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I criticized the show pretty hard but that is about as good of an ending as I could have expected. The big mystery was handled in a few lines of dialog that explained everyone basically already knew everything and the secrecy was pointless. Once the show ran out of time they had like two conversations that essentially explained everything. To me this would indicate there was no reason to spend years dragging out simple explanations of things and the big mystery stuff was a waste of time but what do I know. They murdered the in-show critic like 3 times to prove a point that I am stupid.
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Sep 5, 2023 02:23
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 03:16 |
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What struck me in the final episodes was just - every time they do a battle scene, it's really good. The animators get a chance to flex, and we get to see these characters in action rather than sitting around reciting so-so dialogue. The big battle where every supporting character gets to do something, and Elfo and Bean's running battle through the mushroom patch with Dagmar, those are genuine high points. You get the sense the animators care about the characters and want to showcase them doing cool stuff. Then the writing around those scenes, woof. The aforementioned big battle ends with Bean lightning blasting everyone, but somehow this means Dagmar still wins, and then Bean is dragged off by guards, but Dagmar knows where she is and has her imprisoned (?) in the castle, so...what? Why does Bean lose the climactic fight and then receive clemency while living in Dagmar's castle until she's ready to quit mourning and fight Dagmar again? Why can her friends, who Dagmar also wanted to kill, freely wander in and out of her room while this is happening? I guess Dagmar was holding out hope that Bean would wear the cursed crown now that Evil Bean was dead, but honestly, I puzzled that out just now trying to map the sequence of events there. I definitely do not remember what the cursed crown was even supposed to do. (I looked it up just now. It was meant to "pay off Maru's debts to Hell". It seems like that's a part of the plot that they already handled a season ago, so I don't know why Dagmar is still futzing around with it now.) There's so much that could have been really good. In this final season you can see that they wanted to tell a serialised story, but however their writer's room is set up, you just don't get the sense this arrangement of writers can do that. Character beats wobble about all over the place, the plot spins on a dime, and the show contradicts itself constantly. Bean has two big scenes where she says she's going to destroy all magic, but then she just forgets and never mentions it again. It feels like veteran animated sitcom writers trying their hand at a fantasy epic, realising it's hard, and retreating back into sitcom whenever the going gets tough, leaving the show uncomfortably straddling two worlds. Also Elfo sucks forever. He never gets better and he gets a pity girlfriend because someone really, really thinks he deserves kisses, I guess.
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Sep 5, 2023 11:16
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Such a gorgeous, awful awful show.
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Sep 5, 2023 15:33
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CatstropheWaitress posted:Such a gorgeous, awful awful show. Everything aesthetic, music and animation, is so good. Too bad about everything else.
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Sep 5, 2023 15:42
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Did not expect Vip and Vap meatspin
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Sep 6, 2023 08:48
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Almost done with this season and it gets worse as it goes. Almost entirely "and then this happened and then that happened" storytelling. It's exhausting and you don't give two shits because you can see all the strings.
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Sep 6, 2023 14:31
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It wraps things up okay, but it only does so by making most of its mystery boxes completely empty. Steamland also felt like a massive waste of time. It was ultimately just a place for characters to gently caress off to when they need them away from Dreamland for a few episodes. It kinda sums up the series as whole when we get an entire episode dedicated to Bean making peace with the fact she has to not merely kill Dagmar but wipe her from existence entirely. This is followed up in finale with Bean stating that she needs to destroy all magic to accomplish. Then… that doesn’t happen Now in a better-written show, we may get Bean understanding that magic isn’t bad and she’s just grieving and grasping at straws. And then she finds some alternative option at the 11th hour to kill Dagmar and prevent resurrection bullshit. Could have had God’s death prevented anyone from ascending, and Satan being pissed off at her kept her out of Hell, so she just ceases to be. Not necessarily great, but it’s what I have to work with. Instead, Dagmar is just killed and Bean fucks off. Nothing about destroying magic, no concern that Dagmar will find a way back. That’s it. You might think that duh, the episode is only halfway done, but instead it’s all epilogue and Dagmar is handling by Satan just putting her in a cage over the cliff of Dreamland as if we hadn’t seen characters survive the fall multiple times throughout the series. I don’t think more episodes would have helped either. This season is like half keeping a body hidden (and failing) and half loving around in places that aren’t Dreamland. It has the same problem focusing as it did every other season.
