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The Simpsons

Discussion in 'Shows' started by Member 72, Jan 24, 2017.

  1. John Titor

    John Titor I am "Punished" Scientist, it's so nuclear

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    Halloween of Horror in Season 27, I think. New seasons are a hit or miss.
     
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  2. Asuka

    Asuka Member

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    I was on the Simpsons train relatively late in its life, I didn't watch my first episode until I was in middle school. I believe it was the one episode where Homer reenacts scenes from It's A Wonderful Life, and I remember falling in love with the show for a while until around The Simpsons Movie. After that I sort of lost interest when the show decided to make their characters way too two-dimensional: Homer being a typical dumbass father, Lisa being the liberal SJW, Marge always having to be the voice of reason. It just got old after a while. The most recent one I saw was the Lady Gaga one, and I know it's not trying to be South Park but good lord they were just praising her like she was a God and the cameo just seemed pointless other than to get the younger demographics to watch the show.
     
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  3. Craftaman Tractor

    Craftaman Tractor I do not identify myself as a helicopter

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    I feel the same exact way about the Michelle Obama cameo one I saw not long ago.

    Today I watched Waverly Hills, 9-0-2-1-D'oh, from 2009. The one where Homer has to stay at a cheap crappartment on a rich town so the kids can go to a better school. I found it pretty funny (even though the ending and the arc involving Lisa and the Hannah Montanna parody character seemed kinda rushed), in a way confirming that there are always some good stuff to be found on every season. I also watched Three Men and a Comic Book from 1991 and didn't find it that entertaining. It was basically three of the kids obsessing over a 1st edition comic they saw at the comic store and taking a bunch of over-the-top bad decisions regarding it.

    Personally I'm not much of a fan of the very early seasons, and IMO the best episodes, or at least the most consistently entertaining ones are those from the last two thirds of the 90s and maybe the last few years of the 2000s; after the tone of the show and the personalities of the characters had pretty much settled and the animation had become more consistent, but before they felt the need to make countless referrences to the most current event, recent fad or popular technological device on every episode, and when Lisa was level-headed smart and overall socially and environmentally conscious rather than having to parrot whatever liberal agenda the writer of the week wanted to promote.
     
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  4. Damocles

    Damocles Active Member

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    The Simpsons went from being a cornerstone of satire to becoming the modern Captain Planet, in that it's the show you watch when nothing else is available. The way I imagine it, it's like watching someone craft a crystal statue to perfection but then progress stops and everyone is afraid of getting too close to it, because they might break it if they try to make any alterations to it. All they can do in confidence is polish it over and over.

    I've noticed this tends to manifest in pointless arcs that don't contribute anything to the overall plot, only to find out there isn't any. In fact, each story has gotten so short that they've started piling them together in rows for a single episode. Another instance in which this perpetual buff manifests in is the fact that there are no permanent consequences. Nothing ever enters a point of no return, until an actor dies, that is. Most episodes are shitty recycles of previous ones with a lemon twist. Even Boondocks made fun of Sameyshow Bob with the character Stinkmeaner, who outright tells the audience "we don't respect your intelligence" during his 4th comeback.

    It also probably doesn't help that all the good Simpsons writers work on Futurama.
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2017
  5. ToroidalBoat

    ToroidalBoat ¿qué?

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    I vaguely recall an old episode with something like that, but I don't remember which.

    edit: Was it when Homer got hair using Dimoxinil?
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2017
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  6. Asuka

    Asuka Member

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    Nah, it was the episode where Homer wakes up in the snow without any recollection of the previous day. It has the famous bridge scene in it.

    https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Eternal_Moonshine_of_the_Simpson_Mind
     
  7. Trilby

    Trilby Local Nut

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    Earlier episodes might seem tame story-wise to what they do, and "Three Men and a Comic Book" certainly is more pedestrian than what came afterwards, but I still like the greath lengths Bart did to even get that comic, only to go into that situation he didn't think clearly about.

    BART: We worked so hard and now it's all gone. We ended up with nothing because the three of us can't share.
    MILHOUSE: So what's your point?
    BART: Nothing, just kinda ticks me off!
     
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  8. Asuka

    Asuka Member

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    I find it ironic that Matt Groening still let Klasky-Csupo animate the first three seasons despite him bitching out at Gabor Csupo for the quality of the original pilot. Then the studio went on to produce classics like Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys. Got to start somewhere I suppose.

    I love the original seasons from the 90s, I thought it had some pretty heartwarming and perfect balance of comedy episodes. Like the one where Homer accidentally tries to jump over Springfield Gorge lol
     
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  9. Trilby

    Trilby Local Nut

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    That's how Kent Butterworth, the original director of that pilot, went on to work for WB on Tiny Toons! He obviously had it better there.

