The first few episodes in this series show growth in Naruto, something I waited desperately for, but he actually partially regresses as time moves on. Also, there was nothing really interesting happening around him. In fact, the two most interesting story arcs in Shippuuden were all about other characters. And what happens to Naruto while we're given an in-depth character development of a character that we've never seen before, that's not important to the overall plot and that we know will be defeated? Naruto jumps on logs. He jumps on logs chasing a guy whose power is to create clay birds. That's several episodes where all Naruto does is jump on logs, in a circle, trying to catch this clay guy. Yeah...
All in all, Naruto Shippuuden is much like Naruto. It has some great moments, but it's just not worth looking through all the crap between them. Shippuuden seems to have fewer filler episodes and more filler content and bad writing.
It's not the worst anime series out there, but to me it's just a big waste of time.
