Rockin’ Some Felt

Last month, I mentioned that Disney+ would be airing a new Muppet show. The show focuses on the original house band of the old Muppet Show – Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. I’ve been holding off on watching it because I just wasn’t sure what to expect.

One of the silliest reasons to not watch is knowing that the voices are not the originals. Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, and Richard Hunt will forever be connected to these characters for me. I just wasn’t sure I could get past this. I decided to check it out this weekend and I have to say, it isn’t bad.

Season One of The Muppets Mayhem consists of 10 episodes. I have watched 4 so far and I don’t hate it. The premise is that the band has been touring non stop for years. They were supposed to make an album for a small label after the tour, but that tour continues. The label seems to be ready to close their doors, when an assistant stumbles on the paperwork showing the band owes them an album. In hopes of saving the company with one big album, she’s off to get the band in the studio.

Like many of the great Muppet movies, and the Muppet Show, there have been some really neat cameos. The cameos can appeal to people of all ages – Zed for the younger folks and Cheech and Chong for the older folks. The show is funny, and emotional, too. I am actually pretty impressed and glad I started watching it.

We’ll see how I feel after episode 10, but if the rest of the episodes are like what I have seen, I will be awaiting Season 2!

I Hope These Won’t Suck, But They Probably Will

When it comes to new stuff coming to TV or the movies, there hasn’t been much for me to get excited about. However, this week, news broke of a couple things that seriously have the potential to be good. Sadly, more often than not, these great ideas are a major disappointment.

A good example of this was when Disney brought the Muppets back to the big screen (and later, the small screen). The reinvented Muppets lacked so much of what the movies and original Muppet Show had. You can bring in every big name celebrity for cameos and it just wasn’t going to save any of those projects.

Now, there is news of a new Muppet feature coming to Disney Plus. The premise is solid and I really hope that it will be worth watching. The Muppets Mayhem will feature the house band from the Muppet Show – Doctor Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

The show will be a mockumentary about Dr. Teeth and his legendary bandmates, will be available to stream on Wednesday, May 10th. According to Disney plus, “the series “follows The Electric Mayhem Band — Dr. Teeth on vocals and keyboards, Animal on drums, Floyd Pepper on vocals and bass, Janice on vocals and lead guitar, Zoot on saxophone and Lips on trumpet — on an epic, music-filled journey to record their first-ever studio album. With the help of a driven young music executive, Nora Singh, the old-school Muppet band comes face-to-face with the current day music scene as they try to finally record their first studio album.”

Seriously, this really has the potential to be something cool – and I hope it is.

The other project is not anything new. They have been talking about a fifth installment of the Shrek franchise since 2016, but it looks like it may be happening soon.

In past interviews, Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy have both said that if another Shrek movie were to happen, they’d do it in a heartbeat. Rumors are that the original cast members are in talks to be a part of it. Eddie Murphy was quoted as saying he’d be interested in a Donkey spin-off movie. He noted the success of the Puss In Boots movies, and said it could work with Donkey. The rumors also say that the spin-off is a very good possibility.

Both of these projects peak my interest, and I will probably check them out if/when they are released.

Too Many Streams

Money hungry. That’s what they are. Money hungry.

I remember a time when we had Netflix and Hulu and that gave us pretty much every thing we needed to watch movies and TV shows. That’s not the case today. So many “parent companies” are pulling stuff off Netflix to add to their own streaming platform and quite frankly, it ticks me off.

All the NBC shows are now on Peacock, all Star Wars, Pixar and Disney is on Disney +, and so on and so forth. We’ll guess what? I’m not paying for all of them! We’re barely getting by with all of the inflation, gas prices, and life in general! I cannot afford $20 a month here and $15 a month there. The cable bill alone is high enough! To add more streaming services would put us in one big financial hole!

What really angers me is that there are things that I would LOVE to watch, but can’t because there is no way to justify paying for another streaming service. Paramount + has The Offer, a series about the making of the Godfather. I would love to see it. HBO Max has the new Christmas Story movie, which I hear is great! My list goes on and on. I just cannot in good conscience pay for something that I will only use to watch one or two shows.

The TV shows I would binge watch, well, many of them I have on DVD. I can pop them in whenever I want to. It seems to be more worth buying them outright at $40 and watching them for years that to pay $20 a month and maybe not even get the chance to watch them. And when you have them on DVD, you get the bonus features that don’t show up on streaming.

Actor Jack Palance once said, “The only two things you can really depend upon are gravity and greed.” The fact that there are almost as many streaming services as there are cable channels makes me sick. I’m sorry greedy streaming company – you aren’t getting my money every month.

I suppose I will hope that the one or two things I want to watch on their platform will end up on DVD soon …

Rant over.