Full Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends Scorecard

Since I'm running out of room to fit "complete" in the title, I used a synonym for that word instead (full).

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is one of my childhood cartoons that I have a faint memory on. All I know about Foster is that I've seen the promos for that show and while I did view some episodes, it wasn't the type of show I watched often. I'm not sure if I watched the cartoon as a child, but I still know some characters so I guess I have some knowledge of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends before reviewing it. For the delays, I originally wanted to upload the scorecard to DeviantArt on June 9, 2017, but I had to delay it to June 26 when I wanted to take a break from reviewing cartoons. After worrying that I won't get some shows done on time, I pushed it a day on my journal about the final summer delays and finally June 28 because I definitely won't finish T.U.F.F Puppy and Phineas and Ferb on time.

Like Johnny Bravo, it took me 4 days to complete it, but the condition here is much better. Since this show's one of my types, I couldn't stop watching the show and I even watched 45 episodes in one day. , the person who requested me this cartoon, I guess you made me stay in touch with a show so thank you for requesting Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and give me a blast with watching the show as well. However, "a blast" is opposite of my critic review, because oh god, this is The Amazing World of Gumball all over again. Clearly, there are only 2 blessed episodes (like Jimmy Neutron and The Amazing World of Gumball; oh, the only 2 blessed episodes are what I consider "overhated episodes", which are Duchess of Wails and The Little Peas), almost a quarter of the show is bad, and worse, there's 4 notorious episodes. Yes, I'm not kidding. Especially the Cheese episodes are so bad (forgive me because he's a guilty pleasure, meaning I like him as an audience member), they're the reason why Seasons 4 and 5 are mediocre seasons.

Expect my opinions on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends to be comparable to my final thoughts on The Amazing World of Gumball, starting with the writing:

Before I talk about the writing, I'm going to be honest here. Like my The Amazing World of Gumball scorecard, I'm anxious about sharing my opinions about Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends because I might get criticism for taking an award-winning series too seriously where my amount of watchers will decline (well c'mon, I'm infamous for my criticism on The Loud House, duh), but it's my opinion, so whether if you disagree, please respect my opinions. Don't rage over the comments. Okay, I said this before in my complete The Loud House scorecard, onto the summary!

Positivism is often discussed by reviewers, so I'm going to talk about the positives first because the negatives overtake the positives for the writing. The premise has a lot of potential, quite possibly that I can enjoy the series even with its bad episodes (again, it's ironic that I enjoy some of the "worst" episodes of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends) because of the idea of imaginary friends. There's barely any cartoons that talk about imaginary friends, and this cartoon is obviously the most memorable one for imaginary friends. To make it even more interesting, all of them live in a building that's an adoption center, making this series more creative than I expected. That's it for the premise, onto the actual writing itself; Alright, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends does a really good job at potential due to the fresh premise, along with some relatable episodes. Speaking of relatable, its one of the reasons why the "bad" episodes are good in my opinion. Sure, they don't have substance, but they focus on not only being relatable, but the "bad" episodes have clever twists and sweet endings that show that they aren't pointless episodes after all. Plus, I find the humor in them pretty good and not bad while mean-spirited. 

Now onto the negative, something that Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends could not carry too much to withstand as a "good" show; the execution SUCKS. Possibly more worse than The Amazing World of Gumball's execution. While there are some episodes that are interesting, a big amount of the episodes premises are bland/rehashes of other episodes. From what I said earlier about the twists being clever, well a bunch of them are absolutely contrived or just unnecessary all along. The relatable episodes, while sometimes funny, could go with an incoherrent structure that barely tells a functional story/wastes time. This cartoon does nothing special to some cliches, because that they're too simplistic for a 22-minute episode, there are several episodes that are slow, filled with filler, tedious, get predictable real fast, etc. I can go on with the problem of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends' execution. Plus, there are parts of episodes that are off with the main focus of the episode or just tries to ruin the focus by, for example, starting from some hangouts then turned into an episode where the antagonist sneaks up with our friends. You see? A few episodes feel all over the place (A Lost Claus) or downright obnoxious with the cliche where all of the jokes are annoying. I better stop here because I talked enough about the negatives and besides, the length of this and last paragraph are almost balanced, but still, the writing is bad. It wastes potential all thanks to the mess of its horrible execution where some episodes make no sense at all whatsoever.

I didn't go hard on the writing, 'cause I found some positives worth mentioning that doesn't make it all awful. Could be one of the worst writing I've seen at this point. Things get too similar to The Amazing World of Gumball with the quality...

