The gag is always they’re puppets, but they swear and talk about sex and violence and shit! Can you even believe it?! I supposed it’s possible that all the edgelord stuff is just in the marketing, or on the surface, but it seems so lazy that I can’t be bothered.

I can speak to Avenue Q easiest that a lot of that impression is marketing over substance. Most of Avenue Q’s salaciousness is best observed in its viral song hit “The Internet is for Porn”. Its general premise is much more aligned with “What if the musical Rent was about a street orthogonal to Sesame Street?” (Even the name plays on the idea that in the purported kind of brownstone neighborhood you would find Sesame Street, the named streets run one direction and the lettered Avenues are the cross-streets. In that “alphabet city” the letters don’t run all the way to Q, so it is equally fictitious as Sesame Street. But also the letter Q isn’t just because it is fictitious, but to imply things the Q might stand for, like “queer”.)

It’s a tale about the found family of a diverse neighborhood, including both highs and lows. Some of that diversity is puppets (sure that curse and say or sing salacious things), but the puppets just as in Sesame Street itself are also metaphors for even deeper diversity. (As Sesame Street itself refers to some as well, some of them are Monsters.)

It’s not perfect. I think it’s worth a watch.

A puppeteer once reminded me that it is easy to forget that puppeteering is more work than a lot of other acting, especially because of how easy some of the best puppeteers make it look. Even the most “edgelord” script needs at least some redeeming qualities to get puppeteers to put in all that work. A musical like Avenue Q needed Puppeteers to believe in it enough for a whole Off-Broadway run, and then national touring, and more.

I haven’t seen enough of Brian Henson’s edgelord phase. A lot of it is real hard to find “weird collector’s stuff” now, which is partly a reminder that puppeteering is a lot less commercially viable an art form than a lot of people assume. (Which also plays out in other historic ways such as how much Jim Henson Productions work is still “owned” by zealots at Hallmark with no intent to sell it.)

PS “The Muppets Mayhem” said that Peter Jackson’s edgelord phase “Meet the Feebles” is muppet canon.