Gonzo's personality returns with daredevil tricks and an old jumpsuit that's too small for him in the latest episodes of "The Muppets."
For the entire season, Gonzo the Great has been the Creed Bratton of The Muppets. He’s weird, odd and contributes a minimal amount of sass to the cast. The only problem is Gonzo is Gonzo, not The Office’s infamous “Wacky Weed Creed.”
The episode “Going, Going, Gonzo” completely shied away from a Creed-influenced Gonzo and brought back the pain-tolerant, daredevil Gonzo we all know well. The beginning of the season has just been too odd.
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In “Going, Going, Gonzo,” Miss Piggy is on set when Kermit tells her she cannot have a bottle of “Piggy Water” on her desk during the show. It’s a new line she created, and she’s trying to get it off the ground with some subtle product placement. It has lipstick on the rim as if she took a sip of your water.
Despite the fact that people will think they are drinking from a used bottle, Kermit says she cannot promote it on the show. The water has 30 grams of fat in it by the way.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the on the show and starts doing a “Fly Me to the Moon” duet with Piggy. Kermit cues Sweetums to lower a giant cut-out moon behind them, but no moon appears. Sweetums’ headset broke because he violently sneezed. He sneezes again and scares Gonzo enough where his foot gets caught in the moon’s rope. The moon is now swinging back and forth on stage where Gordon-Levitt and Piggy continue singing while dodging the pendulum of a moon.
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Gonzo hits a really hot stage light in the rafters and lands on the set’s elaborate food table backstage. The entire crew is so flustered. I was too because all this time on the show we have been seeing the odd version of Gonzo the writers created. But after Gonzo responds to everyone’s concerns with a “that was awesome” quip, the original Gonzo the Great returns.
Piggy goes backstage and sees the mess Sweetums and Gonzo created and announces they are both on her list. She shares some examples of how you get on her list, which can be from anything to sneezing or breathing loud to eating a “BLT with a B.”
After all the commotion, Scooter reasons what happened to Gonzo could have been him because he was close by. He then reasons he needs to live his life to the fullest and go crazy.
Rizzo the Rat, Gonzo, Gordon-Levitt, Pepe the King Prawn, Big Mean Carl and Kermit are all playing poker together after the show.
Pepe and Rizzo realized they lost their bad poker player (aka Scooter) to suck money out of, so they invite Gordon-Levitt because he’s rich and claims to have never played poker.
Pepe throws his chips in and says he’s in like “turtlenecks and gold chains” while Carl complains how the Chex Mix has too many “stupid brown disks.” I still don't understand the purpose of Carl's presence.
Gonzo starts reminiscing about his daredevil years and how he never got to do the stunt of his dreams, which is being shot out of a cannon and flying from one skyscraper roof to another and landing in a pool of water. Kermit says he’ll see if he can do it on the show and if he can convince Piggy because she's mad at Gonzo.
Gordon-Levitt sweeps all the money from the table with his winning hand and credits his hustle to acting. According to Gordon-Levitt, people don’t care about plots, they only care about acting.
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Kermit comes into Piggy’s dressing room while she’s doing “nasal electric contouring,” the latest shock-beauty treatment. She’s against Gonzo doing the jump on her show, but Kermit eventually convinces her to have Piggy Water sponsor the jump.
Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem are chilling off stage where they see the moon. Floyd Pepper explains there hasn’t been a real moon since the ‘70s, and Scooter walks in. Scooter wants to live on the edge, and he wants the Mayhem to tell him how.
Dr. Teeth tells him to leave home at age 14 and find a Mississippi voodoo princess named Vienna. The group remembers Scooter can’t go back in time until Floyd says he knows a guy named Eddie who lives in the desert and has a time machine. Zoot says he climbed in the time machine on Friday and got out on Saturday. The whole thing took about a day. The stoner jokes are just too good right now.
Janice offers to pierce Scooter’s ear, and he agrees that having an ear pierced is edgy enough. They’re underneath a black light when Scooter complains he’s experiencing the worst pain ever, but it’s just the ice to numb his ear. He then refuses to keep his head still and violently starts start jerking his body and limbs uncontrollably and runs off with a non pierced ear.
