I didn't like it.
At all. At. All.
I know it might seem odd coming from me, since I'm very good with giving things a chance and I try my best to see the good/redeemable aspects of even the most widely hated media. Basically, I'd say I'm an easygoing guy. Not saying it's wrong to be passionate and critical, of course, and it's always refreshing to see people praise and criticize things with well worded, challenging thoughts, so I'm not touting my attitude as superior. Everyone has a way of approaching things, and I stated my way.
But even I can't, in good faith, use my lenient methods to describe this... well, frankly, shit. I thought it was just really, really disappointing at first, but as I think about it more and more, I'm slowly realizing how truly insulting, sub-standard and plain fucking STUPID it really is.
Yeah, you can probably tell I'm coming on strongly about my feelings; I am. When it comes to basically everything, I have a very prominent tendency to sugarcoat my feelings and make them as understandable and accepting as possible. I'm a very tolerant person in general, ultimately. But after seeing what became of this show, I just can't take it anymore.
I need to rant. Bad.
I loved the comic strip as a kid. Next to Calvin & Hobbes, it was one of my favorites due to the satire, humor and art style. Huey and Micheal's contrasting demeanors and viewpoints often made for entertaining reading, the stuff poked fun at in general was endearing to see, and Riley, is... well, Riley. You get my point. I didn't find out about the show until around 2008 or so, but I wasn't sure what to think. Comic strip adaptions of shows never sat well with me; the only one I really liked was Dilbert. Baby Blues' adaption was horseshit (and I didn't even like the strip itself to begin with, so that sure as hell didn't help), Garfield's was okay at best, and basically every other one I witnessed was just dull as shit. I WAS quite tempted to see how supposedly good it was, since at the time, it was receiving a bunch of good reviews, but I relented regardless; if there was one thing I knew back then, it was that I was cynical as hell when it came to TV (hell, sometime during 2008's summer, I made a huge post here on how much I hated TV at the time), and another shitty newspaper comic adaption wouldn't make me feel any more positive about it.
Then I finally decided to give it a go on April 2010.
It was so, SO worth it that it wasn't even funny. What few expectations I had were absolutely blown away from the very first episode; the anime-style animation, hysterical dialogue, well distinguished characters and great music (seriously, look up the mix-tapes on YouTube; they're fucking amazing) instantly made me fall in love with the show. It was rather low-key and quite vulgar, but that's part of what I loved about it; the show wasn't afraid to pull any punches at all, and despite the fact that you could tell it was an adaption of the strip, it often felt like something different and fresh. It didn't go out of its way to differentiate from its origins on the newspaper, but it still kept the satirical spirit of that counterpart regardless.
Unfortunately, my adoration of the show made me start imitating the speech mannerisms of the characters, so understandably some people just thought I liked the show because everyone said 'nigga' a lot. I can assure you, though, that even back then, that was in no way the only reason (or even A reason) I liked it. It's just that it's probably only now that I'm fully explaining why I loved it so much at the time and why I still do to this day.
The next two seasons were even better; each funnier, more energetic and more entertaining than the last. The stark realism of the first season wasn't there, so plots were often wackier, but for me, that didn't ruin the show at all. The satire, humor and likability of the characters were still there in droves, there were still plenty of hints of realism and the already great looking animation and art dramatically improved. And of course, the music was as amazing as ever. I still consider A Date With the Booty Warrior to be my favorite episode of the entire series; 4 years later, and I continue to laugh my ass off each and every time I see it. Just the perfect combination of pants-shittingly hilarious dialogue, parody, craziness and overall Boondocks spirit in my opinion. Oh, and Clifton Powell (Big Smoke!) voices one of the in-mates, so even back then I knew I was going to love it. Alas, no good thing lasts, and I was quite distraught when the third season ended. I quickly declared the cartoon one of my favorites of all time. I found very little wrong with it, honestly.
Then... four years later, a small teaser was released by Adult Swim that instantly grabbed my interest and made me incredibly excited, with the soulful hip-hop that I've come to love from the series and a relaxing tone.
And then the trailer for the 4th season came out. I loved what I saw. A Breaking Bad parody, a small but hilarious helping of Ruckus, great animation as always... but a few things made me ask myself questions.
What's with the dub-step beat? Why does the writing seem a little... different? Where's Thugnificent?
It wasn't necessarily bad; not by any means, really. But there was a distinct... well, difference in feel from what I was used to from the series. It felt less clever and satirical and more by-the-book. I knew Aaron wasn't going to be over-seeing the season like with the previous ones, but it still felt rather jarring to see the changes. Being the guy I am, though, I still wanted to give it a chance, because hey, new Boondocks after almost 5 years! Can't be that bad, right?
