Halfway through Disney’s new The Muppet Show special, the camera cuts to the in-studio audience to reveal Saturday Night Live icon Maya Rudolph, who brags to the Muppet next to her that she’s “met Kermit a few times.” That Muppet is the hideous, dark blue, furry-browed Beautiful Day Monster, who dates all the way back to the 1960s with appearances on programs like The Ed Sullivan Show. While Beautiful Day Monster initially seems bored by Rudolph’s humble brag about Kermit, they soon catch each other’s eyes and begin a romance over a handful of cut-away moments throughout the episode.
This mismatched love affair continues a longstanding Muppet tradition: Be it Roger Moore and Miss Piggy, Animal and Rita Moreno, Gonzo and Madeline Kahn or Fozzie Bear and Raquel Welch, horny human/Muppet romances have always been a part of The Muppet Show. It’s also just one of many examples of how this new The Muppet Show special is a return to form for the characters as Jim Henson always envisioned them.
Arriving today on Disney Plus, The Muppet Show is a half hour special that operates like an episode of the 1970s series, just with 2020s pop icon Sabrina Carpenter as its celebrity guest star. The special, which was executive produced by Seth Rogen, is a bit of a trial balloon for a reboot of The Muppet Show, which Kermit, in typically meta Muppet style, flat-out says to the camera. Hopefully, the effort works because The Muppet Show special manages to feature many of the hallmarks of the original series without ever making them feel stale.
In the beginning of the episode, after a nice, quiet sequence of Kermit getting the studio up and running set to Rowlf playing the piano, Scooter pops his head into Sabrina Carpenter’s dressing room telling her “30 seconds to curtain,” just like in the old show. What follows is a meticulously recreated shot-for-shot recreation of the original introduction, now in glorious HD.
From there, what unfolds follows exactly the format of the old Muppet Show, a variety show full of musical numbers and comedy sketches intercut with the chaos going on backstage. In this particular story, that chaos is caused by Kermit excitedly over-booking the show. Throughout the episode, more and more Muppets pile up backstage, waiting to go on — including obscure characters like the boomerang fish-throwing Lew Zealand, disaster prone romantic duo Wayne and Wanda, crooner Johnny Fiama and his monkey friend Sal, and dozens of others that even the most dedicated Muppet fan will need to turn to the Muppet Wiki to identify.
Most of the sketches are not the recurring ones from the old show, like “Pigs in Space” and “Veterinarians Hospital” (if the show gets renewed, there’ll be plenty of time for that kind of stuff later). The special does, however, revive one classic sketch, “Muppet Labs” starring Bunsen Honeydew and his loyal assistant Beaker. In it, Bunsen gives Beaker experimental new eyedrops to help him with focus, but it promptly causes Beaker’s eyes to fall off his body. The eyes quickly regenerate, but fall off again. From there, endless eyeballs begin launching out of Beaker’s head like baseballs out of a batting machine. Even after the sketch ends, Beaker’s flying eyeballs show up throughout the special, giving an eye to the one-eyed Muppet cat Gaffer and temporarily choking Maya Rudolph.
This is yet another return to form for the Muppets: the running gag. Throughout the old show (and all of the movies), one of the hallmarks of the Muppets’ style of humor was the running gag, which usually begins as funny, then wears its welcome out after a couple more repeats of the same joke, only to become hilarious again later for how many times they repeat it. Great examples of this include the 1980 episode of The Muppet Show hosted by singer Mac Davis where Bunsen clones Beaker six times and the rest of the episode’s sketches all get interrupted by Beaker clones. Or the icy patch everybody slips on throughout the 1987 special A Muppet Family Christmas.
Perhaps most impressively though, the special isn’t afraid to get weird with the Muppets. Besides the Rudolph romance, the most bizarre sketch of the special stars Rizzo the Rat, who sings The Weeknd’s hit song “Blinding Light” with his fellow rats as backup dancers in a dark alleyway. Unlike, say, a Miss Piggy musical number, a Gonzo stunt, or even a Muppet Labs return (all of which we get), no one needed Rizzo to get his own musical number in this special — but that’s what makes it great. It’s the kind of odd, funny, one-off sketch The Muppet Show would do all the time back in the day, but the more plot-driven Muppet movies rarely have time for. It’s especially nice for Rizzo, who was a major Muppet back in the 1990s, but hasn’t spoken in eight years since Disney fired his performer and originator Steve Whitmire for reasons that still remain unclear. His new performer, Bradley Freeman Jr., is doing an excellent job with the character so far.
Having Rizzo sing a song by The Weeknd also makes the segment feel modern, much like the choice to pick Sabrina Carpenter as host over a more obvious Muppets-associated star like Steve Martin. If the Muppets are ever going to shed their status as a nostalgia property and find a new generation of fans, they need to have modern guest stars like Carpenter. (That said, if we get a full reboot of the show, a couple nostalgia guests per season — especially Martin — would be more than welcome.)
The big question now is, “Will it work?” Will this special prove popular enough to bring about a return of The Muppet Show? It’s truly hard to say.
Most Muppet fans will tell you that Disney has mishandled the characters since acquiring them in 2004, with cancelled TV shows like 2015’s The Muppets and 2023’s The Muppets Mayhem, no theatrical outings since 2014, and last year’s closure of Muppet Vision 3D (Jim Henson’s final project). This special could easily join the felt-heap of Muppet history.
Then again, this is the first time a straight-up reboot of The Muppet Show has been attempted, and that’s always been the best format for these characters — something Jim Henson struggled to convince Hollywood of for years before The Muppet Show was greenlit.. There’s also a new Muppet roller coaster coming to Disney World, a new Muppets comic book from Dynamite Entertainment and a new series of Muppet action figures by NECA toys, all in 2026. So while there’s still reason for caution when it comes to Disney and the Muppets, perhaps the presence of Beautiful Day Monster in this new special could provide some hope for some long-awaited beautiful days ahead.
