Gregory Avery-Weir

(I just noticed that @cofruitrigus did basically this exact post almost a month before I did.)

It's interesting that there's an internet meme about someone being "the only human" in a Muppet movie, when there is no theatrical Muppet movie where that's the case. It's the norm on The Muppet Show for the guest to be the only human on-screen¹, but Muppet films fall into two categories:

1. The Muppets exist in a metafictional human world, usually as performers playing performers in a normal human world where they are the only puppets²:

• The Muppet Movie
• The Great Muppet Caper (not performers, but a bunch of fourth-wall breaking)
• The Muppets Take Manhattan
• Muppets from Space
• The Muppets
• Muppets Most Wanted (haven't seen it yet, but it's a direct sequel to The Muppets)

2. The Muppets interpret a classic story, with multiple humans playing pivotal roles:

• The Muppet Christmas Carol (the Scrooge family and their partners are human)
• Muppet Treasure Island (Jim Hawkins, Long John Silver, Billy Bones, and Mrs. Bleveridge are human)
• The Muppets' Wizard of Oz (TV movie; Dorothy, Uncle Henry, Aunt Em, and every other Kansas resident are human except Toto, who is a non-Muppet prawn until entering Oz)

I find it provocative that our cultural imagination has the Muppets living in a puppet world with a single visiting human, while the works are much more often about the Muppets struggling to exist in a world that is not meant for them.

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1. Even on The Muppet Show, the Muppet Theater clearly exists in our pop-cultural world, where other humans exist in the world outside.

2. Sometimes there are Muppets who are not with the main group of The Muppets. Bobo the Bear appears multiple times as the stooge of a villain.