As I watched each new episode, though, I quickly began to realize how naive I really was.
The show was NOTHING like it used to be. The wit, energy, heart, writing... just about EVERYTHING that made the first few seasons great was missing. Sure, there WERE some diamonds in the rough like Freedom Ride or Die (which told a fairly well written story about his time as a Freedom Rider, although the ending was pretty dumb), Granddad Dates a Kardashian (a funny take on people who're obsessed with ass implants) and Stinkmeaner: Begun the Clone War Has (the official end to the Stinkmeaner storyline, though I personally preferred how season 3 went about it), but by and large, the season felt much less like The Boondocks and a lot more like a cheap knock-off of it. And it's not just (or maybe even, I don't even know) that the show was so dissimilar to its former self; hell, South Park from seasons 4-14 was quite different from the first 3 seasons, and the show still managed to be hilarious most of the time and kept the spirit of its original self up until season 15, where for me it became heavily hit-and-miss.
If the show still had all the qualities of the previous seasons (intelligent look into American/black culture, great writing, excellent music... you get the idea), just with a different approach to writing, I would've been fine with things changing. However, watching basically one episode of the season was enough to tell me that they wanted to revive The Boondocks for one last season just for the sake of it.
For starters, any development the characters went through was basically thrown out the window, and some were even made really unlikable. Ruckus went from an incredibly racist, horrible human being that nevertheless professed his views in a hilariously line-crossing, surprisingly loquacious way and had an incredibly traumatizing past that, once revealed, at least partially changed his character and made his current personality understandable (though still not in any way justifying anything he said or did over the course of the series), to a dude that basically spouts horrifically racist remarks every 5 seconds with hardly a hint of humor, satire or justification (as justifiable as Ruckus gets, anyway, but still). I went from cracking up constantly at the horrendously offensive stuff he said to just being completely disgusted by it, since they basically decided to say 'fuck it' in terms of making him at least partially more likable despite an entire episode being dedicated to explaining his behavior, making said episode, and every appearance he made afterwards (except 'It's Going Down', where his place in the episode at least wasn't that major and his racist tendencies were fairly toned down in comparison to what was usual at the time), completely pointless.
Tom was never a ballsy character by any stretch of the imagination, but one thing that made ADWtBW my favorite episode was that it taught him to stand up for himself more. The very first episode of the new season? Focuses on Sarah basically walking all over him until Pretty Boy Fleezy steps in and... teaches him to stand up for himself more. What the hell was the point of the plot of ADWtBW if PBF basically all but said that 'Tom's still a total pussy despite the fact that he risked his life to fight off a rapist and succeed'? It's kind of minor compared to my other issues with the season, but it's still something that I wasn't exactly happy with; a classic case of a butt monkey going through development, getting thrown a bone for it, then having said development more-or-less completely reversed because fuck you, we love tormenting him.
Grandad went from a somewhat kooky, grumpy and childish, but ultimately well-intentioned, elderly man to a gullible, near-retarded asshole that got way, WAY too much focus. I know he's a main character, but still, you don't fucking KNOW about Spotlight Stealing Squads until you witness this season; practically every episode this season either focuses on Grandad or heavily features him. That alone got incredibly irritating and I had to keep myself from groaning and changing the channel several times. My patience can only be tested so much.
Riley and Huey weren't any better, which sucks, considering they're also main characters.
Huey's cynical mindset was brought into the light far too much for my taste and basically made him a toned down Lisa Simpson/Brian Griffin (okay, maybe that's not quite accurate, but still). Before, he just gave advice and offered his viewpoint on situations every once in a while and even when he did, it was hard not to agree with him more often than not. He often had a direct hand in the plot as well, so he wasn't just at the sidelines. Now EVERY SINGLE TIME anybody does something even remotely wrong or disagreeable, Huey has to be the one that points it out. It makes him come off less as a reasonable, if cynical, kid just trying to make his good intentions known through compelling speeches and effective action and more a snarky, passive-aggressive little bastard. What doesn't help is that his role is regulated SOLELY to a 'you're doing this wrong' statement generator. He only directly helps keep the plot moving once or twice during the season. It's just really, really annoying.
Riley basically just spends most of his time having either nothing go right for him (hell, the LAST EPISODE ends with him basically being at the receiving end of torment even if he deserved it; I'll get more into it later), bitching at everything or just yelling/making fun of his grandfather. It's not TOO far off from his original personality, I suppose, but at least he got a lot of funny lines in and was a fairly interesting character during the first three seasons. Here? I had basically no reason whatsoever to care for him.
