dgw
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Boy Meets World

Average season rating: 8
(also the median and mode, but who's counting?)


Boy Meets World makes some oddball choices along the way (e.g. recasting Topanga's parents three times, for example), and takes off in a few really dumb directions (e.g. Cory the jealous asshole, or Eric as competitor with Wheatley for Best Moron) in the later seasons. But it's still part of my childhood, and there are a lot of good parts to counter those pieces that—now that I'm more practiced at actually watching TV instead of merely viewing it—bug the adult me to no end.

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Cheers

Average season rating: 7.6363…

I'm sure that would be a more interesting number if I went and averaged all of my individual episode ratings, or at least the raw season averages (instead of the rounded versions I set as my Trakt ratings), but it's still interesting that ultimately, my rating rounds off to the current site-wide average of 8/10.

Of course, Cheers has flaws. Sometimes the writing (and therefore characters) was a bit inconsistent, but it's not about the individual episodes. Watching Cheers really is comforting, like walking into a bar "where everybody knows your name."

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How I Met Your Mother
7

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Average season rating: 6.888…

When it's good, it's truly great. But the questionable decisions add up over the years, which drags down the overall experience.

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Sabrina, the Teenage Witch
7

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10

Average season rating: 6.857142…

Really starts to lose the plot with the abrupt changes in later seasons, but starts out nicely enough. By the end I really was just watching for Salem.

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Brooklyn Nine-Nine

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10

Average season rating: 7.625

I don't know what to say that I haven't already said in the comments for individual seasons. Brooklyn Nine-Nine got into a bit of a slump near the end, as many sitcoms do. Perhaps it would have been better to delay production after scrapping the first four scripts of that final season in June 2021 instead of rushing ahead to release in August, but I can understand not wanting to push back what would be the show's final batch of episodes. Ultimately, I think the rush only affected the first few aired scripts, and the series still managed to end on a high note.

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New Girl
6

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Average season rating: 6.428571…
(nah, I'm not going back to average all 146 ratings together; we need https://forums.trakt.tv/t/average-ratings-for-seasons-entire-series/1902 to happen)

As others have already said, this show starts out pretty good but falls into mediocrity after a few seasons and never really recovers.

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Lizzie McGuire
8

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10

I can't quite average all of my episode ratings, because I skipped a few at the beginning. But I think it's safe to give the show as a whole the same rating its seasons earned: 8/10.

Sure, along the way there were a few duds, but so many of these episodes are just superb and not to be missed.

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Superstore
7

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10

Average season rating: 7.333…

Superstore is a solid show with great heart. You won't like all the characters all the time, and some of the stories are pretty dumb, but that's just life in the sitcom game. At the end of the day, if you still don't care about these people, you have no heart. :upside_down:

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M*A*S*H

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BlockedParent2015-02-24T06:08:34Z— updated 2017-01-15T09:04:05Z

M*A*S*H has been in and out of my world since I was a kid and my parents watched reruns when they came on the local TV networks. I'm starting on a real watch-through (only a few episodes in yet) and it's really exciting to think about going from start to finish with this, especially now that I've seen the original film.

(Updated Jan 15, 2017, to fix trakt picking up the *s in the title as italics.)

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Liv and Maddie

I enjoyed this show for what it is. It's perfect for throwing something on while eating lunch or the like—entertaining without requiring too much focused attention. In return, you get scattered rewards in the form of really nice character development, some A+ jokes, and a good feeling when things inevitably turn out fine in the end.

Honestly, I'd rank this among Disney's better sitcoms.

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Schitt's Creek
7

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Average season rating: 6.5
(I do not feel like averaging all 79 episodes)

There's no doubt that the performances are always great. Everyone in the cast inhabits their respective roles so well, it's often impossible to think of them as actors.

Comedically, though, it's a different story. Obviously there are as many different tastes in humor as there are people on our blue globe, and not every joke will appeal to all of them. In this show's case, its style and my taste in humor didn't always see eye to eye.

Ans that's OK. I still am glad I watched Schitt's Creek for all the little character-based inside jokes I can use around the Internet in memes and such.

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8 Simple Rules
6

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It's OK. Much as I liked John Ritter's comic acting, unfortunately more of 8 Simple Rules was produced without him than with.

In that very sitcom-like way, the characters seem to change without changing. They'll change jobs, change schools, but still return to the same established rivalries.

