The Simpsons

[SuperBacon]

Well worthy of its own thread. Sure there is loads but can't be bothered to search.

[SuperBacon]

17 hours ago, Loki said:

This is similar to the scary thought I sometimes have, which is that someone somewhere is still watching new episodes of The Simpsons. They're still making them so it stands to reason someone is watching.

 

17 hours ago, gmoney said:

I still think of the Simpsons as a "good" show, even though it was good for about 9-10 years and has been bad for 23. 

 

17 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

A fair point Loki, but that's The Simpsons. 

Someone (probably lots) has watched 80 episodes of Two Pints!!! 

I actually watched a recent episode of The Simpsons (blame the 10yo) where Bart wants a pair of trendy trainers (Slipreme...LOLOLOLOL!!!) and Homer gets him a snide pair which fall apart. It was alright.

 

17 hours ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

 

16 hours ago, lanky316 said:

I think the problem is just how good peak Simpsons was, as it's not been able to keep up with that level it's made everything for a very long time look even worse. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that new episodes are a masterpiece. I've occasionally caught new episodes during that "killing time before kick off to the evenings football/other entertainment" slot and while there have been episodes that haven't even raised a chuckle they were so bad, a fair few still get a couple of laughs even if they're not the 20 odd minutes of near solid laughter some of the old ones got. It probably has had it's day and could do with moving to a farm upstate somewhere, but of course they'd just keep bringing it back from the dead to increasingly diminishing returns like Futurama.

In general though it is shocking when you realise just how many "long runners" there are, when you think of how some comedies that seem almost universally loved had short runs for whatever reason some of these you never heard any buzz (or nostalgic pangs for) stay on air for so long.

 

15 hours ago, Dr. Alan Grant said:

I used to watch The Simpsons every week, but stopped somewhere around series 14 back in 2002. Last week I decided I would binge the show from the beginning. Once I do get to series 14, I then have another 20 series to get through. Twenty one years worth. It’s madness. The first series is awful. The second is a little better. I seem to remember it being really good from the third to ninth. I may regret this endeavour when I’m on series 25 and I want to die. 

 

15 hours ago, Loki said:

I mean, how BORED must everyone involved be by now - the cast especially?  It's not like a long-running soap part where your character ages and has different relationships and storylines - those characters are exactly the same as they were in the first season. 

 

12 hours ago, Carbomb said:

One of the things I heard recently - and it makes me feel really fucking old - is that the reason The Simpsons has improved a little in recent years is because it's now being written by people who grew up watching it when it was good.

 

57 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

The downside of that is that half the new episodes are really self-referential "remember this?" and publicity stunts like "Jacques is back!"; it's elevated fanfiction, basically. 

While there are some fantastic episodes afterwards, and some of my favourite Simpsons jokes afterwards, the last time I watched a substantial amount of it I couldn't help but think that the heart of it's gone after Phil Hartman's death, even though he was never a major character, he just added so much. Not to say that he was the reason for its quality, but there's certainly correlation, and they certainly never did anything as good as A Fish Called Selma afterwards. 

This is far from an original thought, but the celebrity guest stuff is a big part of it. They used to have celebrities voicing other characters, or making fun minor cameos, and over time it became "this week's episode will guest star..." as if it was an SNL guest host. The episodes were just flimsy justifications for getting another big name in, and not only that, it sidelines a lot of the existing fun characters; there's no place for a Troy McClure, a Krusty The Clown, a Kent Brockman, and so on, all the in-universe celebrities, when you've got the real thing.

The last "new" episode (read: ten years ago) I really remember watching was one where they went back to New York - two things stuck out to me about it; one is that Bart is still ten years old, but makes reference to the first "Simpsons go to New York" episode, which means that he is ten years old in 2012 but has been to the World Trade Center. The second is that there's loads of glamorous ads for Krusty The Clown everywhere, which just seemed like a fundamental misunderstanding of his character, that he's a washed up, provincial, local TV act, not a massive star.