As far as appearances from other loved characters go... no Ed Wuncler III and Gin Rummy![:icon_confused:]()
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. Thugnificent being basically nowhere to be found was a huge blow to me as well. Even if they DID happen to make appearances and I probably just forgot, none of their roles were memorable and this season just seemed to rely on the core cast a bit too much (especially the aforementioned Grandad). It got really dull really, really fast. Ed Wuncler Jr.'s few appearances weren't anything terribly entertaining, unfortunately.
I could go on with this, but I don't know what else to say. Laziness, that's all there really is to it.
The music is also something that really bugged me. There was a distinct lack of awesome beats and fitting tracks that made me tempted to go on YouTube for. Hell, there wasn't even a new mixtape for this season from what I can tell. Only one beat was really used.
The writing also took a pretty massive hit. You know how beyond all the swearing and mature content, there was a sort of... wit or appealing humorous edge to the first three seasons? Like, compare any episode of those seasons to a season 4 episode. You'll know what I mean. It's kind of like comparing The Sopranos to Lost, is what I'm getting at. It's really jarring, and there were way, WAY too few genuinely clever lines or scenes. It just felt extremely atypical of adult cartoons.
If I could condense the remainder of my thoughts at least a bit to avoid rambling, I'll just say that almost everything about the new season bugged the shit out of me. I tried giving it a chance as hard as I could, and I managed to watch every episode, but looking back, I didn't realize until now how hard I struggled to squeeze enjoyment out of the season. Not one laugh or anything.
What bugged me most of all, though, was the lack of interesting portrayals of black culture, which was... well, basically one of the points of the show from the beginning.
To go a bit deeper into why I felt this was such an important aspect of the show: I had Black History month in several of my history classes in high school, and while I was always very, very sympathetic to the plight of the race and never really saw what the hell the big deal was about people with different skin hues, learning in-depth what these individuals had to go through just horrified me in every way. I always hated racism and discrimination, and knowing that, even to this day, it still exists for ANY sub-set of people, whether it be African-Americans, Asians, people with disabilities, homosexuals, what have you, will always greatly enrage me. It's not a choice to have a disability or be of a certain sexuality, much less be a certain race, and I feel you should be proud of what you are in spite of it; it's only as bad as you make it out to be.
I always thought it was interesting that a select portion of blacks used hip-hop, jazz and soulful music as outlets for creativity and stress, and even before I knew of the struggles of the race, I enjoyed rap and such due to beats and lyrics and stuff. The great deal of sympathy I have for what they had to go through, once I found things out, greatly enhanced my appreciation for these genres of music.
My point, though, is that despite cultural, social and ideological differences, I don't see any race as significantly different from one another. Deep down, we're all people, and appearances, behavior, skin color, what have you won't change that as far as I can tell. And part of what I love about Boondocks is that it tore the ignorant/close-minded idiots a new one. Don't like "stupid honkies" or "dumb niggers"? The Boondocks lets you know that you're just looking at a portion of people through stereotypes perpetuated by media and malicious mindsets. It became somewhat less common throughout the show in place of more general storylines, but the intentions/challenges were still there throughout the first 5 years, so it's not as if the show ever completely abandoned it.
I dunno, maybe I'm not exactly right with how I'm looking at this. I might just be talking out of my ass or taking it a bit too much at face value. But one thing is for sure the case; I've always highly respected what McGruder has crafted with his series, and I always will. His views speak to me in a way I might never really be able to describe in a way that's fully coherent.
The fourth season basically undoes this focus and makes the series a typical 'wacky adult sitcom with tons of raunchy humor and n-words and half-assed/occasionally funny satire thrown in for the sake of a message for the people to use on those with opinions different from theirs!'. There's changing the way a show is written and flat-out changing a core purpose into something that spits in the face of it. I was just... really, really, REALLY pissed at what they did to a show I loved so dearly. Only one or two real episodes really had an inkling of what the show once was (the previously mentioned Freedom Ride or Die and Freedomland, though even the latter was ruined by shoehorning in Ruckus' OMG HILARIOUS AND TOTALLY NOT OVERDONE RACISM, so only FRoD harkened back to the old feel of The Boondocks); everything else just felt way too much like Boondocks written by people who didn't understand what made the show special to begin with.
