User blog comment:Weavillain/Why Is Rita and Lynn Sr.'s "Irresponsibility" a Bad Thing?/@comment-4618045-20170614015930/@comment-31022739-20170614025053

While I can find merit in your first claim, I'm someone that cherishes the good more than dwelling on the bad. This wouldn't be "throwing out the baby with the bath water" but still, I can't myself co-signing with that kind of compromise. What makes "Suite & Sour", my favorite non-special episode, so compelling and enjoyable to me is how it's written the way it is now. Conjuring up hypothetical possibilities of switching things up is like knowing that you have the $750,00 briefcase, the second most lucrative prize from Deal or no Deal, on hand but that you could possibly get the $1,000,000 briefcase out of the last remaining four briefcases that are left in play if you were to swap what you had with another possibility that may or may not be worth the sacrifice. I think there's too much speculation for me to comfortably accept anything than what I have right in front of me and I have to thank the factors of what led to that final product.

As for the second one, again, it boils down to whether I think the new innovation that you speak of is worth casting aside what's been established for nearly two seasons. Perhaps, if this creativity were present from the beginning, I wouldn't so much as bat an eye but this experimental tampering doesn't bode well with my fondness of the cartoon's current formula.

And furthermore, I guess we'll have to have a disagreement about what "bad parents" are but I don't think that Rita and Lynn Sr. are bad parents. Like you said before, they can be enabling or incompetent but honestly, I don't think that's such a bad thing as long as there's enough responsibility to balance everything out. You may call it cliche, and maybe it is, but I'm not entirely bothered by them as long as the execution is at least tolerable and the characters are likeable enough. For me, Rita and Lynn Sr. check the latter box and their less than responsible appearances usually check the former box.

So perhaps, you're right. The "bad parent" trope could get in the way of what could be otherwise interesting stories. Or then again, maybe the uncharted territory could lead to disaster. Who knows? Well, I certainly don't want to venture further beyond that, that's for sure. Call me cowardly and "too safe" if you must but I don't think that such a lauded show, one that stands out in a network chock full of subpar animated and live action programming, deserves to have the creativity aspect regarded as severely lacking for adhering to cliches, especially if they work.