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Sep 6, 2023 17:32
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Steamland was a cool setting where they could do jokes and storylines they were clearly more comfortable with (because they were more modern), but yeah, the way it interacted with the plot was wild. Alva is a cool villain idea, voiced by an extremely funny comedian, who does absolutely nothing in the plot despite showing up frequently. The most significant thing is that Bean meets Mora there. They clearly wanted Bean discovering "stience" in Steamland to be a character arc thing, but they didn't wanna do the legwork to show her actually learning anything, so that never really goes anywhere beyond her shouting about how cool science is while she zaps stuff with magic in the finale. Also yeah, wow, I completely forgot there was the "I have to erase Dagmar from existence" setup that the show forgot about too. What was going on with the plotting in this show?
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Sep 6, 2023 17:43
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Alva was a nice contrast to Dagmar, being an outwardly nice person who is not even subtly creepy and self-serving. I imagine they had something planned for him, but dropped it for an utterly pointless rocket that served as one final mystery before becoming yet another absolute nothing. Can’t think of a more fitting way to end the show!
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Sep 6, 2023 19:19
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This is the most inexplicable show I've ever seen. The art and animation are great. The voice acting is solid. The scripts... don't even feel like first drafts. They feel like first first drafts, the vomit drafts where you're just getting words on the page so you can edit them later into a good story. Sometimes it feels like the writers brainstormed three ideas, like, Bean would learn to master her magic in Maru, or she'd learn to master it in a duel with herself where she uses stience, or maybe she'd master her magic dueling her mother with a speech on love. They wrote out scenes, thought through ideas... and then went straight to print with all three. So the show constantly feels like it's making no progress when we have to do the same basic scene over and over again without any attempt to knit them together and make them feel like a clear sequence. But the show clearly had some heft to it, the animation did not look cheap or rushed, so... how did the writing only get a weekend to bang out 10 episodes? Even new Simpsons and Futurama, shows very much past their prime, are capable of basic "thirty minute animated episodes" logic. Basic writers room management. Things Disenchantment just... isn't able to do. It fails at writing goals in a way I don't think I've ever seen another show botch. The one thing I half-liked, though, was the bit where Bean's in the asylum and realizes that she's in a place with considerable matricide experience while she's struggling with the thought of killing her mother. But they don't do anything funny or interesting with it and also, Chazz is there, being a terrible character.
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Sep 9, 2023 15:01
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They really just gave a slew of great actors and powerful animators to some of the worst writers in the industry, huh.
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Sep 9, 2023 16:51
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Bleck posted:They really just gave a slew of great actors and powerful animators to some of the worst writers in the industry, huh. For 5 seasons!
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Sep 9, 2023 16:54
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I just finished it, and what a wildly uneven show. The animation was great, and the voice cast were really good, but the pacing is so strange. There are far too many "running jokes" that just became the same thing repeated over and over. I mean, at least they didn't have Zog honking all the time (John DiMaggio was especially strong this season), but we don't need to hear the horse laughing, or Shocko making a noise over and over and over again. You don't need one note characters like Chazz, when you've got better ones who can be used for drama AND comedy. Mop Girl was a one note character who got developed INTO an actual character, and had an arc and everything, so they could do it. The problem is the show has always had a conflict between if it wants to be a sitcom or serialised drama, and struggles with balancing both.
