Friday, September 25, 2015

Retro TV Friday: The Muppets

S'm not sure if Mitchell will be covering this at the TV blog, but in case he doesn't, take a look at the following:

What were previously sly winks to a grownup audience are now grotesque full-body grimaces, delivered with depressing sledgehammer brutality. In one scene, Animal laments his consequence-free promiscuity. In another, Zoot from The Electric Mayhem is outed as an alcoholic. And then, most heartbreakingly of all, there’s Kermit.

This version of Kermit is absolutely unrecognisable from anything that’s ever come before. This Kermit badmouths fellow celebrities, openly discusses his sex life and, at one point, describes his life as “a living hell”. That’s not who Kermit is. Kermit is the perennial wide-eyed optimist, the figure who grounds the chaos around him in sincerity. Kermit is the dreamer who believes in the power of people. He’s the one who sings The Rainbow Connection. He is most definitely not the stress-eating, coffee-drinking executive that The Muppets paints him as. It physically hurts to see what ABC have done to him.

Rod Dreher points out that all this comes back to Disney, which doesn't surprise me in the least, considering the liberal political attitude of the company and how some of their ABC Family programs include homosexual relationships.  California is due for a major earthquake soon; my question is whether it will be caused by Jim Henson spinning in his grave, or Walt Disney spinning in his.

1 comment:

  1. This probably infuriates Ronald Miller and his family -- and they don't spin in graves. His late wife Diane (Walt's daughter) was very critical of the moves since her father's death. The Disney after they fired the last family members (Miller) has been worse than the Disney when the family ruled. You don't see the Miller family in key roles at Disney now.

    It seems everything on television is taking its cues from premium pay, because they dominate the awards shows, and their perverted messages (see the Amazon Prime show on transgenderism that won big). Television is starting to become "for the elites" where the elites message of perversion is good and Biblical standards is bad has become the message. But who watches the shows that won awards?

    And Muppets is just as bad as Family Feud. Try seeing the questions and answers on the long-running game show now in its 33rd year overall (17th since its 1999 return).

    I wouldn't pay $10 to watch the TV-MA shows on Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, or Showtime. They would be X rated in the movies, and movie theatres spurn those because they would have to treat kids watching family-friendly fare like CART did to Kyle Busch (16 at the time) at a NASCAR Truck Series race. The theatres would have to toss anyone under 17 out of the theatres if an X rated movie was playing in any screen -- all PG, PG-13, and R movies in that multiplex could only feature adults because of concerns kids will enter the screen with the X rated film. Why is X OK for television, and win awards, but not acceptable at the movies?

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