Originally Posted by
Bohandas
I suppose the real hot take then is that, at least as it pertains to shows that are comedic, the stories that work best as serials (or, ESPECIALLY, those told as serialized intrusions into episodes that are otherwise self-contained) tend to be kind of pretentious. Even if the story itself isn't a pretentious one there's something vaguely self-satisfied and superior about doing the show that way. Particularly in the case of the specific kind of shows I'm thinking of which are mostly cartoons that started out episodic but then became significantly less so when they started taking themselves too seriously (and now that I think of it I don't think any of them became truly serialized but they all flirted with overarching developments that progressed over many episodes and in general drifted away from being episodic) (I'm thinking here of shows like Amphibia, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, etc.)