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Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 4, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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For sure. He got Flanderized from "alcoholic dirtbag mad scientist in over his head" to "demigod murderhobo with plot armor." The former was a lot funnier.

demigod

Season 1 episode 2 is where he creates sapient life, uplifting clay a dog, and he takes it far enough past ordinary human intelligence that the cyborg-dog himself is able to uplift others.

murderhobo

Season 1 episode 1 act 1 is about a (brief drunken) plan of his to wipe out life on Earth. Episode 3 is where he literally gets a hobo murdered via the underpaid adventurer mercenary his partnership hired. By episode 6 he's gone full hobo himself, skipping town dimension to escape the mutated+slaughtered Earth he inadvertently created.

plot armor

I think Ep6 was already a pretty solid consequence-free escape, but by episode 9 he outsmarts and beats up Satan.

The whole "demigod murderhobo with plot armor" thing is naturally a little offputting to many people and a lot offputting to everyone else, but the show always printed it right on the tin.

was a lot funnier

The show's gone downhill, but I think the main explanation is just the prosaic one that applies to any show: the writers use their best ideas first, because why would you save something for season 6 when you don't even know if you're going to be renewed for season 2, but then by the time you get to season 6 you're trying to choose between your 52th-best set of ideas and your 53rd-best...

The only Rick-and-Morty-specific problem I've noticed is that they hate continuity, so much that they'll write fourth-wall-breaking rants about how much they hate continuity, but there's only so much pleading to the contrary they can take from the audience before they start throwing a few bones, and so now they're having to throw in the arc-plot episodes they despise ... and even in the rest of the episodes they're probably constantly worrying whether each and every plot point is too grossly inconsistent with every ass-pull tech they came up with three seasons earlier.

Edit: I just saw your

I still chuckle at Gazorpazorpfield and Two Brothers

below, and I think Two Brothers might be the best example of what I'm talking about at the end. That weird underproduced ad lib, the sort of thing you'd expect to either get upgraded to "rough draft" or downgraded to "cuttting room floor" rather than animated straight-out, and yet it's so funny in part because you can tell they're having so much fun with it! They don't seem to be enjoying themselves as much anymore. That's understandable, since they started with this horribly dysfunctional cast of characters that doesn't make mixing "having loads of fun" and "honest close introspection" easily, but I can see how the "loads of fun" crowd might be especially disappointed.