This just reinforces a tenet I’ve always had: If you want a dark, edgy, mean-spirited, heavy-handed “adult” series, make a dark, edgy, mean-spirited, heavy-handed “adult” series. Don’t horribly warp an existing franchise to fit your vision. Has anyone here actually read the original The Tick comics? They were goofy as hell and didn’t give half a fledermaus’ butt about adult anything. They had more in common with Adam West’s Batman than Frank Miller’s.
Doesn’t matter if Jim Henson “created the Muppets for an adult audience and it also appealed to kids” (and I sure as hell never noticed that). For a huge swath of the fandom, The Muppets are and always will be family entertainment. Mess with that, and you tick off a lot of viewers and ratings suffer.
Ah well. Hopefully this will turn off network execs to using darkness or adult-ness as a substitute for actually making a damn effort. (Where have you gone, Homestar Runner?)