It Comes With A Slice Of Canteloupe At The End: THE SIMPSONS SEASON 1 POLL

First self-referential moment I can recall (noticed it at the time, "Oh wow!") is in the season two episode where Burns runs for Governor - Bart gets his picture in the paper for catching a three-eyed fish, and cuts out the newspaper clipping to paste it in a scrapbook next to another clipping about the decapitation of the Jeremiah Springfield statue.

Season One seems full of pokes at the show's supposed negative influence on kids - Krusty Gets Busted is basically all about it! I don't know how much lead time they had; they might have just been guessing that they'd get pushback from parent groups and such. But the 'family jewels' callback is a different kind of gag, I guess.

I'm amazed those are callbacks I never noticed before! And I watch my DVDs all the damn time.

Just watched "Bart the General." Not seeing why it's gotten so much attention here. A few good sight gags (Bart rolling home in the trash can) and a couple of moments of sparkle in the script, but overall a bit rote. Like a Dennis the Menace episode with a few attempts at real jokes. Herman really doesn't add much, either - easy to see why they didn't use him much again. A more intense, OTT version of that concept (like the 'Nam vet history teacher on Daria) could have taken them places. Abe, at least, has a little of what would later make him so great.

Telltale Head: pretty decent! Felt 'fuller' than some of these have, probably because of the (admittedly underdeveloped) B-story about Homer's football bet and the bowling ball catalogue. (Wondering, in fact, if I'm missing a resolution to that - some of my friend's collection is from syndicated reruns.) As elsewhere, certain scenes/gags play out too long, like Lovejoy unintentionally lip-synching the color commentary, but here it's charming rather than grating.

Watched Season One not too long ago and it struck me how much heart these early episodes had. Bart actually, legitimately CRIES in three separate episodes! Anyway, "Homer's Night Out" is easily top ten all-time for me, so I'm voting for that one. Homer and the burlesque singer doing "I Could Love a Million Girls" (from Ragtime!) always makes me smile. "It's an honor to have a reeeeal swingin' cat with us tonight. Homer Simpson: Party Guy."

There's also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBTYri2KGEE

I've hardly caught any 'late, bad' Simpsons, but this was just on telly and it was awful. Most of it was watchable but not funny, but Nelson and Lisa acting out of character was just so painfully pointless and dreadful. Like, I'm not sure what they were even trying to do with it? Just so lacklustre.

Thread for heaping derision (or sadness) on recent Simpsons probably belongs elsewhere, if at all, but I just caught a 2013 ep last night:

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Love_is_a_Many_Splintered_Thing

...and yeah, watchable but never funny describes it perfectly. There were a million sub-plots, wacky Family Guy-like references to other things, all this stuff happening to no apparent point.

Political biographer Robert A. Caro and former Conan O'Brien bandleader Max Weinberg guest starred as themselves.

Sold

Prefer Max's Futurama cameo tbh

http://theinfosphere.org/images/e/e4/Max_Weinberg.png

I've hardly caught any 'late, bad' Simpsons, but this was just on telly and it was awful

If I'm thinking of the right episode this is the one that has Skinner's eulogy for Martin Prince (who is worngly thought to have died) which begins 'Martin was an shy,awkward child who never had the chance to grow into a weird, unloved adult' which might be my all-time favourite line from the show. But it was pretty crappy by this point, occasional flashes of brilliance aside

Yeah, that line was in it, and not bad. I think Wiggum had a line or two that worked as well. But maybe three lines in the whole thing? Come on, that's not enough.

caught the first two episodes of the season. the 'homeland' parody or whatever it was was completely unfunny and kind of incomprehensible. might have been partly due to my low expectations but the halloween episode was actually kind of fun, laughed out loud a few times at the dr. seuss parody especially. but was also struck by the sort of casually mean-spirited tone of the whole thing, callous in a way that i don't remember the older halloween episodes being.

gettin an itchy SB finger over here guys.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Crap!

So, I've seen all of these at some point in time, some more than once, but I'd hoped to rewatch most of them before the poll was up. As it is, I've just done "Bart the Genius," "Krusty Gets Busted," "Bart the General," and "The Telltale Head." Ugh. It sounds like "There's No Disgrace" and "Homer's Night Out" are the other big ones I'm missing - maybe "Crepes of Wrath" too (which I'm sort of curious about since I remember it being so strange).

Ended up voting "Life on the Fast Lane" simply because its the most consistently funny of these.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

haha I wonder if the thread title swung this since nobody can be arsed to actually revisit these

Wow, never seen a poll with so little curve

Tough but fair. Season 2 tomorrow!

I've been finding myself re-watching the early seasons of The Simpsons recently, and I was surprised by just how many of these episodes I remembered. There was quite a few of these episodes I hadn't really seen since the early '90s, and I was struck by how slower-paced, much less surreal and relatively undeveloped (character-wise) these episodes are in hindsight.

However, I still like this season, and I think its flaws only become apparent with hindsight - it was fine at the time!

The scene where Marge unplugs the TV just as Homer is finally going to defeat Bart at that boxing game is still as fucking funny to me as the first time I saw it. As is Bart receiving/testing out his spy camera, Homer screaming at Bart and Lisa "BE NORMAL! BE NORMAL!" at Burns' picnic while Marge gets drunk on punch (which now all seems strange to watch all these seasons later) - and, of course, "KWYJIBO" ...