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projects beyond their intended shelf lives and keep them going as if nothing ever happened—artistic freedom has been superseded by financial viability. 

Patreon Announcement

Hi everybody!

My name is Matt, and I assume that if you're reading this, you know that I'm a freelance writer who's latest project has been working through every single SNL season systematically and writing reviews of every single episode along the way. 

What you might not know is that I have been writing online since at least 2011, and while I've historically been a bit uncomfortable with monetizing my work—it's a passion project!—I am now, officially, a young adult with many things they must do. I can't commit myself to my writing as easily as I used to. Writing my SNL reviews is something I greatly enjoy, but it's also a massive time investment; doing coverage for an entire season can take anywhere between 1-3 months depending on how busy I am, and it makes up some of the most lengthy and comprehensive writing that I have ever done.

That's where you can chime in! For only $3 a month, you can help support my writing endeavors and get exclusive, early access to my SNL coverage as it's written instead of having to wait for everything to come out at once! I'm also planning some fun, exclusive content for behind the paywall, starting with coverage of Lorne Michaels' doomed spiritual successor to SNL, The New Show! Even if I'm very biased... that sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I look forward to seeing you on the other side!

https://www.patreon.com/mattalamode

IMPORTANT BLOG UPDATE

Hey, Internet!

In case you haven't noticed, my coverage over the past few months has been... a bit iffy. My Amphibia reviews have halted entirely, other shows that I was really looking forward to covering—City of Ghosts, Close Enough Season 2, and Elliott from Earth—have failed to come into fruition, and even reviews of the one show that I'm still on top of episodically, Final Space, have not been coming out as on-time as I would like to hope.

I'm incredibly frustrated that I can't attend to everything that I would like to, but I've been having an incredibly arduous semester of college since January which has made it incredibly difficult to allocate as much time as I would like to writing reviews. I alternate between being consumed by work, or alternatively being too exhausted to devote myself to something this intensive in what free time I get. I only really have one day that I'm able to dedicate to writing my reviews, and I try to put everything into that day, but on long weeks they can end up getting squandered pretty easily. 

I am sorry to everyone who enjoyed my coverage of Amphibia and Close Enough that I have been unable to dedicate time to maintaining those bodies of work; I'm as disappointed as you are. I do hope to do some sort of further write-ups concerning Amphibia, perhaps for the Season 2 finale if nothing else so that I can reflect on the past season. I won't lie, though, in also saying that I have been somewhat ambivalent to the direction of the show as it's continued, which has made writing about it frustrating at points. As for the other shows I listed that I wanted to pick up coverage of, I do hope to write something about Elliott from Earth and City of Ghosts at some point in the future. I just can't right now.

I have spent the last four and a half years pouring my life into this blog, but now that my life has become too much to bear for at least this present point in time, I need to loosen away from it and tend to the other things around me. This website has always been a passion project for me, but if I can't put the passion into it right now, why should I keep plugging away at it? I feel a lot of stress and anxiety, and I need to tend to my mental health. Thank you for your understanding.

Update: "A Second Opinion" and Abroad

Well, it's finally my summer, and you know what that means: the guy that writes things that you read every once in a while's gonna write something you'll never read. At the very least, this is sort of relevant to the aim of the blog: diversifying.

Why I'm Covering The Amazing World of Gumball

Why the heck am I gonna start covering a cartoon?

Well, there are two shows that I follow religiously: one, of course, being SNL, while the other is a little cartoon called The Amazing World of Gumball.

It has to go down as criminally underrated, one of the few shows on Cartoon Network to not have an established fanbase, and it desperately needs one. It succeeds on every possible level for the kind of show that it is: the visuals are stunning, the characters are a lovely palette, and most importantly, the stories are unique. It's one of the few cartoons to beat the living crap out of the fourth wall without coming across as desperate and it's experimented with the medium more than any other show I can think of. Heck, one episode is built around the episode glitching out while another makes fun of cartoon's consistent resetting and reverting back to normal after every episode by forcing the titular family (The Wattersons, for future reference) to frantically fix everything.

The show's discussed nihilism, the meaning of life, depression, and everything in between perfectly whereas so many others have offered little insight. It even flip-flops genre, covering prison drama, dystopian fiction, zombie thriller, and more. Heck, its most famous scene features their entire world deconstructing, flowing into a computer-generated nightmare, storyboards, and Post-it notes.