The Muppets Mayhem Season One Early Review

The Muppets Mayhem is the newest series in the Muppets franchise. As an entity, they’ve experienced many successes and failures over their run and as of late, several has clamored that Disney as a company doesn’t know what to do with the property. So, is this latest entry just another example of showrunners who don’t understand the magic of the Muppets? When it comes to this Disney+ series, fortunately, this is not the case.

The Muppets Mayhem stars Lily Singh as Nora, an album executive pursuing her dreams in working in the music industry. She soon comes across the Electric Mayhem Band, a band that found success over the years performing on the now syndicated Muppet show. During that time, the band developed a cult following of devoted fans despite never releasing a full-length album. Now, it was up to Nora to get the band to come together and record an album and in the process, boosting her own career.

Frank Oz, the man who formed the Muppets alongside Jim Henson, has stated several times that The Muppets are supposed to have a bit of an edge to them and he believed that Disney has softened them up over time. Not that The Muppets were never sentimental before Disney owned the property, but their irreverent humor wouldn’t fit into Disney’s box with Mickey Mouse and his gang. If that is an issue with some viewers in the new era of The Muppets, Mayhem will likely rub them the wrong way. However, as a series outside of the Muppet franchise, it is pretty effective and cute. Co-created by Muppet franchise fixture Bill Barretta and Adam F Goldberg, known for his successful sitcom The Goldbergs, the series very much shows his sensibilities as a writer as The Muppets Mayhem has much of that similar goofy and chaotic energy.

Whenever the series is focused on The Electric Mayhem Band themselves, it shines. While it is weird that certain prominent do not appear, it’s easy to get over it as the band of characters and their backstories are fleshed out in profound ways. Their humor is wonderful, zany and very true to Muppet sensibilities. Sadly though, this was definitely not the case whenever the Electric Mayhem Band were not on screen. Also starring several human characters, they were easily the weakest aspect of the series. Including subplots involving sisters learning to bond or a love triangle, they were trite and predictable for the most part while those scenes tended to drag. The series as a whole took a while to get going to the band’s shenanigans. Once it finds its groove, there’s so much fun to be had with trippy and silly sequences that only The Muppets could pull off.

Meanwhile, the celebrity cameos also get better as the series progresses. As it goes on, some of the cameos will surely have viewers cackling, especially if they happen to be fans of The Muppets or just filmmaking in general. A pair of standout bits featured Kevin Smith making an inspired documentary about The Electric Mayhem Band and Peter Jackson who had a reference that was so inside baseball, it’s bizarre that it even made the final cut.

While writing this review, this Muppet fanboy who has been disenfranchised by recent Muppet properties in recent memory is delighted that The Muppets Mayhem is a strong entry and one that continues the streak of good Muppets content following the Haunted Mansion special that was released roughly a year and a half ago on Disney+. Though it may not be perfect, it shows enough promise that will hopefully lead to the series being greenlit for a second season. Recovering from a rough start, once it finds its footing, it is without a doubt some of the best Muppet content in years.

still courtesy of Disney

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Brett Schutt

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