Plus the show was abruptly canceled on a relationship cliffhanger, so that really soured the final season.

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Kim's Convenience

Average season rating: 7.6

It kills me that the spin-off of this show (which one of its co-creators left to pursue) centers on one of the white regulars. Doesn't that fly directly in the face of what Kim's Convenience represented for Canadian (or any other) television? More stories about more diverse people?

Such a shame. Give us a Janet or Kimchee spin-off, smh.

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Happy Endings

Happy Endings most certainly didn't get one (it was canceled after three seasons), but it still put in some solid work along the way.

The characters manage to stay likable despite an excess of silliness, and somehow the writers avoided pigeonholing (most) of the characters based on stereotypes. (Alex seemed caught in the "dumb blonde" role, unfortunately.)

If Happy Endings wanted to do itself one favor, it should have been pushing the big story arc along. Three seasons of playing "will they, won't they" with Dave and Alex got pretty long in the tooth by the start of season 3.

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The Good Place
7

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The ride is fun. Ted Danson (Michael) was a nice treat, and I'll hopefully find some more things in which to watch William Jackson Harper (Chidi) perform. Just don't expect rock-solid philosophy; the last season really left some holes there, I thought.

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Mischievous Kiss: Love in Tokyo
8

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Average episode rating for seasons 1 & 2: 7.96875

I'm hedging by specifying which seasons this applies to, in case there's a surprise third season, but after almost 8 years it seems quite unlikely.

The average would be higher if the series was a bit less fast-and-loose with the rules of its universe. For example, some episodes pretend like cell phones don't exist, which gets pretty old the tenth time Kotoko is late for something but for some reason doesn't text or call Naoki to tell him. It doesn't help that Naoki in real life would be lucky if his parents even tolerated how uncommunicative he is, let alone a wife he vowed to love for the rest of his life.

Just in general, it's ridiculous how often stuff happens just because one character or another just doesn't communicate some important piece of information. I can suspend my disbelief only so much, even if this is a live-action manga adaptation.

Even so, the show's cute as heck, and it's a great feel-good watch. Even if I'd feel like punching Naoki five times a day if I lived in this show's universe, because he's such a schmuck sometimes.

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Better Off Ted
7

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10

Average season rating: 7.1923077

It's fun. Pretty superficial humor, even by sitcom standards, but funny enough in places.

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DARLING in the FRANXX
6

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BlockedParent2018-12-21T06:36:22Z— updated 2019-01-11T00:12:57Z

(Cross-posted from season 1, as I usually do when finishing single-season anime that don't have existing or upcoming additional seasons.)

Average episode rating: 6.58333…

One of the rare occasions when I'll refuse to round my rating up, even though the number technically qualifies.

Darling in the FranXX (I have no idea where Trakt's data sources got that weird all-caps thing) is actually a pretty good show, for roughly the twelve middle episodes. I found it "meh" at first, and the last 6-8 episodes were made of "WTF?" in my opinion—but when the show is focusing on the characters' relationships and not a universe-spanning "AI YO" deus ex machina, it's an enjoyable watch. Even though Zero Two annoys the absolute living fuck out of me and the way she's written doesn't make sense half the time.

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8

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Average episode rating: 8.0

I started this show in late 2017, and continued through episode 22 in early 2018 before taking a five-year pause. There's honestly no good reason for that. Initially I held off on the last two episodes so I could watch them together with a colleague (we were both in a community theater production, and this would have filled the time between performances on our double-show Saturday). There were several reasons for that plan not working out, unfortunately, but I kept waiting like an idiot.

Meanwhile, for most of the last five years, one of the insert songs has been my default alarm ringtone—across two phones. Thrice during the last episode, I looked at my phone wondering what alarm I'd forgotten about setting. :joy_cat: (That song was used a lot in the finale.)

Having finally finished the series, I wish I remembered the plot details better. The wrap-up leaned heavily on certain characters getting "big reveals" that the audience already knew, so the show skipped over the actual information to avoid annoying viewers with old information. If I need to fill 18 hours sometime, I'll consider rewatching.

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Flight of the Conchords
7

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10

Average season rating: 7.2166666…
Average episode rating (since it's easy enough to calculate over just 22 episodes): 7.227272727…

No matter how I calculate, it looks like this show deserves a 7 from me.

As I said in my season 1 summary comment, it's not always the easiest show to get into. I'd put off watching it in favor of other things because there's a certain amount of energy that goes into appreciating the humor. At least, for me there is.