Again, though, I'm not saying that it was solely the fact that Boondocks tore down ignorance that made it special and nothing else; look up and you'll see that I also mentioned the characters, music, dialogue and whatnot. It's just that the focus on cultures was a particularly major part of the show, and to see the show both almost completely dismiss that AND ruin the other elements was just very saddening for me.
It wasn't a complete train-wreck, though; like I said, I enjoyed Freedom Ride or Die, Granddad Dates a Kardashian and Stinkmeaner: Begun the Clone War Has. Not anywhere close to the quality of the previous seasons, of course, but considerably better than the other turds I had to witness.
Then after nine episodes of this generic tripe came the final nail in the coffin that solidified this as a shit-stain of a season and a black mark on the show; The New Black.
Bar Goodlove's (an earlier character that I liked) surprising reappearance, I could hardly find it in me to like the episode. The concept itself was nice; a look into people using gay and retarded as regular insults. The execution? Could've been so much better.
So, SO Much better.
Obviously, I thought the whole season was bad as is, especially compared to how great the first three seasons were (keep in mind that this is, again, one of my favorite cartoons of all time, so I had high expectations for the final season despite Aaron not being involved), but I at least thought they'd step it up a BIT more for the series finale. I probably should have known better, and I'm most likely looking at it through rose-tinted bias goggles, but I still can't begin to express my disappointment.
The overarching plot introduced early in the season (The Freeman family being poor, which in itself wasn't handled too well for the most part) was pretty much just left on standby for whatever reason and no changes were made to the status quo. Which really doesn't make any sense, since this is the FINAL EPISODE and considering all the interesting elements they introduced, including the plot, I would've loved a proper wrap-up, but I guess that was just asking for too much. Either way, you simply don't introduce a major story, decide to not bother with an ending, and just expect viewers to forget about it at the end of it all, but the writers just didn't seem to get that. Sure, it was already focusing on a potentially good concept, but they could've at least made it a side-plot or scrap it early on as a surprise so they could go all out with the world of The Boondocks and give us one hell of an ending.
Beyond that, the episode's execution of the concept... alright, actually. Better than other episodes, that's for sure. Would've been perfectly fine as a standalone episode, really, but not as a season finale, much less, again, a SERIES finale. When you take that into consideration, that's why I'm so disappointed at the writers just playing it safe and making a normal episode instead of a knockout finale. The jokes in general at least got a few smirks out of me for a change, which I DEFINITELY can't say for the rest of the season, where I mostly either just got a huge "meh" feeling or wanted to change the channel as soon as possible.
But a part of me was still on my toes. I knew this was an Adult Swim show, so a part of me still had hope that these guys would pull out some crazy shit at the last minute.
Nothing of that effect ever came, though. It just ended abruptly with Riley being chased by the special needs people, and what (very) little enjoyment I got out of the episode, and effectively the entire season, was quickly crushed as a result of that, knowing that this was the end of a show that they could've spent time building towards an insane final plot-line or whatever and instead chose to cash in on the popularity and laurels.
I was crushed. Absolutely crushed. I had a feeling in my heart that felt like a hole was cut through. Instead of thinking to myself "woah, best ending to a cartoon ever, this reinforces my love for The Boondocks", I thought "...WHAT. THE HELL. WAS THAT.".
And as you can most likely guess, I did not mean that in a good way by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn't a 'holy shit' what the hell, it was a 'what the fucking motherfucker fuck was that abysmal, appallingly written bullshit' what the hell.
I've seen countless things I've loved throughout the years changed to generic pandering bullshit, abominations or something that appeals to executives. I've done my best to tolerate it all, as I know not everything's perfect and there's some sort of reason for most things, no matter how twisted or poorly explained.
Once again, I might just be taking this far, far too seriously. I might just be exaggerating the hell out of my views and making the final season writers out to be heinous monsters instead of dudes that just wanted to write a season for one of my favorite shows (which, as an idea in itself, I greatly appreciate despite the execution being every type of shit). Really, no one's the monster here. They simply did what they wanted (from what I can tell, anyway...) and that was that. You know what they say; if life gives you lemons, use them!
But my stance remains; I never thought, out of all things, The Boondocks would be subjected to this kind of atrocious handling. It's one of Adult Swim's most popular shows, and it's gotten a good amount of views over the years, so maybe I should have expected a certain set of eyes to look into it. Regardless, to see something I love so much become this in its final days is just something I cannot let slide without giving my thoughts on it. I really do love this show, and I love it enough that I'm not ashamed that I'm passionate about it, even if its a bit too much. Though at the end of the day, it's not comparable to an epidemic, natural disaster or a church bombing. It's just a show based off a comic.
