Ever since Bunk'd ended two years ago, I've always wanted to do some retrospective on it. It was a show that I grew up with, dipped out of, then actively got back into just in time to see its final moments, so I felt as though I owed it to myself to do a deep-dive into. But that always required stomaching the entire series which I knew from firsthand experience was a daunting task.

I only binge watched the series once before and that was during the hiatus before the final 10 episodes of the series came out. This was to prepare myself for the finale, which, spoilers, wound up being so bad that I was incredibly drained by the time the end-credits rolled. Going through over 100+ episodes in the span of 6 months and then tuning in to see the finale in real time with already low expectations only for it to somehow be WORSE than what you expected it… kinda fucks you up.

I've always wanted to do some retrospective on the show since it wound up bouncing around in the back of my mind, but that required rewatching it in its entiredy. And binging an entire show from start to finish, especially one as long as Bunk'd, one that I had such a love/hate relationship with, for the sake of recapping it as opposed to preparing for future episodes or seasons... it was something I could've gone my whole life without.

Well one day I decided to say "challenge accepted" and do a marathon binge of the entire show from start to finish, incidentally with the 10-year anniversary of the series occurring 9 months ago. It took me four months (from January to May, I finished two days ago) to cover all 7 seasons and 161 episodes. I do NOT have the patience to cover every single episode beat-by-beat (and Reddit's character limit is not going to let me clear that). It took me an entire college semester to watch the complete series and I would rather not spend my summer vacation writing any more essays.

So to give as close as I can to a retrospective look on the series, here is my ranking of every season from worst to best from the perspective of someone who has the entire show fresh in their memory.

#7: Season 7 (2023-2024)

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I was strongly torn between this or Season 3 as the bottom entry of this list. For as long as the show has been over, I just hand-wove both of them as collectively the worst of the show.

However, having completed the series in my recent marathon, I bestow the crowning turd to Season 7.

It fails as a final season on so many levels and pretty much showcases everything that can and will go wrong with giving a show far more seasons than it should‘ve and not letting it die while it’s ahead. Because now you actually have to end the show, but you’ve missed so many opportunities that you have to half-ass something out of the blue. Like turning in a final homework assignment 3 minutes before the deadline because you procrastinated all semester.

And on the surface, it doesn’t seem so bad at first. The first half of the season is a middling “okay” and it does establish things that come back into play for the finale, (i.e. Destiny’s Nature Without Borders program, Parker’s ski camp, and Noah’s interaction with Tish) even if it didn’t have any overarching narrative. If the entire season was just every character getting their own “focus” episode that wound up being a Chekov’s gun for the finale, it would’ve been okay. But instead they overcomplicate shit by having the second half of the season.

Parker and Victoria’s relationship is cute, especially knowing that their actors are married. But dedicating the final story arc of the show to their relationship, especially so late in the season was such a bad move. The proposal, the development of the arc, and the resolution aren’t nearly treated with the seriousness or emotional weight that they deserve (compare that to the Jessie/Brooks arc, or even Waybe and Nicholas’s engagement episode which actually took their time with balancing humor with emotional stakes). It just feels anecdotal and not at all interesting, not helped by how Victoria herself is severely sidelined.

And then there’s a lot of other characters that SHOULD get a send-off in the final season that don’t get any real send-off like Noah’s girlfriend Megan, Scout, the Betties, Winnie’s brother, and oh yeah, the entire cast from the first three seasons (look, I can buy them not getting the actors back, but the show pretending they don’t exist, and not giving them any reference or shout-out in the final episode of the show is always going to be bullshit in my eyes). As result, a lot of loose ends also don’t get tied up and it gets really distracting.

What kills a LOT goodwill for Season 7 is the finale, which is basically everything wrong with the show that is slow-broiled and stuffed into a 25 minute episode. Rehashed conflicts? Check. Plot-points that the audience has zero reason to care about in light of others? Check. Wasted potential? Check. Piss-poor character focus? Check. Mean-spiritedness? Check.

And to this day, I will never not find it insulting at how they gave this 7 season show a dance party ending featuring Lou and her boyfriend we've only seen for the last 3 episodes.