The show is overdosing on Scooter's presence. They never even followed up with his apparent long-distance relationship with Chelsea Handler. He does not add anything funny to the show.
Uncle Deadly attempts to get Gonzo into his very old daredevil costume Gonzo, which is proving to be a challenge due to weight gain. Bobo the Bear and Sam the Eagle talk about their pipe dreams. Bobo always wanted to be a Chicago bear, and by Chicago bear he means just being a bear who lives in Chicago. He reasons they’re good people and no pressure on the body image.
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Sam dreams of serving in America’s commerce, but he can’t even get elected onto the board of his condo association. He refuses to share his fabric softener in the laundry room. Chip the IT Guy wants to bring people joy by tap dancing across the world. OK, cool.
Deadly asks Kermit to say something that’ll make Gonzo gasp so the zipper in his suit has a fighting chance. Kermit says he got Dave Grohl to sing “Learn to Fly.” Gonzo gasps and the daredevil suit is suited up. He also breaks the news that he has to put on a new suit that says Piggy Water everywhere, and he must be referred to as "The Great Gonzo brought to you by Piggy Water," even when answering the phone.
Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker test the cannon jump on the roof with a replica of Gonzo made out of fruit. If Gonzo doesn’t fly at 83.7 mph, he will become a “flesh and blood smoothy.”
Gonzo starts getting scared about the jump and goes to Sam to see if Sam will deem it too gory for TV if he happens to die on television. The network has no objection to Gonzo dying, for it’ll all be in good fun. But, when he hits the wall and explodes, he is not allowed to curse.
Gonzo ends up at Rowlf’s Tavern, and Kermit realizes Gonzo is scared and tells him to call off the stunt. To keep Gonzo’s dignity, he reasons Gonzo shouldn’t associate his name with Piggy Water. The FDA is investigating if it should be called water at all.
Gonzo says he wants to give everyone hope for their dreams. Kermit says his dream is for his friends to be able to tell him anything, and he’ll never judge them. Gonzo says that’s a very boring dream. He then reasons he’s going to call it off because he doesn’t want to be a sell out. It has nothing to do with being scared.
Scooter is back to see the Mayhem and apologizes for causing a disturbance in their hangout place yesterday. They waved it off because they thought it was fun and that Scooter displayed a great deal of “strength and fortuition.” They claim something was awakened inside of Scooter.
On the show, Piggy announces the Piggy Water jump is canceled due to weather conditions. Statler says he didn’t notice any bad weather, and Waldorf says, then again, Statler didn’t notice he was in his neighbor’s apartment until the police caught him taking a bath. That sounds about right.
Grohl is backstage with the Mayhem and asks Mayhem if they remember how they did the song in rehearsal, but instead the band wants do it differently than rehearsal. Grohl asks why they even rehearsed then, but then Lloyd says it’s because if they don’t rehearse then there’s nothing to do it different from. Ugh, Mayhem you are too much right now. Grohl digs the reasoning though.
Piggy introduces Grohl to the Mayhem with the famous Foo Fighters song, “Learn to Fly,” even though it made a lot more sense when someone was flying.
Everyone is rocking out because it’s a pretty awesome song. Gonzo asks Kermit if he actually believes he could’ve made that jump. Kermit says if anyone were to make it, it would have been the Great Gonzo.
Gonzo disappears, and Kermit just realized what he did and runs to the roof. Kermit lights himself in the cannon and Kermit arrives just in time to witness the Great Gonzo land in the pool of Piggy Water.
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The cannon victory cuts to a dark stage with two drumsets with Animal and Grohl. Grohl says he’s been waiting years for a drum off with Animal. They drum back and forth until they both start crazily drumming at the same time. They’re headbanging everywhere until they both just knock their drums out of the way. They call it a win for the both of them.
It may be a sign that the show finally realized those characters don’t need to be transformed or revamped. They’re fine just the way they are, and continuing the story with the character’s same personality isn’t boring. The Muppets will never be boring if you just let them be themselves.
Muppet MVP: Fozzie for not being in this episode at all, and Animal for taking on Grohl in a drum off.
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