My brother introduced me to the show. He had the first two seasons on DVD, because of some deal he got. We watched them together, although he’d already seen the whole series. Anyway, it was hilarious. I loved the weird humor, the cultural references, the bleak attitude, and later, the complexity. I mean, the first season was pretty straightforward, but it got more interesting as time went on. I kept watching, and most of the episodes were pretty good.

So I watched the third season. I saw it on the adult swim website; it was the first show I really watched online. Even early on, the show wasn’t without its flaws. I mean, the creators voiced nearly all of the characters, so most of them sounded like those two. They had to replace Stephen Colbert, because he got too famous. His replacement sounded nothing like him. As far as voices go, several characters are hard to understand, and more difficult voices showed up as time went on.

Some episodes sucked, even in the earlier seasons. I don’t judge a series by individual episodes, but the ratio of suck to decent increased dramatically later on.

Everything that happens in later episodes seems to have the sole purpose of undoing whatever happened earlier on. What’s the point of having continuity if they’re just going to reverse everything? You could watch the new season without knowledge of the earlier ones, because knowing those things doesn’t help. The super-secret ORB turned out to be broken. It didn’t do anything. Hunter’s sex change operation was reversed. Now, Molotov is dead. The Ventures’ bodyguard is Brock or Hatred depending on the week.

My brother says that I should just ignore the continuity and focus on the plot and humor of the individual episodes. I don’t see anything wrong with that, but the real problem is that none of the new episodes are funny. In the first two seasons, there were clever plots and interesting ideas, with humor similar to the other good comedy series on adult swim. The third season was okay. Some episodes were funny, some failed. But the fourth season is all crap. I don’t think I’ve been amused by any of them. Again, my brother says that I just don’t appreciate the show properly. Other people, he suggests, are out there laughing while I just shrug.

Speaking of things I hate, the character Shore Leave is high on the list. An unnecessary flaming gay character, he is a horrible stereotype, and still not funny. The other characters are not interesting anymore. The Monarch is so useless that even when they joked about it in the season finale, it wasn’t ironic. It was 100 percent accurate. It’s at the point where all of the “unsolved” problems are tired and irrelevant. There’s no reason to care why the Monarch hates Dr. Venture. If they’re going for a “there is no reason” angle, even that is exhausted.

The fourth season revealed nothing, did not advance the plot, was not funny, and took too long doing it. If you’re not going to have a continuous plot, then be funny. If you can’t even manage that, get the fuck off the air.