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Sep 10, 2023 19:40
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OldMemes posted:I just finished it, and what a wildly uneven show. The animation was great, and the voice cast were really good, but the pacing is so strange. There are far too many "running jokes" that just became the same thing repeated over and over. I mean, at least they didn't have Zog honking all the time (John DiMaggio was especially strong this season), but we don't need to hear the horse laughing, or Shocko making a noise over and over and over again. You don't need one note characters like Chazz, when you've got better ones who can be used for drama AND comedy. Mop Girl was a one note character who got developed INTO an actual character, and had an arc and everything, so they could do it. One of the really baffling things is how many comic relief characters whose core joke is just "has an annoying voice, says stupid things, and is evil" there are. There's Freckles, Scruffles, Chazz, like a million side characters where this is their entire bit. Sometimes there's nominally a joke there, like how Freckles is an evil ventriloquist dummy, but all the jokes are actually just about how Freckles sucks and is annoying to listen to. Which is the case for the audience too! It also sucks for us to listen to him, not just the characters in-fiction!
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Sep 10, 2023 20:06
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The pay off for Freckles being exposed to Zog as being evil was far, far too late. What even was the joke of Chazz? That's he's annoying? It wasn't funny, and the time could have been spent elsewhere. Was Alva wanting to go to the moon and Earth (!) even foreshadowed or mentioned? OldMemes fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Sep 10, 2023 |
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Sep 10, 2023 20:13
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I killed Netflix a few months ago and really unlikely to re-sub but I’m mildly interested in how they wrapped up this mess. Is there a good summary of the season anywhere?
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Sep 14, 2023 10:55
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Honestly whatever you write in your head is going to be just as satisfying. Bean loves mermaid, gains control of her magic and kills her mother, but not really, but it's ok because she's imprisoned at the end. Some other stuff happens but it really doesn't matter and has no weight. I still think the most lame one-joke character they have is the inserted critic that keeps dying by arrow. It's them trying to do an Austin Power's "I suggest you don't worry about those things and just enjoy yourself"... but the guy is correct most of the time and is pointing out flaws that make the show incredibly unenjoyable. They seem somewhat aware of how poo poo the story is, but then do nothing to fix it over five seasons. Makes it more of a middle finger to the audience.
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Sep 14, 2023 15:05
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Lampshading how awful the Honking is does not make continued Honking ok.
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Sep 14, 2023 15:30
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socialsecurity posted:Lampshading how awful the Honking is does not make continued Honking ok. Post series 10 simpsons did this a lot "If we say it's bad it's not as bad" It's still bad
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Sep 15, 2023 09:03
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I've never really thought bad tv shows was especially bad, it's all just generically samey with a few good shows that stand out. But this show has shown me what actual a bad show looks like. Like how did some of this stuff get to the final cut?! One part that springs to mind involved that Alva guy doing the fanfic bit with the mermaid (and that didn't even stay internally consistant, he had a fanfic he was writing he wanted to show off but they just do improv instead?) and while that's going on (at least this is what the editing suggests) Bean is off stumbling onto the weird robo suit. Alva steps out of the shadows in all his lab gear ready to take advantage of the situation. I was expecting this to be explained by the other one being a robot Alva, or something... anything. But nope, apparently he knew where Bean was going, what she was doing, and was in two places at once. I had to rewatch it twice to make sure I hadn't missed anything. The end of the show was even worse, but I don't wanna delve too far. I've just never seen a show have new plot holes opened up by scenes meant to resolve everything before. They could have literally just cut off all the scenes showing what happened after the victorious battle and it would have been better and made more sense.