And even with some of the good things about the finale or even the season, it’s not enough to save it. It’s a bad conclusion to the show, and that’s something no final season should be. I hate Season 7 even more because it makes previous episodes even worse because you KNOW how the show is going to end and how much of a piss it’ll take on whatever episode you’re on and it’s just so disappointing.

There were so many ways the show could’ve ended, but they dropped the ball here. Two eventual entries on this list, including #1 would’ve been a much better send-off to the show than what we go.

#6: Season 3 (2018)

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When Season 3 aired, I instantly labeled this the worst season of the show, and did so for years. Thanks to Season 7, that title has been usurped, but that does not save it from being an absolute garbage season.

Much like Season 7, it reeks of desperation. This was originally supposed to be the final season of the show. No one knew that it would be picked up for more seasons so this was the writers putting their best foot forward, and what they had to offer was just 16 episodes of nothing-burgers, even worse humor, uninteresting plots and characters, a really odd and distracting aesthetic (seriously the lighting is so weird) and a very underwhelming finale (which I guess is better than the seratonin-draining mess that the actual finale was). I remember when S3 was airing and 12 year old me was consistently unimpressed. I was either bored out of my mind, or in the case of the finale, incredibly pissed. I actually stopped watching the show after this, not because the Rosses left, but because I assumed that however bad the S3 finale was, S4 and onward would be just as bad. Spoilers, they weren’t (at least until Season 7), but to give you an idea.

But by far the biggest offender is the fact that half of the main cast (Jorge, Tiffany, Xander, Griff) is retconned out of existence with no explanation. Like, again, I’m aware that a lot of behind the scenes stuff happened such as creative changes that didn’t see the need for the old cast, or other actors not being available. That, I can understand and see past when looking at things from a meta-sense.

However, my main issue is that the show pretends that the characters in-universe never existed. If your show takes great pains to establish these characters as important to us, the audience, and to other characters, you’re gonna have to answer for why we don’t see them. For this reason alone, I don’t mind that the Rosses left, because there was an actual story reason for that which made sense and was easy to run with, and evidently had actual consequences. The absence of the other characters though, aren’t handled that way. And that does the show a huge disservice.

Because we, the audience, are left to do the writers work for them and fill in the gaps ourselves and that’s bad writing. We just assume that Lou’s best friend of over a decade being absent didn’t at all affect her, that Emma wouldn’t mention her relationship with Xander, that Ravi wouldn’t miss Jorge, or that Zuri wouldn’t miss Griff or Tiffany (there’s one episode that basically confirms Tiff doesn’t exist in the show’s canon anymore, which is super vexxing).

It basically tells you to ignore what happened in the first 2 seasons and that’s not good storytelling. Especially when this is written in mind as the final. Season. And among many things, it makes the mains look hypocritical when they’re about to separate at the end, when they didn’t seem to give two shits about the rest of the group being mysteriously gone.

Also this is Destiny, Finn, and Mateo’s first season. They become way more likeable and tolerable as the show goes on, but Season 3 is not a good season for them. They’re basically carbon copies of the old cast despite them being included as part of “creative changes” to the story. The new seasons actually do a pretty good job with their characters but in order to get to that you have to stomach through Season 3’s terrible writing and characterization.

S3 is better than S7 because at the end of the day, it’s not the final season, so there’s a much lower bar for it to clear in hindsight (which likely explains the revisionism, bc people HAAATED this season when it came out and now call it the last “good” season).

But it was still intended as one, which makes so many writing decisions bad on those lens. And even if you go beyond the original intent, it’s still a very vital season for the show. It’s a transition season, meaning this is the last we’ll see of the original era, and the first we’ll see of the new norm for the second half of the show. We could’ve had this show’s equivalent of Descendants 4 or Zombies 4, a natural passing of the torch from old characters to new, which wraps up loose ends from the first saga and sets the stage for the new one.

But instead we just get an absolute mess that feels like a last-minute rush job to end the show and puts an extra weight on future seasons. I’m on the fence about the whole “Season 3 should’ve been the end” take that I see a lot. On one hand, it would’ve saved us from all of the stupid that is Season 7, on the other hand, Season 3 in of itself is stupid and would’ve been just as awful and unsatisfying as a final season. Especially since, again, there are two seasons coming up on this list that would’ve been way better of a conclusion than this.