 

16 minutes ago, air_raid said:

I think the bigger problem for when I tapped out somewhere around S9/S10 was that the characters had been changed so much, for the worse. Everyone got diluted to just an amplification of one character trait. Homer had gone from being a typical American dad, oafish but loveable, stupid but always with his heart in the right place, to a one-note joke - "Homer's done/said something really stupid - LAUGH NOW!". Lisa went from a tortured genius wasting away to nothing more than a know-it-all moanarse.

I also got fed up of how many of the minor characters got fleshed out and had episodes focused on their lives, or single use jokes became actual recurring characters. Disco Stu was amusing when he was the payoff to the joke about the rhinestone jacket, he didn't need to return. I just placed a bet with myself that at some point while I haven't really been watching, a minor character like Comic Book Guy who only works in small doses, had been probably given a real name and had at least one episode properly about him - Googled it, and was right.

Sometimes something just goes on too long. There's only so much you can do with a certain cast of characters before you run out of ideas, get stuck repeating old ones, or the characters become something they aren't. One of my favourite shows ever was Star Trek : Next Gen and even that, after great consistency, suffered badly in S7 because they were running out of ideas, cycling through stories that roped back in or involved Lore, Geordi's mum, Troi's mum & sister, Data's "mum," Worf's adopted brother, Beverly's late grandmother, Wesley Crusher, Alexander and Alexander from the future, and Picard's apparent lovechild. We forgive it because it's bookended by two blinders and also has Lower Decks but it's the weakest series since the start and proof that the show ended at the right time.

The conversation thus far.

[Hannibal Scorch]

On that subject, Adidas released these today

Edited August 18, 2023 by Hannibal Scorch

[TheBurningRed]

My girlfriend watches the new seasons. She had one on when I was round there once and I’m pretty sure it was just remake of an older episode. I’d try and find it but then I’d have to watch some of that shite again.

I get why they changed voice actors, but the new Dr Hibbert is jarring. The laugh isn’t the same. 

[SuperBacon]

5 minutes ago, TheBurningRed said:

My girlfriend watches the new seasons.

Plenty more fish in the sea mate. 

According to Troy McClure anyway.

[BomberPat]

19 minutes ago, TheBurningRed said:

I get why they changed voice actors, but the new Dr Hibbert is jarring. The laugh isn’t the same. 

As well as them casting black actors to play black characters now, Dr Hibbert was originally modelled on Bill Cosby, so I imagine that's played a part in the new actor changing up how they play him.

[TheBurningRed]

I didn’t know he was modelled on Bill Cosby. That makes sense in the long run then. 

[lanky316]

This conversation reminds of one of the absolute lowlights of recent years Simpsons. The response to "The Problem With Apu" was one of the most painful fourth wall breaks in tv and completely missed the point. I'll concede to not really thinking about the issue, voice acting is voice acting so people playing different genders/races and so on wasn't something I really thought about and had grown used to, nor had I thought about the cultural impact of it being (especially in America) near enough the only character of South Asian heritage and the bullying that would come with it - white male privilege and all that, I'd just essentially "dismissed" it as being one of the many over the top stereotypical things that the background cast was full of without thinking about it. Once the issue was raised in a higher profile manner however I did get that moment of "fuck yes, I can see how that has a major negative affect on people" and understood why it was an issue.

That's why when the response was... Marge trying to edit an old book from her childhood to be more "modern" for Lisas ears and the two of them looking at a picture of Apu and saying "something that started decades ago suddenly becomes offensive and politically incorrect, what can you do?" and deadpanning straight into the "camera"... What the actual fuck was that? Especially with people from the backroom then being vocally critical of the film and dismissing it as a plot by what we'd now call the Liberal Elite Wokerati. It essentially took Azaria himself to come out and say he'd stop voicing the character, before 2020 and George Floyd and The Simpsons deciding to try and (re)cast performers of respective backgrounds for those sort of roles. I can accept things sounding a bit different - as weird as characters may sound after literally decades - especially when a lot of characters (in "fairness" Apu did get some fleshing out... admittedly usually with other stereotypically Indian elements which certainly didn't help) are still largely one note stereotypical background characters used for *insert cheap gag that works in this moment* despite their episodes in the sun.

[DavidB6937]

I watched it a lot as a kid on Sky. I then just kinda stopped because it seemed to be going on forever.

