'Muppets Now' Episode 4 Review: A by-the-numbers showing that struggles to keep us awake through 'Sleep Mode'
Spoilers for 'Muppets Now' Season 1 Episode 4 'Sleep Mode'
This episode's between-segments gag saw Scooter (David Rudman) struggling to stay awake in his rush to upload the episode, and it's a fitting gag for the dullest episode of the show up to date. There's nothing notably wrong with the episode, just nothing that especially stands out. There have been enough episodes of 'Muppets Now' to be able to recognize a by-the-numbers episode when we see one, and 'Sleep Mode' was definitely that.
The episode started off in an awkward tone with an interview with Aubrey Plaza. While she is an excellent performer, Plaza's deadpan emotiveness can be a challenge for an unskilled interviewer, and while Miss Piggy (Eric Jacobson) is an entertaining character, an expert interviewer she is not. The "Mup Close & Personal" segment ended up being more about Miss Piggy than Aubrey Plaza herself - although Miss Pigger herself probably wouldn't have had it any other way. Uncle Deadly (Matt Vogel) did his best to save the interview, but though his wig changes were amusing, the interview segment definitely crashed and burned.
'Okey Dokey Kookin' was equally uninspired, as the Swedish Chef (Bill Barretta) went up against Chef Giuseppe Lioce to craft a spaghetti carbonara. Where the previous segments went a step beyond the premise of "Swedish Chef is a bad cook," this time things stuck to basics. Chef Giuseppe himself may be an excellent cook, but he doesn't bring a lot to the screen aside from a delicious looking carbonara - great for a serious cooking show, dull for an unscripted sketch comedy show involving puppets.
Even Miss Piggy's 'Lifesty' segment was relatively low-key, with a focus on self-care. 'Lifesty' has always been one of the show's weaker segments, oscillating between hit and miss every episode, and this one was definitely a miss. Pepe the King Prawn (Bill Barretta) perhaps put it best when he dejectedly points out that Miss Piggy can ruin the party - though that's perhaps more on the writing for the episode over the Miss Piggy herself.
The episode's one saving grace was 'Muppet Labs Field Test,' which has been a consistent delight since its introduction. This episode introduces the poor, unfortunate Beepalyzer, who illustrates some fun soundwave experiments while both lamenting the lonely existence it led in storage and dreading its return to the same. A machine so sad shouldn't be this funny, but Dr. Bunsen Honeydew's (Dave Goelz) upbeat cheeriness in the face of misery is always good for a laugh.
When you have an unscripted sketch comedy series, there are bound to be some highs and some lows, especially in a Season 1. 'Muppets Now' had been on a roll, up to this point, and hopefully, this episode is more a hiccup than a sign of things to come.
The next episode of 'Muppets Now' airs August 28, on Disney+.
