Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25944852-20150207023955/@comment-24330788-20150211044944

The others are right, Regular Show isn’t the same show it was four to five years ago. Matt Price himself said that the world they created is evolving. Major characters will experience growth outside of a single episode. I don’t think season one Benson would have casually tagged along with Mordecai, Rigby, Muscle Man and Fives to rent a movie, at least without it being work-related or there being some other extenuating circumstances involved. So on that note it makes sense that with changing characters, there’s going to be changing friendship dynamics, even if that change does affect arguably the most prominent relationship in the series.

Speaking personally, I do have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I’m always happy to see new interactions not possible in earlier episodes like in Expert or Liar, where Rigby hilariously plays off Benson’s character, or Maxin’ and Relaxin’ that looks at some pretty deeply rooted aspects of Mordecai’s personality outside of his friendship with Rigby. After all, one of my minor gripes with the first few seasons had been that Mordecai and Rigby seem to function a little too often as a singular unit, particularly when it comes to interacting with the other park workers. The newer seasons seem to really turn this around with not only more individualised integrations from both characters, but also having them act out on their own a lot more frequently.

However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss episodes like Don, The Wizard or even Death Punchies that really explored how they functioned as best friends. The way they originally worked off each other, putting ridiculous amounts of energy into admittedly trivial things and having the others back while still driving each other nuts half the time, are some of the most endearing aspects of the show to me. Those were well written episodes that made me love the characters in the first place. And while I certainly wouldn’t want the writers to keep rehashing the same themes over and over when it comes to those two, I do get a bit nostalgic about the old episodes sometimes. Can’t help it.

For what it’s worth, I also feel that Mordecai and Rigby aren’t any less friends than they were a few seasons ago, the show just has other less explored aspects to focus on now (and they should). Considering Rigby jumped right after Mordecai into a pit of molten lava in the Christmas Special and Mordecai dropped everything and put all his efforts into bringing his friend back in Eggscellent, I’ve no doubt both will be there for the other when they really need it.