flipit
12-22-2008, 09:50 AM
I grew up watching The Muppet Show, and I loved it, so I was really hoping this show was going to put me in some nostalgic mood, maybe not the throws of nostalgia, but at least the mood. This did not happen. I do not think Jim Henson would have been very happy, in fact, he may have rolled over.
The show opens up with the gang waiting on an absurdly long line at the post office to deliver some last minute Christmas letters, which of course, is unacceptable to the pig. From the jump, Miss Piggy is running her usual routine of complete self- involved nonsense, and yet somehow it is far more annoying than I ever remembered it being when I was a kid. As a pleasant surprise, with sweeping vintage Muppet fashion, the show is peppered with random cameos, beginning with Mayor Bloomberg, stepping in to quell the ever-irritating pig.
Now it’s time to really get the party started with a song and dance routine in tribute to the postal service. I’ve never seen mailmen move with such grace and form, shimmying around the room, leaping onto one another’s shoulders. During the outburst, Kermit gets his scarf stuck in a conveyor belt, and it serves him right, after using the horrendous one-liner this “postal service is going postal”, and the whole crew goes for a ride through the mail ducts. It seems just for a random chuckle and some kicks, but later it will offer some weak cohesion.
The stunt gets the crew sacked, literally, and delivered home to the comfort of the heckling old men, hovering in the balcony situated right next door to them, which was a nice touch. Claire is then introduced; she comes out of her apartment to invite the Muppets over for Christmas dinner. Gonzo respectfully declines as they are all going away on vacation. Claire pouts and comments on all her friends being out of town. Gonzo misses this cue completely and says something along the lines of ‘tis the season. They wish each other a Merry Merry, Claire closes the door, and here comes the plot: Gonzo reaches into his bag and realizes he has three letters to Santa in it. But how could that have happened? Oh right, the conveyor belt shenanigan, of course. And what do you know, one of them is Claire’s, whom Gonzo promised he’d personally deliver and now, somehow, it’s back in his bag, along with two other mysterious letters. Kermit comes up with the brilliant plan to just go back to the post office, duh.
This is when we learn, or I figured out, one or the other, that it is actually Christmas Eve. Would anyone else be sweating mailing anything on Christmas Eve? I get that it goes with the story, but c’mon, please, wouldn’t even a kid know to put that in the mail well before let’s say the 15th or so if they even wanted Santa to give it a once over? Well, the post office is closed, so no dice there. Fozzy Bear and Gonzo kick around tearing them open to see if they can help Santa out at all, but then this big intimidating Eagle steps in and warns them that it is a felony and jail time can be served. Scary. The guys aren’t really worried about this, they are however worried about being on Santa’s Naughty list.
Gonzo’s freaking out, and Piggy is completely unbearable about it all. I can’t believe Kermit has stayed with her all this time. The guys start coming up with hair brained schemes to get the letters to Santa. They go to see some NY pigeon currier service; it was neither effective nor funny. Pepe the Prawn goes and sees Paulie Walnuts and another Soprano character, and the deal is almost closed until the rat shows up, and wise guys never deal with rats. They make a random Godfather “sleep with the fishes” reference, a joke that wouldn’t be funny for adults and would go right over a kid’s head.
So, the only logical thing left to do is to go to the North Pole and bring the letters to Santa themselves. Piggy bails for the Caribbean, and most of the other Muppets scatter, but Kermit, Gonzo, Fozzy, Pepe, and the Rat take off for the North Pole on Christmas Eve from New York City. This defies space, time, and the MTA but these guys have heart, a song and Whoopi Goldberg as a cab driver. With help from Uma Thurman, they book flights on North Pole airlines but get held up from a nasty Nathan Lane at the security checkpoint. Seems he’s been carrying a Christmas grudge his entire grumpy life since he ended up on the naughty list and didn’t get the tricycle he always wanted. The guys are being held in an interrogation room, and we hear briefly about a letter he wrote, wink, wink, when suddenly, spontaneously, Lane sets them free. The guys have just enough time to catch a ride on the wing of the plane all the way to the North Pole until they guess where to jump, and lo and behold, they’re right in front of his house. What luck, but it ends there, as they are informed when they ring the bell and Santa’s chief elf, who’s a little unpleasant, answers the door and tells them that they just missed him. How can there be surprise here?
In spite of Gonzo doing everything he could, I mean really, he’s very depressed, and he and Fozzy share a touching duet about wishing to be Santa. Well, Santa puts the brakes on right away to swing down, pick them up and answer their Christmas wishes, since he can’t let Christmas wishes go unanswered. Uma Thurman is again flight attending, and the guys rip into the Santa letters. The first is from Pepe, who said earlier that he didn’t even believe, that fibbing little prawn. Anyway, he asked Santa to be an opera singer, so that’s what he got. I don’t know why I was always messing around with bicycles and cabbage patch kids when super powers and mega talents were available. The second was from Frank Meany, aka Nathan Lane begging to be taken off the naughty list. Now what are the chances of Gonzo ending up with that letter and then that very security guard holding them up at the airport? That’s so weird, right? Last, of course, is Claire’s letter, which is just a gripping “Please don’t let me be alone this Christmas” letter to Santa. So, naturally, they race home to find all the other Muppets cancelled their plans as well, even the belligerent Miss Piggy. In the end, in spite of weak plot lines and cancelled trips, the whole crew got to hang out with Claire and her Mom and be together at home and have the best Christmas ever. That’s what they said anyway. There was a song about it.
