The Muppets just wrapped up its first season on ABC, and the series' future is now rather unclear. Back in September, the gang's return to TV earned mixed reviews and even some outrage due to its adult themes and as a result, ratings plummeted week after week. In a desperate attempt to save this sinking ship, ABC fired showrunner Bob Kushell, replaced him with Kristin Newman and hoped a soft reboot would bring fans back. It did not work. In fact, the show lost an additional one million viewers following that mid-season retooling. Nine million people tuned in to The Muppets' premiere and by the finale, only 2.7 million remained.
With those numbers, the chances of a second season are on the low side and considering how wildly inconsistent the journey has been thus far, does The Muppets even deserve to come back? If so, how could the series be retooled (again)? To answer both of those questions, let's break down a few of the highlights and lowlights from The Muppets' freshman season.
The concept of The Muppets was to introduce more adult humor to the franchise, something literally nobody wanted and which was awkward right from the get go. Something felt so profoundly wrong about the pilot, in which Kermit talks about having sex with pigs, Fozzie discusses online dating and Kermit's new girlfriend Denise simulates fellatio on a straw. Yes, that happened. Remember those beloved fuzzy creatures you grew up with? Here, listen to them talk about their sex lives!
Making a slightly more adult Muppet show was not an inherently flawed idea. When that news broke, fans assumed it meant the series would take the characters' relationships a bit more seriously and it would perhaps examine more complex storylines than the original Muppet Show ever attempted. But no, as it turns out, sex humor is the only thing that makes a show "adult."
And yes, the original Muppet Show contained plenty of adult humor too, but never to this degree. There might be a line or two here and there that kids didn't understand, but with The Muppets, a solid 50 percent of gags in the first few episodes had something to do with sex. That was thankfully toned down as the series progressed, but it wasn't eliminated entirely, with a few weirdly inappropriate (and not that funny) jokes popping up over the last few weeks. If season two happens, this is the first thing that needs fixing. It was an interesting experiment, but this kind of comedy simply does not fit the Muppets. We need more slapstick and wordplay and less lines like, "My mom likes quiet nights in and my dad likes my teacher."
Season one also focused far too heavily on the romance between Kermit and Miss Piggy, following the same tired "will they, won't they" plot outlined in every sitcom ever. The problem, of course, is that Kermit and Piggy have already broken up and gotten back together a million times, so why is this suddenly the dramatic through-line of the whole show? We all know they'll rekindle their relationship in the end, so the countless sequences teasing a potential reunion feels like a boring slog towards a destination we all know is coming.
On the other hand, over the course of 16 episodes, the writers of The Muppets have demonstrated a remarkable ability to respond to what works and what doesn't. At first, characters acted needlessly cruel to one each other; mean-spirited jabs fit 30 Rock, but not a franchise built on positivity and friendship. The writers' room apparently came to that realization too and they very quickly made corrections. An early example was the wonderful "Going, Going, Gonzo," an endearingly joyful outing in which Kermit encourages Gonzo to follow his dreams. Later, a heartwarming storyline follows Piggy's relationship with Uncle Deadly and the bromance between Pepe, Rizzo and Gonzo was also effectively built up throughout the season.
Introducing the network antagonists, Pizza and Lucy, was another fine way to solve this issue. Instead of harping on internal feuds, the Muppets could now team up and work together against an external foe. Sadly, the network subplot was haphazardly wrapped up in the finale while all of the screen time was devoted to the far less interesting Miss Piggy/Kermit romance. Still, Season 1 began in a dark place where it appeared none of the characters enjoyed working together, yet it quickly adopted the cheerful tone that defines The Muppets as a brand.
Then there was the complaint that The Muppets was too much like every other workplace sitcom on TV. After all, the pilot was essentially an abandoned 30 Rock script reenacted with puppets, but isn't the whole point of the Muppets being able to do things not physically possible with human beings? In the original Muppet Show, everyone is constantly injuring themselves, blowing up, flying across the studio and it all plays out like a live-action cartoon. Yet The Muppets ditched those zany antics in favor of adopting the format of a generic, down-to-Earth comedy that happens to star puppets instead of humans.
That has slowly been tweaked throughout the season and some storylines toward the end relied on slapstick a bit more. A great example was "Pig's in a Blackout," in which behind-the-scenes mishaps leads to the studio losing power. Big Mean Carl has also been utilized wisely for silly visual gags. Very gradually, The Muppets began to morph into something less like a traditional sitcom and more like a silly show with puppets, though it still could use some work. We have enough grounded workplace shows. Let the Muppets be the Muppets.
And in the beginning, the series was severely lacking funny sketches, putting the emphasis so heavily on backstage drama that we very rarely got a glimpse into Up Late With Miss Piggy. On The Muppet Show, behind-the-scenes segments made up less than half of any given episode. But luckily, more and more sketches were introduced throughout season one, both new and old - from Pepe the Uber Driver to the triumphant return of Veterinarian's Hospital - so this was another welcome change.
If season 2 happens, the final addition should be more of an attempt to reach out to kids. For a property that has always targeted children and adults equally, this version of the Muppets has completely rejected the younger generation by being made up almost entirely of adult humor or callbacks to a series from four decades ago. The 2011 and 2014 feature films were hilarious for both kids and adults alike, so why is this show having such a difficult time striking that same balance?
The Muppets' first season was highly flawed, then, but it certainly deserves a second go. These writers have proven that they are not completely out of touch with what's working and what isn't and they can correct their mistakes as they go. Considering the incremental improvement, we have every reason to believe that the show can finally start hitting it out of the park in season two ... assuming ABC lets that happen.