Matt Groening's Disenchantment feels like a never-ending "Treehouse of Horror" sketch

Entertainment Weekly

A lot of Groening's medieval animated series seems nasty -- gross without being funny, says Darren Franich. "The main feeling you get is that everyone’s stoked to work for a service without any apparent standards and practices division," says Franich. He adds: "There’s a low-key boom in brilliant TV animation these days: The deranged anti-humanism of Rick and Morty, the candy-colored muchness of Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time and Steven Universe, the kinetically rebooted DuckTales. Next month sees the return of Bojack Horseman, Netflix’s best ongoing series. Catch me on the right night with way too much Duff on the brain, and I’ll tell you Bojack is the modern-day Simpsons, an ever-expanding silly city symphony carving a precise path between brilliant cultural commentary and up-close emotionality. Compared to all that, Disenchantment feels half-formed, a bit plastic. The vibe is like one of the wilder 'Treehouse of Horror' segments, the kind where the big joke is how many grotesque ways Simpsons characters can die."

ALSO:

• Disenchantment is comfort food for Simpsons and Futurama fans
• Disenchantment plays it too safe and winds up looking bland and dated compared to other Netflix animated series
• Groening's influence catches up with him with Disenchantment: He's looking backwards instead of forward
• Anybody expecting Disenchantment to be great from the get-go should also remember that The Simpsons and Futurama had early struggles
• Disenchantment starts rough, but it instills high stakes and emotional resonance toward the end of the season
• On the cleverness and hilarity spectrum, Disenchantment is much closer to The Simpsons Season 29 than Season 4
• Disenchatment's voice cast rescues it from mediocrity
• Groening avoided watching Game of Thrones, but added a reference "to get it out of the way"