"The Muppets" show runner exits, series to be relaunched February 2 with episodes 11-16

[D'Snowth]

ABC has such "high standards" for this show, so they show it by having it copy other shows on primetime television? Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, and bring in someone else from another show to take the guy's place; let's keep forgetting actual Muppet people like Jim Lewis, David Gumpel, Kirk Thatcher, or even Joey Mazzarino now that he's left SST.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

ABC has such "high standards" for this show, so they show it by having it copy other shows on primetime television? Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, and bring in someone else from another show to take the guy's place; let's keep forgetting actual Muppet people like Jim Lewis, David Gumpel, Kirk Thatcher, or even Joey Mazzarino now that he's left SST.

It would be nice to have Joey write for some Muppet stuff,still can't believe we only have one more season of SST with him.Or they could maybe even have Frank Oz write something,he seems to really understand the characters plus he co-wrote The Muppets Take Manhattan.

 

[D'Snowth]

The thing about Frank is he's made it clear that he's completely retired from the Classic Muppets, however, he has said that he may return to at least direct, but only if they approach and ask him, which they aren't doing.

 

[mr3urious]

This is indeed worrying. I also hope that this "soft reboot" doesn't mean tossing out the promising plot lines that we already have.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

The thing about Frank is he's made it clear that he's completely retired from the Classic Muppets, however, he has said that he may return to at least direct, but only if they approach and ask him, which they aren't doing.

In a 2015 interview, when asked about whether he would want to return, he said, "I’m not asked to go do it [because] they have other people doing [the characters and voices] now, and they’re satisfied. But I would love to go back and do it for a short period of time, yeah."

 

[Muppet fan 123]

I doubt that it would be like hitting the reset button. Im assuming it would still acknowledge the first half of the season while being a soft reboot of the series. It'll be a bit more variety show format (again, still guessing).

The reason why this sucks is bec reboots mid season is a sign of a dying show. Its never worked. A better fate would have been if ABC allowed it to run the way it is and retool for Season Two. Plus that would have given more time. With six episodes it'll be tough to satisfy and ABC might feel the reboot didn't have strong enough legs for S2.

 

[jobi71]

I am cautiously optimistic with this report. I have enjoyed all the episodes, but I think there is still room for tweaking. I think they are close to capturing that "Muppety Feel". In fact in some plots and some characters (Deadly, Carl, Yolanda) they have it. So, I say let them tinker. They have a handful of episodes left. I am curious what they will be like.

 

[sarah_yzma]

I am going to remain optimistic. Prady and Barretta are who I really want the vibe of the show to come from, so I am feeling pretty good about it still.

 

[charlietheowl]

Not sure what to make of this. I think it will be worth watching the writing teams on the episodes up until the hiatus at 16, to see if any of Kushnell's episodes (he wrote one and two with Prady, four and six with other writers) see to have thematic patterns compared to other writing teams. Episodes four and six were Piggy-centric, so maybe they partially disagreed on writing her character? Obviously that's not enough to lead to a departure, but it's the only pattern apparent to me so far.

We'll see what they do. I highly doubt they're going to go to a TMS style show, my guess is they're going to focus more on "absurd" plotlines than the relationship-based comedy.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

Not sure what to make of this. I think it will be worth watching the writing teams on the episodes up until the hiatus at 16, to see if any of Kushnell's episodes (he wrote one and two with Prady, four and six with other writers) see to have thematic patterns compared to other writing teams. Episodes four and six were Piggy-centric, so maybe they partially disagreed on writing her character? Obviously that's not enough to lead to a departure, but it's the only pattern apparent to me so far.

We'll see what they do. I highly doubt they're going to go to a TMS style show, my guess is they're going to focus more on "absurd" plotlines than the relationship-based comedy.

Oh,I really hope so,I'm getting really tired of all the dating.