I started back at the beginning this week. We binge watched season four over three short days (there were only six episodes in this last round) and in a bout of “we should have rewatched season three to re-catch-up confusion, I got to thinking that I really didn’t understand it and it might be that I need to revisit the whole series again, in order, to get a better sense of the whole.

That said, I did pull out the graphic novels and flip through them too in an attempt to see if there were any hints, but it turns out that season four was seemingly invented whole cloth for the Netflix show and not adapted from the page like the first three seasons, so the slight change in vibe and tone I was sensing might not have been completely off.

The Kid had already dug into the reviews before we capped off the series (even though she did politely wait for me to watch the actual show) and the reviews of season four were right in line with what we sensed: a bit of meh, a bit of wtf, a bit of oh. The show was always weird, but sometimes nostalgia kicks in and the magic we glommed onto during those magical first episodes doesn’t float fully across the entire series even if the quality and story parallels. We can inflate stuff in our brains and make it out to be better than it was. But benefit of the doubt, I’m re-watching the whole damn thing now.