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Well, to address the eternal elephant in our room, what is "the franchise"? That is, what incarnation of the franchise do you deem the bit worthy of respecting? Mirage? Fred Wolf? The older live-action movies? The newer live-action movies? The most recent show? The IDW series?
That series of questions isn't trivial, but the unfortunate reality here is that there isn't a "right" answer in the sense that all of the fandom would agree. Certain approaches some people would call respectful, others would call disrespectful...or at the very least, annoying. Filling the series with pizza references or puns off of the word "shell" is arguably "respectful" in that it is keeping in mind things that have been done before in the franchise, but still there will be people who dislike those things.
In a limited sense, the most broadly consensual definition of being respectful, in that it's the most opportune way to please (or at least interest) as many people as possible (not to mention, sell as many toys as possible) is probably to draw a bunch of characters from multiple different incarnations. If they decide to clarify that is what they're doing, I can believe that.
However, calling back to old stories by other people that many audiences liked doesn't mean you're capable of writing new stories that many audiences like. As someone, I forget whom, aptly described the IDW series (at least in my opinion), "Hey; remember that?" is not clever writing. You can make people more initially interested in your new adaptation by calling back to such things, but that also sets you up to disappoint them if your writing is boring, annoying, etc. You can reach high heights by standing on the shoulders of giants, but you can also slip and fall, far and hard.
Factor in that it's been heavily implied that this show is under a mandate to be more juvenile than the last one, and I'd say that even if the writers are endeavoring to be "respectful" as I semi-defined it above, that doesn't mean they're going to reach the quality of your favorite past incarnation; let-alone surpass it.
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