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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9852118" data-attributes="member: 6799660">I feel like it is too bad, as they did course-correct towards the end (just too late, I guess). Regardless, like many of the post-Henson projects, I think it is questionable whether the basic premise was a good fit. At least for what people want and expect from the Muppets. Admittedly, the Muppets peaked with cornball send-ups of (semi-) modern entertainment tropes (a variety show in the 70s which featured celebrities on their way up or down), so neither the in-fiction Ms. Piggy talk show nor the out-of-fiction (maybe really 15-minutes-past-fresh) sitcom tropes were obviously bad fits. However, it was basically an adaptation of an existing thing ('30 Rock, but with Muppets'). The Muppets adaptations that have stood the test of time and are wholly well-regarded are A Muppets Christmas Carol and...? I recently broke Muppets products down into good/bad with my most die-hard Muppets fan friend recently and even Muppets Treasure Island he called 'a good Tim Curry performance in a nonstellar Muppets movie.' I think that or worse can be said about their Wizard of Oz and It's a Wonderful Life adaptations as well. No one forgets. No one doesn't know. I said my peace on this years ago (probably on Dragonsfoot, but still) with the 10,381,496th D&D fan who acted like they were the first person who'd read the Silmarillion. But here in the last ~6 months it's happened with Muppets and the Rocky Movies and of course Star Wars & Trek. No one is distributing great unknown wisdom by repeating public knowledge about some of the most famous movies, books, and tv shows of all time. I want to be clear, I'm not angry and this isn't personal (or even directed specifically at this more than the other examples), I'm just baffled and I don't get it.Regardless, overall, I think you are right -- IMO, The Muppets 2015 tv series was actually quite good (particularly the later half). It also wasn't what the audience wanted (of the Muppets). One issue I think was that it was 5-10 years too late. The Office (UK) was 2001-03, the US one was 2005-13, 30 Rock was 2006-13. To make a show which was a pretty straight copy of those (but with Muppets) really should have come out at/near their peak, not 2-3 years after they ended (2-3 years too late, according to no small part of their audience). The other part was that the 'but with Muppets' gag didn't add to the humor that much, with the two humors (understated office disfunction, zany puppet antics) either conflicting or just swapping in and out. A whole lot of ithe show was stuff that would have worked just the same with Steve Carell and Tina Fey, and then it would switch to throwing penguins around, but rarely did the two comedic styles amplify the other. When it worked, it worked. Velma was a completely different level. The Muppets (2015) was imputing the Muppets onto an existing premise and tone, etc. -- something that they'd already tried before with mixed results. Velma was taking wholly different characters, story, tone, premise, and kinda painting the Scooby Doo characters (minus Scooby)'s names* and costumes over the top. You can change race**, or age (high school instead of young adulthood), or tone (lots of deaths instead of no-one-gets-hurt action), or premise (investigating real crimes, mostly murder, instead of assumed paranormal events that never turn out to be), or characterization (no one in the show had the same personality as any other iteration of them). However, if you change all of those things at once, then there's effectively nothing left to tie it back to the original you are trying to associate the thing with. Honestly, in that case, I'm not sure the 'made by people who don't really get what most fans love about the IP' point is accurate. I think the showrunners knew and didn't care. They were making something deliberately crass and confrontational -- they just thought the audience would be along for the ride (why they thought this, I cannot say). *Shaggy's given name being Norville being a trivia deep cut that I think they used to generate buzz through reddit articles about 'who is this Norville guy instead of Shaggy?'**and honestly, if that's all that had changed, it would would not have been noteworthy.</blockquote>

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