Still a shame to end all shames, though.
At all. At. All.
I know it might seem odd coming from me, since I'm very good with giving things a chance and I try my best to see the good/redeemable aspects of even the most widely hated media. Basically, I'd say I'm an easygoing guy. Not saying it's wrong to be passionate and critical, of course, and it's always refreshing to see people praise and criticize things with well worded, challenging thoughts, so I'm not touting my attitude as superior. Everyone has a way of approaching things, and I stated my way.
But even I can't, in good faith, use my lenient methods to describe this... well, frankly, shit. I thought it was just really, really disappointing at first, but as I think about it more and more, I'm slowly realizing how truly insulting, sub-standard and plain fucking STUPID it really is.
Yeah, you can probably tell I'm coming on strongly about my feelings; I am. When it comes to basically everything, I have a very prominent tendency to sugarcoat my feelings and make them as understandable and accepting as possible. I'm a very tolerant person in general, ultimately. But after seeing what became of this show, I just can't take it anymore.
I need to rant. Bad.
I loved the comic strip as a kid. Next to Calvin & Hobbes, it was one of my favorites due to the satire, humor and art style. Huey and Micheal's contrasting demeanors and viewpoints often made for entertaining reading, the stuff poked fun at in general was endearing to see, and Riley, is... well, Riley. You get my point. I didn't find out about the show until around 2008 or so, but I wasn't sure what to think. Comic strip adaptions of shows never sat well with me; the only one I really liked was Dilbert. Baby Blues' adaption was horseshit (and I didn't even like the strip itself to begin with, so that sure as hell didn't help), Garfield's was okay at best, and basically every other one I witnessed was just dull as shit. I WAS quite tempted to see how supposedly good it was, since at the time, it was receiving a bunch of good reviews, but I relented regardless; if there was one thing I knew back then, it was that I was cynical as hell when it came to TV (hell, sometime during 2008's summer, I made a huge post here on how much I hated TV at the time), and another shitty newspaper comic adaption wouldn't make me feel any more positive about it.
Then I finally decided to give it a go on April 2010.
It was so, SO worth it that it wasn't even funny. What few expectations I had were absolutely blown away from the very first episode; the anime-style animation, hysterical dialogue, well distinguished characters and great music (seriously, look up the mix-tapes on YouTube; they're fucking amazing) instantly made me fall in love with the show. It was rather low-key and quite vulgar, but that's part of what I loved about it; the show wasn't afraid to pull any punches at all, and despite the fact that you could tell it was an adaption of the strip, it often felt like something different and fresh. It didn't go out of its way to differentiate from its origins on the newspaper, but it still kept the satirical spirit of that counterpart regardless.
Unfortunately, my adoration of the show made me start imitating the speech mannerisms of the characters, so understandably some people just thought I liked the show because everyone said 'nigga' a lot. I can assure you, though, that even back then, that was in no way the only reason (or even A reason) I liked it. It's just that it's probably only now that I'm fully explaining why I loved it so much at the time and why I still do to this day.
The next two seasons were even better; each funnier, more energetic and more entertaining than the last. The stark realism of the first season wasn't there, so plots were often wackier, but for me, that didn't ruin the show at all. The satire, humor and likability of the characters were still there in droves, there were still plenty of hints of realism and the already great looking animation and art dramatically improved. And of course, the music was as amazing as ever. I still consider A Date With the Booty Warrior to be my favorite episode of the entire series; 4 years later, and I continue to laugh my ass off each and every time I see it. Just the perfect combination of pants-shittingly hilarious dialogue, parody, craziness and overall Boondocks spirit in my opinion. Oh, and Clifton Powell (Big Smoke!) voices one of the in-mates, so even back then I knew I was going to love it. Alas, no good thing lasts, and I was quite distraught when the third season ended. I quickly declared the cartoon one of my favorites of all time. I found very little wrong with it, honestly.
Then... four years later, a small teaser was released by Adult Swim that instantly grabbed my interest and made me incredibly excited, with the soulful hip-hop that I've come to love from the series and a relaxing tone.
And then the trailer for the 4th season came out. I loved what I saw. A Breaking Bad parody, a small but hilarious helping of Ruckus, great animation as always... but a few things made me ask myself questions.
What's with the dub-step beat? Why does the writing seem a little... different? Where's Thugnificent?
It wasn't necessarily bad; not by any means, really. But there was a distinct... well, difference in feel from what I was used to from the series. It felt less clever and satirical and more by-the-book. I knew Aaron wasn't going to be over-seeing the season like with the previous ones, but it still felt rather jarring to see the changes. Being the guy I am, though, I still wanted to give it a chance, because hey, new Boondocks after almost 5 years! Can't be that bad, right?
