It seems like a mistake to try to turn something so resolutely goofy into something serious.
Do you ever watch television shows? There is a well-established TV structure of laugh-laugh-laugh-laugh-VERY SERIOUS MOMENT- The End.
Shows like
Diff'rent Strokes examined such subjects like drug abuse, child molestation, and bulimia while at the same time sticking to a sit-com structure with three laughs per page and characters spouting catch phrases.
This is an attempt to see how the TV show formula works on the web. If it were structured more like a movie, there would probably be a different ending, but television is structured to never reach a resolution or conclusion - otherwise you would not want to watch the next episode. This venture is considered a success primarily because people want more.
One of the most painful examples of how this doesn't work is the reveal of Bad Horse. That should have been very funny. But we're too busy being depressed and/or feeling whiplash from the tone change for the joke to even register.
I thought this scene was like the one in
Team America: World Police where the dam burst and killed all of the puppets. Seeing the dead bodies floating in the water has a greater dramatic impact than one would expect, but then you see the ridiculous plastic donkey and start to laugh. The mixture of humor and despair makes it more enticing because you are feeling multiple conflicting emotions.
Do you really want entertainment that spells it out for you and tells you to have only one emotion at a time? Laugh here. Cry here. I am sure if the material was of that caliber, we wouldn't even be talking about it.