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Sep 15, 2023 12:27
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QwertySanchez posted:I've never really thought bad tv shows was especially bad, it's all just generically samey with a few good shows that stand out. But this show has shown me what actual a bad show looks like. Like how did some of this stuff get to the final cut?! One part that springs to mind involved that Alva guy doing the fanfic bit with the mermaid (and that didn't even stay internally consistant, he had a fanfic he was writing he wanted to show off but they just do improv instead?) and while that's going on (at least this is what the editing suggests) Bean is off stumbling onto the weird robo suit. Alva steps out of the shadows in all his lab gear ready to take advantage of the situation. I was expecting this to be explained by the other one being a robot Alva, or something... anything. But nope, apparently he knew where Bean was going, what she was doing, and was in two places at once. I had to rewatch it twice to make sure I hadn't missed anything. I posted a bunch of words about similar inconsistent stuff in the past. My conclusion/opinion was that the show is bipolar with the serialized stuff supposedly being the point of the show but Groening involving himself enough to push through the gags. Groening is the George Lucas of his quirky comedy cartoons so when someone writes an episode that is like "Get to Steamland -> Meet Alva -> Dinner -> Reveal of Suit to Advance Plot" you have Groening pushing through gags he finds funny like Chaz, honking or the creepy fanfic so the show has to sidestep around this stuff while kind of ignoring it.
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Sep 15, 2023 13:01
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Dagmar just allowing a rebel faction to live unperturbed in the castle is maybe the least sensical plot point of the last season. At one point early on she and Elfo have a confrontation in the throne room and he just walks out and closes the door behind him and then has like a whole 2 minute conversation with all his buds right on the other side of the door. Like, open the door and kill him, lady. Why do you seem to care so little about your evil plan? You've enlisted literally Satan in it, and you just kinda twiddle your thumbs for most of the season.
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Sep 15, 2023 14:52
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PostNouveau posted:Dagmar just allowing a rebel faction to live unperturbed in the castle is maybe the least sensical plot point of the last season. At one point early on she and Elfo have a confrontation in the throne room and he just walks out and closes the door behind him and then has like a whole 2 minute conversation with all his buds right on the other side of the door. Like, open the door and kill him, lady. Why do you seem to care so little about your evil plan? You've enlisted literally Satan in it, and you just kinda twiddle your thumbs for most of the season. I'm still confused about the part where Dagmar is trying to trick Bean by being nice to her and it seems to be kind of working only for Dagmar to use the music box to lure Bean into discovering her being evil which she then acted surprised about. So she foiled her own plan? Did someone else use the music box despite it being established Dagmar was the one using it to mess with Bean? Why did the music box need to lure Bean into discovering Dagmar eating Trog brains in the first place? If Dagmar wanted to just come out as evil why do it that way and also act surprised about it? It's like the writers didn't think it would be convincing that Bean started exploring the Trog tunnels unprompted and picked the thing that had been luring her around in the past but didn't consider it would make zero sense when applied to Dagmar specifically. It's completely unimportant but highlights that weirdly poor execution in the scripting. The episode where Bean hits her head and hangs out with Mora which is apparently presented to the viewer as a dream, complete with necklace in the surf closing scene, is another example. Bean and Mora never thought it was a dream and only thought the other had ran away. They resolved it by figuring out the other mermaids separated them. So what was the point of the dream stuff? Was it not intended to be portrayed as a dream and just weird scripting that made the viewer assume that? What?
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Sep 15, 2023 23:50
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The Trogs just seemed to do nothing overall. A neutral faction who have their own agenda was interesting, but the payoff wasn't strong enough.
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Sep 20, 2023 14:15
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“What if this was all a dream? Wouldn’t that be infuriating?” I wonder if that was an in-joke about a possible ending they had considered. Like Bean wakes up from a coma in a hospital in our world and Zog is the Muffler King of New Jersey or something. The kingdom being called Dreamland suggested that possibility to me.
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Sep 21, 2023 04:35
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socialsecurity posted:Lampshading how awful the Honking is does not make continued Honking ok. Honestly the honking was the reason I would have been perfectly happy if Bender was written out of Futurama.
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Oct 20, 2023 20:11
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 03:16 |
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Here, at the end, I ask: what was the loving point?
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Nov 2, 2023 14:30
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