserves to be weaponized and commodified. Bring it on.

I’m not going to tell you that this Muppet Show, with a 30-minute running time sans commercials, is my Muppet Show platonic ideal. Too many of the punchlines feel like first-draft jokes in desperate need of refinement, but I can fully buy that the Muppets (whom I’m treating as real people for purposes of this review) might be comedically rusty after having not participated in the variety format since the ’90s offshoot Muppets Tonight, which was basically The Muppet Show with a different name.

This is not The Muppet Show at its best, but it’s a return to what the Muppets do best.

Directed and steered by Alex Timbers, with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg among its executive producers, The Muppet Show keeps things chaotically simple.

It is, as Kermit observes in his opening monologue, a return to the same theater as the original with the same conceit: that Kermit and pals are putting on a live show, featuring the whole felt ensemble and at least one celebrity guest host. Invariably, anarchy reigns both on stage and off in the wings, usually exacerbated by the triangular tensions — sometimes romantic, sometimes simply professional — produced between the weekly celebrity guest, Kermit and Miss Piggy.

For the special, the producers have landed a perfect host in Sabrina Carpenter, a multi-hyphenate talent who checks all of the boxes established for one version of an exemplary Muppet companion. She can sing and dance, and she generates a comic sensibility that’s at once childlike and wise. That means she’s capable of interacting with the Muppets as a peer, embracing their zaniness with appreciative wonder, and as a more mature adult with a different definition of “kink” from what Kermit expects.

Carpenter has an instant rapport with Miss Piggy, recognizing similarities in their respective personae. But in this incarnation, she mostly reminded me, in stature and costuming and overall attitude, of Dolly Parton — who bizarrely never hosted the original series, but welcomed Kermit and Miss Piggy to her own 1987 variety show. The producers make the comparison obvious with a second musical number that was easily my favorite part of the show.

The episode doesn’t make full use of Carpenter’s versatility, but she has good moments throughout, performing one new song and one classic. She has to share the overall celebrity spotlight here with Rogen, appearing in a couple of scenes, and Maya Rudolph, part of the studio audience. Rogen and Rudolph are both obvious candidates for future hosting duties, as they too are stars with the exact overall attitude that has always worked well on the show.

The special tries to keep to the brand’s core, Muppet-wise. Gonzo attempts a wild stunt; Fozzie makes a few schlocky jokes; Bunsen and Beaker are working in the laboratory with unfortunate consequences. There are the usual chickens and bears and Sam the Eagle and even Pepe the Prawn for the younger generation, but no attempt to introduce a freshly created centerpiece Muppet. Bonus points for the brief return of Rowlf, absent for much of the post-Henson era in part because he was seen as the character closest to Jim Henson’s heart.

The majority of the characters are performed by Bill Barretta, Dave Goelz, Eric Jacobson, Peter Linz, David Rudman and Matt Vogel, who have all been with the franchise for years — though the yearning for the original Muppets voices, which I’d set aside while watching the other recent failed shows, returned here.

If the literal voices don’t sound exactly right, there’s also a bit of a struggle with the new writers to latch onto the precise character voices, or sometimes to match characters and sketches. If there’s a reason, for example, why Rizzo and his rodent friends are performing a cover of a semi-recent hit song that ABC seems to want critics not to spoil, I couldn’t figure it out. It’s not bad, but it’s imprecise, and the Muppets are characters so individually distinctive that that shouldn’t happen.

And I know there’s something inherently hacky about balcony grouches Statler and Waldorf, a commentary on self-satisfied critics, but I assure you that Statler and Waldorf would heckle most of the dialogue the special has given Statler and Waldorf. Sorry, but I’m deeply invested giving Statler and Waldorf the best material possible.

The important thing is that The Muppet Show feels generally right — including in its demographic-spanning comic aim, with enough double entendre and insinuation for the grown-ups and mayhem for the kids. It could all be refined and adjusted and expanded, and I would be somewhat disappointed if this turned out to be the show’s top gear, but it proves conclusively that what worked in the ’70s and a bit in the ’90s can absolutely still work today.

Miss Piggy is right: The Muppet Show is, indeed, giving the people what they wanted all along. Now, people just need to watch.

Original Article on Hollywood Reporter