User blog comment:Mario&LuigiBowser'sInsideStory/The worst of season 1/@comment-9300845-20170114052535

This is probably a little bit of an unpopular opinion, but I sort of like "The Goons." Mostly because of it portraying Anais as not necessarily embracing her intelligence and wishing to let herself loose. Too bad that doesn't save the episode from being pretty mediocre.

I strongly agree on your assessment of Season 1's quality, and I'd like to throw in my two cents. On the characterization of the Wattersons, Gumball, Darwin, and Richard were a little too similar, and Season 1 relied a lot on the "dumb males/smart females" cliche (which I really dislike, this coming from a female.)

While you didn't cover the supporting characters, I'd like to mention that most of Gumball's classmates hardly have any personality back in Season 1. For example, Banana Joe used to have a pretty inconsistent personality: sometimes he's nice toward Gumball, sometimes he's mean. In Season 2, he's firmly established as being a nice person in general, although he still can lose his cool.

Season 1's animation is nice on its own, but it looks rather robotic and a little too smooth. And the character designs (especially of 2D characters) look stiff and geometric.

On Season 1's style of writing and humor, it's more safe and kiddy (not that it's necessarily bad) compared to Season 2 onward's more experimental and riskier style, not to mention a little bit of actual continuity. I'm sure there's a reason there's an influx of people flocking to the show especially around Seasons 4 and 5.

How anyone could claim Season 1 to be superior is just beyond me.