Muppets Now: Miss Piggy Steals the Show

Keri Lumm reviews the new Disney+ show Muppets Now for Paste, which you can watch in the video above or read the transcript of below:

I’ve been a part of the Miss Piggy fandom since I was a girl. The Muppet Show, the movies—it was the kind of thing that you loved to watch as a kid. I think the appeal to me as a kid was that I felt I was watching a show for adults with puppets.

Does that make any sense? It was as if I knew it was better than other kid shows because my parents actually enjoyed it, and while what I watched as a kid were re-runs, you had a feeling that you were watching the Carol Burnett show but for an 8-year-old.

So I was thrilled when I found out that Disney+ was bringing the franchise back to their streaming platform with Muppets Now.

It’s a bit like the old show in that it’s full of small sketches and segments, and in some ways, it reminded me of John Mulaney’s popular Netflix show for kids that adults also enjoyed, The Sack Lunch Bunch.

And yet, while it definitely has that feeling of watching a silly show, at points they tried to educate me.

Gotta tell you, I’m not into being educated by the Muppets. That is the job of Sesame Street puppets.

And so, in that way, the show really shines brightest when it’s about Miss Piggy. She interviews people, and at one point even asks Aubrey Plaza to share a story that she made up with her publicist, and it was perfect. It felt a bit like Between Two Ferns. I can only hope that Miss Piggy eventually interviews Justin Bieber.

While I appreciate all of the characters, watching this show reminded me how much I love Miss Piggy. She is a pig, and yet for plenty of girls, I would go out on a limb and say that she was their first exposure to a truly confident female character.

She is a pig. She is not supposed to be attractive, and yet she is. She’s fully confident in everything she does, and dare I go even further and say that is what makes her sexy?

Did a puppet teach me to be sexy?

Honestly, it didn’t work. I don’t feel confident 9 times out of 10, and maybe Miss Piggy doesn’t either, but she appears so confident in her appeal that she chases Kermit for years. He rejects her, she doesn’t care—she is still fabulous.

Her feminine wiles are put on full display in the new show in a segment she does with the equally hot Taye Diggs. It’s full of flirting, and he seems to be into it!

How did this turn into a Miss Piggy fandom piece? I don’t know. But as I watched it, I thought about how smart Jim Henson was to give us girls someone who is confident in herself—even if she is a pig.

Keri is a professional chatterbox who loves watching TV & movies, reading about pop culture, and gawking at any craziness on the internet. You can follow Keri on Twitter.

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