long overdue bump. this was back when the show just started and 5 seasons (parts) later, now it's done.
the first season was extremely good, from what i recall. it's been 5 years since i watched it, and i've never re-watched any of this show (some people have said re-watches will make you pick up on more stuff, but i haven't had time).
the second season made me a bigger fan, thinking this was some really cool maze of stories intertwined...like an animated fantasy comedy novel. in the tradition of, say, terry pratchett.
the third season is when it started to get bogged down. the laughs were few, and there were sociological things going on that weren't really credible or appropriate for an animated fantasy satire. like, king zog suddenly having these "honks". i remember reading on reddit that it was a "real beacon for people with mental illness" or something. leave it to reddit to pretentiously and self-indulgently think they have the intellectual superiority (i mean they said the same thing about "bojack horseman"). in the end, all it did was make me lose interest in the show.
the other thing, was the shoehorned "lesbian" affair between mora the mermaid and bean. bean is introduced as a smartass, boozy, independent but also vulnerable heroine. obviously she wasn't going to have a heterosexual relationship with elfo or luci or any other male character. i was hoping they'd just leave her single. instead, they bring in this mermaid and suddenly bean is all squishy for her. but mora leaves her high and dry, and bean is sad.
zog keeps honking.
season four starts to bring it back to its roots, with zog finally reclaiming his attitude and gruffness by the end. around this time, i actually thought the show was going to get cancelled. netflix was taking a chainsaw to a lot of their shows after the 2nd or 3rd season...i had invested enough time so i wanted to see how it ended.
so here we are, at season 5. it's a mixed bag. it has some bigger laughs, probably more than the previous 2 seasons. it is more about the buildup of the final showdown between bean and dagmar, and evil bean (who was created in season 4). by now, though, i'd gotten very tired of the dagmar storyline. it felt like there was another potential buildup with cults and possibly even something Lovecraftian. But...
...they brought the fuckin' mermaid back. And that became the focal point for bean. now, they cram all of their lovey dovey stuff in which couldn't feel more contrived because i knew at that point a) they were going to kill her off and b) they were going to bring her back. check and check.
the funny thing is, her and bean are reunited in the "love conquers all" ending only through...god. so for all the gushing that media outlets have been doing for this being a champion of lgbtqa+ programming...they have to credit god for that. lol.
luci is definitely the biggest bright spot of the whole series, and the relationship bean has with him and elfo is fantastic (which is also why it's not really believable that she would abandon all hope and friends when mora is dead). the relationship between luci and the devil is also pretty amusing.
i'd only recommend this to "futurama" and later "simpsons" fans because the humor and situations will be more familiar (early "simpsons" is in a class all of its own as some of the greatest TV ever)...but to those who aren't, or aren't huge fans of this genre...obviously, you wouldn't get much out of it.
besides the contrivances and forced stuff, it's still decent entertainment and the ending is satisfying.
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