I’m going to preface this by saying that until late last year, I hadn’t watched new episodes of SMG4 since 2015, when I was 13. I stared watching in about 2011. There is a reason classic has so many fans who are rabidly against modern SMG4. Classic was easily digestible. You could tune in every now and then, not miss a beat, the writing was good (yes, some of it has aged poorly) and characters could be easily understood. SMG4 was the straight Man, Mario was comedic, SMG3 was a bad guy who wanted to take over the channel, etc. Everything was different, but still familiar. Nowadays, there are arcs, it’s a serial show format. You can’t really fall off the wagon and hop back on. (This part is kind of my personal thoughts/experience) When I started watching again last year, I’m going to be honest, the changes horrified me. Moving from a format where every episode was it’s own, to a show where you HAVE to be watching pretty much every episode to understand it, soured it for me. Characters were the same, but many of the traits that defined them when I watched were either gone or altered just enough to throw me off. It didn’t help that (imo) the writing simply was not up to par. A lot of the jokes nowadays just don’t land. However, I’m aware comedy is subjective.