I completely disagree. That is all.
I have to say-again--that I am sad to find you uncivil in your expression of your opinion. Being rude rarely convinces anyone.
Denying reality rarely convinces, either. Kermit is different. He is mean. He is shallow. He is dismissive of old friends and calculatingly manipulative to others.
Piggy, hailed worldwide as a feminist icon, is simply psychotic and dumb, divorced from reality and estranged from her frog. Fozzie has become morally untethered and grovels in a way that is unappealing. (Fozzie used to make us root for him when he bombed--now I just want to avoid eye contact.)
And Scooter, who had grown and changed from an annoying teenage wannabe with people skills into a dependable and trusted assistant, capable of managing impossible schedules and impossible stars&-well, he's now the groups enabler-in-chief. He props up Kermit and supports his bad decisions, such as overeating and getting his portly self involved with a younger, more servile pig. He has gone from being the band's manager to being their "supplier." I want to cry when I think about it.
Gonzo isn't even really there.
The problem isn't that the old (performing) guard is gone. The problem is that the new people and the old people and whoever the heck the "people" are who are writing for this show don't know who the muppets are. They don't understand what makes them tick (see my post above about how Kermit's worst fear about Fozzie become the bear's defining characteristic).
In The Muppets, Kermit acknowledges that he is lost without Piggy, and the gang is lost without him. The crowds stood up and cheered. On the backs of that success, a sequel was born. The second movie, in which none of the other muppets seem to notice that Kermit has been replaced by a disaffected criminal, would NEVER have launched another movie.
Believe me--we NOTICED Kermit was missing. We see that he IS missing.
The irony here is nothing short of staggering. Constantine didn't do as much to damage to muppets as Kermit has managed to do in two shows. And sadly, while I find this version of Kermit repellant, I know it isn't really Kermit's fault.
His fate is--literally--in the hands of others, and they have let him down and left him hanging.
Irony. And sadness.
For me, who loves them wholeheartedly, the question isn't hard to answer: do I wish they hadn't come back to television?
Yes. Absolutely.
The main characters, as portrayed in the first few episodes, are unsalvagable unless they fix the major flaws in the writing: ignorance and meanness.
Even Gonzo could do better than this.