#5 Season 6 (2022-2023)

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Good news, this season’s not as bad as 16 year old me thought it was. I think the fact that they had 30 episodes instead of 21-26 ironically was enough to get my interest and it did give me some interesting stuff, particularly the treasure hunt story arc (see Season 7, THIS is how you do an overarching narrative!).

Bad news, it’s not very good. And largely on principle.

I often compare this show to Rise of Red and Zombies 4, in that all three media did the trope of transitioning characters & settings + “passing the torch.” This bears repeating because it shows how Bunk’d, despite being Patient Zero of modern Disney Channel properties that do this, completely fell on its ass in what it tried to achieve.

When D4 and Z4 did a major change in their franchises, they actually stuck to it. They had a clear target, they knew what they wanted to be and how to get to that identity, and shot for it, doing what they had to do in order to reach that goal. How good they were at being that thing is up for discussion, but there was clear cut consistency.

Bunk’d fails in this because the goalpost is constantly changing. First we start at a summer camp with the Rosses. Then we have it without the Rosses and with a new crop of characters. Whether you think that was handled well is up to you, but there was already a reasonable change for the premise to go. And for reasons we’ll later get to, they adjusted well into that change.

So it really confuses me why they decide to change the setting again to a dude ranch? What exactly does this accomplish, on any scale? Why would the story need to change in trajectory again when there already was a change in trajectory before hand that we spent two seasons setting into. Season 3 was a transition season that bridged the gap between the first major saga (the Rosses) and the second one (Lou). It sucked at doing so, but it at least tried to set the stage. But there’s nothing like that for Season 5 and 6 outside of the check we see in the finale (which isn’t even paid off at the start of Season 6??) so it becomes all the more jarring that we’re leaving behind the camp that we’ve known for more than half of the show for this dude ranch that’s not even that much different, and having the ending of the show be centered around that.

It’d be like if Descendants 5 all of a sudden made Red’s evil sister the new protagonist of the franchise when we only had one movie to focus on Red and Chloe or if Zombies 5 basically just kicked the Vampires & Daywalkers to the curb and solely focused on the mermaids. Completely unbalanced and renders the previous transition moot if it was never that important of a goalpost.

The Learning the Ropes era of the show is where the series truly started to go downhill, because it was where the show’s underlying identity crisis and disadvantages of quantity over quality became the most noticeable. Either the writers had too much confidence here or none at all, and it puts a huge damper on Season 6. There’s really nothing better I can give apart from a very staggering 5/10.

#4 Season 1 (2015-2016)

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I honestly cannot tell if I’m putting this season too high or too low on the list, but either way this will definitely be a controversial spot. Season 1 gets a lot of nostalgia from many people, myself in others, as it’s the most connected to the previous Jessie show. It’s the reason why people are so quick to dismiss the newer seasons (and I almost agree, albeit for different reasons). And I won’t deny that I loved this season as a kid and was comforted by the nostalgia during the rewatch. As a kid I would’ve been very quick to call it the best season.

As an adult… ugh.

This season aged like fucking milk.

Most of the things wrong with Season 1 are things that spilled over from the Jessie series. Mean-spirited writing, stereotypes, jokes that do not age well. Even beyond that, this season is not immune to the show's identity crisis. Despite being a spin-off of Jessie, and being implied to pick up a few months after the Jessie finale, Jessie herself is not ever mentioned. And never does get mentioned outside of one throwaway joke in Season 2.

That being said, I did like the callbacks to the original show and how it set the stage for future seasons (even in spite of Season 3's retconny bs).

If I wasn’t someone who grew up with the first show, or in this show’s target demographic when the show started airing I probably would not like this. It’s definitely a rough start to a show with more than rough finish. Again, I do not know where else to place this on the list, there’s a lot of seasons that are far worse, but there’s also a lot that are far better so, I’m putting it at #4.

#3 Season 2 (2016-2017)

6/10

Again, this is probably way too high on the list, but the bar is in a very weird place when it comes to this show, so this was the only appropriate spot I can put it.

