The Muppets has its hands in too many territories for the comedy to be in focus.
Late night TV goes hand in hand with celebrity cameos, and The Muppets utilizes that trope on Up Late with Miss Piggy. Unfortunately, these brief visits on the 30-minute show lack any enjoyment for a viewer.
The writing crew opens the “Hostile Makeover” episode by signing a birthday card and a joke on male genitalia. Fozzie steps in and announces the email he received about being invited to Jay Leno’s house for a party.
Gonzo snubs the invite by saying he always deletes those spam emails.
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Scooter runs in the room where he alerts Kermit and the others that Miss Piggy is in a "code red." In a confessional, Kermit explains he and the crew created a traffic light system where code green means Miss Piggy is calm, which has never happened. Yellow, someone’s crying, and red is complete chaos.
Piggy barges in the writers' room and dumbly and unnecessarily torments everyone about her Sharpie markers being switched out. As Kermit and Scooter are cowering under a table, Piggy’s seamstress reveals that Piggy has no date for the People’s Choice Awards.
Just like a twister, she leaves with debris everywhere, and Kermit realizes he must find her a date for the red carpet event.
The writers are hard at work trying to find any male celebrity as a guest for the show so they can set him up with Miss Piggy. They frantically cross off actors such as Jeff Goldblum, who is unable to attend, or in Keanu Reeves’ case, overweight for a role he is currently in.
Finally, they settle on the excellent choice of Josh Groban — who has the singing voice of beautiful American hilltops — to be Piggy’s next guest and potential date to the awards show.
The crew creates an elaborate set for the show with candles and fake snow as Groban sings with Miss Piggy while playing a grand piano as she’s draped over it.
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The match ends up a success, and they go to the award show and begin dating. Kermit has been pretty smug since then.
Groban is familiar with the Muppets. He’s made a cameo in Muppets Most Wanted as a confined prisoner in Siberia, and his role for this episode was just as weird with less singing and without the Siberia part.
We only heard him sing once, which is a crime in the name of basic cable. His acting role, however, did not compensate for the numbers he did not sing. He was a passive boyfriend who channeled his ideas and thoughts through Piggy as a way to influence the show. It’s a shame, since Groban is a pretty comical person on the screen and on talk shows in general.
Soon Piggy begins suggesting the Electric Mayhem become acoustic. The ideas are terrible, and Kermit wants to get rid of the “horribly evil, incredibly talented velvet-throated piano god.”
No one agrees with him because since Piggy’s rendezvous, she’s been in code green, and no one has had to do a “pre-show cry.” Even Animal used to cry before the show.
Meanwhile, Fozzie attends Jay Leno’s party, which didn’t turn out to be a spam email. Leno establishes that he and Fozzie are good friends, which phases Fozzie so much he wants to steal something from Leno to commemorate this. He steals Leno’s candy dish by putting it under his hat.
Yet another weird backstory for Fozzie, but this is oddly better than the human girlfriend in the premiere. The Jay Leno spiel is still pretty far-fetched, but let's at least try to move up from here.
Fozzie returns to work and tells the crew about what he stole and soon becomes paranoid when he realizes that a big celebrity like Leno must have security cameras.
Kermit comes up with a plan to make Piggy break up with Groban after his confrontation with Groban did not work.
“Wouldn’t the world would be a better place if everyone was a little like me?” Groban says. You’re not wrong, but you confuse me to my core, you lovely singing man.
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Fozzie returns to Leno’s house to try and put the candy back in its place but breaks it outside his house during his confessional. Leno wants Fozzie to open for him in Las Vegas, and when Leno leaves, Fozzie is so flustered again that he feels as if he must steal something to mark this life-changing event. He goes for a bronze rooster this time but gets caught. Leno then laughs and recalls the time he stole George Carlin’s candy dish. The candy dish that Fozzie stole and shattered happened to be that dish, and Leno kicks him out.
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Already the comedy is too obsessed with covering all areas of funny. The Muppets are still the puppets we love, but they take over the unflattering adulthood by worrying too much about the little problems we as adults face every day in the real world. It reminds us, too, how our problems can be just as pathetic and minuscule, which isn’t funny. The fun-loving comedy is gone. Let's create a Muppet movie on finding it.
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The cameos are not substantial. There were two-second snippets of Laurence Fishburne and Lea Thompson, but I wish they were more significant for me to appreciate.
Ultimately, Kermit has the sign outside the studio, "Josh Groban presents Up Late with Miss Piggy" to prove the point and have Piggy realize she’s queen bee. So she offs Groban, and we’re back at square one.
Muppet MVP: the Swedish chef, who had the best lines, which says a lot because he speaks gibberish.
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