As I watched each new episode, though, I quickly began to realize how naive I really was.
The show was NOTHING like it used to be. The wit, energy, heart, writing... just about EVERYTHING that made the first few seasons great was missing. Sure, there WERE some diamonds in the rough like Freedom Ride or Die (which told a fairly well written story about his time as a Freedom Rider, although the ending was pretty dumb), Granddad Dates a Kardashian (a funny take on people who're obsessed with ass implants) and Stinkmeaner: Begun the Clone War Has (the official end to the Stinkmeaner storyline, though I personally preferred how season 3 went about it), but by and large, the season felt much less like The Boondocks and a lot more like a cheap knock-off of it. And it's not just (or maybe even, I don't even know) that the show was so dissimilar to its former self; hell, South Park from seasons 4-14 was quite different from the first 3 seasons, and the show still managed to be hilarious most of the time and kept the spirit of its original self up until season 15, where for me it became heavily hit-and-miss.
If the show still had all the qualities of the previous seasons (intelligent look into American/black culture, great writing, excellent music... you get the idea), just with a different approach to writing, I would've been fine with things changing. However, watching basically one episode of the season was enough to tell me that they wanted to revive The Boondocks for one last season just for the sake of it.
For starters, any development the characters went through was basically thrown out the window, and some were even made really unlikable. Ruckus went from an incredibly racist, horrible human being that nevertheless professed his views in a hilariously line-crossing, surprisingly loquacious way and had an incredibly traumatizing past that, once revealed, at least partially changed his character and made his current personality understandable (though still not in any way justifying anything he said or did over the course of the series), to a dude that basically spouts horrifically racist remarks every 5 seconds with hardly a hint of humor, satire or justification (as justifiable as Ruckus gets, anyway, but still). I went from cracking up constantly at the horrendously offensive stuff he said to just being completely disgusted by it, since they basically decided to say 'fuck it' in terms of making him at least partially more likable despite an entire episode being dedicated to explaining his behavior, making said episode, and every appearance he made afterwards (except 'It's Going Down', where his place in the episode at least wasn't that major and his racist tendencies were fairly toned down in comparison to what was usual at the time), completely pointless.
Tom was never a ballsy character by any stretch of the imagination, but one thing that made ADWtBW my favorite episode was that it taught him to stand up for himself more. The very first episode of the new season? Focuses on Sarah basically walking all over him until Pretty Boy Fleezy steps in and... teaches him to stand up for himself more. What the hell was the point of the plot of ADWtBW if PBF basically all but said that 'Tom's still a total pussy despite the fact that he risked his life to fight off a rapist and succeed'? It's kind of minor compared to my other issues with the season, but it's still something that I wasn't exactly happy with; a classic case of a butt monkey going through development, getting thrown a bone for it, then having said development more-or-less completely reversed because fuck you, we love tormenting him.
Grandad went from a somewhat kooky, grumpy and childish, but ultimately well-intentioned, elderly man to a gullible, near-retarded asshole that got way, WAY too much focus. I know he's a main character, but still, you don't fucking KNOW about Spotlight Stealing Squads until you witness this season; practically every episode this season either focuses on Grandad or heavily features him. That alone got incredibly irritating and I had to keep myself from groaning and changing the channel several times. My patience can only be tested so much.
Riley and Huey weren't any better, which sucks, considering they're also main characters.
Huey's cynical mindset was brought into the light far too much for my taste and basically made him a toned down Lisa Simpson/Brian Griffin (okay, maybe that's not quite accurate, but still). Before, he just gave advice and offered his viewpoint on situations every once in a while and even when he did, it was hard not to agree with him more often than not. He often had a direct hand in the plot as well, so he wasn't just at the sidelines. Now EVERY SINGLE TIME anybody does something even remotely wrong or disagreeable, Huey has to be the one that points it out. It makes him come off less as a reasonable, if cynical, kid just trying to make his good intentions known through compelling speeches and effective action and more a snarky, passive-aggressive little bastard. What doesn't help is that his role is regulated SOLELY to a 'you're doing this wrong' statement generator. He only directly helps keep the plot moving once or twice during the season. It's just really, really annoying.
Riley basically just spends most of his time having either nothing go right for him (hell, the LAST EPISODE ends with him basically being at the receiving end of torment even if he deserved it; I'll get more into it later), bitching at everything or just yelling/making fun of his grandfather. It's not TOO far off from his original personality, I suppose, but at least he got a lot of funny lines in and was a fairly interesting character during the first three seasons. Here? I had basically no reason whatsoever to care for him.
