>>150064476
>They were “normal” and everyone else was not
Looking back, I think that the show became that much harder for me to watch when Ben largely did away with this principle by making it so that Gumball and his family not only would keep on confronting themselves with weirdness, but also that they would become the main source of that weirdness - making most of the cast redundant.
In a twist of irony (after all, Ben Bocquelet had expressed desire to create something for older audiences at one point), "Smiling Friends" would pick up that abandoned principle which made early Gumball so good and - despite being an Adult Swim show - managed to keep things quite wholesome and uplifting whereas Ben Bocquelet only doubled down on cynicism and jadedness.