Review: The Muppets – “Walk The Swine”

Spoilers Below

We’ll start off with Miss Piggy’s plot. Reese Witherspoon is appearing on Piggy’s show. However, Piggy is supremely jealous of Reese. Apparently, Piggy lost the role of June Carter in Walk The Line to Reese and, as we all know, Reese won the Oscar for Best Actress for it. Piggy does everything in her power to knock Reese down. She sends the actress to the parking lot farthest from the studio, then she gets some stranger to valet park the car instead, and gives her guest a suspect food basket. But when Reese finally gets on the show, she refuses to participate in Piggy’s feud. Instead, she talks about her work with Habitat for Humanity. When Reese tells Piggy that she will be building a house for charity the next day, Piggy leaps at the chance to one-up her and brags about building a house as well.

Piggy shows up at the Habitat work site in very inappropriate clothes. (Yes, they do make high heeled work boots. Thanks, Timberland!) Then she spends the day trying to get publicity for simply being there. Reese eventually gets Piggy to do some actual work but, really, it’s more of the two of them trying to outdo each other. In the end, their fighting results in an entire wall falling down. And, yes, the media was there to catch it. Good job!

Knowing she has to fix this, Piggy gets Kermit to invite Reese back on the show so she can properly apologize. Reese apologizes for her behavior first, which was probably a bad idea. Miss Piggy break out in a huge apology song (and rap) with huge production values. Kermit even admits that they probably could have built two houses for the cost of Piggy’s song. But now Piggy is satisfied. That’s all anyone can ask.

Of course, Fozzy also had a storyline. Riki Lindhome is back as Fozzy’s girlfriend, Becky. She goes to see Fozzy’s stand-up act and he is killing it with jokes about her. The bear embarrasses her with jokes about her faults (like she sweats a lot). Becky retaliates by telling Fozzy’s co-workers his dark secrets. Like how he cries when “True Colors” plays. Realizing that this is bad for his relationship, Fozzy agrees to stop the girlfriend jokes. At his next set, he completely bombs. Not wanting Fozzy to suck, Becky asks him to tell his girlfriend jokes. Once again, he is a hit. Buuut…he keeps the jokes up once the set is over. Will this be the end of Fozzy and Becky?

The third story in this episode involves Scooter and Rizzo. The co-workers were in a small car accident in the studio parking lot. Rizzo doesn’t want to involve the insurance companies (presumably because he doesn’t have one) so he gives Scooter his cousin’s business card. This cousin will fix Scooter’s car cheaply and give him a loaner to use. Scooter ends up getting a $500 ticket while driving the loaner because it had bad plates and a bunch of hidden compartments that he couldn’t explain. So Rizzo gives him another business card. This one is for his uncle who is a lawyer. The uncle had Scooter wire him $1,000 but when Scooter went to the address, it was just a hair salon. So Rizzo gives him another business card. This one is for his nephew who is a private investigator. By this time, Scooter is fed up with all the business cards. He’s just going to contact his insurance and take his car to a real body shop. Yes, Scooter finally stood up for himself!

When I saw that there would be three stories in this episode, I was worried that it would be overkill. That none of the plots would get fully fleshed out and we’d be left wondering what we just saw. Thankfully, I didn’t need to worry. None of the plots required the scripts to be particularly deep and it worked well. I also appreciated the fact that the episode didn’t rely on Fozzy as heavily as it had previously. This episode is proof that other characters can handle the secondary plot better than the bear. Why not give Gonzo a little bit of spotlight? The poor weirdo has been relegated to little more than a terrible writing position. He is definitely funnier than that. As it stands, I thought that the Scooter/Rizzo plot was better than the Fozzy/Becky plot. It may be a relief when she is finally out of the picture.