As far as appearances from other loved characters go... no Ed Wuncler III and Gin Rummy
. Thugnificent being basically nowhere to be found was a huge blow to me as well. Even if they DID happen to make appearances and I probably just forgot, none of their roles were memorable and this season just seemed to rely on the core cast a bit too much (especially the aforementioned Grandad). It got really dull really, really fast. Ed Wuncler Jr.'s few appearances weren't anything terribly entertaining, unfortunately.I could go on with this, but I don't know what else to say. Laziness, that's all there really is to it.
The music is also something that really bugged me. There was a distinct lack of awesome beats and fitting tracks that made me tempted to go on YouTube for. Hell, there wasn't even a new mixtape for this season from what I can tell. Only one beat was really used.
The writing also took a pretty massive hit. You know how beyond all the swearing and mature content, there was a sort of... wit or appealing humorous edge to the first three seasons? Like, compare any episode of those seasons to a season 4 episode. You'll know what I mean. It's kind of like comparing The Sopranos to Lost, is what I'm getting at. It's really jarring, and there were way, WAY too few genuinely clever lines or scenes. It just felt extremely atypical of adult cartoons.
If I could condense the remainder of my thoughts at least a bit to avoid rambling, I'll just say that almost everything about the new season bugged the shit out of me. I tried giving it a chance as hard as I could, and I managed to watch every episode, but looking back, I didn't realize until now how hard I struggled to squeeze enjoyment out of the season. Not one laugh or anything.
What bugged me most of all, though, was the lack of interesting portrayals of black culture, which was... well, basically one of the points of the show from the beginning.
To go a bit deeper into why I felt this was such an important aspect of the show: I had Black History month in several of my history classes in high school, and while I was always very, very sympathetic to the plight of the race and never really saw what the hell the big deal was about people with different skin hues, learning in-depth what these individuals had to go through just horrified me in every way. I always hated racism and discrimination, and knowing that, even to this day, it still exists for ANY sub-set of people, whether it be African-Americans, Asians, people with disabilities, homosexuals, what have you, will always greatly enrage me. It's not a choice to have a disability or be of a certain sexuality, much less be a certain race, and I feel you should be proud of what you are in spite of it; it's only as bad as you make it out to be.
I always thought it was interesting that a select portion of blacks used hip-hop, jazz and soulful music as outlets for creativity and stress, and even before I knew of the struggles of the race, I enjoyed rap and such due to beats and lyrics and stuff. The great deal of sympathy I have for what they had to go through, once I found things out, greatly enhanced my appreciation for these genres of music.
My point, though, is that despite cultural, social and ideological differences, I don't see any race as significantly different from one another. Deep down, we're all people, and appearances, behavior, skin color, what have you won't change that as far as I can tell. And part of what I love about Boondocks is that it tore the ignorant/close-minded idiots a new one. Don't like "stupid honkies" or "dumb niggers"? The Boondocks lets you know that you're just looking at a portion of people through stereotypes perpetuated by media and malicious mindsets. It became somewhat less common throughout the show in place of more general storylines, but the intentions/challenges were still there throughout the first 5 years, so it's not as if the show ever completely abandoned it.
I dunno, maybe I'm not exactly right with how I'm looking at this. I might just be talking out of my ass or taking it a bit too much at face value. But one thing is for sure the case; I've always highly respected what McGruder has crafted with his series, and I always will. His views speak to me in a way I might never really be able to describe in a way that's fully coherent.
The fourth season basically undoes this focus and makes the series a typical 'wacky adult sitcom with tons of raunchy humor and n-words and half-assed/occasionally funny satire thrown in for the sake of a message for the people to use on those with opinions different from theirs!'. There's changing the way a show is written and flat-out changing a core purpose into something that spits in the face of it. I was just... really, really, REALLY pissed at what they did to a show I loved so dearly. Only one or two real episodes really had an inkling of what the show once was (the previously mentioned Freedom Ride or Die and Freedomland, though even the latter was ruined by shoehorning in Ruckus' OMG HILARIOUS AND TOTALLY NOT OVERDONE RACISM, so only FRoD harkened back to the old feel of The Boondocks); everything else just felt way too much like Boondocks written by people who didn't understand what made the show special to begin with.
