Commentators talking about "The Land of Gorch" agreed that the reception was bad — "The A.V. Club" wrote that it became an open joke between the staff that no one wanted to continue having the sketches on "Saturday Night Live". "San Francisco Chronicle" called the characters the opposite of Kermit the Frog, and compared them to trolls. "DVD Talk" called the feature the worst mistake made in the first season of the "Saturday Night Live". "Vogue" described the characters as early versions of Muppets and the world they inhabited as quite dark. Academic Michael J. Bernsten wrote in his essay "The Muppetry of Nightmares" that the idea failed because the characters were not funny and did not have strong values.