>>102454281In Avatar's case, I think the standalone episodes helped give the world the showrunners were creating some more personality and was able to have just deal with some fun ideas without them dragging too long.
In Gravity Falls' case I loved that first season because those episodes didn't need some overarching story, it's nice to just have fun with some weird situations to show how offkilter the town is and to also establish character traits and just have some good gags.
You seem to have this idea that episodic shows or the format itself don't establish anything, but they do. Maybe not like a show with a wider scoped story, but still.
And as much as serialized has dominated streaming, the shows with the most viewership are reruns of old, EPISODIC content and sitcoms. That doesn't necessarily mean quality, but you're underestimating the importance of an episodic series.
And coming up with a serialized story is certainly harder, but recently I haven't really seen a cartoon besides something like Gravity Falls that actually had a decent overarching story. From my perspective, certain creators seem to think it makes them more artistic or more of an auteur to come up with some lore or overarching story first, but with streaming I find many of these people failing (mostly my opinion, not based on a probable fact admittedly) because they pad out a lot and are given so much power that they can't edit themselves. Most of them also just can't write real people, at least well enough to make you care about THEIR characters. And that's just a general complaint, not just an animated show