I have just one thing to say about Pig’s in a Blackout: Best. Episode. Ever.
Recap
The episode opens with Kermit addressing the camera when. out of nowhere, Sweetums comes flying in on the golf cart screaming, “Look out! There’s butter on the brakes! There’s butter on the brakes!” Out of control, the golf cart careens into the studio and crashes just off stage.
The butter he had been transporting was for a sketch. It was actually replacing a celebrity interview because something else had already gone wrong: Patrick Dempsey had dropped out of the show due to a poison ivy rash. As the Swedish Chef weeps over the melting butter block, Kermit tells them to put it on ice and he goes backstage, only to be met by Uncle Deadly who informs him that Miss Piggy is stuck in the elevator.
When Kermit arrives at the elevator, he finds Miss Piggy in a panic, and Bobo trying to fix the elevator by messing with the wiring. All he succeeds in doing in sending the elevator zooming down the straight back up again. As soon as the elevator disappears, Fozzie wanders in and falls down the shaft. Could this day get any worse? Yes. Kermit proceeds to faint from the stress.
When he comes to, he finds Doctor Honeydew and Janice standing over him, burning his head with a “Laser thermometer,” and cleansing his aura. Meanwhile Sam is off to the side, still trying to make a connection with Janice.
Suddenly Denise comes running, and shoos everyone away telling him that she’ll take it from there. As she asks him what happened, Miss Piggy runs up and tries to take over. The two pigs then argue civilly how best to help Kermit. Miss Piggy tells him to take a long weekend, and sends him to a spa retreat to relax.
When Kermit leaves, he hands the reigns over to Scooter, who is the associate producer. He tells him that he’ll be in charge until he gets back. Scooter’s first order of business is to send Big Mean Carl on a coffee run and to turn down the thermostat. As soon as he touches the dial, a giant AC pipe falls out of the ceiling, blasting Beaker across the room, spraying him with Freon and freezing him solid.
When Kermit gets to the retreat, he meets Jason Bateman who keeps interrupting his relaxation to explain his personal problems. He is in charge of his daughter’s school play and he wonders if Kermit knows some people who could help him out for little to no money. Or course Kermit can’t help but help.
Back at the studio things have gone from bad to worse. Bunsen is trying to thaw out the still frozen Beaker, and Miss Piggy is in literal hysterics because her new fall wardrobe was destroyed in the AC incident.
Meanwhile, Big Mean Carl has now slipped in a pool of melting butter, sending scalding coffee into Beakers face. On the plus side he’s now thawed out. As he screams in pain, loud explosions from the auditorium catch everyone’s attention. When they go to investigate, they find that one by one, the stage lights are exploding. Condensation from the AC has short circuited the system, destroying all the lights. Suddenly the electricity goes down completely. In a panic, Scooter screams, “I broke Kermit’s show!” and runs from the room.
Back at the retreat, Jason Bateman is bugging Kermit again. Apparently, he called Kermit’s guy about some costumes, but he wouldn’t listen. He wants Kermit to call him for him. Kermit protests, as they are not allowed to use cell phones at the retreat, but once again, he can’t help but help. He calls his guy back, but as soon as he gets off the phone the woman leading the retreat discovers them. Jason throws Kermit under the bus, and he is kicked out.
Back at Up Late, Scooter is packing his bags. Gonzo comes in and asks him what he’s doing. He tries to make excuses, but Gonzo is having none of it. He tells him it doesn’t matter how scared he is, he knows he can do it, he believes in him. Scooter thinks about it and suddenly has an idea. Even without electricity, the show will go on!
That night the power is still out, but the entire stage is filled with candles. They’ve told the audience that this is just their way of raising awareness about energy conservation. Scooter had them hook up the cameras to the golf cart’s battery, and they even found a music group that doesn’t use electricity, or even instruments: YouTube acapella group, Pentatonix!
After leaving the retreat, Kermit makes his way to Rowlf’s Tavern, where he and Rowlf have a good heart to heart. Rowlf tells him that he keeps his stress levels down by chewing on a dirty old sneaker. Kermit just needs to find his version of a dirty old sneaker, and he’ll be on his way to peace and happiness.
