How The Muppets are Surviving 2020

Cookie Monster

Me ate all cookies in me apartment in first few hours. In first week, me cleaned out entire cookie supply in fifty-mile radius. Me normally not baker, but me try. Me confuse sugar with salt, me burn cookies. Me eat anyway. Flour all gone, me improvise. Me suck up dust balls from floor with mouth vacuum and call them “Fluffy Bunnies.” Me miss real cookies, and fur look more like a dull, steel blue now, but apartment so clean and me feeling svelter than ever.

Swedish Chef

I’ve been in the U.S. since the seventies and I always had the feeling I was never taken seriously, despite my superior cooking skills. Lockdown was the perfect opportunity to improve my English! I took a course on the computer with the little owl who thinks he’s your boss, and voilà! Let’s see if the IKEA restaurant in Red Hook still says I’m fired now! Bork! Bork! Bork!

Ms. Piggy

To hell with hair products! To hell with makeup! To hell with false eyelashes and brassieres and satin gloves and WASHING! This pig is dirty, mostly naked, she needs NO frog and has reclaimed her joie de vivre! Hmppfhh!

Elmo

Elmo and his goldfish Dorothy love coloring and laughing and sheltering in place together! Dorothy has a short memory, but Elmo got bored on Day 54 and wanted to see what our neighbor Mr. Noodle was doing. When we opened the shade, Mr. Noodle was having a dance party! Mr. Poodle and Mrs. Doodle were there! And Ms. Boodle and Sir Croodle!

“Mr. Noodle!” Elmo and Dorothy shouted. “What are you thinking? And where did you find all those friends?”

Elmo went to his piano and banged out “Shame shame shame! Shame shame shame! Shame shame shame, shame shame!” to the tune of “Jingle Bells.” But we could still hear them dancing.

Elmo and Dorothy tied that shade shut. It makes Elmo sad, but as far as friendships go, Dorothy says that noodle’s been overcooked.

Animal

BAD YEAR! BAD BAD YEAR! ARRRGGGGHHHHH! BLAAHHHH! DRUM SOLO!

The Count

Greetings! You think The Count must be having the time of his life, yes? No! Too many numbers, too many hours, too many unhappy things to count.

My new obsession is crossword puzzles! What is three letters long and the thing we all want the pandemic to do? END! AH-AH-AH! Yes, be gone! Away with you, fiend!

When it is over, we will meet for coffee and I will again count the beautiful things: your colorful fingernails, the freckles on your nose, the many times our mouths smile at each other.

Kermit

This year’s been a real kicker — Piggy won’t answer my calls for some reason — but as the leader of the group, I knew I had a responsibility to keep everyone together and, uh, lift up the downtrodden. So I pulled out my old Rolodex, called up my old celebrity pals, and we put together one heckuva video where we all sang one line of a song that really captured the zeitgeist: ACDC’s “Highway to Hell.” We posted it to social media, and I kinda regret not cutting the line about paying your dues to Satan, but oh well — it was a hit!

Oscar the Grouch

When I heard about Cookie Monster eating filth from the floorboards, I laughed so hard I choked on my rotting newspaper and rusty nail sandwich. But then I couldn’t breathe, and there was no one around to give me the Heimlich! Just as things were going dark, I threw myself over the rim of my garbage can and knocked the nail lodged in my trachea loose.

Lying there gasping for breath on the sidewalk, I had an epiphany: I was alone. I was alone, living in a filthy bucket in a dumpy part of the Lower East Side that somehow hasn’t improved since the eighties. It was time to stop being such a jerk. Being a jerk almost killed me.

I’m out of that can for good now and I can practice being social from a distance. If you see me around, give me an air high five and I’ll probably hit you back.

Life’s too short, fellow Grouches, so knock that crap off. Yes sir, 2020 might be the year we finally turn ourselves around.

Ernie

Oh boy oh boy, has being cooped up inside with my good buddy Bert just been a barrel of laughs!

To keep my mind sharp and our spirits up, I’ve been plotting a new elaborate prank for every day of the week! I’ve swapped Bert’s toothpaste with shoe cream, I’ve sawed three-quarters through one leg of his favorite chair, I’ve switched off the wifi, asked Bert to reset it, then switched it off again once he went back to his room! Today I’m planning to order us Thai food, intercept the delivery guy, then ding-dong ditch our door until I hear Bert’s desperate scream of exasperation!

This year has been one of the most challenging of our lives together — not so much because of what’s going on outside, but because I’m being pushed to my impish comedy limits. But I’ve got good news for my loyal old pal: I think my best work is yet to come!

Bert

Ernie’s playing with fire. If I eat one more “peanut butter and jelly sandwich” where the peanut butter’s been replaced with mustard, that rubber ducky’s gonna get it.

I tell you what, the day I get vaccinated is the day I get my own apartment.

If I can survive this, I can survive anything.