So I just got caught up with Red vs. Blue.
Started right from the beginning, with my only real knowledge of the series being a vague recollection of early seasons I watched as a kid, and I gotta say, going through it all, it was pretty fucking great.
First five seasons were some top notch comedy. I was surprised at how well they held up. The writing, the acting, the editing, if you looked past the fact that they were 'animating' in a Halo 1 multiplayer map, it was genuinely well crafted.
Seasons 6-8 were an interesting transitional period with a shift to a more dramedy format. I kind of felt like the Blood Gulch Chronicles ended on a well enough note, and I was skeptical that continuing on, they would just be dragging its corpse around, but the move to another genre I think helped justify it. Season 8 in particular was a real high point in the series, and also the point where original animation started cropping up, which certainly was fun, if a bit jarring at first.
The season ended well though, and I kind of thought it could have stopped there again too, and at the start of season 9, I sort of wanted them to.
The beginning of that season was rough. It had a real duality to it, in that half of it was split up with Church, and the characters I like, while the other half was full of what looked like Halo fanfiction OCs doing a completely unrelated side plot. I didn't like it at first.
Eventually though I warmed up to the freelancers, and i think it helped again that by season 10, the casts were meshing, so there wasn't a major divide in narrative. In fact, I loved season 10, which, as well, I think it could have worked as another ending.
That's a theme I'm seeing, where basically the story starts to feel like it could conclude after Church's character gets another resolution- he's had three up to this point.
(Continued)