After the really innovative and very funny The Looney Tunes Show, the Wabbit feels, in both art and writing, like a step back to the nostalgic old Looney Tunes shorts. The show has short, 11-minute long episodes, composed of two 5 minute-long shorts. Bugs is back to living in a rabbit hole, often sharing his home with his friend, the oddly not-speaking Squeaks the Squirrel. In appearance, most of the characters got redesigned - frankly, not for the better. They try to harken back to the old Chuck Jones era, but in effect, look more like the 1990's Chuck Jones era of Tom and Jerry, not as Looney Tunes. Plot-wise, pretty much all the shorts have the same setup - random antagonists is being an annoyance to Bugs, usually without a rhyme or reason, and generally being a major troll. Bugs suffers a bit, then he retaliates using his patented tools like disguises, dynamite, and generally fooling his usually not terribly bright opponents to do harm to themselves - The End.
Therein lies the problem - this is the plot of pretty much 90% of the episodes (save for a few special ones like where Bugs has to share his home with an oddly childish-Gossamer-like Bigfoot). Rinse and repeat, and it gets very, very old after the third episode already. Another problem is the nature of the antagonists. While Yosemite Sam (who oddly gained weight) and Wile E. Coyote (now Bugs' snotty know-it-all neighbour) are recurring foes, most of the time the enemies are one-shot and not really interesting characters with very little character development. Often, they feel rather out of place too from the show which is set in the modern world, like oddly cylinder-shaped tiny ninjas, a fox version of Marvel's Black Widow, a polar bear-riding barbarian, or even the Death of Rabbits himself, who has fallen a long way from his truly terrifying appearance in Watership Down. It is odd because even after 13 episodes, there is not sign of other famous Looney Tunes characters - Elmer Fudd, Marvin the Martian, and especially Daffy Duck or Porky Pig. Perhaps they are getting their own shows, but I find that unlikely.
Maybe it's just me, but in this day and age... I find the slapstick is no longer enough to entertain. The Wabbit does not fall into trap of Tom and Jerry, where you eventually start to sympathize with poor Tom when Jerry torments him without provocation, Itchy and Scrathy style - here the villains all get what's coming to them - but that doesn't make the experience feel less empty. I am not saying every funny cartoon needs to be Monty Python levels cerebral, but after a truly unique show like the Looney Tunes Show, I cannot say I find this sort of humour a step back, and at best, just average.
