We’re all drowning in content—so it’s time to highlight the best. In her column published every Friday, critic Clarisse Loughrey recommends a new show to watch. This week: Disney’s new Muppet series The Muppets Mayhem.
The Muppets Mayhem: Season 1
There’s not all that much room left in our culture for what the Muppets represent – that unabashed, earnest desire to entertain, like clowns at a birthday party or Donald O’Connor backflipping off walls in Singin’ in the Rain. It not only requires sincerity, but vulnerability. It demands artists put themselves wholeheartedly in the service of an audience, without ego and without any desire to be taken as more profound of an artist than they are. Comedy these days must always be underpinned by the tragic or the confessional. To only put a smile on someone’s face is to admit defeat.
Maybe I’m being a little dramatic here. But I’m not sure how else to explain why the Muppets have struggled so much to find their place in the culture as of late. Since Disney acquired this felt band of harlequins in 2004, it’s stubbornly and periodically sent them out into the world, remixed in vague but inconsequential ways. There was the relatively successful 2011 film, with Jason Segel and Amy Adams, which recaptured a decent amount of the Muppets magic, only to be steamrolled by a disappointing 2014 follow-up. ABC’s attempt to stir up controversy by breaking up Kermit and Miss Piggy for a docu-style sitcom was deemed heretical. A Disney+ sketch series titled Muppets Now attempted to cash in on a few internet trends and barely caused a ripple.
And so, Disney+’s latest attempt to force some Muppets-related content into existence – The Muppets Mayhem, about the misadventures of Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem – is immediately confronted by its own existential crisis. Can the Muppets find a home in today’s modern world? Or is everything simply too sad and too cynical now? The Muppets Mayhem is a sweet and wholesome distraction, a reliably pleasant way to while away five or so hours. And yet I highly doubt it’ll ever see a second season.
YouTuber Lilly Singh attempts to, as the show itself admits, harness that crucial 12-24 demographic by starring as Nora – a frustrated record label assistant determined to force the Mayhem, who’ve been on tour nonstop since 1972, to finally record an album. She also has to pick between two lovestruck dudes, sweet-hearted Mayhem superfan Moog (Tahj Mowry) and slick former colleague turned app entrepreneur JJ (Anders Holm).
But let’s be honest, nobody cares about what the human characters are up to in any Muppet project (Michael Caine excluded, of course). Only two things matter here. One, there are the gloriously corny jokes issued by Dr Teeth (Bill Barretta), Janice (David Rudman), Sgt Floyd Pepper (Matt Vogel), Zoot (Dave Goelz), Lips (Peter Linz) and Animal (Eric Jacobson). “Talk about a cliffhanger,” the Mayhem say directly into the camera, as their van teeters off the edge of a precipice. “Disney+ is gonna love this for sure.” Only the Muppets, and the Muppets alone, could get away with a gag like that.
Two, an entire Rolodex-worth of celebrities turn up, all of whom look like they can’t quite believe they actually get to hang out with the Muppets. Danny Trejo, Ben Schwartz, James Hong, Lil Nas X, Billy Corgan, Kesha – the list goes on and on (and on and on and on). You can never quite guess who will say yes to a Muppets project, because there is not a single soul on Earth who would not say yes to a Muppets project.
And yet, it’s clear that a show like Muppets Mayhem isn’t quite sure where it fits into the cultural lexicon. There are jokes about Peter Jackson’s old, extremely gnarly Muppets parody from the eighties, Meet the Feebles, and Kevin Smith’s much-maligned horror-comedy Yoga Hosers. There’s also an entire episode where the Mayhem attempts a virtual concert in Minecraft. It’s a show for everyone. And sort of no one, really – and, yet, it’d be a terrible shame if the Muppets sacrificed one iota of their generous buffoonery in order to conform to our current standards. Let that felty, freak flag fly.
