So many other older franchises are still relevant today because their best work was kept in the public eye. Not because they kept trying to reanimate them into something unrecognizable.
Ehhhh... no. Older franchises are still relevant today because they have larger fansbases. Seriously. Everyone outside of this board is a causal fan at best. Even then, those other franchises keep cranking out expanded universe novels and comics and stuff outside of bigger media presences. Oh, and they totally still make stuff anyway, those franchises are so big they can afford having older fans whine about them and ignore them all day. Except they TOTALLY still go to those movies and stuff just to make sure they hate them. It's like they hate everything new in the franchise, and continue to support it out of spite.
But even if they didn't, the franchises and fanbase are strong enough to run on fumes, provided they keep buying enough nostalgic crap to warrant its inclusion on store shelves.
Thing is, the Muppet fandom is very fragile, and it's franchise even more so. Disney can subside on Frozen merchandise alone and still have a high stock. You think they give a rat's fez about anything that isn't Frozen or Star Wars? The fact they even gave the Muppets a second chance as a TV show after MMW is pretty miraculous. And this will sadly be up to the general public, because I'm sure none of us have Nielsen boxes (which are a scam anyway). If they're the same insultingly fickle audiences that love seeing something once and then pull their hair out when that love equals a follow up which will always be the worst thing ever for simply being a sequel, the show is screwed.
Our fanbase isn't just small as heck, it's slowly becoming as freaking awful as the Sonic the Hedgehog one. Next hurdle after that one is Transformers, where half the fandom is 30+ year olds whining that Hasbro doesn't make only $100+ collector's toys because that's unsustainable. Every freaking project is an apple of discord. And has been for over 20 years. This is too kiddy, this is too adult, this is not adult enough, this isn't exactly the same, they don't get the characters this way, they don't get the characters that way. We're never going to get The Muppet Show factory freshness sealed exactly the same way. Why must every project live up to one thing they did one time? Because nostalgia? Because elitism? The Muppets can and have done worse than this show in the past, and the same fans complained the exact same complaints about them. We're never getting the same thing back because too many people died or moved on. Just like we're never going to get "What's Opera Doc?" anymore from Looney Tunes, but we can hope we don't get Space Jam or Loonatics out of them anymore.
I'm tired, so very tired of having to defend the heck out of every project only to read the same complaints from the same people for the same reasons. And I get that. You don't like things a certain way, and that's cool. But it's the level of the complaining that bugs me. The whole air of "I'm right because I'm negative and anyone that doesn't agree with me is wrong, and man do I want this project to fail and when it does it's ONLY because hypothetical people agree with me." By all means, stop supporting the franchise if you don't like anything new going on. There's a difference between saying "I don't like this and here's why" and obsessively watching for more reasons to complain to say "Here are specific reasons I don't like this fro this week." There's plenty of good old fashion stuff you grew up with. Just watch that over and over. That's what you want, that's what you get. Don't try and be a "not drinking the Kool-Aid" type that purposely poopoos on things to seem right about an opinion.
I'm done trying to defend things.