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Duke Remington
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Out of curiosity, are there Muppet characters out there that you think have fallen victim to "Flanderization" over the years?
Here's a few examples:
I know that some sites, including ToughPigs and TVTropes.org, feel that Sam Eagle has been affected by Flanderization. As TVTropes points out, "On The Muppet Show, he started out as a general, pro-American detractor of the show's non-cultural content and a Stop Having Fun Guy with strong, exaggeratedly right-wing strawman views on various issues. In recent media, such as the Muppet Viral Videos, he's been depicted as generally obsessed with Americana itself and not much else. (For instance, he starts singing American Woman" by The Guess Who just because it has "American" in the title, something that the old Sam would never do.)
Of course, there's also the stuff about how Kermit has gotten too soft/too nice/too passive since Jim's death.
As for instances that I do agree with, I gotta say that I strongly feel Miss Piggy's character has been Flanderized more often than not in recent years, as I've expressed on other threads.
Piggy was always a force of nature, of course, but her personality had multiple layers and complexities to it. We actually knew that a lot of her negative feelings stemmed from insecurities (we all know she had a pretty lousy childhood) and she displayed a broad emotional range, as well as a greater amount of subtleties.
If you watch a lot of her earlier appearances, while she does get angry and violent constantly, she displayed her softer sides too, which Eric Jacobson's Piggy almost never displays today. For instance: she asked "Are the octopuses alright?" in the James Coburn episode of The Muppet Show, she helped Beauregard expose the rats in the Joan Baez episode, etc.--all signs that she did care about her friends, even though her tolerance of them was low. The pig even had a sense of humor, which was showcased especially in Vet's Hospital and At the Dance.
When she did karate chops, she usually did it for a valid reason (like to beat up villains or even to punish another character when they deserved it, like she did to Kermit in the Lena Horne episode or to Fozzie in the Candice Bergen episode, for instance). And much of her karate-chops usually had slow build-ups to them (such as in the Leo Sayer, John Denver, Lena Horne and Florence Henderson episodes, for instance).
Today's Piggy, by comparison, comes off as rather one-dimensional. For example, today's Piggy is almost always angry. She hardly ever displays a sense of humor and she almost never expresses any care or concern for her friends anymore. And karate-chops are almost always the answer to EVERYTHING to her now, even if it's for a very stupid or petty reason (ie: "WHAT DID YOU SAY? HII-YAH!", "THERE'S OTHER WOMEN STANDING NEXT TO KERMIT AND I DON'T KNOW OR UNDERSTAND WHY! HII-YAH!", etc.), unlike in the old days.
And she seems to have lost her old subtleties as well.
Here's a few examples:
I know that some sites, including ToughPigs and TVTropes.org, feel that Sam Eagle has been affected by Flanderization. As TVTropes points out, "On The Muppet Show, he started out as a general, pro-American detractor of the show's non-cultural content and a Stop Having Fun Guy with strong, exaggeratedly right-wing strawman views on various issues. In recent media, such as the Muppet Viral Videos, he's been depicted as generally obsessed with Americana itself and not much else. (For instance, he starts singing American Woman" by The Guess Who just because it has "American" in the title, something that the old Sam would never do.)
Of course, there's also the stuff about how Kermit has gotten too soft/too nice/too passive since Jim's death.
As for instances that I do agree with, I gotta say that I strongly feel Miss Piggy's character has been Flanderized more often than not in recent years, as I've expressed on other threads.
Piggy was always a force of nature, of course, but her personality had multiple layers and complexities to it. We actually knew that a lot of her negative feelings stemmed from insecurities (we all know she had a pretty lousy childhood) and she displayed a broad emotional range, as well as a greater amount of subtleties.
If you watch a lot of her earlier appearances, while she does get angry and violent constantly, she displayed her softer sides too, which Eric Jacobson's Piggy almost never displays today. For instance: she asked "Are the octopuses alright?" in the James Coburn episode of The Muppet Show, she helped Beauregard expose the rats in the Joan Baez episode, etc.--all signs that she did care about her friends, even though her tolerance of them was low. The pig even had a sense of humor, which was showcased especially in Vet's Hospital and At the Dance.
When she did karate chops, she usually did it for a valid reason (like to beat up villains or even to punish another character when they deserved it, like she did to Kermit in the Lena Horne episode or to Fozzie in the Candice Bergen episode, for instance). And much of her karate-chops usually had slow build-ups to them (such as in the Leo Sayer, John Denver, Lena Horne and Florence Henderson episodes, for instance).
Today's Piggy, by comparison, comes off as rather one-dimensional. For example, today's Piggy is almost always angry. She hardly ever displays a sense of humor and she almost never expresses any care or concern for her friends anymore. And karate-chops are almost always the answer to EVERYTHING to her now, even if it's for a very stupid or petty reason (ie: "WHAT DID YOU SAY? HII-YAH!", "THERE'S OTHER WOMEN STANDING NEXT TO KERMIT AND I DON'T KNOW OR UNDERSTAND WHY! HII-YAH!", etc.), unlike in the old days.
And she seems to have lost her old subtleties as well.
Hmm.....now I am dying to know! 
