The amount of people ive seen/heard/spoken to who have either only watched the pilot or haven't watched it at all, referring to clarence as one of the cartoon network failures that you should skip, is frankly starting to annoy me.
Im in my 20s and my mom is in her 50s, we watch it all the time together because i watched it growing up. I also had my partner watch it who had only heard of it but never watched it because it never seemed good enough. She now loves it too. The humor in certain episodes (personally neighborhood grill and bedside manners are good examples) hit with joke after joke, visual gags and clarence being a sweet potato.
The show also is an amazing representation of a standard middle to lower class suburban life. Unlike shows like gumball, adventure time, steven universe, etc, where there's a magical storyline with non human characters, clarence relys on childhood memories, imagination, and writing through the eyes of a kid. Sumo, Jeff and Clarence also all represent a different type of home life, like sumo sharing a bed with all his siblings, clarence having a one story one income home, and Jeff coming from a (most likely) two income two story house. The differences in home life representation was very important to me as a kid who grew up in a lower income home. This also represents different family dynamics, like queer parents and divorced/separated parents.
I also feel alot of cartoon network shows have rocky first seasons. This is a personal opinion, but all the shows mentioned above as well as many others I feel struggle with season one syndrome, where they are still trying to find their footing. Clarence however dives right in, he knows who he is and the first few episodes unlike a ton of other shows ended up being my favorites.
Am I the only person who feels this way?