User blog:ThatGuy456/A Guy's Thoughts: (Feat. Mattalamode) Season 1 Debate

Introduction
So, Mattalamode and I have decided to collaborate once more. This time we will be discussing Season 1. I'll try to defend Season 1 to the best of my ability and explain why I find it to be good while Mattalamode will be doing the polar opposite. Let's go.

Also, yikes. This turned out long.

Matt's Argument: "I'm Practically Coasting at this Point"
Since Guy and I previously collaborated to considerable success, indebted to him, I shall thus return the favor by completely discrediting him and objecting to all of his remarks with expected animosity. That's called having a healthy working relationship, right?

Though I may have, in our last debate, taken the burden of an inevitable surrender by fighting a hopeless battle, I should think that our positions have been mercifully reversed. Granted, I don't think that Season 1 is without its merits, but if I'm asked to play the offensive and, in Guy's words, "grill the season hardcore," I'd be an idiot not to accept the offer. At the same time, I can only be terrified if he himself made the preposition that Season 1 was passable, which means he must have a great argument that I can't grasp.

Either way, while I have the lead: Season 1 sucked hard. Thank you.

While I could honestly just leave it at that (seriously, it's not that difficult of a viewpoint to defend), I suppose I'm obligated to pretend my defense isn't arbitrary. That's right. The big words are coming out. I'm not even sure if I used "arbitrary" right, but just for that second, you thought I sounded smart. Let's see if that mentality can carry over for the rest of my argument.

There's a lot of issues with the show's first season, but we'll start with what gave the show its identity: humor. Watching TAWOG nowadays is a breath of fresh air: it's air-tight, fully-formed, and distinctive. However, such traits seemed only to allude the show so early on, instead being virtually the complete opposite: loose, half-baked, and woefully generic.



We can call out the fact that the writers were new to writing such a show, but that they were able to do such a fantastic reversal with the next season only makes Season 1 seem worse. The change in quality is almost abrupt. It's as if the writers always knew what they wanted to do but instead fell back on the lowest common denominator for the sake of finding a dedicated audience which, ironically enough, cost them in terms of cultivating a dedicated audience at all.

Unfortunately, quintessential to their appeals to a much younger audience was perhaps the bane of comedy: frenetic randomness.

I get it, I'm a comedy elitist, but there's nothing good about randomness for randomness' sake. Comedy needs rhyme and reason - we need to be able to know why something is funny. Sure, we can say something's funny without knowing why, but there's still some part of the subconscious that can actually grasp that if we fail to articulate. Things happening without explanation and without care defy that. There's such a fine line that it can be troublesome when it comes to cartoons, but for the show's first season, the line couldn't be any bolder.



That's not saying that a sudden, unexpected twist - a trademark of the show's present sensibilities - should be shunned, because that's not randomness. I don't mean that we have to be able to suspect the outcome; that would be terrible. It's just that there's a difference between "Holy crap, there were ashes in that vase, SHOCKING" and "lul, look he's naked again 'cuz Darwin ate his clothes, RANDUM :P," the difference being that one is proper and has actual conception motivating it and the other requires a tongue-out emoticon to contextualize, in words, the complete vacancy of thought.

Random does not equal funny. It's not a hard rule. If anything, I'm sure it requires the extra mile to think devoid of reason, and if that only results in an unmitigated, horrendous amalgamation (triple word combo right there), then you shouldn't even bother.

Compounding onto the spotty humor were equally spotty characters. Across every character in Season 1, only Nicole seems properly conceived, and even she was refined and perfected as the series progressed. The other characters, however, have little going for them. Obviously, we can call out Anais' tone-deaf "I'm the smart one and I'm surrounded by idiots" routine, as well as Richard being wholly lazy (and willing to throw his kids under the bus for the sake of preserving it), but let's just focus on Gumball and Darwin for the sake of simplicity, at least for the time being.



I know that I've called Gumball vanilla before, but Season 1 transcends being that kind of refreshingly malleable: he's full-on generic. There's nothing distinctive about him or memorable about him as a character that really sets him apart. He existed entirely to be inoffensive, and while that's an easy way to create a character, it's a difficult way to leave an impression. Look at me, I've been trying for years. The reason that the show works so amazingly now is that it's not afraid to get dangerous with how it uses its characters, which is exciting, whereas here, Gumball's safe and comfortably nondescript.



Darwin somehow pushes that featurelessness to unparalleled extremes to a point where he does practically nothing separate from Gumball. He's completely pointless, serving only as an agreeable sidekick who echoes all of Gumball's sentiments. The show does try to hide it by creating episodes where Gumball acts irrationally because of Darwin, like "The Secret," and episodes like "The Genius" that show his family unable to function without his presence, but even then, he lacks any independence at all. His position isn't changed - he's still dopey, oblivious, and taking up space - so much as everybody else's is, and his failure to similarly realign is frustrating to say the least. With no distinct voice or purpose, he simply exists as a prerequisite, and the sad thing is that he still hasn't shaken it off, that he's still perpetually sidelined to a point where even the most recent episodes ("The Ex," most glaringly) fail to use him as anything more than a prop.

When you have characters that dull, you can't rely on them to motivate episodes. Instinctively, the show pulls one of the worst tricks out of the book as a thin cover-up: if they can't cause their own trouble, then use the powers of the universe to force them into adversity. By virtue of the stupidity of our two heroes, the frustrating principle of accidents prompting scenarios tainted the entire season. There's nothing exciting about the characters to a point where they have virtually no voice so much as the world around them is rooting for their destruction, all while they stare on obliviously. Nothing interesting is thrown into the formula either, short of literally handicapping the characters to a point where their ability to survive in modern society is thrown into question (see: "The Genius"). If the only way to get better scenarios is to somehow make your moronic cast impossibly narrow-minded, then we've got a problem.

Also not helping? The entire supporting cast of the show. While nowadays I can praise the show for its diverse, carefully-conceived cast, the reason it's like that now is from reflecting upon the utter blandness of their Season 1 predecessors. The only merciful thing I can say about characters like Alan "No Hands - that joke's still funny, right guys?" Keane is that they were so underdeveloped that it invited a complete reformation of their character. Alan went from having no hands to being frustratingly altruistic and/or sociopathic. Banana Joe went from fart noises and insults to klutzy but sympathetic. Molly went from coincidentally boring to intentionally, mind-numbingly so. The list goes on.

Heck, even the best offerings of Season 1 - "The Sock," "The Curse," "The Helmet," etc. - are only seen as great for the sake of coming off as in line with Season 2 and the show's current sensibilities. They don't stand on their own right, instead being praised for the sake of a cozy familiarity. There's not an issue with that, of course - good episodes should be praised - but the fact that we so quickly make that association rather than seeing them as Season 1 "staples" certainly isn't a good indication of the other episodes plaguing those early years.

If you can find anything redeemable about Season 1 as its own, distinct item other than "It helped shape the rest of the series and make it as great as it is now" - a lazy argument that, having been called out for, I have since sought to avoid - then be my guest, because I can't.

Closing Stuff
Well, that should end that session of overanalyzing. Anyways, I suggest you take a look at the work of my partner because he is such a talented writer.


 * User blog:Mattalamode
 * Unfunny Guy Talks About Funny Show

That's it for now. Take care.

....

Season 1 is overhated.

Bye.