User blog comment:ThatGuy456/A Guy's Thoughts: (5-1) My 15 Favorite Season 4 Episodes/@comment-31194372-20170416225117

Solid as always.

If there's one controversial opinion I want to dispel, it's that I've never been too keen on the episode's major, two-parter episodes. Don't get me wrong, they are objectively great, they do everything right, the pacing's perfect, and the episodes leave an impression. My issue is just that I'm not drawn to rewatching them. One of the draws of the show (in my opinion) is that it's not serialized, and it's one of the few shows I can think of that's properly thriving without having some continuous storyline. I always struggle with those kinds of shows because that factor relies on drawing the viewer in out of unpredictability and heavy investment.

You have to watch them with that anticipatory mindset that comes with being on the edge of your seat and not knowing what happens next, but once you've seen it and know every beat of the episode, I don't have the urge to see it again. Even in standard episodes, there's usually a couple of jokes or gags that I forget about that keep the interest flowing, but the larger episodes are too dense and reliant on story-telling for those moments to really exist.

I feel the same way about "The Nest," though to a lesser extent. It's the kind of episode that, no matter how many times I watch it, I always assume it won't be as good as it ultimately ends up being. It also benefits from being only half as long, and while that means it's more dense, it benefits from its brevity. (At the very least, they found a compelling way to use Evil Turtle, a character that ironically has no bite to it.)