How’s this for the weirdest premise ever for a midseason replacement: “an innovative look at the world where puppets are living, breathing creatures.”
Surprisingly, that’s exactly how Fox describes its new Wednesday night fare, Greg the Bunny.
This isn’t the world you imagined Kermit and Miss Piggy living happily ever after in.
The title character is a puppet, or “fabricated American” as Greg likes to call himself, who stars in a kids’ TV show and has to deal with pesky human TV execs–just like a non-fabricated American TV star. Seth Green–yes, a human–plays Greg’s best friend and roommate.
Greg’s fellow fabricated Americans (FAs) are as complex as the less furry kind, and no less coarse and crude than most adults.
In the pilot, Greg unwittingly becomes the star of Sweetknuckle Junction when he wanders into the audition room after the show’s former star, Rochester the rabbit, is canned for being too drunk to remember his lines.
Interesting and quirky, the show has spunk. Yet you get the feeling that wherever Jim Henson is, he’s cringing mightily. For example….
When Rochester, in a fit of rage, threateningly holds a pair of scissors to Greg’s neck, he’s told by a co-star to “face facts, you’re not the performer you used to be.”
Rochester rejoins, “That’s not what your ex-wife said.”
And therein lies the strange contradiction of the show.
While setting up the television industry for real satire and possibly tackling political correctness, the show inexplicably often relies upon the same sex, fart and slapstick humor all too often found in teen raunch movies like American Pie.
After you quickly get past the immediate titillating shock value of puppets (which you instinctively relate to as cute and cuddly and innocent, etc.) saying nasty things, the satire has to stand up on its own.
Plus, the show needs to avoid the pitfalls of rampant silliness–the second episode revolves around Greg’s tussle with a dog bigger than he, leading to inane Mr. Bill-type hijinks.
More often than not, though, as in an upcoming episode in which Greg joins a radical puppet group that demands he speak in his native “puppish” and wear traditional puppet garb, the satire is clear and piercing.
Whether Fox can raise Greg above its inherent silliness remains to be seen, but the seeds of a quality, highly subversive show are here.
