Seasons 1 through 3 were truly inspired. Plenty of cool ideas executed well. Quick editing, snappy dialog, and great voice acting.
However, upon watching season 4, I ended up lowering my rating for this show a notch. The clever ideas, tight editing, and great voice acting were still there. However, it was starting to fall victim to the same thing that so many comedy shows suffer from. That is, the increasing insecurity of some of the writers and their coping strategy of relying more and more on gross-out toilet humor because they somehow think they're just not funny enough without it.
I suspect the need to be overly crude will be what eventually kills the popularity of this series. It's always sad to see such smart ideas and great imagination cheapened by sick one-liners that seem to be cooked up by demented three-year-olds. It makes for uneven viewing.
Having said that, there is still a lot of great stuff happening in this show. The clever still outweighs the cheap-shots, and that's why I've resisted dropping this below a 7 star rating.
In summary, it's a shame that the creative staff don't realize that this show can stand on its own two feet (and is actually stronger) without the excessive potty humor and incest jokes.
However, upon watching season 4, I ended up lowering my rating for this show a notch. The clever ideas, tight editing, and great voice acting were still there. However, it was starting to fall victim to the same thing that so many comedy shows suffer from. That is, the increasing insecurity of some of the writers and their coping strategy of relying more and more on gross-out toilet humor because they somehow think they're just not funny enough without it.
I suspect the need to be overly crude will be what eventually kills the popularity of this series. It's always sad to see such smart ideas and great imagination cheapened by sick one-liners that seem to be cooked up by demented three-year-olds. It makes for uneven viewing.
Having said that, there is still a lot of great stuff happening in this show. The clever still outweighs the cheap-shots, and that's why I've resisted dropping this below a 7 star rating.
In summary, it's a shame that the creative staff don't realize that this show can stand on its own two feet (and is actually stronger) without the excessive potty humor and incest jokes.