    It's all about street cred, that and he fact their original studio address was once Bob Clampett's own studio he used on Beany & Cecil! Not bad for a Hungarian defector. Matt simply didn't want that sort of cartooniness in his show.
    175344_525722760790800_1721425858_o.jpg

    Classic! You could tell the guys in the editing bay had to work long and hard on that one given the way the ending just kinda abruptly ends like that. Season Three always bugged me in particular knowing how many re-writes they ended up doing due to the recycled animation from previous seasons that were used in places that weren't animated. It felt too cheap to me but looking back, I suppose that was enough reason for Gracie Films to move production over to Film Roman.
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2017
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  10. Mouseberger

    Mouseberger Ground Lolcow on White Bread

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    My parents were radical Christians who watched it with me from my youngest ages.

    I think I was roughly Maggie's age when this show came out?
     
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  11. JULAY

    JULAY Active Member

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    What really amuses me is that I was roughly Bart's age when The Simpsons first aired, and now I'm roughly Homer's age. That said, this show should have been cancelled at least a decade ago if not more. Seasons 2 through 8 were pretty fucking amazing, as someone mentioned earlier, the dropoff started around season 9 or 10, and by season 12 the show was utter shit. I haven't seen a new episode since season 18, and lasting that long as a viewer was just out of nostalgia for a show that I used to absolutely love.
     
  12. ToroidalBoat

    ToroidalBoat ¿qué?

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    I think one of the crappiest ideas they had for a newer episode was to have Homer and Marge in college in the 90s, even though the show was originally set in the 90s and had Homer and Marge go to college in the 70s.
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2017
  13. Asuka

    Asuka Member

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    Wasn't that the one where Homer plays a parody of Kurt Cobain? That episode was kind of cringey to watch.
     
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  14. Trilby

    Trilby Local Nut

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    For me, I was already two years past Bart's age when it aired as a series though I was 9 when it started as the Tracey Ullman shorts.

    That's the problem you get with you don't deal with a real world continuity (a la Gasoline Alley) here. It's almost like they simply kept the same ages but moved the period to now in these later episodes simply to stay topical.

    Now I'm thinking of "Homerpalooza" and it's Homer pining for Grand Funk Railroad and boring the kids!
     
  15. Liquid Squirtle

    Liquid Squirtle Still Shitposting on the Moon Staff Member Administrator

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    Yeah that was a really, really weird one to watch and because of how out of place it was it's one of those episodes that raises a lot more questions than it tries to answer. Was kind of cringey all around. Was actually one of the last episodes of the Simpsons I ever watched, even if I never really watched the newer ones much.

    Kind of hard to stay topical or nostalgic when despite Homer doing a straight-up Kurt Cobain parody the climax is a parody of "Glcyerine", a song by a band (Bush) who's about single-handedly responsible for Post-Grunge, a genre that people with '90s nostalgia hate and see as a decline of hard rock at the time into something formulaic as hell like Nickelback and Creed, and that younger kids watching the Simpsons would associate with Nickelback.
     
  16. ToroidalBoat

    ToroidalBoat ¿qué?

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    I think it's the one where Marge has the hots for a professor who claimed that "anything penis shaped is evil."
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2017
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  17. Craftaman Tractor

    Craftaman Tractor I do not identify myself as a helicopter

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    I agree with the whole timeframe thing. It wouldn't have been that hard to simply keep the setting of the series as this atemporal 90s-ish period. They'd just have to drop the ocassional and lame iPhone, Apple or Facebook joke no one cares about. Hell, they could still reference more current topics and events as long as they didn't went for things that were way too period-specific.
    I haven't watched the episode ToroidalBoat mentions, but it's really a shame. The episodes that explore the stories of the characters during any other period than whatever time it is when Bart is 10 and Lisa is 8 are always refreshing to watch, so it's a shame the continuity of these is being butchered so bad too. Soon things like Burns and grandpa Abhram serving on WWII and Skinners serving on Vietnam won't make much sense unless they're like 110+, 100 and 70 years old respectively.
     
  18. JULAY

    JULAY Active Member

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    Yeah, that 90s show. That was actually the last episode that I saw, and after looking, apparently I quit watching in season 19, not 18, because that's when that was.

    This is also good.

     
  19. ToroidalBoat

    ToroidalBoat ¿qué?

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    "Fruit is nature's candy!"
     
  20. Asuka

    Asuka Member

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    I think the problem is that when Mike Scully came to be the show's leader during the late 90s, it was during a period where shows like Beavis and Butthead, South Park, and Family Guy were slowly taking away the show's former glory. In order to keep up with them, the show gradually turned away from light hearted comedic storylines in favor of getting the next crappy celebrity cameo or modern trend into a new episode. There is really nothing likeable about most of the characters anymore, they ironically are a shell of their former selves who faded away when Homer became a poorman's Peter Griffin.

    I think the reason why people still watch it is that it was a very big deal when it first aired and there are still many faithful followers that still see some redeeming quality in it, maybe due to the nostalgia. Hell, Family Guy came out of cancellation after only 2, 3 seasons?? because the fanbase was huge enough to continuously buyout the DVD collections.