Season 2 is hung-up from most of S1 + Jessie’s issues, but it does better in other regards. I liked the inclusion of Griff, the backstories of Xander and Lou, and how it further developed the relationships among the core cast. Granted, Season 3 eventually shits all over that, but we’re not talking about that. I had the most fun watching this season because it got over *some* of the roughness of S1’s sloppy intro.

Season 2, in my opinion, works as a far better final season than Season 3 and 7. Instead of handwaving everything to the side or shoehorning random new stuff in at the last minute, it’s a natural expansion of what we’ve seen throughout the show, complete with the finale that manages to give everyone a satisfying pay-off and have things full circle from the pilot.

If you’re watching the show and uninterested in anything that happens after the main cast leaves, watch the first 2 seasons, view Episode 21 directly after Episode 19, and then end at Episode 20 and you’ve basically set yourself up for an okay viewing experience.

#2 Season 4 (2019-2020)

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I largely missed out on Season 4 when it first aired. I was so disappointed with how the show “ended” at Season 3 that when the announcement of a fourth season came, I just blanked out entirely. Then I heard about the crossover with Raven’s Home at the end of this season and it got me to watch some choice episodes before catching up with Season 5 just in time for the finale + the Learning the Ropes reboot. Then I binge watched the series whilst waiting for the final 10 episodes of Season 7 to premiere and watched Season 4 but didn’t think anything of it.

Having fully watched the series again and re-exposed myself to the fourth season I can say that I was SO wrong about this season! Like, holy shit this is so good!

Destiny, Finn, and Mateo, despite their terrible introduction into the series in Season 3, are actually given some substance and character beyond just "Diet Tiffany, Jorge, and Griff." And the new characters Ava, Gwen, and Noah, are genuinely so fun and hilarious to see, I don’t think there was a single episode that I ever found them to be boring. And the absence of the main characters from the previous season actually HAS consequences! Some of the messages and morals are much better in the first 3 seasons and I found myself enjoying what the season had to offer (except for the butchered theme song, fuck that noise).

I used to not like this season bc I saw it as a hang-up of Season 3’s terribleness. Now I like it for the opposite reason. It does everything that Season 3 doesn’t when it comes to actually having a show establish a major change in characters. Again, gonna compare this to Rise of Red and Zombies 4 but in an actually positive way this time!

And much like Season 6, it was definitely a bold move to double the standard episode model for what was essentially a soft reboot because it allowed for more stories and plots to be told and to get more accustomed to these characters.

I also really loved the crossover with Raven’s Home. That entire episode was the reason I got back into the show, and during my marathon I was the most excited to reach that episode, but in doing so, I wound up going through a lot of other really good episodes that increased my enjoyment. It’s hands down the best episode of the show.

If you can stomach the Ross kids’ absence, you will have a good time. I honestly didn’t know whether or not I should have this be the #1 entry but it DESERVED to be in the top three. Speaking of…

#1 Season 5 (2021)

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Season 4 brought me back into the show, but Season 5 was what got me to stay, and rewatching it 5 years later gave me a newfound respect for this season.

To put it bluntly, Season 4 set the stage for the post-Ross era of the show, but Season 5 did a full on dance number all over that stage.

This season did for Season 4 what Season 2 did for Season 1. It was a natural expansion of the status quo, further exploring the characters we know and love, and adding more characters and story elements that we can actually care about. It also has the perfect amount of fanservice to Jessie fans by giving Emma a cameo in the season premiere, a shameless ratings trap that my whimsical ass can’t help but love, I've heard that the actor joked about wanting to be a regular, but honestly I think having this episode be her final appearance was a good move for the character. It showed us just enough of what went on after the events of Season 3, and the cameo didn't overstay its welcome.

Parker Preston is a really good addition to the cast, I feel he COULD’VE been really annoying, but the actor does a good job at making him endearing in his occasional annoyance and ignorance. I did miss Gwen in this season but again, they explain that away and even give her a cameo so it evens out.

I didn’t like how they wasted the 100th episode on a three-part road trip arc, but I did like how that arc built character for both Lou and Parker.

