First half is pretty good, second half is mostly criticism, with which I only partially agree.

A long video – probably much longer than it needed to be to make its point – but a good one. It’s hard to express why you might start to dislike a show like Sunny, and she does a good job of outlining the reasons with evidence to back it up.

As someone who doesn’t think about shows in a meta-sense too often, a lot of the issues with Mac’s character really did go over my head. In fact, I had kind of tricked myself into thinking Gay Mac was a better character because I identify with him more than old Mac, but as Mary rightly points out the purpose of the characterization in the show is to make fun of them, not to identify with them. Mac being openly gay necessitates that the show make fun of gay culture, and that’s pretty antithetical to its thesis.

The gross-out humor also kind of slipped past me, but in hindsight it’s obviously a crutch that they’ve been relying on in a lot of the later episodes (and continue to, see S16E1 and E3…).

And I definitely noticed how characters were wildly shifting between their traits and the “straight-man” on an episode-by-episode basis, though I didn’t realize how much it’s just a later-season problem. It’s a little heartbreaking because it definitely feels like the cast just doesn’t care enough to try anymore, and are only making the show still for their paychecks, which indicates that there’s very little chance of a “turnabout” or return-to-form like Mary suggests.

On the bright side, we got between 8 and 12 really damn good seasons, and nobody can take that away.