Review: The Muppets – “Bear Left The Bear Write”

Fozzy wrote a skit for Miss Piggy’s show. Kermit doesn’t have the heart to tell him that it’s terrible. Instead, Kermit simply agrees when Fozzy tells him it’s good. Actually, Kermit takes it a step further. He tries to get Fozzy to stop writing skits by telling him to turn this particular skit into a movie. Fozzy takes the advice to heart. He quits the show and goes into the forest to focus on writing.

The secondary plotline focuses on Miss Piggy and Christina Applegate. As a guest on Piggy’s show, Applegate shows an embarrassing clip of Piggy falling face first into a cake at a party. Of course, Piggy does not take well to this. She decides that she needs to get back at Applegate and spends the rest of the episode trying to get Scooter to find Applegate in a compromising position.

Kermit realizes that Fozzy has always been there for him when he needed a friend. He goes after the bear to bring him back to the show. Fozzy, confusing the forest with the mall, tries to get a campers’ bag of food out of a tree. In the process, he is tranquilized by a park ranger. When Fozzy wakes up, Kermit is there by his side to bring him home.

This episode was very weak. The only time I laughed was when Chip the IT guy had to, once again, identify himself. It was a cheap running joke but it was the funniest part of the episode. I don’t want to hate on Fozzy Bear but I don’t think he was ever intended to be a main character. He is the (un)comedic sidekick. He is at his best when he is playing funny man to someone else’s (usually Kermit’s) straight man. When you stick him out there by himself, we can see how painfully lame and unfunny he is. He needs someone to play off. As for the Piggy storyline, there was no substance there. Piggy is at her best when she is a demanding diva. Here she was barely a Mean Girl.

I know this is still early in the series. If the writers keep relying on Fozzy to carry a portion of the episode, we may be in a lot of trouble. I hope that they will be able to save the show from the path it is taking.