Muppets Tonight what went wrong?

[Muppet Master]

I think this review of Muppets Tonight (I think the only one ever on Youtube) best shows MT's good side and bad side in a way respectful to the show.

 

[BeakerJanice]

I don't think something went wrong!I loved Muppets tonight I saw some Episodes for Example Heather locklear,The cameo Show and Andie macdowell.

It was something other than TMS,But I liked Clifford!Some old characters had incredible Parts/whole Episodes!Bunsen and Beaker had wonderful Parts and I laughed so much. For Example in the andie macdowell episode how Bunsen Wanted to change everything

I loved MT and some Episodes!Especially Heather locklear,the cameo Show,Andie macdowell,Rick moranis and the best of Muppets tonight!!

The new characters were wonderful,funny and good! Pepe and Seymour made me laugh with their show,so much that I Can't stop!!

 

[Gonzo14]

Reading these really makes me want to go back and watch these again. For the most part, I agree with what people have been saying about new characters being unnecessarily created.

If you look, the ones that are still around are ones that couldn't just be replaced with classic Muppets. I'm mainly talking about Pepe and Bobo, who are great characters that weren't copies of other Muppets. Another example would be Big Mean Carl who fits in really well with the Muppet monsters.

Dr. Phil is about half and half for me, because I really enjoyed him, and he wasn't a carbon-copy of Bunsen, but "Tales from the Vet" was too close to Muppet Labs.

They tried to regenerate Pigs in Space with new characters by spoofing Star Trek, Next Generation, but Pigs in Space without Link or Dr. Strangepork is just kinda blah.

David Hogselhoff could've been entirely replaced with Link Hoghtrob, even though they wanted the name parody of David Hasselhoff.

Zippity Zap being the "cool" character could've also been replaced with Floyd.

and one of the biggest missed opportunities was the absence of the Swedish Chef, a Fan-Favorite who had already been used in Muppet Christmas Carol. He was in that opening scene, but that's it if I recall.

 

[Drtooth]

Except for any compliment for the dreary Muppets From Space, I pretty much agree with you. While I liked Muppets Tonight, it really was like having a Muppet Show without most of the Muppets.

I see that standpoint. The problem with Muppets Tonight was that it was trying to rebrand the property after essentially losing most of the characters. Kermit was strangely on a limited use basis at that point, and quite honestly, he wouldn't have worked as the host with the format. That weird talk show/sketch comedy thing. Which was a strange and indecisive format anyway. Though I'd say that the parody segments (for the most part... the Pig segments were lousy) here were much more hip and well done than some of the stuff in JHH. If MT was a little more like a polished version of JHH, it would have worked better, and Kermit would have been a perfect host. In MT, he'd just be that awkward, trying to be hip Kermit that said, completely out of character, "Get down with your bad selves" in MFS.

That said, they certainly had full use of Steve, Dave, and Jerry's characters. They should have used more original characters in silent cameos, sure. But I'd say a good amount of the new characters made for the show were quite good. Just... the pigs...the pigs... well, maybe not Howard Tubbman. That was actually kinda funny. But Spamella and Hasslehog were even more vapid than what they were parodying. Worse yet, when Miss Piggy was involved in the skit, they just ramped up the overly jealous schtick and let the fat jokes fly.

Dr. Phil is about half and half for me, because I really enjoyed him, and he wasn't a carbon-copy of Bunsen, but "Tales from the Vet" was too close to Muppet Labs.

They tried to regenerate Pigs in Space with new characters by spoofing Star Trek, Next Generation, but Pigs in Space without Link or Dr. Strangepork is just kinda blah.

David Hogselhoff could've been entirely replaced with Link Hoghtrob, even though they wanted the name parody of David Hasselhoff.

Well, considering Link wasn't fully recast until a video game, and didn't actually get screentime in anything until the movie before the last one, that would have been impossible. Strangepork should have been there, and he actually was in one Bay of Pigs Watch, but what made PISD9 unfunny was forgetting what made PIS funny in the first place and just had Andy and Randy run around like idiots.

