The Simpsons

[rancor]

For the past few years, as far as I've been concerned, new episodes of The Simpsons have been fairly dire. I hadn't watched any new episodes for years until last night and must admit I was quite surprised. Did anyone else catch this visual gag:



Also, I loved the fact that Moe got in a reference to our beloved Japanese fuck-pillows. In comparison to whats usually taking up TV air time, this episode was fairly witty and entertaining take on YA novels / heist movie genre with Neil Gaiman guest-starring.

So I suppose the questions is: After many years of being TVs biggest joke, are The Simpsons back? Was this a fluke? Any fans of the series able to pinpoint exactly when they got their groove back?




edit: stupid typos..

[geotrig]

Didn’t see that episode but I have noticed recently that some of the episodes are back to form !Tbh I think it probably didn’t dip as bad as most of us thought, more so we grew up and matured a bit !i did see an episode recently that came out a couple of years ago and at the time I thought it was crap but on the 2nd viewing it was really funny !

[BryanM]

There is a bell curve on the life expectancy of an entertainment product, in genre and themes. Popularity of shoot them ups rose and fell; superheroes and then vampires haunt us in boom cycles that last so freaking long we never want to see another one for the rest of our lives, etc...

If you go back to fantastic shows like X-Files, Twin Peaks, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr... you'll notice that the pacing is way slower than modern TV. It isn't a bad or good thing - just different.

With that in mind I've defended the last few seasons of House with the logical "It can't just be seasons 1 to 3 over and over again for forever. We already have seasons 1 to 3. They have to change, somewhat, or die." However my enthusiasm of the current season has been rather low so far. My current theory is that Cuddy's ass was the lynchpin that held House M.D. together.

The Simpsons however shifted in one sharp chop. I remember as a callow youth the very moment I realized I didn't care about the show any longer: when Homer was in a cherry picker rolling down the street. The commentary track by the guy in charge in the Movie depicts why it is sucky now: "If Homer is on the roof, he has to fall off the roof."

No, Homer does not have to fall off the roof. We've seen it before. If you spend more than 8 seconds on it, you're wasting our time.

It is a far, far cry from the episode where Homer's poisoned by eating fugo and we spend the entire episode feeling sad. That level of dramady is impossible in the hollow soulless beast it has become - a "cartoon".

The nadir that I'm aware of is that one with Sideshow Bob for the billionth time. Compared to that, yes the more recent episodes are a bit of an upswing.

But god it's nothing close to Conan's writing. Whacking Day, Monorail.... I say with no irony that the greatest thing to come from a Kurzweilian future of AI's would be new episodes of the Simpsons. Sure, immortality and hot robot wives are great and all, but... new episodes of the Simpsons.

[NTSC-J]

I haven't seen any recent Simpsons in a while, but even the decent ones I still don't have any interest in because they most likely still suffer from the things I hate about New Simpsons:

- The animation is too clean and CG-y.
- Guest stars are usually flavor-of-the-month and always play themselves. The era of Al Brooks-type memorable characters is long past.
- The core family feels like they're playing themselves in a sitcom. None of them are true to how they were during the Golden Age. Lisa is essentially a liberal undergrad and Homer is a Looney Tunes cartoon.
- It feels like it's written by people that grew up watching The Simpsons, which it is, but it feels feux-Simpsons. The jokes are all copied from earlier seasons and grate the nerves.

I still watch seasons 2 through 10 on a regular basis and it's jarring how different of a show it is, but also amazing to me how well they've aged. Watch anything else made in 1992 and you see the acid-wash jeans and stale dialogue, but Mr. Plow is as good as ever.

[GaijinPunch]

You realize the gag is actually a hat tip to Gary Larson's Far Side, right? Pretty cool, IMHO.

[NTSC-J]

Yea, good reference.

[RNGmaster]

I haven't seen any recent Simpsons in a while, but even the decent ones I still don't have any interest in because they most likely still suffer from the things I hate about New Simpsons:

- The animation is too clean and CG-y.

