Oh yeah, his character has definitely gotten dumbed down.
His character was dumb from day one.
But okay, here's a #FirstWorldProblem
Recently YouTube introduced new video players that conforms to the aspect ratio of the video itself, eliminating the pillarboxes if the video is 4:3, or the letterboxes if the video is 16:9, and so on and so forth . . . admittedly, it's a nice idea, but it's gotten me to thinking . . . when are they ever going to make a TV that can automatically adjust its display format based on the aspect ratio of the program or movie or whatever you're watching, so we don't have to keep doing it ourselves? I mean, it's quite a drag when I keep having to reformat my TV's display to 4:3 when watching tapes or DVD on my A/V input, then having to reformat it to 16:9 when watching the cable input (and sometimes back to 4:3 again if a certain channel broadcasts something in 4:3).
I mean, TVs are supposed to be "smart" now, right? You know what I mean?
Of course, the better question is simply this: why did we ever invent a cropping system anyway? Instead of cropping footage in 16:9 for theatrical display, or 4:3 for television display . . . why couldn't we just be watching the entire thing, uncropped, unformatted, unmatted, whatever all these years? That would've solved all of our problems from the get-go.