The animation is pretty solid, but yeah, it's original and fascinating. I like how the backgrounds are 2D, but it gives Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends resemblance to Samurai Jack with the animation style. Still, there's at least strokes on the backgrounds and character designs, so I guess it's not all similar to Samurai Jack. Anyways, I like the color schemes because the animators made them look like they're the same color but with a different shade, making the quality cooler. And then we got the character designs, which are absolutely creative, fitting for the cartoon itself, and of course since you know I'm going to say that word, imaginable. However, the designs can look ugly and confusing like for example, I can't tell what Wilt looks like if he's real, but thanks to some info, it appears he was made to have long legs. Peculiar designs, but I love them. 

Sadly, the animation cannot save the fact that the audio is far worse. Especially the intolerable sound effects and some ear-rape induced voice acting, the sounds, the dialouge and voice acting are far away from the goods. Some of the voice acting is rather...um...what was some words to describe the voice acting? Oh yeah, annoying. Some voices make the characters sound a little female and one factor that faces Mac through the show is puberty, which makes him sound like he's a teenager that never grows up. Hmm. If he gets a job at the same height, it would be strange that he still looks like a kid, but since the show doesn't have that much continuity, it's forgivable, but off that Mac sounds like a high schooler from Seasons 4-6. Puberty's the case, but of course, the worst thing about the audio are screaming and some of the most irritating sound effects in real life that tries to shove a knife into my ear. Since screaming is found in all shows alike, I can still forgive it, but not this show for example. In some episodes, it all comes with NONSTOP screaming of characters voices in a higher pitch that sounds like 6000hz in addition of some good jokes spoiled. Okay, I guess its not as bad as 6000hz or higher, but they still drag on too long and make one episode intolerable to the max. Wow, I didn't expect the quality section to be bigger, but yeah, Very good animation, but spoiled by its opposite, the audio.

Kind of like the writing where there's good aspects but the bad overtakes the good. The characters don't help either.

Okay, again with The Amazing World of Gumball similarities, the characters are awful. I mean, there are a few characters I like because they have fantastic development, a good amount of honesty and friendship or felt likable for its originality, but the only thing good about the awful characters are their development. BUT, characters like Cheese (he's a guilty pleasure because I find him hilarious) and sometimes Goo (a sort-of copy of Cheese) have an overactive attitude, no development, really obnoxious, has some horrible aspects that makes him/her intolerable, has an unusual design and worst of all, have some cliches that only make them bland, but turn out to be frustrating and too much for me. , you're one of the people I know who dislike Bloo, and I agree with your point. He's an example of the awful cast that's either a jerk/an annoying orange for no good reason. Here's a quote because I do have the same opinion as Jaylop's:

He would start whinning or start becoming a worse character as the show went on. He become much more selfish and irritating much later in the series and his friendship with Mac was really getting ugly with Mac usually being a victim of whatever he had instores.

You see that? One of the main characters are actually damned characters who feel like he doesn't really care that much about anyone! From what he said about Bloo and Mac's friendship, oh, I began to realized that Bloo is ungrateful to anyone the later seasons and since I forgot to mention this in the writing, there's a lot of episodes that forgets the friendship between Mac and Bloo. Yeah, it's like Mac got so tired of Bloo's antic that he would unfriend him in the later seasons, which I ACTUALLY EXPECTED to happen in the series and it could work really well, but NO! THE WRITERS JUST DIDN'T CARE ABOUT IT! Mac remain friends with Bloo throughout the series because he's his "imaginary friend", but it turns out that Bloo is taking advantage of him, but the horrible execution steps in and he remains loyal to Bloo for no reason! I guess they used that for unpredictability, but c'mon writers, you need to include that aspect where Mac unfriends and abandons Bloo at Foster's for adoption, but Mac doing nothing to Bloo after he got brutally humiliated by him makes the entire episode pointless! Again, there could've been an episode mostly focused on the duo, especially their friendship troubles, but no episode of that has been made! Next time writers, do not forget about the friendship between Mac and Bloo and instead plug that in as a story arc/TV movie to prove that Bloo isn't all that bad and ungrateful but can be decent occasionally instead of ditching that and nothing happens to the friendship. Yep, it's obviously terrible writing no one should forget, but with the characters, they're Gumball only to be killed off by the execution.

I have good nicknames to describe Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, which are "2000s Gumball" and "the Father of Gumball" since both cartoons have alike reasons why they're meh. I didn't expect this show to crash like a plane with horrible execution, uncommonly bad audio and obnoxious and jerky characters, but the goods, like the fantastic potential, great development and original animation that got its influence from Samurai Jack, are minor enough that they can't pull how bad the cons are, this show's just tolerable (47%). But in all seriousness, it's like a weaker mixed bag instead of an okay mixed bag like Dexter's Laboratory and of course, Gumball. Now what I've just talked about Bloo, I'd say he isn't detestable because he was given some development in a few episodes, along with a cool but ugly design and yep, he's like the other imaginary friends at Foster's. Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends may not be good, but at least it isn't in the bad range.