Three weeks later, we find Kermit back at work and things are just as stressful as ever. Big Mean Carl is eating the delivery guy’s shirt; Pepé and Rizzo have Chip in a panic by prank calling him as the FBI, investigating his online activities; and Sweetums has clogged the toilet. However, Kermit is cool as a cucumber. He took his conversation with Rowlf to heart, and made his own dirty old sneaker. In this case, that sneaker was ripping out his backyard pool and building a small version of his swamp back home in Mississippi. As the episode ends, Kermit peacefully strums his banjo and sings Rainbow Connection to himself.
Review
This was my favorite episode ever. That’s it. That’s my entire review.
Just kidding. But seriously. Pig’s in a Blackout was so good it almost doesn’t need any more than that. But since I loved it so much, it won’t be hard to find a lot to say.
Let’s get the not-so-good stuff out of the way first, so we can focus on the good stuff. My main beef with this episode was the guests. Jason Bateman really served no purpose other than to use Kermit, and then get him in trouble. I’m not a Jason Bateman fan. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him in anything, but I can imagine that if I was a fan, I probably wouldn’t like how he was portrayed. It reminded me of the Nick Offerman incident. Now Nick Offerman I am a fan of, and I didn’t like that they just used him as a pseudo-bad-guy. The Jason Bateman scenes just felt like more of the same. I want the guests to have a fun part, not just come in to be almost-villains. However, it was clear that he was having fun in the role, and he had some decent lines, so that did help.
My next issue is actually mostly praise. Oh, my word! The Muppets had my all-time, number-one favorite YouTube music group on their show! I was flipping out Tuesday morning when Pentatonix posted on their Facebook page that they were that night’s musical guests on The Muppets! I had no idea that this was happening, and I was so excited! For those of you who’ve never heard of them, Pentatonix started out as nobodies on a not-American–Idol music show that almost no one has heard of, and built themselves an acapella empire on YouTube. For them to get to the point where the Muppets are inviting them to guest star on their show is huge! Plus it’s another huge win for YouTube culture in general, as the “mainstream” accepts them as legitimate talent.
However, their musical number was totally cut short this week as well. I suppose I should have been expecting this after the Kristen Chenoweth incident last week but it was still disappointing. Yes, the bit with Statler and Waldorf was funny, but I didn’t like that it came at the expense of most of the music. One of the biggest problems that everyone has had with this show is the lack of music. I do love that they’re trying, and I know it’s so hard to fit so much into just 20 minutes, but I hate that the music is getting the short end of the stick again. Thankfully, they were able to fit in most of Kermit’s song at the end. That did help.
Okay, complaints over, let’s get to the good stuff. This episode was SO much fun! It was just like being back at The Muppet Show, with mayhem and madness everywhere! Every time he’d turn around Kermit would find some new terrible, but hilarious, thing happening! And it was a riot! I have missed the mayhem and violence so much. This stuff was always an integral part of the Muppets, but so far it had been relegated to just a few little tastes here and there. This episode did not hold back. They pulled out all the stops to make this the craziest, Muppet-iest episode ever, and it was awesome!
Scooter was in rare form as well. Last week I was not so much as fan of his creepy relationship with his mother, but this episode set that part of his personality in the backseat, and just focused on making him an even better version of the old Scooter. He was still intent on pleasing Kermit, and he was nervous and frantic, but just so much funnier!
There were so many great little character moments in this one too. The Swedish Chef crying over the “Spooshy” butter had me in stitches, as well as his scene in the background during Gonzo’s interview. If you didn’t catch it the first time, go back and watch it again. It was hilarious.
Miss Piggy was hilarious as well. Her scene in the elevator was very funny, and her screaming at the top of her lungs, “My babies! My babies!” over her ruined clothes was great. Kudos to Eric Jacobson for that one. I hope he didn’t destroy his vocal cords, because that was a great scene.
