Are The Muppets Worth Getting Mad About?

Say what you will about we conservative Christians, we do not lack opinions. And we’re eager to tell you what they are—sometimes even before we know exactly what we’re talking about.

Take ABC’s The Muppets, which premiered Tuesday. Before the premiere, the show was widely advertised as an “adult” Muppet show—a phrase used by Kermit the Frog himself in an interview or two. One advertisement, showing a towel-toting Kermit, declared, “Finally. A network TV show with full frontal nudity.”

It’s certainly not the most auspicious way to advertise what one would think would be a show for the whole family. Indeed, lots of conservative Christians were horrified. In fact, One Million Moms called for the show’s cancellation shortly before the first episode aired—issuing a petition that called the program “perverted.”

“The puppet characters loved by kids in the 1970s and 1980s and beyond are now weighing in on interspecies relationships and promiscuity,” the petition said.

I’m no scientist, but frogs and pigs are of different species, yes? Even the original Muppet Show had a bit of an edge to it (nostalgia makes us forget such things), and, as we see from this clip, its share of passionate intrigue as well.

But romantic semantics aside, the thing that was most striking about the One Million Mom petition was that it made specific references to the ad campaign leading up to The Muppets, but only generalities about the show itself—and nothing that couldn’t have been learned from reading the advance press. I’m guessing that some critics received screeners of The Muppets, but from the petition, I can’t say that One Million Moms did. In fact, if I was a betting man, I’d say they called for the show’s cancellation without seeing the show.

When Franklin Graham joined One Million Moms in their outrage, he admitted he hadn’t watched. He took the Moms at their word. “It sounds to me like the whole show should be off limits!” he wrote in a Facebook post that garnered at least 72,000 likes and nearly 40,000 shares.

And then, that evening, The Muppets actually aired.

The first episode of The Muppets was rated TV-PG, which feels about right. It served up a few vaguely risqué jokes. If we were rating on a scale of 1-10 in terms of suitableness for families—with 1 being, say, Bob the Builder and 10 being Game of Thrones, the old Muppet Show would be worth a 2, and ABC’s new Muppets would probably peg out at a 3. Maybe a 3.5 if you’re feeling particularly angry. It’s worth a word of warning to families, certainly. But it’s hardly the second coming of Family Guy.

That said, The Muppets indeed felt “adult”—more so in its cynicism than in its explicit content. The heart of Jim Henson’s creation—so evident in the original show, in The Muppet Movie and even surprisingly in 2011’s The Muppets—felt like it was missing. Kermit, the well-meaning, put-upon everyman (everyfrog?) has always been the soul of the Muppets, and that has given the franchise an abundance of goodness. Miss Piggy, at least early on, feels like the driver of this new incarnation. And something feels like it’s been lost along the way.

Perhaps that’s by design. Perhaps, as the show goes on, a sweeter side to the show will flower. But until then, let me leave you to this—to remind you of just how cool the Muppets can be.