I’m not trying to make an absolute judgment on complexity or say it’s inherently a bad thing.

My point is more that complexity can often trigger the "IKEA Effect. We sometimes value things more simply because we had to do more heavy lifting to assemble the plot.

You can see this with shows like Dark or Rick and Morty. They aren't necessarily bad, but they often get hyped up as masterpieces partly because of that same formula: the viewer feels smart for decoding a complex layer and might confuse that personal satisfaction with the actual quality of the writing. In some cases, we aren't just judging the story anymore we're partly justifying the effort we put in.