And speaking of that particular scene, Uncle Deadly was amazing! He was great in both of his scenes, but that’s really nothing new anymore. Seriously, he is now one of my absolute favorite characters. The writers have taken this fringe, background character, that almost no one knew, and turned him into the star of the show. Or at least, someone who could easily be the star, if they should so choose. And I hope they so choose.
Sam and Janice, were back at it again, more Sam than Janice, who still seems completely oblivious to Sam’s advances. I don’t really know how I feel about those two, but Sam should just watch out for her. As we learned last week, she’s a heartbreaker. Either way that turns out, Janice was very funny. Half of her lines will be in my favorite quotes later.
We also had some surprisingly touching moments in this episode. Gonzo really came through for Scooter with his little pep talk to make him gain some self confidence. That was really big of him, especially after he made it clear to us that he’d wanted Scooter’s job. I was really happy with that. They could have easily gone in the other direction and made him revel in Scooter’s failure, but no, they showed us that these characters are all friends, and despite some not so nice behavior in previous episodes, the Muppets are still all friends. It was very refreshing to see that.
And speaking of refreshing, we got to see Rowlf again! This was literally only the second time we’ve seen him since the show began, but they made up for it by giving him one of the nicest scenes of the show so far. He gave Kermit the best advice, in the only way he knew how. It was funny, it was touching, it was perfect.
Speaking of Rowlf’s advice, when we see the result of that advice, a miniature recreation of Kermit’s swamp home? That was priceless. Oh the feels! That scene was just beautiful. I loved it so much. Then Rainbow Connection to top it all off? I know it’s cliché at this point, and they even lampshaded that fact, but I didn’t care. I loved it.
Favorite Quotes
Kermit: “Sweetums are you okay?”
Sweetums: “No problem Caroline!”
Gonzo: “So Kermit, we got a great sketch for Patrick Dempsey.“
Kermit: “Oh no, Dempsey’s out. We got a big block of butter.”
Rizzo: “Okay, we’ll just tweak it. Piggy’s havin’ a dream, where she’s makin’ out with a big block of butter! Huh! It’s actually funnier!”
Pepé: “And more realistic!”
Uncle Deadly: “Don’t worry Piggy! I’ll be right back with some emergency jeggings!”
Deadly – Quietly, To Kermit: “There are no jeggings. Hope is what she needs now!
Kermit: “What happened?”
Janice: “You fainted! But don’t worry; I’ve been cleansing your aura. And I don’t even cleanse my own aura! I have a woman come in once a week.”
Sam: “Janice! So, uh, do you snorkel?”
Janice: “Oh, never! Snorkeling’s an invasion of fish privacy!”
Sam: “Yes, which is why I always yell, ‘Are you decent!’ before I jump in the water!”
Kermit – To Scooter: “Well, anyway, feel free to use my office, and my assistant. Right, Yolanda?”
Yolanda: “Oh, yeah, of course. I love bein’ passed around to any rando you put in charge. I do, it’s my fave.”
Animal: “Explosions! Yum!”
Janice – spinning around in a shower of sparks: “Look at me! I’m a fire goddess!”
Sam – following suit: “Me too!”
Scooter – To an inspirational kitten poster: “‘Hang in there.’ What do you know about real problems? You’re a kitten who’s a model!”
Gonzo: “Scooter, everyone’s counting on you. When the Titanic was sinking, the captain stayed on till the very end!”
Scooter: “Yeah, well, I’m no captain, okay? I’m the other guy, who dressed up like a lady and snuck into the lifeboat. I’m ashamed, but alive!”
Miss Piggy: “Welcome back! And for those just tuning in, tonight, we’re raising awareness about energy conservation. So join me by turning off your lights. Because lights cause squinting, which leads to wrinkles. Which are character on a man, but get women banished from society.”
Final Thoughts
It think you know what my final thoughts are going to be. This episode was the best episode they have created so far. Everything came together almost perfectly, making this a hilarious, crazy episode, tinged with nostalgia and even a few tender moments. This episode was great. It was more than great. It was wonderful.
What did you think of the episode? What was your favorite line or scene?
Edited by: Kajsa Rain Forden
