If there's one thing I hate being right about, it's something cynical like that. That only goes to prove that it would have at least got a second chance had it not for trying very hard to please the stock holders. I thought them torpedoing Disney Infinity (which still should have been license rescued) was a huge hint at that, but it's at least cold comfort to know that it wasn't merely canned because of low ratings, but because of the most cynical means imaginable. And if ESPN did play a factor in this, and by extension the greedy a&& team and league owners they had to deal with...well, let's just say I'd rather the show was doomed by low ratings. I never liked how there were like 4 ESPNs and only like maybe one of them would actually have a sport of some kind on. What was the point of that?And then the floor dropped, the earnings came in, media crashes and burns and the stock plummets. I've heard it was very last-minute with Muppets. It and Castle were the two series on the bubble at ABC, waiting for a last-minute decision. So the Muppets, in the end got off'd before an S2 entirely due to things that weren't its fault. That's showbiz!
My problem is, as restrictive as it was, it could have worked better if they took 30 Rock as the show to imitate (while not really a mockumentary) rather than The Office. On the plus side, it did get them to give the characters deeper exploration than a simple retread of the original series would have. But they certainly could have made things a little more Muppety and a little less adult. And I feel that was something they were addressing several episodes in. As soon as they mentioned the giant stick of butter, I knew the episode was going to be in turn around. Problem is, they lost too many on the first episode hoping to tune in and get their inner child satisfied, didn't, and promptly switched onto mediocre singing competitions and Naval courts that don't really try those crimes. Again, it's that level of something that tries and fails to become more than what it is being the lesser option than shows that could be written by shoving a pencil in their mouths and burping it on the page and having that still be too intelligent.yet the biggest problem I had with the entire thing was the mockumentary style. It fit the Muppets like a pair of extremely tight pants: no room to breathe, to experiment.
Then again, The Muppets was tardy to the mockumentary party. The Office ended at least 3 years ago, Parks and Rec was rushed off NBC a year prior. A Muppet mockumentary was pitched all the way back a year or two before the first movie announcement, right there with that awful reality show parody which I'm over the moon happy we never got. But I think the choice was based on how MMW did. While I don't think it would have been successful either, the time to make a new Muppet Show was around a year after the first film. I am totally convinced had MMW did much better, we would have had The New Muppet Show 2015 instead of what we got. While I actually wouldn't prefer it, it probably would have held an audience a little better.
EDIT: On the other hand, there was no excuse to renew that terrible new Odd Couple last year. I'm glad they're just burning that season off. Hopefully this will be the last we see of that trainwreck. Talk about actually ruining a classic. They turned it into a generic 1990's sitcom that would have aired between Seinfeld and Friends. You know how quality those were.
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