The Muppets - Hostile Makeover

I was lukewarm to last week's series premiere of The Muppets. Taking place behind the scenes of "Up Late with Miss Piggy," the show is set-up to give us a peek at the lives of the characters when they aren't on stage. It's like the old Muppet Show in that we get a look at Kermit (Steve Whitmire) struggling to keep order behind-the-scenes but without the great performances and musical numbers that made the previous show such a stand-out. Immediately dumping the premises of new love interests for both Kermit and Fozzie (Eric Jacobson) from last week's episode, "Hostile Takeover" is more enjoyable in that it unleashes the wrath of Miss Piggy (Jacobson) upon the rest of the Muppets.

While the main story deals with the unintentional (and humorous) consequence of Kermit fixing Piggy up with Josh Groban (which, among other things, leads to an Acoustic Mayhem), we're also offered a pair of subplots that are mainly filler. The first involves Fozzie's mix of fandom and kleptomania ending his new friendship with Jay Leno prematurely, and the second centers around Bobo the Bear (Bill Barretta) and The Newsman (Whitmire) each attempting to sell cookies to members of the cast. While the main story entertains, giving us Miss Piggy at her most serene and in full blitzkrieg mode, the other subplots fall as flat as most of Fozzie's jokes. The show also needs to work on its celebrity cameos which, while numerous over the first two episodes, are hardly memorable.