THIS

I watched an episode recently and all the mildly strenuous animation was done in CG. Principal Skinner was running on a shipping crate and you could actually see the jags as the crate rotated. Dire, dire animation work.

[Observer]

I think the old ones were like an unstoppable machinegun of gags from minute zero until the end, sometimes even going through the credits and even Fox logo (so many Fox jokes). If you check the extra materials in the DVDs and look for the stuff they cut, it's pretty much all the fucking retarded jokes that were force-fed in later seasons. Like in Last Temptation of Homer, when he falls into the pond with the talking fishes (under the effects of "that white powder" or whatever he sniffed in the parking lot), the scene ends with Lenny&Carl angels saying something. The extra stuff was the cats entering into the pond with a small kitten following last. A pointless scene. Too long, too retarded and totally broke the pace.

That very same shit was eventually put in later seasons with raccoons or whatever the hell they were. I mean, they fucking took it out for a reason, yet some retard (Al Jean?) put it back. It's not an isolated case. Many of those cuts were put back later on. It feels almost as if the new directors took revenge on their predecessors for cutting their fucking stupid jokes!

I assume the dialogue at least remains potable in english because past season 12, the spanish dub became an unlistenable (sp?), alienating nightmare, whatever. If the episodes were bad, the terribad and totally unfunny dub made it all the worse.

It took me 15+ years to see the original Last Temptation of Homer in english, only to catch a ridiculous reference to buddhism (Homer talks to Mindy and he freaking says "Nam-myoho-rengue-kyo", we have a bloody Gohonzon at home!!!). That kind of small details were massacred in the dub.

I grew up watching them and still I can re-watch the old seasons and find references of all kinds, it's insane. Someone once said the narration had several levels: the kids level who watch the "story", the teens trying to catch stuff as they grow up, and the adults how spot pretty much all the details, even small, silly things like posters in the background ("Rolling Stones 2010 Wheelchair Tour" anyone?).

So I don't even want to see mention to the "rose tinted glasses" and that shit. I can admit there might be some smart jokes here and there nowadays but I don't feel it'll ever reach that "machinegun of gags" of old... which by the way owes a lot to the Naked Gun series and such. In the "do what you feel" episode, the one about being like Bart, the scene where the giant wheel crashes into the zoo and the animals escape is pretty much lifted from the second Naked Gun movie! (The animal escape I mean)

Etcetera.

Agreed on the CGI. I can't bear to watch them now. I absolutely hate when the stuff looks like 2D sprites from Doom... and I don't have a double barrelled shotgun to blow them up. Cacodemon dewarimasen. Nor the stupid movie. STUPID PIG. Seriously, I cannot be the only one who hated this movie so much. However, the CGI never bothered me in Futurama. In fact, it kind of suits the show with the future setting and all. Plus at least some of the dialogue is genuinely funny and the episodes have some serious tones now and then.

"What is this?" "It appears to be the mothership." "Then… what did we just blow up?" "The Hubble telescope."

Also agreed on the fact that the retarded writers have to either make Homer gay or, no matter what he does, get attacked by everything. I would rather watch an inanimate carbon rod. (I still remember Homer's comic book-like pose when he swears vengeance at the rod!)

Boy, I've been holding this for way too long. Thank god someone opened a thread, hahaha. Seriously, avoid like the plague the newest episodes translated to spanish. Such an earsore.

[BryanM]

Some canoodling on No Homers reveals the proper term for the new show is "Zombie Simpsons", in the vein of the philosophical zombie or general lifelessness.

There's apparently an entire blog devoted to ranting about it.

When at least 50% of people on a fan forum are upset about their show getting renewed, that's a freaky place to be. I know I was kind of annoyed when the syndicated shows began to include more and more episodes of the bad era until it hit a saturation point where you rarely get a good episode on reruns...