But one thing I also have to give credit for this season is the finale. The Meg Donnelly cameo was absolutely priceless for one. But for another, it was one of the few instance degree a show pulled a “fake-out” and I was actually able to care. Because it shows us how far these characters have come and gives them one final test in their story. Unlike Lou’s relationship with Ryder or her “will they won’t they” drama over running the dude ranch in Season 7, you’re given a good enough reason to care about the characters and where they end up. Complete with a really heartfelt ending where the cast sings the Kikiwaka song for the first time since Season 2, which again, comes full circle from the pilot. The night that I saw the finale, 15 year old me, who otherwise eyerolled almost everything this show had to offer, tried very hard not to cry.

This is why I disagree with the notion that the show should’ve ended after Season 3. Season 5 is RIGHT. THERE. It does everything right both as a standalone, and as part of an ongoing series. I think the fact that the show got a name change afterwards (and that usually is done so that the higher-ups can treat the new seasons as a separate show and pay people less), indicates that this was meant to be the final season, and it does a so much better job than 3 or 7. It makes me sooo angry at the actual ending, but that makes me love Season 5 even more for what it is. Best season of the show, hands down.

Conclusion

It’s a really interesting algamation of great and terrible beyond what you might find at the surface. I’m kinda glad I took my nostalgia goggles off because it was VERY easy for me to just write off Seasons 1-3 as the best thing since sliced bread and Seasons 4-7 as just utter garbage because the Rosses aren’t in it. I found it to be much more interesting seeing the good parts in what I thought were bad and the bad parts in what I thought were good, and much of what was in between. I still have the consistent thought that this show had a major quantity over quality problem, and it breaking the 4 season limit for Disney Channel was a huge double edged sword.

My thoughts on the finale haven’t changed though. Despite its crumbs of good jokes, neat cameos from the former cast, and the heartfeltedness of it all, it is SUCH a mess of epic proportions that it soured my opinion of the whole show. In a way this rewatch was both a re-exposure to that nightmare and a pallate cleanser because it ultimately reminds me that it’s not ALL that bad.

I strangely enough, still have the original recording of that episode saved on my DirectTV playlist from the night that it first aired; August 2nd, 2024, 7:00 P.M. CST. It’s one of three episodes that I was able to record and save, which are the only episodes that I can watch on television since reruns for the show have long since phased out. I’m probably not gonna delete it because I‘m just weird like that lmao.

Marathoning this show took so much energy out of me even with how good I found some seasons or episodes to be. I honestly doubt I’ll ever watch it again, but if I do, I can at least know that I’m gonna be in for something really intriguing.

I probably would recommend this show, if nothing else because you deserve to see in real-time how much of a beautiful mess it is.

Probably the most anti-climatic way to end this word soup off of (started this word soup at 1 A.M. - It is now 6 A.M. and I have my final class of the semester in exactly 3 hours from now) but to anyone who wants to go into the show, here are some varying recommendations of mine (though at the end of the day, the way you choose to view it is your own, curate your own experience!!)

1. Watch the series until Season 5: This is only if you can stomach the Rosses being written off the show and Lou being made the new protagonist. It’s a great book-end to the series that makes good use of the rotating cast. If the open-plot thread of Lou’s check in the finale is enough to pique your interest, or if you’re just curious as to how the show ends, then watch on to Seasons 6-7 (haha).
2. Watch the series until Season 2: If you’re that much of a fan of the Rosses, and are watching based on Jessie nostalgia, I think you’re better off watching the first 2 seasons. Season 3 does not do any characters justice, especially not the Rosses (except for when they’re written off the show) and the unexplained absence of so many characters they’ve made a connection with that have become the backbone of the show will ultimately leave a bad taste in your mouth if you end at S3. If you’re interested in knowing how the Rosses eventually leave the show, or how the camp is re-built, watch on, but you’ll probably be more satisfied by Season 2’s ambiguous ending. And on that note, I’d recommend you watch Episode 21 directly after Episode 19 before ending the season on Episode 20. It was originally meant to be the Season 2 finale, but the season was aired out of order and the penultimate episode was the last to air in the line-up. Reruns of the show omitted it, but if you’re watching it on Disney + then either watch the series based on production code order, or by the order I listed above.
3. Watch until Season 4: That is, if you’re okay with the Rosses being gone, if you can handle ending the series on a crossover episode, AND you’re familiar enough with Raven’s Home to do so. Whilst it doesn’t have series finale vibes, it does feel conclusive on its own. It’s the only episode of the show to be a one-hour special so it covers way more plot-bases and has more screen time for the main and secondary characters, whose arcs have far more substance and weight that connect back to the overall season - suffice to say, it’s enough to give some finality to the season’s overall feel. And again, it is THE best episode of this entire damn show, it will leave a good taste in your mouth.
4. Watch The Entire Show: If you are an absolute fucking nutcase like I am and you want to get a full experience of the entire show, then by all means go ahead and watch it. 7 seasons, 161 episodes, and roughly 4,000 hours worth of content to see from start to finish. In my experience, it took 4 months to get through this. So ideally I recommend you wait until the summertime to watch this so that you don’t have to balance the marathon with any schoolwork. If you want to see the exact merits of the show’s quality, the good, bad, and everything in between, or you are someone with INSANELY high tolerance and can enjoy every single episode of the series, then this is for you. If you’re even more insane, binge watching the entirety of Jessie then jump straight to Bunk’d, and you’ll have over 11 seasons and 200+ episodes’ worth of content under your belt (if anyone asked, no I did not marathon Jessie before doing this, I had enough familiarity with that show because it had more reruns than Bunk’d).

