Kermit and Miss Piggy Officially Split!

[mr3urious]

Boy, Denise got quite a snout job in between the pitch pilot and the series proper!

 

[jvcarroll]

Some are saying that Denise's lack of Muppety eye focus could be intentional, but I tried a hand at tweaking the eyes in Photoshop to give her the classic Muppet look.

 

[Muppy]

Some are saying that Denise's lack of Muppety eye focus could be intentional, but I tried a hand at tweaking the eyes in Photoshop to give her the classic Muppet look.

Even just the slight adjustment of the eyes makes Denise look SO much better. I wish she looked like that ^ (or better yet still like Spamela lol).

 

[Drtooth]

Some are saying that Denise's lack of Muppety eye focus could be intentional, but I tried a hand at tweaking the eyes in Photoshop to give her the classic Muppet look.

That's what I'm talking about. Just a small eye tweak and the character looks a lot better.

 

[Daffyfan4ever]

Yeah. I think that's where they worked with Miss Piggy at first. Around the eyes, or maybe it was the face. I mean, I wasn't around in 1977 so who knows? Lol.

 

[Duke Remington]

I, for one, never care for publicity stunts. They always have the opposite of the desired effect. I'm so ticked I won't watch the new show now.

Kermit & Piggy 4-ever!

Watch it anyway.

 

[dwayne1115]

I have one question.........Does Puppet Heap know how to build puppets?

 

[muppetlover123]

She likes fine actually after a couple days of processing it

 

[Duke Remington]

I have one question.........Does Puppet Heap know how to build puppets?

Of course they do. Don't be silly.

 

[Duke Remington]

I feel that there is too much personal ownership over things like this. I can find changes to certain things (ones I listed before) to be obnoxious, disrespectful of the original concept, or destructive to some extent, in the context that it's the fault of the writers, not the characters themselves. And usually if something's bad enough, it's something to just ignore. Like when they had that Simpsons plotline about Skinner not being Skinner, and it's just completely ignored except for one callback. Though, that show's continuity is wildly inconsistent, and they tend to make the mistake of calling back to things instead of ignoring them.

With the Muppet characters, I've noticed that Disney tends to have a virtual celebrity handle on the Muppets. If anyone remembers the TV Guide "Top 5 non-human characters" Piggy and Kermit have no mention of being puppets or Jim Henson, yet ALF's entry on the list has nothing but references to him being a Puppet. I think that's the intent of publicity here. That we know they're fictional characters, but very special fictional characters that sort of exist sort of don't. The whole "celebrities in their own right" thing that you just can't have with Spongebob or Mickey, or any cartoon for that matter. Part of the fun is the illusion and suspension of disbelief while knowing these are puppet characters. That's why so many of us are Muppet fans. The talent to make these things seem real while knowing it isn't. That's what I like about this "announcement." Taking it too seriously, however, drains all the fun out of it.




That's what I really liked seeing int The Muppets. That one line Kermit says about how Piggy does and says things that pushes Kermit away. That was a refreshing level of complex maturity in a sea of "Fat Joke/ HI-YAH!!!" that plagued the characters since the 90's. I've said it a hundred times before, but it's jarring that Kermit and Piggy seem so distant in MFS. It's due of course to bad writing and direction, but it comes off...weird. The movies usually give Kermit and Piggy a softer, more gentle relationship because that's how movies work in comparison to TV shows. So I can see where some are turned off by this announcement.

But those repetitive "Pig Joke/HI YAAAAH!!!" TV appearances weren't exactly fan favorites. And they were clearly goading Steve in that direction, even before the Disney sale...especially before that. Remember that Thanksgiving Parade appearance to announce VMX? As long as we never get that sort of thing again out of the two characters, I don't mind the direction.

I hope that the Kermit/Piggy dynamic will change for the better in the long term after the new show ends, because I fear that they will end up going to being modern era Flanderized/derailed selves that Steve and Eric have been goaded into portraying them as since the late 90s/early 2000s.

After all, it's not just Piggy who has fallen victim to Flanderization and Character Derailment over the last few years but Kermit has been affected as well--he become much too wussy and his fear of Piggy has been over-exaggerated, making him seem increasingly sad and emotionally-brutalized by the pig-turned psychopath.

In the old days, they were actually on an even playing field and there was more of a give-and-take between the two of them, where even though Kermit often got intimidated by Piggy, he wasn't totally afraid of her, not really sad or emotionally-brutalized and not always hesitant to state his personal opinions about her and their relationship, even if he expressed his views with sarcastic remarks that led to him getting beat up by the pig.

If the character development in the new series is going to include not only both Piggy and Kermit getting their original complexities back (with Piggy not going around karate-chopping everybody every single nano-second and getting jealous of every single female that Kermit interacts with and Kermit not being afraid to assert his authority as Piggy's boss and stand up to her, tell her off, put her in her place, tell her to stop doing all those bad things and even punish her or threaten to fire her when she crosses the line), I REALLY hope that it will affect the two characters in the long-term in future projects, since it's LOOOOOONG overdue to finally abandon the Flanderized/derailed/one-dimensional versions of them that have been forced down our throats for way too long.