Again, though, I'm not saying that it was solely the fact that Boondocks tore down ignorance that made it special and nothing else; look up and you'll see that I also mentioned the characters, music, dialogue and whatnot. It's just that the focus on cultures was a particularly major part of the show, and to see the show both almost completely dismiss that AND ruin the other elements was just very saddening for me.
It wasn't a complete train-wreck, though; like I said, I enjoyed Freedom Ride or Die, Granddad Dates a Kardashian and Stinkmeaner: Begun the Clone War Has. Not anywhere close to the quality of the previous seasons, of course, but considerably better than the other turds I had to witness.
Then after nine episodes of this generic tripe came the final nail in the coffin that solidified this as a shit-stain of a season and a black mark on the show; The New Black.
Bar Goodlove's (an earlier character that I liked) surprising reappearance, I could hardly find it in me to like the episode. The concept itself was nice; a look into people using gay and retarded as regular insults. The execution? Could've been so much better.
So, SO Much better.
Obviously, I thought the whole season was bad as is, especially compared to how great the first three seasons were (keep in mind that this is, again, one of my favorite cartoons of all time, so I had high expectations for the final season despite Aaron not being involved), but I at least thought they'd step it up a BIT more for the series finale. I probably should have known better, and I'm most likely looking at it through rose-tinted bias goggles, but I still can't begin to express my disappointment.
The overarching plot introduced early in the season (The Freeman family being poor, which in itself wasn't handled too well for the most part) was pretty much just left on standby for whatever reason and no changes were made to the status quo. Which really doesn't make any sense, since this is the FINAL EPISODE and considering all the interesting elements they introduced, including the plot, I would've loved a proper wrap-up, but I guess that was just asking for too much. Either way, you simply don't introduce a major story, decide to not bother with an ending, and just expect viewers to forget about it at the end of it all, but the writers just didn't seem to get that. Sure, it was already focusing on a potentially good concept, but they could've at least made it a side-plot or scrap it early on as a surprise so they could go all out with the world of The Boondocks and give us one hell of an ending.
Beyond that, the episode's execution of the concept... alright, actually. Better than other episodes, that's for sure. Would've been perfectly fine as a standalone episode, really, but not as a season finale, much less, again, a SERIES finale. When you take that into consideration, that's why I'm so disappointed at the writers just playing it safe and making a normal episode instead of a knockout finale. The jokes in general at least got a few smirks out of me for a change, which I DEFINITELY can't say for the rest of the season, where I mostly either just got a huge "meh" feeling or wanted to change the channel as soon as possible.
But a part of me was still on my toes. I knew this was an Adult Swim show, so a part of me still had hope that these guys would pull out some crazy shit at the last minute.
Nothing of that effect ever came, though. It just ended abruptly with Riley being chased by the special needs people, and what (very) little enjoyment I got out of the episode, and effectively the entire season, was quickly crushed as a result of that, knowing that this was the end of a show that they could've spent time building towards an insane final plot-line or whatever and instead chose to cash in on the popularity and laurels.
I was crushed. Absolutely crushed. I had a feeling in my heart that felt like a hole was cut through. Instead of thinking to myself "woah, best ending to a cartoon ever, this reinforces my love for The Boondocks", I thought "...WHAT. THE HELL. WAS THAT.".
And as you can most likely guess, I did not mean that in a good way by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn't a 'holy shit' what the hell, it was a 'what the fucking motherfucker fuck was that abysmal, appallingly written bullshit' what the hell.
I've seen countless things I've loved throughout the years changed to generic pandering bullshit, abominations or something that appeals to executives. I've done my best to tolerate it all, as I know not everything's perfect and there's some sort of reason for most things, no matter how twisted or poorly explained.
Once again, I might just be taking this far, far too seriously. I might just be exaggerating the hell out of my views and making the final season writers out to be heinous monsters instead of dudes that just wanted to write a season for one of my favorite shows (which, as an idea in itself, I greatly appreciate despite the execution being every type of shit). Really, no one's the monster here. They simply did what they wanted (from what I can tell, anyway...) and that was that. You know what they say; if life gives you lemons, use them!
But my stance remains; I never thought, out of all things, The Boondocks would be subjected to this kind of atrocious handling. It's one of Adult Swim's most popular shows, and it's gotten a good amount of views over the years, so maybe I should have expected a certain set of eyes to look into it. Regardless, to see something I love so much become this in its final days is just something I cannot let slide without giving my thoughts on it. I really do love this show, and I love it enough that I'm not ashamed that I'm passionate about it, even if its a bit too much. Though at the end of the day, it's not comparable to an epidemic, natural disaster or a church bombing. It's just a show based off a comic.
Still a shame to end all shames, though.