The Muppets S01E15 “Generally Inhospitable” REVIEW

The Muppets S01E15 “Generally Inhospitable” REVIEW

0 comments 📅11 April 2016, 20:27

The Muppets S01E15 “Generally Inhospitable” REVIEW

Hosting the show

stars 3

Airing in the UK on Sky One, Mondays, 8pm
Writers: Margee Magee, Angeli Millan
Director: Randall Einhorn

 

Essential Plot Points:

  • Miss Piggy is dancing to a Beyoncé song when she snaps her leg, much to the horror of everybody present.
  • She is taken to hospital by Kermit and Deadly, but this means that Pizza is in charge of that night’s show – and he’s planning to have it hosted by (gasp!) a guest DJ.
  • Determined to stop him, Pepe, Rizzo, Carl and Yolanda lock him in an office. Yolanda, who is great at doing impressions, takes all of Pizza’s calls to throw people off the scent.
  • In the hospital, Miss Piggy is handling the broken leg with admirable restraint, but finally bursts into tears and tells Kermit that she’s scared it’s the end of her career.
  • Kermit comes up with a magic solution: he’ll have Miss Piggy host that night’s show from her hospital bed!
  • Sweetums has spent some time talking to Pizza and says he’s not a bad guy, really: he just has father issues. This gives Yolanda an idea…
  • The show begins, but Miss Piggy accidentally loads up on morphine and is almost incoherent. The team pull out some old Muppets sketches and save the day.
  • Yolanda calls Pizza’s father and gets him to tell Pizza that he loves him. Thrilled, Pizza announces he’s returning home to run his dad’s sportswear store. At last, the pesky brand manager is gone!
  • Miss Piggy is wheeled into surgery and tells Kermit she loves him. Kermit says it back, not realising that Miss Piggy is so stoned she’s telling everyone (and everything) she loves them…
  • Willie Nelson sings with the Electric Mayhem.

Painting

Review:

This is a fun little episode, although perhaps not quite as good as the ones over the previous few weeks: the one-liners are on form, but the plot’s fairly subdued. Its highlight is definitely the Willie Nelson song “On The Road Again”, a lovely little treasure that really brings to mind the kind of performance you’d have seen on the ’70s Muppet Show – given all the celebrity guests from that era, it’s quite surprising that Nelson hadn’t worked with the Muppets before!

Poor Miss Piggy goes through the wars here, with the horrifying announcement that the pigs she grew up with on a farm were all killed and sold as food if they broke their legs. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – what kind of world is this, where Miss Piggy has to hear about people eating her kind? There’s also a joke about a “pig in a hospital blanket” which is definitely funny but also deeply morally dubious. The more we try not to think about these things, the more the show seems to mention them, too! Arrrgh!

Rizzo spelunking

As a side note, the second-half of this season has seen two major cast bump-ups: Deadly and Carl are now major players, while Fozzie barely gets to say any lines (remember how big his role was in the first half of this year?). It’s a good call, as both the obsequious dresser and grumpy receptionist are priceless in every scene. The running joke about things being swallowed by Carl is also amusing: this week sees him gulping down Pizza’s phone, and Rizzo having to go spelunking inside him to retrieve it (“Jeez, it’s like an episode of Hoarders in there!”).

 

The Guests:

Willie Nelson

  • Willie Nelson (who looks as though he’s having the time of his life!)

 

The Good:

Miss Piggy's broken leg

  • Random members of the crew pass out when they see Miss Piggy’s gruesome leg break. Wusses.
  • Deadly tries to distract Miss Piggy from her injury by pointing at a vending machine: “Focus on the encased treats just waiting to be set free!”
  • Another Deadly gem: “Piggy asked that you give her weight in stones so it’s indecipherable.”
  • And we have to admire Janice, who can cheerfully announce: “I can, like, wander around the hospital and curl up next to patients nearing death like that psychic cat,” and not realise how creepy it sounds. Fittingly, the final shot in the episode is of an old woman finding her on her bed and pushing her off, indignant.

Creepy Beaker moment

  • This week’s Beaker-bashing sees him eating a flash-frozen meatball which makes his neck stretch to the ceiling before his body fires up after it. Er… okay, then.

 

The Bad:

  • Kermit talking to himself about still loving Miss Piggy, while not realising he’s being watched by the entire show’s crew, is cringeworthy. Not because it’s bad, but because we have secondhand embarrassment.
  • “Peace and bless,” says Pizza when he says goodbye to someone. This is actually a thing for some people, you know.
  • Miss Piggy staying in a hospital room which contains a painting of sausages. Not the cheeriest of ideas, that.

 

The Random:

Pepe's snapdragon impression

  • Pepe’s impression of a snapdragon is certainly rather arresting. Compare and contrast – what do you think?
  • Best Quote: Yolanda: “Hey Carl, can you use those things on the top of your head? They look like they should be able to hear real good.”
    Carl: “THEY’RE VESTIGIAL!”

Reviewed by Jayne Nelson


Read our reviews of previous episodes of The Muppets

 

 

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