User blog comment:Mattalamode/A Second Opinion: The Detective/@comment-9300845-20170617030802/@comment-31194372-20170617075741

Yeah, Fandom's crazy janky about posting stuff - I usually write comments on an online notepad, then go into incognito to post it. So many extraneous loops.

Oh yeah, Anais is definitely limited, but even more so than Darwin. Both serve practically the same standard purpose - to keep Gumball in line - but since Anais isn't specifically Gumball's sidekick, she gets to show off that reflex less and less, and for a main character, she's weirdly snubbed out of a lot of episodes that could've found some use for her. There's also the fact that she's more complex than Darwin in her conception, which means that her utility is even more limited, and since her role in the family is (I hate to say it) the least consequential (though still really important), it means she's hardly used well, let alone at all.

Also: that's exactly what I think is so masterful and so unfair about "The Detective" and its reception: it's the show's writers doing what they envisioned, fully understanding that it's not going to be the easy crowd-pleaser that "The Console" or "The Uncle" were. It's one of the show's greatest accolades: more often than not, they don't care about the consensus of their demographic so much as they want to have fun themselves, and that's what makes watching the show such a joyous occasion for me - you can tell it's a labor of love as close to the definition as humanly possible. Heck, I haven't watched any detective shows at all, but "The Detective" just radiates with an exciting, different energy, and you can tell everyone did their homework. (That's also my primary complaint with episodes like "The Uncle" - they're good, but the writers are obviously reaching a bit - and it's also a bit of an impediment to me fully appreciating "The Console," 'mainstream perceptions' be darned.)

And sorry about the impromptu ending to all of these articles! I just gotta work some stuff out so that, in a few months, I can get back into it stronger than ever before.