You gotta hand it to Disney when it comes to tenacity about brands. As newly anointed incoming CEO Josh D’Amaro articulated yesterday in a coronation interview conducted by one of ABC”s few current category leaders, WORLD NEWS TONIGHT’s David Muir, a central component of the company’s strategy with its most zealotic fans is providing the optimal brand experience that capitalizes on lifelong familarity while providing something that reinforces the desire to want to come back. Given that he achieved enough success (record breaking profits in 2025) as head of the Disney Experiences division with that playbook to make him the unanimous internal choice to succeed Bob Iger–the real reason for that sitdown with Muir–he’s undoubtedly a master of that approach. When you’re expecting a family of four to drop close to a thousand bucks a day (people gotta eat, remember) to schlep around central Florida in high humidity or Anaheim amidst Santa Ana winds, you’d better give the customer what they want.
It seems that was the playbook that the folks who have been stubbornly sheparding the Muppet franchise since Disney swallowed it up tmore than two decades ago applied to the latest attempt to reinvigorate it with a 50th anniversary one-off that dropped on Disney Plus yesterday and was graciously allowed to air on ABC in the heart of primetime last night. Which was more than appropriate considering that it’s been a LONG time since THE MUPPET SHOW was a truly successful TV series and those that sought it out then are probably still more familiar with ABC than any platform with a plus sign.
Yes, it was a huge success in the cutthroat world of first-run syndication checkerboards when it was imported by the UK-based ITC in the late ’70s, regularly tentpoling lineups otherwise being dragged down both in quality and demography by umpteen nighttime versions of daytime game shows. But when ITC attempted to extend its life by offering stations the no-brainer option to strip the reruns once the checkerboard craze and the original run ended the results were nothing short of lousy. Somehow, the idea of reliving the same slapstick and corniness that was endearing in first run had little appeal the second or third time around. Yet somehow, as THE NEW YORK TIMES (and Disney expert) James Poniewozik reminded in his review earlier this week, that track record isn’t stopping Disney from trying pretty much the same approach now:
The premise for “The Muppet Show” of 2026…is comparatively simple: It’s “The Muppet Show.” And wocka wocka wocka, that’s all you need. There’s no newfangled hook, no contrived rationalization to bring the characters up to date, no pretensions toward heft or hipness. There are songs and slapstick and jokes, and nobody, blessedly, stayed up too late thinking about the reasons why. (Because Muppets, that’s why.)
POLYGON’s Brian Van Hooker took that enthusiasm up a notch in the review he dropped yesterday:
In the beginning of the episode, after a nice, quiet sequence of Kermit getting the studio up and running set to Rowlf playing the piano, Scooter pops his head into Sabrina Carpenter’s dressing room telling her “30 seconds to curtain,” just like in the old show. What follows is a meticulously recreated shot-for-shot recreation of the original introduction, now in glorious HD. From there, what unfolds follows exactly the format of the old Muppet Show, a variety show full of musical numbers and comedy sketches intercut with the chaos going on backstage. In this particular story, that chaos is caused by Kermit excitedly over-booking the show. Throughout the episode, more and more Muppets pile up backstage, waiting to go on — including obscure characters like the boomerang fish-throwing Lew Zealand, disaster prone romantic duo Wayne and Wanda, crooner Johnny Fiama and his monkey friend Sal, and dozens of others that even the most dedicated Muppet fan will need to turn to the Muppet Wiki to identify.
To a generation that grew up with the OG version–and that would appear to be the overwhelming amount of critics who are gushing over it–this is a welcome relief from the more recent attempts to make hay with this IP that have gone over about as well as just about anything that Statler and Waldorf have watched. As veteran critic David Bianculli reminded in his review for the remnants of NPR’s FRESH AIR:
In 1996, Henson’s son, Brian, produced a wonderful update for ABC, Muppets Tonight, set at a TV station, like SCTV. Much more recently, in 2020, Disney, the new corporate owners of ABC, presented a terrible update, Muppets Now, on Disney+, where the show — now run by Scooter instead of Kermit — was a program targeting the Internet audience.
But the sobering fact was that MUPPETS TONIGHT was a short-lived ratings failure and that the attempts to reinvent it to accommodate today’s audiences were equally unsuccessful. Poniewozik reminds that a 2015 attempt was especially off-putting and had similarly lousy results. So if nothing else, as we’ve seen so many times in recent years in the game show world, forgetting about revolution and evolution was probably the most prudent–and by default necessary–approach. And as Van Hooker informed us, it’s gonna be put to the test in a big way by several of the business units D’Amaro has heretofore been focused on:
There’s also a new Muppet roller coaster coming to Disney World, a new Muppets comic book from Dynamite Entertainment and a new series of Muppet action figures by NECA toys, all in 2026.
That’s an awfully heavy load to put on any franchise, let alone one with the recent checkered history with the generations it will need to appeal to who don’t quite have the same warm fuzzies that those that were around for the OG MUPPET SHOW do. The Muppets are not the MCU, they’re not Star Wars–heck, they’re not even Pixar. But Disney Plus has acquired that full five season output for the platform and they will be algorithmically teed up to anyone who chooses to watch this special, which in the case of the average platform subscriber will likely be new to them. And as we’ve seen time and time again from everything from SUITS to SUPERMARKET SWEEP, streamers have this knack to make yesterday’s failures by old school metrics de facto hits by today’s.
So I’ll be hoping against hope that Disney will choose to share the total consumption of the franchise both for this effort and the echo effort of library viewing; if they do, the likelihood that we’ll be seeing more of this to support the aggressive merch efforts will be enhanced. Which would be a welcomed result for those who will be reporting results to D’Amaro as his regime settles in. Because as Kermit himself would likely remind any of those creating those visualizations, it’s not easy being green.
Until next time…