The show tries for comedy quite frequently, but the jokes rarely landed for me. Perhaps that's due to it having very few arrows in its quiver in this regard. It usually just involves characters overreacting in some goofy way. There's the "mistaking alphonse for the FMA" gag, the "Ed getting embarrassed about Winry" gag, the random shirtless scenes with Armstrong, and, of course, the many, *many* times that characters call Ed short. I don't think I've ever heard another series use the term "pipsqueak" as often as this one does.
The action scenes were also pretty lackluster. There's multiple layers to this. First, there's the show's inherent reluctance to show death, with characters getting stabbed with what should be grave wounds but end up just being moderately injured, or even shrugging it off entirely. Second, there's the classic anime mystery genre problem of characters simply manifesting new powers that resolve the situation whenever they're in danger, which rapidly conditions me to expect this kind of resolution whenever the good guys are in trouble. Third, the villains never seemed particularly committed to thwarting Ed and friends. They attack piecemeal and with little sustained intensity. I had thought this would be due to a later reveal that the bad guys had been purposely letting Ed disrupt their schemes, that it was "all part of the plan" especially given the scenes where Father is implied to be watching over everything, but this wasn't the case. Instead, it's revealed early on that Ed is needed as a "sacrifice" which effectively means he's immune from any major harm since the bad guys can't kill him, they can only harass his friends as an indirect punishment.
The mysteries and lore of the show were probably the best aspects, but that's a low bar to clear. Most of the twists could be predicted far ahead of time, and there were none that really shocked me.
Ed and Al are nowhere near as annoying as many other anime protagonists... but they're not particularly interesting either. They have fairly standard personalities and don't grow much over the course of the series.
The highest praise I can give Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is that it was decent enough to the time. If you're looking for something inoffensive then this show is fine I suppose. But there are so many other better alternatives out there.