Now my daughters are really into it so we've been starting again from the beginning.

There's some stuff I'm skipping because they're only 8 and 5 and.. well, even though I'm not sure they'd understand it, some of it is a bit questionable.

But it's nice to see them enjoying it the way I used to.

[SuperBacon]

9 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

I watched it a lot as a kid on Sky. I then just kinda stopped because it seemed to be going on forever.

Now my daughters are really into it so we've been starting again from the beginning.

There's some stuff I'm skipping because they're only 8 and 5 and.. well, even though I'm not sure they'd understand it, some of it is a bit questionable.

But it's nice to see them enjoying it the way I used to.

Yeah, I only tend to watch with the kids these days.

It's one of the things I love the most about it is the different stages you like it at and what for.

Very young: because it's bright and they're yellow.

Bit older: Bart because he's naughty, Homer because he's stupid.

A bit more older: some of the sight gags/signs etc start making sense.

Pre-teen/Teenager: you start to understand some of the parodies/pop culture references etc.

Truly something for everyone.

People can moan all they want about it going on too long, characters changing, storylines being stupid etc but you can choose not to watch. Like Raw

[The Gaffer]

If ChatGPT started writing the new episodes in full, would anybody notice? 

[SuperBacon]

8 minutes ago, Gay as FOOK said:

If ChatGPT started writing the new episodes in full, would anybody notice? 

You just know Frink came up with a similar concept years earlier, but for an incredibly irrelevant reason. To write erotic fiction or something.

[Chili]

I'm one of your basic bitch Season 1 up to about when they did that daft Skinner imposter ep. Seen bits after and the movie.

I was always a fan of John Swartzwelder episodes. He wrote loads and just has that perfect surrealism that The Simpsons hits pitch perfect.

I always sigh when Phil Hartmann's voice pops up. I'd have loved to see that live-action Troy McClure film he pitched before he died.

It's brilliant but I've had a feel that the Simpsons when it was absolutely fantastic was because none of the writers were influenced by The Simpsons.

Edited August 18, 2023 by Chili

[BomberPat]

2 minutes ago, Chili said:

It's brilliant but I've had a feel that the Simpsons when it was absolutely fantastic was because none of the writers were influenced by The Simpsons.

This might be a "getting old" thing, but what stands out to me so much in golden era Simpsons is the depth of cultural references and the expected knowledge of the audience.

The Rashomon joke in the Japan episode, the countless references to Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Citizen Kane, scenes that are specifically laid out to reference classic photographs or film scenes - there's an expectation that the person watching this is smart enough to get the reference, but also a confidence in the material that it's still funny even if you don't pick up on that stuff. Very few things seem to do that any more, least of all The Simpsons, which just has none of that depth any more.

Any fun reference in a TV show or movie now is likely to have someone explain it to you seconds after it happened, either because the writers can't bear the thought that you'd not realise how smart they are, or because they don't trust the audience to understand a reference from context clues.

[Chili]

4 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

This might be a "getting old" thing, but what stands out to me so much in golden era Simpsons is the depth of cultural references and the expected knowledge of the audience.

The Rashomon joke in the Japan episode, the countless references to Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Citizen Kane, scenes that are specifically laid out to reference classic photographs or film scenes - there's an expectation that the person watching this is smart enough to get the reference, but also a confidence in the material that it's still funny even if you don't pick up on that stuff. Very few things seem to do that any more, least of all The Simpsons, which just has none of that depth any more.

Any fun reference in a TV show or movie now is likely to have someone explain it to you seconds after it happened, either because the writers can't bear the thought that you'd not realise how smart they are, or because they don't trust the audience to understand a reference from context clues.

The fucking Spiro Agnew alarm clock!!! Its a wonderfully daft creative joke about someone only really old enough to remember politicians of the 60's. I absolutely love that for just reasons, they have Henry Kissinger in a episode. When you think about it, it's completely absurd and weird because who in The Simpsons target demo knew who in earth he was. But it's amazing.

The picture parodying the LBJ being sworn in after the JFK assassination from Little Miss Springfield is sublime.

Edited August 18, 2023 by Chili