ABC took The Muppets off life-support today, terminating the one season run of the new mockumentary style sit-com staring the Jim Henson created characters. The last few episodes of the show were reworked by a new showrunner, but by then the damage had been done. Little of the original humor fans loved about the Muppets was there, and the new humor the show attempted didn’t fit The Muppets brand and failed to attract a new audience.
Once again we’re in a period where there are no Muppets on TV and no Muppet movies announced. Yes, we’ll probably still have Social Media (Disney was recently hiring for a social media manager for the brand) and, who knows, The Muppets could totally rock social media with the right genius behind it.
That Disney with all its money still hasn’t been able to crack the mold of bringing Kermit, Miss Piggy and their friends into the post-Facebook era on TV seems odd. They definitely tried, I give them credit for that, but it just fell flat.
If you have an idea for Disney to successfully leverage The Muppets and bring them to a new generation of fans, share it in the comments.
It’s simple and obvious. Bring back The Muppet Show. Not a mockumentary sitcom but the original style of the show, the original theme song, and so on. Don’t reshape, reboot, rearrange, or revamp what worked perfectly. Just do it again!
You have great Muppet voice actors. You have countless new and old Muppets to use. You have a world filled with singers, actors, and other celebrities who would be thrilled to guest on The Muppet Show. You have 3 or 4 generations of fans waiting for that classic inspirational, celebrational, Muppetational feeling…not post-modern meta-mockumentary nonsense.
Just do that–The Muppet Show, like it was but with modern production quality. In other words, do what Disney did with Star Wars: bring back what worked the first time around, and don’t mess around with the formula!
Yes. Get better script writers. The Muppets have always been really funny. Why didn’t they keep a similar style to the previous series. This was a bit too much like a soap. I am very sorry to see Jim Hensons wonderful creation being treated like this.
I actually liked the new re-boot. It was an attempt to move forward with the characters rather than fall into the trap of nostalgia, but it didn’t resonate with its target market, which was the people who remember the old show.
The show had all the hype, but couldn’t deliver in the end.
As to what to do with the Muppets now, how about brand ambassadors for Disney? Use them in the parks, on the promo video for the Magic Express, commercials for the vacation destinations or the vacation DVD’s? A short 30 second spot, or 1 minute commercial can squeeze the humor of the Muppets into it, plus you remind people that Muppets are Disney. Expose them to the audience, keep them in front of people’s minds with twitter, or youtube videos.
We finally had a great show with all of the jokes and innuendos and Disney Cancels it. Dammit! Put it back! There is nothing on TV that I really like. Finallly I Find a great show that is both entertaining and funny for all ages and it is gone. I guess there wasn’t enough violence and death to sustain the show.
Maybe it’s just nostalgia on my part, but I thought the Muppet baby cartoon worked when I was a kid. Maybe they could do a cartoon to keep them on everybody’s radar. Then use the real deal on movies and in the park.
The fact is that the Muppets worked because they appealed to children, and still had humor that adults could enjoy (much like the old Warner Brother cartoons). So, those shows held up, and still hold up. Tackling adult issues, ignoring children, and essentially recasting the Office using the Muppets was a HORRIBLE idea and the person responsible was obviously wrapped up in the trend of trying to make everything “edgy” as opposed to embracing the Muppets brand and doing something great with what they were given. Hopefully they will recover from this ill-thought out attempt at a revival.
I had so been wanting it to succeed…
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