With Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef getting a segment in each of those first four episodes, with the identical gimmick, there’s just not as much room for other ideas.
As I write this, it’s been several days since I watched the first four episodes of Muppets Now and beyond the broad strokes, there’s little I actually remember from the series.
Part of what made The Muppet Show so much fun was that you never really knew what you were getting.
Completely bizarre ideas would show up and they weren’t all winners, but sometimes the Muppets would stumble on gold, and it would all be worth it.