The fucking Muppets arenāt entertaining. At all. Not even a tiny little bit. First of all, who is their intended audience, even? Not kids, really, because they contain a bunch of references to stuff that kids really wonāt get. Kids donāt really know how a rock drummer is supposed to behave. They wonāt find Kermit and Miss Piggyās couple dynamics relatable. They donāt understand that Fozzie Bear is supposed to be an old-fashioned standup comedian. Itās all a bunch of weird cultural callouts, from a very specific 1950s-through-1970s American time period. Even kids in the mid-1970s didnāt actually understand what they were seeing.
But, on the other hand, none of that shit is appealing to adults. At least, it shouldnāt be. The pig woman is low-key horny all the time, but isnāt being satisfied by the naked frog guy? Thatās funny to you? Those old guys are trolling everyone from the fake balcony seats, but they canāt ever actually put together an actual joke? You canāt understand what either the chef or the scientist guy is saying?
STOP ME IF I GET TO SOMETHING THATāS ACTUALLY FUNNY, RIGHT?
It just isnāt fucking funny. Any of it. And itās really not cute. Itās allllll just fucking stupid, from start to finish.
I donāt get what the appeal was ever supposed to be, and Iām pretty sure it only got popular because a large number of people were simultaneously afraid that they were missing the joke, missing references, missing SOMETHING, and they didnāt want to be seen as stupid, soooooo they agreed with the small number of shitheads, who were like āBRILLIANT! THIS IS GOING TO CHANGE PUPPETRY FOREVER!ā
Puppetry is a shit-tier medium, anyway. Yeah, I said it. Real controversy Iām kicking up, huh? Yeah, you all KNOW puppetry sucks. It originated during the Classical and Medieval periods, when people desperately needed entertainment, but couldnāt stand to look at the faces of the other villagers for one more second, even if theyād written a play, and it was the only thing you could go and see, other than your walls.
The only SENSIBLE reason that the fucking Muppets are actually beloved is that people in the English-speaking world all watched Sesame Street, and that show is tangentially associated with the Muppets. And thatās fine. But itās actually a kidsā show. And itās not really the same exact thing as the Muppets. The two franchises are related, but Sesame Street actually teaches kids the alphabet and shit.
And fuck Jim Henson, himself. He was just some guy with a beard and a MASSIVE EGO. Youād have to have a giant fucking ego to shit out that kind of nonsense, with such utter confidence. If only heād been able to actually write comedy or drama, he probably WOULD have been a great man. But he couldnāt, so he wasnāt. He was just a weirdo with a puppet fixation, who had a knack for jamming his foot into Hollywoodās door, before anyone could close it on him. Moreās the pity.
Stop lionizing a deeply and pathetically unfunny, uninteresting man, just because he died tragically. Lots of people die tragically. It doesnāt retroactively give them talent.
EDIT: hmmmmmm, it seems as if my UNPOPULAR OPINION, which I posted in the place for UNPOPULAR OPINIONS is immediately proving to be pretty UNPOPULAR. Please keep this in mind, when youāre getting ready to type your personal attacks.
Aight, lemme see ifān I canāt match the goofy ass rant energy hereā¦
Motherfucker, we had lawn dartsā¦ 6" long finned metal spikes that you threw across the yard at a hula hoop. Think Cornhole, but with giant stabby thingsā¦ We shot each other with bb guns, on fucking purposeā¦ You know why?
Because TV had maybe ten channels. VCRs didnāt even exist. If you wanted to watch a movie, you dug through 15 pages of schedules in a little comic book looking deal that came in the Sunday paper (and if you didnāt get a Sunday paper, well fuck youā¦) looking to see if it was gonna show that week and when, and hopefully you were able to watch TV whenever the hell it was gonna be on, which never once fucking happened to anybody everā¦
We had cartoons on Saturday morning until a bunch of singing Mexican kids came on, and then it was whatever was on the damned thing. You got days of our lives, Dallas, some fucking nutjob recruiting for shit like jonestown (there was always one on one of the channels), mr ed, or the fucking muppetsā¦ We watched the fucking muppets because it wasnāt in fucking black and white, didnāt have a talking horse or a bunch of goofy ass Germans making bad jokes, and we really didnāt give a fuck who shot JR because we didnāt even know who the fuck he wasā¦
Knight Rider and A Team were āprime timeā, wich didnāt mean it was what everybody was streaming, it meant it showed in the hours betweern school/work and bedtime when people had time to watch. There was exactly ZERO ability to make anything appear on that fucking TV except whatever 10 options you had at any given time, until the Atari came out.
The Muppets were our Biden. Not great by any metric whatsoever, but the alternatives were all crap, so it was what we went with and we all enjoyed the lack of shitshow alternativesā¦
Three things. Four really, but Iām leaving the fourth un-numbered:
You make a bunch of excellent points, unironically.
I will take the āmatch the goofy ass rant energyā remark on the chin. Hands up, dead to rights, you got me on that one.
Most importantly, itās refreshing to see anyone of your generation unreservedly admitting that all sane people have to choose Bidenā¦or else, well, youāre not actually sane.
On the other hand, your generation also voted for Ronald Reagan. If youāre one of those voters, you can eat my Millennial ass. I know ass-eating is more of a Gen-Z thing, but Iām young at heart.
Important to note, that had people never tried trickle-down economics, then we wouldnāt have data telling us about its effects. This is kinda just how the āmarch of historyā works, its how the data that can be used to fill textbooks gets generated in the first place.
Itās like wishing a lab experiment had never been done just because it resulted in disproving something. Itās good that it disproved something, thatās helpful.
If we arenāt both in a concentration camp in five years, Iāll continue to agree with this comment. If we are, well, it doesnāt really matter.
Now that was funny!