A few months ago, we wrote about the new Muppet videos that popped up on YouTube. (Those articles are here and here.) Now they’re popping again: Fozzie and Rizzo have started their own YouTube accounts, joining Beaker, the Swedish Chef, Sam, Gonzo, and Statler & Waldorf.
Fozzie’s video is “Rolling with the Skateboarding Dog”…
…and Rizzo’s is a video response to Fozzie’s, called “Skateboarding Dog gets served.”
So these are pretty exciting, especially given the prominence of Rowlf, even if Bill Barretta’s Rowlf still sounds a lot like Bobo. Here’s what I find interesting about these new clips (other than the fact that we’ve yet to see Kermit and Piggy): Those other videos they posted — Stars and Stripes Forever, Habanera, etc. — were all presented as performances by the Muppets, whereas these look like the characters were bored on a Saturday afternoon, so they picked up their camcorder and went to the beach to see if anything happened.
As Peter mentioned in his review, there was something about the Studio DC specials, with the Muppets squeezed uncomfortably into a show starring fresh-faced preteens, that made the Muppets seem old. I was a little worried there for a while… Does Kermit’s unfamiliarity with text message shorthand mean he’s over the hill, out of touch, and completely irrelevant to anyone too young to vote, drink, or buy cigars?
But now we see that the Muppets not only have YouTube accounts, they also go out and shoot random, pointless, shaky, handheld video to post online. Suddenly they’re more contemporary than ever!
Welcome to the internet age, Muppets. Just don’t pay too much attention to the Comments.
Click here to discuss this article, and how funny it is to see Rizzo’s legs, on the Tough Pigs forum!
