Just watched the episode...It was especially disappointing because I've just recently watched Bleach in its entirety, so it was basically going from "pwnmax" straight to "meh" in one fell swoop of sucks-in-comparison.

You know what's really ironic? This thread was more entertaining than the actual episode.

They should just eliminate fillers altogether. There's one new manga chapter a week, and an episode covers about 2 chapters, right? So just make Naruto every OTHER week and we're all set. But of course that'd never happen.