Okay well this episode was probably the worst episode in BFDI’s 10-year history. That’s not saying it was bad, it was just bland, and felt rushed. The characters all act totally different to how they usually do, everyone’s totally on board with 2, the idea to split the series in two is stupid for a number of reasons I’ll get into later, and there’s a whole host of other issues I’ll also detail in a bit.

The characters all act totally out of wack. The only people that act remotely like they’re supposed to are Match and Pencil, everyone else, especially everyone around Loser, seems to be totally distant from the remainder of the series, and even the hosts feel way off. Four comes off as not his usual total bipolarism mixed in with heavy force, but as weak, powerless, and totally unable to do anything. It was quite obvious he could’ve prevented the split from happening, but it couldn’t happen because plot convenience. He even let his literal (officially canon) lover X just slip away without a second thought.

The rest of the characters feel way off too. Spongy feels oddly remorseful for what he’s done, despite having no quarrel with shelling Puffball last episode, Golf Ball and Tennis Ball seem completely distracted and unfocused due to Two, which again, plot convenience so they appear in TPOT, and the entire episode feels like everyone acts totally differently so that way they can just slot in to whichever they belong, Taco especially, who hasn’t made up with Book but still decides to be totally on board with her in whatever she does. This isn’t an issue we’ve ever had in BFDI, every character’s had a solid, canonical personality which develops and changes over time, not suddenly without explanation here.

Moreover, the idea to split the series in twain is one that inevitably leads to longer waits, due to the resources being split, and less time to focus on character development, as all of a sudden it’s been split between 14 and 40 characters, meaning these newer episodes will inevitably focus more on the split and less on what we wanna see in BFB: character interactions. It feels like a rushed decision to add more into the series that didn’t need to be there.

There’s also other issues, such as Two’s obvious ineptitude as a host, the whole “escaping EXIT” thing, which resulted in the largest vote in BFDI’s history, which was also well over a majority vote, a rare occurrence, counting for naught, and a Mary Sue, Loser, being added back for no other reason than that they can. It feels like it’s something that was just rushed, like a first draft, even the animation seems rushed and lifeless compared to 13-15. It feels like something that was rushed to meet a deadline rather than carefully planned out and executed like a BFB episode should be.

To quickly sum this all up (also TL;DR), BFB 16 is quite easily the worst episode of BFDI to date, with rushed animation, a first-draft level script, characters acting out of character, an arbitrary and even overall harmful split, and all in all should never be seen as a standard to follow BFDI by, as opposed to say BFB 13, 14, and 15, which were each masterful in every second, fully polished, with everyone acting as they would. It’s honestly disappointing more than anything, because it wasn’t bad, it was just… really mediocre.