Honestly, I thought the show got easier to watch toward the end of season two, but then it ended. :/

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Celestial Method
5

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It took me (checks MAL) 486 days to force myself through this series. I have not watched the OVA. I don't need an extra 11 minutes† to know that I don't care for this show. Allegedly it still has yet to be either renewed or cancelled, but I hope that Studio 3Hz will move on and leave this behind. It really shows that production values alone cannot make an anime good. The writing in Sora no Method just isn't there, and no amount of moe can hide that.

Up next from Studio 3Hz is Dimension W, which will hopefully be better. (Yes, I'm way behind on anime.)

† - The OVA shows as 25 minutes because no metadata source that Trakt pulls in allows overriding episode duration. It's set at the show level, and that's what you get, period. It's too bad.

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Last
8

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10

Average episode rating: 8.125

Overall I found it an entertaining ride. The characters were the real selling point, especially Hae Jin, the Chairman, and friends.

Nitpicks:
* Overuse of identical musical tracks
* Other lazy audio work (including playing fast and loose with both diegetic and non-diegetic tracks in the same scene)
* Exaggerated fight scenes, especially blood (seems ironic that knife blades must be blurred, but this amount of blood is fine)

I can't seriously fault the series for heavy stereotyping. It's based on a webtoon, so I hardly expect hyper-realistic characters.

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I Couldn't Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job
5

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This was one of the first shows I worked on subtitles for. So, despite it having been years since I started the show, I don't need per-episode ratings to give me a starting point. I didn't much like the show when I was working on it, either.

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Elfen Lied

I just (manually) imported my history for this show from MyAnimeList.

Writing a detailed review would be impossible now without rewatching the show (I watched it 6 years ago, in 2012), but I can say this: It must be a damn good show, because I watched it all in one day.

Well, it was technically the same day. From my perspective it was two days—first four episodes late at night, then sleep, then finished the show that evening—but even with time to sleep and do other stuff that day, from start to finish, it took me less than 18 hours.

You should probably watch this anime.

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Beast Tamer

The girls are cute, but suuuuuper flat characters. Rein's even worse than Kirito for plot armor and always conveniently having the right knowledge of some rare skill.

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Flip Flappers
7

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Rating average: 7.46153846

I see great strides here from the studio that inflicted Sora no Method on the world. There are echoes of the same writing problems—the story's pretty convoluted, and you'll be lost easily if you miss any details—but less pronounced than the previous series. (Dimension W, I can't speak to…it's still on my watchlist.)

Flip Flappers has a lot to recommend it, even if it's only for the visuals. Papika will worm her way into your heart if you let your guard down even a little, and you'll get to visit a number of fantastical worlds with Ichimichi Mao's voice to guide you and Cocona along. While I don't know if I would call it "Superb" (a Trakt 9) or even "Great" (8), it's definitely a solid "Good" (7) plus—if Trakt allowed half-points I'd be giving this a 7.5.

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Charlotte
8

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This is my customary cut-and-paste of an anime first-season review to the series page, because a sequel seems unlikely to happen.


Average episode rating: 7.69230769

I'm quite happy to round this one up. Early on, my ratings were low-balled because of, uh… Actually, I don't remember why. That's the problem with taking three years to watch a 13-episode anime, I guess.

About halfway through, my ratings really spiked, though. If you can call going from mostly 6's and 7's to mostly 8's and 9's a "spike"… But the show definitely got my attention at that halfway point, and there's no excuse for taking so long to finish except—just maybe—that I didn't want to run out of beautiful P.A. Works art to watch, so I slowed way down. (I've definitely done that before with shows I like, putting off finishing them for months or even, literally, years, to make them last longer. I'm a weird one.)

This is one of a handful of anime that I think would be worth rewatching to see how my opinion of it might have changed.

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Breaking In
8

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It's a shame that this show was cancelled mid-season. It really started to hit its stride in the latter part of season two, in the episodes that FOX never aired.

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JINSEI - Life Consulting
4

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10

There are some great moments in this show, but they're buried in so much boring crap that it's a chore to watch.

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Orange
9

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I feel ambivalent about rounding this show's raw average of 8.6 up to a 9, but really…all that keeps me from giving the series a 10 is the Bermuda Triangle nonsense and the somewhat weak writing at the very end. The rest of the show is very strong, and it deserves the 9.

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