Metalocalpyse - Season 3

Metalocalypse's third season definitely felt like a creative shift away from the first two. All of the old characters are still there and there's the same formula from episode to episode: the members of Dethklok are idiots, the Tribunal plots a scheme against them based on what's going on, but they'll probably manage to play a big gig somewhere anyway. But after a couple experiments with it last time, every episode is a half hour now, leading to a different pacing to everything. There's half the number of episodes at double the length, so more time is provided for individual story ideas to breathe and develop the comedy, and there is less of a need for a wave of random violence to resolve everything quickly right at the end. It's still basically the same show, but if you would be disappointed in a drop in the body count and a larger variety of styles in the original music (as in, not all death metal), then you're just going to have to deal with it.

I kind of liked the shift, though. It just seemed like a funnier show without them having to rush through the plots at lightning speed, and just let the band be amusing jackasses for a while before blowing everything up. Not every story was the best, and even if there was some good humor I'm honestly tired of stuff like Rockso the Rock and Roll Clown. Pretty much all the main characters got their own dedicated episode, and it allowed for a reasonable amount of character exploration in a show you might not expect that from, especially after seeing its first two seasons. Apparently a lot of the changes were probably attributable to the departure of one of the two main creative people behind it (he still does his voices, though). It still seems more or less on track for its original vision of an absurd, over the top storyline involving an insanely popular metal band, even if they haven't done enough to develop it in the last four years. Whatever, it's a cartoon.