The show opens up with the gang waiting on an absurdly long line at the post office to deliver some last minute Christmas letters, which of course, is unacceptable to the pig. From the jump, Miss Piggy is running her usual routine of complete self- involved nonsense, and yet somehow it is far more annoying than I ever remembered it being when I was a kid. As a pleasant surprise, with sweeping vintage Muppet fashion, the show is peppered with random cameos, beginning with Mayor Bloomberg, stepping in to quell the ever-irritating pig.
Now it’s time to really get the party started with a song and dance routine in tribute to the postal service. I’ve never seen mailmen move with such grace and form, shimmying around the room, leaping onto one another’s shoulders. During the outburst, Kermit gets his scarf stuck in a conveyor belt, and it serves him right, after using the horrendous one-liner this “postal service is going postal”, and the whole crew goes for a ride through the mail ducts. It seems just for a random chuckle and some kicks, but later it will offer some weak cohesion.
The stunt gets the crew sacked, literally, and delivered home to the comfort of the heckling old men, hovering in the balcony situated right next door to them, which was a nice touch. Claire is then introduced; she comes out of her apartment to invite the Muppets over for Christmas dinner. Gonzo respectfully declines as they are all going away on vacation. Claire pouts and comments on all her friends being out of town. Gonzo misses this cue completely and says something along the lines of ‘tis the season. They wish each other a Merry Merry, Claire closes the door, and here comes the plot: Gonzo reaches into his bag and realizes he has three letters to Santa in it. But how could that have happened? Oh right, the conveyor belt shenanigan, of course. And what do you know, one of them is Claire’s, whom Gonzo promised he’d personally deliver and now, somehow, it’s back in his bag, along with two other mysterious letters. Kermit comes up with the brilliant plan to just go back to the post office, duh.
This is when we learn, or I figured out, one or the other, that it is actually Christmas Eve. Would anyone else be sweating mailing anything on Christmas Eve? I get that it goes with the story, but c’mon, please, wouldn’t even a kid know to put that in the mail well before let’s say the 15th or so if they even wanted Santa to give it a once over? Well, the post office is closed, so no dice there. Fozzy Bear and Gonzo kick around tearing them open to see if they can help Santa out at all, but then this big intimidating Eagle steps in and warns them that it is a felony and jail time can be served. Scary. The guys aren’t really worried about this, they are however worried about being on Santa’s Naughty list.
Gonzo’s freaking out, and Piggy is completely unbearable about it all. I can’t believe Kermit has stayed with her all this time. The guys start coming up with hair brained schemes to get the letters to Santa. They go to see some NY pigeon currier service; it was neither effective nor funny. Pepe the Prawn goes and sees Paulie Walnuts and another Soprano character, and the deal is almost closed until the rat shows up, and wise guys never deal with rats. They make a random Godfather “sleep with the fishes” reference, a joke that wouldn’t be funny for adults and would go right over a kid’s head.
So, the only logical thing left to do is to go to the North Pole and bring the letters to Santa themselves. Piggy bails for the Caribbean, and most of the other Muppets scatter, but Kermit, Gonzo, Fozzy, Pepe, and the Rat take off for the North Pole on Christmas Eve from New York City. This defies space, time, and the MTA but these guys have heart, a song and Whoopi Goldberg as a cab driver. With help from Uma Thurman, they book flights on North Pole airlines but get held up from a nasty Nathan Lane at the security checkpoint. Seems he’s been carrying a Christmas grudge his entire grumpy life since he ended up on the naughty list and didn’t get the tricycle he always wanted. The guys are being held in an interrogation room, and we hear briefly about a letter he wrote, wink, wink, when suddenly, spontaneously, Lane sets them free. The guys have just enough time to catch a ride on the wing of the plane all the way to the North Pole until they guess where to jump, and lo and behold, they’re right in front of his house. What luck, but it ends there, as they are informed when they ring the bell and Santa’s chief elf, who’s a little unpleasant, answers the door and tells them that they just missed him. How can there be surprise here?
In spite of Gonzo doing everything he could, I mean really, he’s very depressed, and he and Fozzy share a touching duet about wishing to be Santa. Well, Santa puts the brakes on right away to swing down, pick them up and answer their Christmas wishes, since he can’t let Christmas wishes go unanswered. Uma Thurman is again flight attending, and the guys rip into the Santa letters. The first is from Pepe, who said earlier that he didn’t even believe, that fibbing little prawn. Anyway, he asked Santa to be an opera singer, so that’s what he got. I don’t know why I was always messing around with bicycles and cabbage patch kids when super powers and mega talents were available. The second was from Frank Meany, aka Nathan Lane begging to be taken off the naughty list. Now what are the chances of Gonzo ending up with that letter and then that very security guard holding them up at the airport? That’s so weird, right? Last, of course, is Claire’s letter, which is just a gripping “Please don’t let me be alone this Christmas” letter to Santa. So, naturally, they race home to find all the other Muppets cancelled their plans as well, even the belligerent Miss Piggy. In the end, in spite of weak plot lines and cancelled trips, the whole crew got to hang out with Claire and her Mom and be together at home and have the best Christmas ever. That’s what they said anyway. There was a song about it.