That’s it, it’s over. Last Monday the very last episode of Regular show aired (although I confess parts of this will have been written before that due to the magic of forewarning) With 8 seasons and 1 movie how do you even sum up a cartoon that’s lasted since 2010. Well you don’t. It’s beyond the scope of anything I could really do in a single blog post. So I turn to what I can do, and that is celebrate it. Thank it for its achievements and draw attention to its greatness. And just to differentiate my piece, from god knows how many others there won’t be a countdown of the best episodes, the best moments or anything like that. I’m going to do what I do best. I’m going to ramble. Then I’m going to edit it into something mostly legible, and ship it out. Because, in hindsight, this cartoon meant a lot more to me than any other I’ve ever watched and it’s only now I’m realising that.
So what is Regular Show? Well I have the Wikipedia synopsis staring me in the face right now,
“The series revolves around the lives of two working class friends, mordecai and rigby, both employed as groundskeepers at a local park. Their regular attempts to slack off usually lead to surreal, extreme and often supernatural misadventures”
And as with anything you condense down into a single sentence, it sounds normal, dull, run of the mill and with a name like regular show, you wouldn’t be amiss to think that.
I do admit to not beginning to watch it until roughly its 3rd season, only going back to watch it all the way through once it hit its 4th because at that point I was at the height of my Adventure Time fandom and once I started to watch it, it was the cartoon I most often put down and would always find myself binge watching to catch up. Whole season would be viewed in a day and then forgotten. Because to me, Regular Show was always the cartoon that quietly chugged along, overshadowed by the media giant of Adventure Time and the fan loved Steven Universe. Always there, but never centre stage.
And that is a complete crime because it is hands down the best cartoon of this decade. I alluded to this last week, with it being my favourite cartoon ever. And frankly it is, the more I think about it the more it seems funnier than Adventure Time and more emotional than Steven Universe. Out classing both with ease and after a little bit of thought, I can trace it back to one thing. Regular Show knew exactly what it was all the time, it never tried to be more, or less. It was just Regular Show. Whilst Adventure Time was displaying the bright happy surrealist comedy and Steven Universe was pushing social boundaries further and further Regular Show was being profoundly human.
It was a show that featured a Blue Jay and a Racoon as main characters, their boss was a Gumball machine, and their co-workers included an immortal yeti, a ghost with an arm sticking out its head, a goat that was a spy for the KGB. And all of this was normal to the narrative, somehow this show had managed to take the surreal and make it real. Nothing felt out of left field in this show, no matter how objectively odd it got, it still seemed perfectly, well, regular (I’m sorry that’s the only time I’ll use that joke) The characters never stopped to question why these things were happening, or how it was even possible, they just took it in their stride. Through the medium of just having characters never draw attention to the weird, the writers made possibly the most beliveable world of oddities in cartoon history.
And now I find myself struggling to touch all the points I want to, not knowing where to start. There’s too much I want to say about this cartoon I will keep returning too it, hell I’m already starting to watch it through again from start to finish (now that’s actually doable) I think instead of discussing plots, character arcs or reviewing the final episode I will save that for another time. So goodbye Regular Show, you were the scrappy underdog of the Cartoon Renissance, and with you now gone, it seems like that age is at an end.
Cavorting Cartoons 