>>101368281No, it didn't. It had a proper beginning, and like half of a middle, then somebody skipped about a season or so of content and we pushed ahead right to the ending. /co/ usually likes to hate on Mabel in particular but her arc suffers by far the most from it, with a lot of setup with episodes like "Sock Opera" going more or less untouched near the end, because large portions of what likely would have become a full arc were rushed in order to run headfirst into endgame.
And if I'm going to be real with you, even the parts of the story that were complete weren't always done well, like how Dipper's character arc doesn't actually go anywhere. Or more accurately it goes everywhere, but never coherently builds up to a point. At the end of the day it's unclear whether Dipper's that much of a better or worse person by the end of the story, which in your heavily serialized character driven narrative is a really, really poor sign.
... mind you all of this is regards the deeper narrative at play. While I'd argue that as a complete narrative Gravity Falls hovers between above average (the Author of the Journals plotline is really well executed all things considered) and below average (a lot of the DEEP CHARACTER PROGRESS that kinda gets forgotten from episode to episode, and how nothing regarding Bill ever really pays off and at the end of the day we know just about as much about Bill by the end of the show as we did when he was introduced, give or take a few neat details like his work with Ford), the moment to moment of GF is really enjoyable. I'd probably put it around a 7-8 personally (OTGW is hovering at an 8- and I do mean that in general, not just "as a cartoon), but most of its actual strengths are as a clever running homage/parody of decades of beloved horror/sci-fi tropes with a lot of really good gags and a cast of well written characters you wanna root for. The LEEPEST DOOR stuff is more a bonus for the fandom.
