I'm not hating on the Gaga, it's just that I turned to this special with the expectation of a classic Muppets holiday special along the line of, oh I don't know... the John Denver one. That was a special in classic Muppet Show style.
This special had too many cutaways (which at least had the Muppets in them...) with characters talking about their favorite holiday memories. This gets old real fast. In fact, it was old before the show started. Seriously, how boring is a holiday special that makes no attempt to be a memory in its own right and just has people talking about their memories of other stuff?
Most of the Gaga segments were straight up performances off her album (which according to the LA Times reviewer, the whole show was basically just a commercial for). Nothing horribly wrong with them individually, but if you were watching the special for the Muppets, there is simply too much Gaga and too few Muppets musical segments.
One huge bright spot in the show was when she broke away from the standard album stuff to do Baby It's Cold Outside with Joseph Gordon-Levitt (of 3rd Rock From The Sun fame). Ordinarily, I joke about this song being "the date rape song" (because it is), but in a pleasing twist, they reversed the male-female parts in this song, turning it into a rather flirtatious number that wasn't creepy at all. (Okay okay, I know in the original she's really not "protesting" all that hard and is portrayed as a willing participant in her delay, but it's oh so much less creepy when it doesn't sound like some dude is trying to make the date a little more than she planned.) Anyway, I really, really enjoyed this number. And Gaga looked stunning dressed simply as a very sexy lady. I heard once that she doesn't think she's very attractive, and I suppose that explains why she goes for all the performance art crazy costuming, but she looks great just as herself! It gave the audience a chance to sit back and just appreciate her for her performance and musicianship, which was nice. You can view the segment here on YouTube.
I think if this special had had just one or two straightforward album-promoting performances, and everything else was a bit more repertoire-expanding like the Baby segment, I would have enjoyed it much more, and it would have left me more curious about her album than it did.
The cameos with Elton John and RuPaul were fun. But they still left me wanting more Muppets. Especially with Elton John, whose appearance decades ago on the actual Muppet Show were so great.
I guess I just wanted the whole thing to be a bit more... Muppety.
In that vein, I did enjoy the duet with Kermit and Gaga. Not so much for the staging, as it was still very straightforward as a duet staging (just that one performer was a Muppet), but I thought Kermit's voice actually blended very nicely with Gaga's.
But all in all... not enough Muppet segments, and the ones they had were lacking in zaniness, edginess, or both. The "holiday memories" discussions were boring as hell, Statler and Waldorf's jokes were okay, but only just. There were just a couple all-Muppet musical segments. When the Muppets joined a live singer, they did just that, joined them in a setup you'd expect for that singer, rather than adding a singer attempting a straightforward performance in a zany Muppet-filled setting.
None of this would be a problem if we were talking about one show out of a season of Muppet Shows. But the problem is, they rarely trot the Muppets out for their own show any more, and so to have one fall flat puts the reappearance of the franchise at risk (anyone remember Muppets Toninght? The ill-fated attempt to recreate the Muppet Show as it might appear if it was actually the Arsenio Hall Show? No? EXACTLY. Don't screw with the old vaudeville format, it WORKED.)
I wanted this show to work. I really did. Having had little direct exposure to Lady Gaga, I was even looking forward to seeing her do some of her stuff. You know, a TASTE of it. But this was just... too much Gaga, not enough Muppets. It had the potential to be a good special but it came off as too blatant an ad for the album. Subtlety... needed some.
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