TV Talk: ‘Sam Now’ surprises; ‘Muppets Mayhem’ disappoints

PBS’s “Independent Lens” debuts an engrossing, emotional 90-minute documentary “Sam Now” (10 p.m. Monday, WQED-TV) about a family where the mother, Jois, abandons her kids — doesn’t tell them where she’s gone, if she’s safe; doesn’t make any effort to see how the kids are doing without her — and then decades later has the gall to complain when her now-adult son doesn’t communicate with her two Christmases in a row.

Despite the supreme lack of self-awareness this evinces, Jois does self-label as a narcissist at another point in the film.

Director Reed Harkness, Jois’ stepson, made the film over 25 years with a focus on Jois’ son, Sam Harkness. The brothers, who have the same father, started making home movies together as children and in 2003, three years after Jois disappeared when Sam was a freshman in high school, the pair set out on a mission to find her. Reed interviews family members and tracks down a lead from Jois’ former co-worker.

At first, Sam doesn’t seem all that upset about Jois’ disappearance, unlike his brother Jared, who went from a straight-A student to a truancy hard case after Jois’ departure.

But the film reveals Sam’s nonchalance and willingness to search for his mother belies internal turmoil that leads him to have a fear of abandonment in adult relationships.

Reed Harkness comes off as the most critical of Jois early in the film, but he doesn’t allow those feelings to get in the way of what’s ultimately a story of generational trauma as viewers learn more about Jois and what she experienced as a biracial, Japanese American child adopted by a white American family.

As with all family dynamics, the Harkness clan is complex; their relationships, motivations and life choices are complicated, which makes “Sam Now” a humane, fascinating chronicle of one family’s travails.

‘The Muppets Mayhem’

It’s no secret that in the almost two decades since Disney bought The Muppets, the company has repeatedly struggled with how best to deploy them. The 2011 movie reboot starring Jason Segel was a hit, but its follow-up, 2014’s “Muppets Most Wanted,” flopped.

On TV/streaming, there was the 2015-16 behind-the-scenes ABC comedy “The Muppets,” another flop, as was Disney+’s 2020 disappointment, “Muppets Now,” which featured the characters in repetitive, short, YouTube-style clips.

Disney+ seemed like maybe it learned a lesson with the far more entertaining, bigger budget 2021 special, “Muppets Haunted Mansion,” which creatively blended Muppets Gonzo and Pepe with the mythology of Disney Parks’ Haunted Mansion attraction. It looked great, had some decent original tunes and it was pretty funny, wisely deploying Gonzo and his never-ending depths of weirdness as the lead character.

But there’s another letdown with “The Muppets Mayhem,” streaming all episodes on Disney+ May 10. The show takes the band from the 1970s “The Muppet Show,” Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, and moves them front-and-center as a low-level record exec (Lilly Singh) tries to get the band to make a record.

Created by Muppets vet Bill Barretta (who performs Dr. Teeth) and sitcom writer Adam F. Goldberg (“The Goldbergs”), “Muppets Mayhem” puts the spotlight on these one-note secondary characters. It’s like taking a recipe that calls for a teaspoon of spice and instead using two cups of spice — and no other ingredients. The result is unappetizing — a dry, dull and disappointing Muppets series.

The only saving grace: Through the first two episodes there’s no sign of Kermit, who hasn’t sounded like himself since Disney fired Steve Whitmire in 2016 and subbed in a replacement who sounds nothing like Henson’s Kermit, which Whitmire ably did.