TLDR: Bunk’d is a show that exists.

I've reached the home-stretch of my Bunk'd binge as I've reached Season 6 (I had to take a one-week long break because I knew I'd be dreading this). Now, I do not like this season for how it reeks of "jumping the shark" and further dragging the show past its prime but there were things I liked. One of them being Megan. Her relationship with Noah is cliche'd but cute. I like how they actually fleshed it out into an arc throughout the season. I'm watching her introductory episode and it's kinda funny (although how many times are they going to recycle the "misunderstanding/liar revealed" trope in the series?)

However, gonna beat the dead horse and say that as good as this episode is, it, much like many others is retroactively spoiled by Season 7's terrible writing and the finale's half-assed send-off. Megan does not appear at all in Season 7 outside of her making a cameo in "The Glitching Hour." Now, to that episode's credit, it does build character, showing Noah's fears of losing Megan and how he deals with those emotions. However, it's later revealed that Megan was an NPC in a VR headset this entire time. Which is funny but it also steals agency from the characters. And that still would've been forgiveable had this not been Megan's last appearance in the series.

It gets even worse remembering that Noah eventually leaves camp at the end of the series. You think that this would affect his and Megan's relationship which was already strained by distance during the school year. With competent writing, The Glitching Hour would've been foreshadowing for Noah's departure, where he has to come to grips with something that could risk him and Megan separating, only this time both of them have the agency to determine the future of their relationship.

It would've been a far more interesting "will they won't they" conflict than whatever the fuck they decided to do with Lou and Ryder (who, again, I don't give two shits about when their relationship only lasts throughout the final two episodes!). But nope. Meg is just put on a bus and then never referenced again, with her final appearance having 0 consequences on the broader storyline.

I suppose this shows a more glaring issue I have with the series in that it is really awful at character focus. I don't just mean them playing Russian roulette with the cast or retconning characters out of existence (although that IS an issue); Supporting or main characters that could've and should've played a more prominent role in the seasonal story arcs or at the very least should be acknowledged more than they are get heavily sidelined or ignored altogether. So by the end of the series, you're left with so many loose ends that are never tied up and are incredibly unsatisfied as a result.

Characters like Griff, Tiffany, Megan, Priscilla, and Scout all had a lot of potential for the respective story arcs of their seasons - or in the case of Griff and Tiffany, could've been given any form of closure that would've tied into the mains we're following - and it's just hand-woven away because of the writers' wavering committment or lack of pre-planning (oh and there being zero mention or reference of the Rosses + S1-2 cast in the finale... that too).

It's a consistent issue that gets worse with each and every season, and the Learning the Ropes arc suffers from this the most. Because it's the final story arc of the series, and yet they constantly shit the bed in ways that both makes the ending much worse and retroactively spoils better episodes that feature plots and cahracters I actually like.

I'm... really not gonna enjoy reaching the finale at the end of this marathon am I?