Review: The Muppets – “Hostile Makeover”

As we saw last week, Miss Piggy is a little volatile. Then again, if you watched any of the previous Muppets shows or movies, you already knew this. This week, Piggy’s tantrums throw the world into chaos. And, of course, the show will solve it in a way that will upset the Easily Offended.

The show begins with a Code Red Miss Piggy tantrum. She is screaming at everyone, throwing anything she can find, and generally being the uber-diva she is. Kermit, Scooter, and Uncle Deadly (who is in charge of Piggy’s wardrobe) hide under a desk, trying to figure out the best way to fix the problem. It turns out that Piggy is upset that she doesn’t have a date for the People’s Choice Awards. Kermit can fix that.

I can already hear the parental groups yelling now. When thinking about who Piggy would date, Kermit talks about The List they had when they were dating. Yes, The List of celebrities that it would be OK for them to cheat with. Kermit’s list had Lea Thompson. Piggy’s list had Jeff Goldblum.

Kermit gets the entire staff on the phones to contact stars and their agents to find just one person to take Piggy to the award show. Jeff Goldblum is married. (Granted, he’s married to someone 30 years his junior….) Keanu Reeves is fat? So they end up at Josh Groban. Kermit gets him on the show as a guest and creates an on-set mood perfect for match-making. Of course, Piggy and Josh start dating. Piggy’s mood greatly improves and everyone is ecstatic.

At the same time, Fozzy gets an invitation to a party at Jay Leno’s house. During the party, Jay actually has a conversation with Fozzy. The bear is so happy that he steals a candy dish as a souvenir. When he gets the dish back to the show, the rest of the staff make him feel so bad about stealing that Fozzy tries to figure out a way to take the dish back. Luckily, Jay has invited Fozzy back to his house. Unfortunately for Fozzy, he drops the dish outside the house, shattering it into pieces.

It turns out that Jay invited Fozzy over to ask the bear to open for him in Las Vegas. Fozzy, happy that Jay didn’t nab him for stealing, happily agrees. In order to remember the moment, Fozzy tries to steal a brass rooster. Jay catches him, Fozzy confesses to the candy dish, and Jay throws him out.

But Piggy is the interesting part of this episode. Piggy is on cloud nine and, as a result, everyone is more relaxed. Yet…Josh has been making suggestions about the show to Piggy. Perhaps the Electric Mayhem should play acoustic. Perhaps Piggy should have more intellectuals, like authors, on the show. Kermit agrees to the changes, though he had recommended some of them years ago, and all is well. Sort of. The Electric Mayhem sound awful acoustic. Piggy asks author Reza Aslan stupid questions like “Where did you get the inspiration to write your historical novel?” The show, as a whole, is terrible.

Much to the chagrin of the rest of the staff, Kermit decides that Josh has to go. He tries to confront the singer but it doesn’t go well. Instead, Kermit takes a more passive approach. He puts a “Josh Groban Presents” above Piggy’s name on the show mural outside the studio. Then he tells Piggy that this shows that she needed a man to help her be successful. Piggy does not take this well. She dumps Josh, claiming that her success was too much for him. And now everything is back to normal.

I love this show. I love that the writers never changed the adult humor from the original show. (Yes, it is there. Go back and watch the original series.) The Muppets of recent years have been very watered down. Excluding the recent movie reboot, I haven’t been able to watch a Muppets movie in a very long time. The best part about this episode is that it shows the staff (well, mostly Kermit) dealing with Piggy’s mood swings. In the past, they would just write them off and hope she would be professional enough to keep the show going. Now they actually have to handle her. Muppets in the real world dealing with real problems. Brilliant. However, Fozzy Bear needs to go away. I’m not sure why the writers decided to give him all the side stories but they aren’t all that interesting. The girlfriend thing was cute. The Jay Leno thing? Not so much.