It’s Time to Meet the Muppets, Again

The most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, motivational show reinvents itself for the YouTube age.

Some of the other stars are cast in parts that either comment on their familiar personas (brainy Kermit as the Scarecrow, meek Fozzie as the Cowardly Lion) or brazenly ignore them. The funniest of the newer characters, Pepe the King Prawn, plays Toto — which is to say he plays Pepe the King Prawn, strolling through Oz in a hipster jacket while spewing Latin-accented malapropisms. (The movie reaches a surreal peak when Pepe turns to the camera and deadpans, “Those of you who have ‘Dark Side of the Moon,’ press play now.”)

The Muppets’ reinvention as an online phenomenon is an encouraging development because it reconnects the troupe with the basic sources of Henson’s magic: the strength of the Muppets’ personalities, and the notion of performance as a journey in itself, as bold and edifying as any narrative. At its best, the original “Muppet Show” was conceptual comedy with training wheels, owing as much to Brecht, Ernie Kovacs and Salvador Dalí as it did to any variety series (or children’s program) being made at that time. There were always two shows going on: the one that the theater audience saw onstage, and the behind-the-scenes insanity, with Kermit’s stage manager kissing the posterior of that week’s guest star while managing the egos of his repertory troupe.

It was Showbiz 101 for tots (and tots-at-heart). Ben Vereen singing “Pure Imagination”, Julie Andrews performing “The Lonely Goatherd” and the “talented but frightening” Alice Cooper blowing the doors off the theater with “School’s Out” served as examples of true professionalism — a benign contrast to the personal silliness that usually prevented the show’s regulars from achieving greatness: Miss Piggy’s vanity, Gonzo’s clueless desire to impress, Fozzie’s incompetence. And let’s not forget wild-card developments such as Waldorf trying to court guest star Valerie Curtin with a potted jungle vine that eventually takes over the theater.

The Muppet Channel is still a fledgling enterprise, but what’s there suggests that the people running it really, truly get it. The videos are about the length of a “Muppet Show” sketch, and they manage the tricky feat of succeeding as stand-alone goofs (i.e., as endlessly re-playable YouTube videos) while being true to the characters, showcasing them not just as performers but as individuals. (In “Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody,” Animal spaces out during his solo, repeating “Mama?” over and over — a bit that reacquaints us with Animal’s mouth-breathing stupidity while deftly excising the least kid-friendly part of the song’s lyrics.)

The new shorts exist to re-start the Muppets as a cash cow for their parent company, Disney, while cross-promoting Disney’s other media properties (including Queen, whose greatest hits have just been repackaged on CD for the umpteenth time). But there’s enough integrity in the first batch of videos to suggest that the Muppets will be Muppets first, properties second. The YouTube clips kid the clichés of the still-young viral video format just as “The Muppet Show” kidded the conventions of vaudeville, variety series and backstage melodrama. (The Rizzo-Rowlf skateboarding clip is shot with a wobbly handheld camera, just like a real skateboarding video.)

They also find new media equivalents for some of the most beloved bits from the old variety show. At the end of “Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody,” and throughout “Ode to Joy” and “Classical Chicken,” the screen splits into boxes to showcase each participant in the song’s multi-part harmony; the mosaic tile effect evokes the rows of creatures stacked on top of each other at the end of the “Muppet Show” credits. Statler and Waldorf’s post-video gripes poke fun at how the Internet has turned the whole planet into Comic Book Guys, stampeding online after each new pop culture experience to dub it The Worst Ever. Watching the Muppets’ YouTube channel is like attending a reunion comprised only of people you really wanted to see again, and discovering, to your relief, that they’ve aged beautifully, and are even more charming than you remembered.

[Additional photos: Edgar Bergen in "The Muppet Movie," Associated Film Distribution, 1979; Rita Moreno on "The Muppet Show," The Jim Henson Company, 1976; "The Muppet Christmas Carol," Buena Vista Pictures, 19992]

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