‘The Muppets Mayhem’ Review: Disney+ Series Can’t Figure Out What to Do With Lilly Singh
The recent passing of Harry Belafonte — and the viral proliferation of a clip featuring the iconic singer/actor/activist crooning “Day-O” in front of a boat packed with dancing pigs — was a reminder of how many stars of a certain generation were at their most relaxed and ebullient as participants on The Muppet Show.
Some 44 years after Belafonte did The Muppet Show, the powers that be at Disney and the Muppet Studio continue to go out of their way to find avenues for Muppet programming that inexplicably avoid just doing The Muppet Show for a new generation. There’s a willingness to fritter this priceless brand away on tangential projects that vanish quickly and forgettably instead of bringing the characters and the A-list stars who love them together in one spoof-and-song-driven space.
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Disney+’s new effort at Muppet-mining — a third, following Muppets Haunted Mansion and Muppets Now — is The Muppets Mayhem, a lightly amusing but topically questionable effort to elevate Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem to leading band status. Don’t get me wrong. I love Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem — both their general burnout zaniness and the classic rock jukebox musical possibilities they introduce — but even after spending 10 episodes getting to know Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem better, they still feel like manic supporting players elevated to a starring platform for which they’re ill-suited. It’s a bit like telling the story of Watergate with E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy at the center. And like HBO’s White House Plumbers, The Muppets Mayhem offers a reasonable amount of chaotic mirth, but it struggles to find a still point at the center around which to ground the madness.
The Muppets Mayhem comes from Adam F. Goldberg, Jeff Yorkes and Bill Barretta, currently the performer behind Dr. Teeth himself. The conceit is that Nora (Lilly Singh) is an assistant at a low-level Hollywood record label, desperate to find an act she can nurture and break on her own. Going through old contracts, she’s shocked to discover that Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem had a deal for an album that they never delivered. She gets in touch with the band — Barretta’s Dr. Teeth, Matt Vogel’s Floyd, Peter Linz’s Lips, Dave Goelz’s Zoot, David Rudman’s Janice and Eric Jacobson’s Animal — and makes a pitch to help them update their sound for a new generation thanks to industry connections she doesn’t have.
Can Nora update the Mayhem for the 21st century without tearing the band apart, alienating their most devoted fan (Tahj Mowry’s Moog) or jeopardizing her relationship with her social media influencer sister (Saara Chaudry’s Hannah), all before a possibly evil app developer (Anders Holm’s JJ) buys and liquidates the record label?
Because the Mayhem offers a variety of internal personalities, from the manic Animal to the ultra-agreeable Janice and everything in-between, they aren’t wholly one-note, so to speak. Within the vast Muppet tapestry, there’s value in staking out enough real estate to get a backstory for Dr. Teeth — shockingly, it involves dentistry — and getting a sense of the pathos behind Janice’s easygoing attitude. There’s even the latest attempt to carve out an origin story for Animal, though I’ll always take Muppet Babies as canon there. Ten episodes in and I’m still not sure I “get” Zoot or Lips; since they’re the Mayhem members I’ve tended to forget previously, that illustrates a lack of general progress.
Though it’s almost completely devoid of “random” Muppet cameos, the series finds its place generally within the Muppets formula. Each episode features a bunch of real-life musicians and as-themselves personalities, intended to help the show have meaning across generations. Parents can explain to their kids who Susanna Hoffs and Cheech & Chong are, while kids can explain to their parents who Zedd and Sofia Carson are. It’s unclear who will necessarily be able to explain the Yoga Posers joke when Kevin Smith drops by as the director of a Get Back-style documentary about the Mayhem, but some of those low-yield punchlines scattered throughout the season were among my favorite parts.
The season is also littered with in-character cameos by a bunch of recognizable younger-generation comic talent, exactly the people who you can easily imagine clamoring to be a part of a hypothetical Muppet Show reboot. Ben Schwartz, Nicole Byer, Rachel Bloom and Kristen Schaal are just a few of the actors who don’t necessarily add narrative value to the series, but exhibit the requisite Muppet-based chemistry.
The Electric Mayhem lose something if you accept that other than a few exceptions — “Can You Picture That?” is central to the first episode — they’re basically a glorified cover band, and I wish that some of their ’50s, ’60s and ’70s covers here were a tiny bit more distinctive. Still, the selection, overseen by Linda Perry, is impressive. Throw in reassuring doses of lesson-learning in each episode — lots of “Learn to love and be yourself” messaging — and I felt OK about the Muppet-based components of The Muppets Mayhem.
The series’ biggest flaw, finally, is figuring out anything to do with its central human characters. If you know and appreciate Singh’s comic background from her YouTube work and her short-lived NBC series, you’ll be frustrated at how dead-ended it feels to stick her in a strictly straight-woman role. Ten episodes and The Muppets Mayhem almost never gives Singh anything funny to do, and while she has respectable rapport with the Muppets — and a couple of funny beats with Chaudry — it’s an inconsistent and limitedly conceived character. The writers’ struggles developing Nora as a protagonist can be seen in the fact that when it comes to other characters interacting with what should be the lead human figure in the show, it’s all variations on different men being smitten with her. There isn’t a trace of spark between Singh and either Holm or Mowry, neither actor has anything to play, and the suggestion that Animal is in love with Nora is one of those human/Muppet pairings that the brand is usually unsure how to advance.
The human spine of The Muppets Mayhem is so unengaging that it becomes increasingly hard for the Muppet storyline to maintain interest. This is what happens when you have six characters in a band and three of them are between non-verbal and semi-verbal and the others are very clearly conceived as devotees of mind and mood-altering substances Disney+ doesn’t want its core audience asking questions about. The Mayhem can be the focus of a sketch and they can be valuable supporting components in a storyline built around Kermit or Fozzie or several of the more grounded Muppets. But if they’re ready for a full spotlight, the writers on The Muppets Mayhem have let them down here.
And yes, I know that 90 percent of my readers have read this entire review thinking the same thing: Wait, why isn’t Disney+ making a Watergate miniseries starring the Muppets? Right there with you. I’m thinking Fozzie as Henry Kissinger. Kermit as John Dean. Gonzo as G. Gordon Liddy. Animal as E. Howard Hunt. Beeker as Deep Throat. DONE.
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