Gumball's back. Am I gonna talk about it?

There's unrest in the streets. The planet is on fire. War, famine, Grok waifus. Em dashes are apparently a sign of AI writing now. And yet one question is on everyone's mind: will there be new Mattalamode Gumball reviews? 

It's an interesting question, and it's an interesting time for media in general that I'm not sure to how feel about. All of these shows that were so formative to me, and such a part of my life to the degree that they sort of shaped the person I became and what I've chosen to do with my life, are randomly coming back. Gumball is back. Regular Show is back. Adventure Time is on their twentieth spin-off. SpongeBob never left. There's a grimness to the notion that nothing ever changes, and I don't place any of that blame on the creative voices that have accompanied these shows' rebirth and continuations; it speaks to the depressing state of the industry, especially within animation. The value of new IP is at an all-time low. We've seen brilliant shows like JG Quintel's Close Enough and Guillaume Cassuto's Elliott From Earth get unceremoniously shitcanned, sometimes even leaving behind questions that will never be meaningfully answered. I'm not happy that this is seemingly all that these brilliantly gifted people can do, to resuscitate projects beyond their intended shelf lives and keep them going as if nothing ever happened—artistic freedom has been superseded by financial viability. 

However, this is not to say that everything about these shows is entirely cynical. I had the privilege of meeting Regular Show/O.K. K.O. writer Toby Jones last week at the Chicago premiere of his new movie, and I was struck by his enthusiasm for the Regular Show reboot which I had, to some extent, forgotten was even happening. Even if that show told a complete story and ended gracefully, these new episodes are no less of an involved, passionate endeavor for the people who have gotten to return to it. That's still a privilege. If there's a very depressing, corporate read you can have on this situation, it's important not to let that diminish that these shows are still labors of love, and that they continue to be a joy to create.

So with that in mind, I would like to write about The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball, but just as I've changed since the show ended, so too has all notions of sane media consumption. If episodes were being released on a weekly basis, I'd happily toil away and do the sort of individual reviews of episodes that I did during the show's original run. But since the show just released 20 episodes all at once, that's untenable for discussion. It would be a ton of work to get articles out in rapid succession, and they'd all drown each other out. What I'm looking to do, then, is to return to the tried-and-true list format; once this entire run of episodes is released, I'll make a nice, pretty, comprehensive ranking of every episode, just like I did a few year's back, but with infinitely better writing!

So yes, it'll be a while before I write about Gumball, and I apologize for that. But trust: it'll be worth it. You waited seven years for new episodes. You can wait a month or two for a new article :)