2010, TV

Regular Show (2010)

This is a well-regarded animated sitcom from the teens. I watched only the first season before giving up and I will explain why below but it’s pretty funny and its spin on sitcom conventions is entertaining more often than not.

If you are a passionate fan of this show and think I should watch all 8 seasons, please let me know in the comments. Currently, I don’t intend to watch any more of it.

Though I am often enjoyed myself during the first season, I don’t think I enjoyed myself enough to continue. There are too many other things to watch. I think there are a few reasons why I don’t feel I should continue that have little to do with Regular Show itself:

  • I was absolutely sick to death of sitcoms by the late ‘90s, early ‘00s, though I have come back around a bit. I made an exception for animated sitcoms for years however
  • The early Williams Street shows (especially Space Ghost and The Brak Show but also Aqua Teen) absolutely finished off US network TV conventions for me; it’s hard to go back when you’ve seen all conventions skewered so well and so often.
  • The animated sitcoms I do watch with some frequency are a lot more sophisticated and/or imaginative than a lot of animated sitcoms. Bojack Horseman is hard to live up to for any show. But even something like Archer has its own internal universe that is really well-developed. Bob’s Burgers is a finely-honed machine with lots of jokes (and songs) in each episode. Something like Adventure Time, which is a little more of a kid’s show than most of these animated sitcoms, is full of boundless imagination.

But I like how every episode, something so much worse than the worst thing you could imagine happens to these two, getting up to normal young male hijinks. Essentially, Rigby (usually) convinces Mordecai to slack off or do something stupid, and then something supernatural or science fiction-esque happens that is world-threatening, and it’s so over-the-top. That’s the best aspect of the show and they clearly mined it for a lot given how long the show went on.

But Rigby is the literal worst. He’s a ridiculous character who is bad life and seems at least 10 years younger than his age. I suspect he’s based on someone the creator knows, and I’ve definitely known teens like that, and probably some drunk young adults (and maybe some sober ones), but I don’t want to spend time with people like that. Rigby is just a walking chaos agent because he has no impulse control and I just have zero interest in him. In the episodes that are funnier, he’s easier to take. But in the episodes that aren’t as funny, I just want him to be devil punched (or whatever) into oblivion.

So, between my feelings about sitcoms, which this definitely is, and Rigby, I have no interest in going further. But, if you’re a fan, and you think I should, do let me know.

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