As for Tales from the Vet, I'd say it's completely different from Muppet Labs because it was more of a horror comedy angle. VanNeuter was different comedically than the mild tempered Bunsen Honeydew, and the humor focused mostly on VanNeuter getting the brunt of the physical humor. Muppet Labs was more about making fun of scientists who build stupid, impractical inventions and seeing them fail on Beaker was most of the humor. TFTV was more about mocking mad scientists and humiliating VanNeuter along the way.

Still, a more nuanced approach to this series would have been a blend of old skits and new. Some of the new stuff was actually pretty good. The stuff that didn't work wanted to be the old show in all the wrong ways.

 

[Muppet Master]

Reading these really makes me want to go back and watch these again. For the most part, I agree with what people have been saying about new characters being unnecessarily created.

If you look, the ones that are still around are ones that couldn't just be replaced with classic Muppets. I'm mainly talking about Pepe and Bobo, who are great characters that weren't copies of other Muppets. Another example would be Big Mean Carl who fits in really well with the Muppet monsters.

Dr. Phil is about half and half for me, because I really enjoyed him, and he wasn't a carbon-copy of Bunsen, but "Tales from the Vet" was too close to Muppet Labs.

They tried to regenerate Pigs in Space with new characters by spoofing Star Trek, Next Generation, but Pigs in Space without Link or Dr. Strangepork is just kinda blah.

David Hogselhoff could've been entirely replaced with Link Hoghtrob, even though they wanted the name parody of David Hasselhoff.

Zippity Zap being the "cool" character could've also been replaced with Floyd.

and one of the biggest missed opportunities was the absence of the Swedish Chef, a Fan-Favorite who had already been used in Muppet Christmas Carol. He was in that opening scene, but that's it if I recall.

From a muppet fan standpoint, yes those reasons made the show less appealing compared to TMS, but there was still little excuse for taking out all of Jerry Nelson's characters, really Floyd, Lew, Crazy Harry, they were all nowhere to be seen. Though even then the show was enjoyable to me. Though, from a general non-muppet fan standpoint even if all the old muppets were there it still would have been cancelled. Everyone was in that phase that the muppets could not do anything without Henson, and even if Kermit was the host everyone would make some dumb excuse that he sounded funny, and that is why I hate the show. It was just the wrong time for a new muppet shoiw, unlike now which would be a perfect time since the muppets are somewhat popular again.

 

[Daffyfan4ever]

As someone said before, the time slot was thrown around a lot, and viewers didn't know when to watch it. It wasn't really the show itself, but when it was placed.

Not to mention the fact that not everybody got Disney channel, so I didn't see the second season eps until they were put online.

I agree with the comments about the fact about hosting. Clifford is great and all, but like someone said, he may have been better as a background character since I know that worked in JHH.

 

[minor muppetz]

Today I've been thinking about some of the shows weaknesses that I and other fans have thought of - namely the fact that the show focused more on new characters and less on old characters, and the show's habit of not showing full musical numbers very often. But I wonder how much those affected the show. Those matter to us (and I don't think any of us stopped watching the show while it was on the air), but did they matter to casual fans (casual fans might have been turned off by Kermit not being the host, or the lack of Frank Oz's characters, maybe also the lack of Rowlf, Scooter, The Electric Mayhem, and certain other supporting characters... i doubt many would have cared too much about the lack of characters like Beauregard, Lew Zealand, Crazy Harry, and others).

In a Muppet Mindset interview, Kirk Thatcher mentioned that ABC got a new manager at the time who was very interested in shows that attracted 18-35-year-old males, and was worried about whether Muppets Tonight would attract that audience. There's also the possibility that it aired on Friday nights, but it was part of TGIF, which seems to have been a very successful programming block for its time slot. Of course, Muppets Tonight and The Jim Henson Hour both had episodes about ratings, maybe ratings episodes are bad luck (the Tough Pigs review of the JHH ratings episode pointed out another short-lived show that had an episode about ratings as well... either viewers really don't want to see people talk about ratings, or it's a bad coincidence).