The Simpsons

I feel like with later seasons it's rare that there really is a 100% gold episode, I mean almost all of the show premises are just horrible...but there are ones with good jokes and there are some with lots of good jokes.

from whence do you feel it went downhill? It wasnt til S12-13 for me, so I'm happy with p much all of whats on DVD. I'm partial to all the halloween episodes tho - especially the one with the 3D bit.

A random list from those last few seasons tho:

- Computer Wore Menace Shoes
- Skinners Sense of Snow
- HOMR
- Faith Off
- Behind the Laughter

I feel like with later seasons it's rare that there really is a 100% gold episode, I mean almost all of the show premises are just horrible...but there are ones with good jokes and there are some with lots of good jokes.

― iatee, Wednesday, February 9, 2011 9:19 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

that's kinda true, but in my experience there are a decent number of episodes where i just laugh through the whole thing and get to the end and go wow, they killed that one, i didn't even think "that plot's been done" or "wow they're running out of Moe jokes" or whatever

i guess i would put anything after the first decade as a 'later' season although it's been too long since the episodes originally ran for me to claim any memory of whether season 8 or season 11 or season 14 or whatever represented any particular drop off

Ah yeah, I can see how if you've consumed it all via TV reruns that might be more confusing. I stopped botghering watching it on TV about 3 years ago. I dont think Ive seen a single new episode in at least 2 years. Certainly nothing since they changed the starting theme imagery.

i've watched the first run episodes on and off throughout the whole history of the show, although less and less consistently over the last decade -- i'm just saying i'll be damned if i know how good or bad it was in 2001 compared to 2003 etc.

I was like that until recently - as I mentioned upthread I'm watching tons of episodes each week w/ the gf. looking through the seasons trying to pick an episode, night after night, has definitely given me a feel for the differences season by season. I consider the first few episodes of the 10th season classic era simpsons, the rest of the 10th/11th/12th still very funny but definitely the cynical/crass mid-period. there's something about the animation that changes too, the colors seem brighter? is that a thing?

more computers

Two random favorite jokes:

When everyone's in the bunker waiting for the comet, and Moe suggests playing a game where you make an animal sound and people try to guess that sound, and he leads off with some bizarre, unidentifiable yelp/bleat/garble.

And then from Lionel Hutz, when Marge suggests they should tell the truth, "Yeah, but what is truth? If you follow me."

Both season 2. Golden, delicious season 2.

One of mine is:
Flanders( to Homer, driving the car): "Oh no! I think we hit something!"
Homer: "I hope it's Flanders!"

And yeah nothing'll ever top Phil Hartman's work on the show, which is so sad.

ilx thread revives as of late are eerily corresponding with my life. just in the past few days i've been revisiting the show after not having watched it in rerun or first run format in eight years or so.

from whence do you feel it went downhill? It wasnt til S12-13 for me

for me, too. the ones where the family went to africa, brazil i especially recall being stinkers which led to me giving up on the show and wishing that they would just pack it in

i think the first few seasons are kind of "meh", but the show really begins to get Great around season five

re-watching the years of greatness (say, 1993-2000) i was pleasantly surprised by how well the show's humor held up...after sitting through some of the dreggy episodes from the crap years, i wasn't sure that i'd ever find any of the characters amusing again

there are some not great episodes before it, but the africa one is the first 100% horrible, 'why am I watching this shit' episode

tho weirdly the next episode is the run, lola, run parody which is 100% classic

i don't remember that one now, but i am interested in seeing more of the ones from then and beyond, such as the standouts from the stinker years that trayce mentioned

one interesting and cool thing about the ones i've been watching (i've started with 95-96) is that so far there's only been one or two especially dated-seeming references that might cause younger viewers to scratch their heads. the idea of doing a run lola run parody, while i have faith that it's funny, just seems like a bad move in that sense, as opposed to say the pulp fiction one, which i think most latter-day casual viewers would have no trouble picking up on

yeah I agree, having rewatched it recently I realized that I barely remembered rlr and had no interest in watching it again (tho the simpsons episode is great regardless)

"Skinners Sense of Snow" wins entirely for the one line "Nibbles! Chew through my ball sack!"

...I am 12.

The reworked opening sequence is there to warn you that your favorite characters will be desperately referencing pop culture and current technology, blatantly rolling their eyes or staring extra blankly to be totally sure you know you were supposed to laugh at whatever just happened, and relying on successful beer commercials to cue them in on what type of overly cartoonish physical humor they think today's young people respond to.

Honestly though, I like a lot of the new stuff on it's own, but I'm sick of seeing the same 15 episodes of the most current seasons constantly replayed, and its just so much cheaper than the best, older seasons were. I especially hate when it seems like they've done market research to appeal to younger demographics with hip references or unsubtle physical comedy.

Just please play older episodes too! And not just when it is "Valentines day episodes week" or something!
That felt good to vent.

There must be some contract obligating them to not just run through any season besides the last couple, which is frustrating because they've always been on FOX and I just want to see older ones rerun.

there are two quotes from the Simpsons that are circulating in my current vocabulary - first is "well that's the end of me", which no one gets and it thus seems excessively dark, and second is "I'm on my way!", which obviously no one recognises as a 'joke', or anything but me saying that I am indeed on my way. When it comes to catchphrases I'm Lisa-esque.

YES. For me and my housemate "I'm on my way!" is shorthand for taking the piss out of him because he is always so slow to get anywhere/put on his shoes/leave the house/etc.

(much like homer was in that episode. Pickabar? Whats pickabar?)

So does anybody know why they won't replay old episodes? Unless there is an occasion?

i don't know if it's that they won't but that there's so many episodes now that the % of them from early seasons gets smaller and smaller and the odds of you seeing one from those years gets less and less as they add to the pile. but then i gave up watching it in syndication regularly a couple years ago, maybe they really have stopped playing oldies much at all.

No but it has been really like one or two seasons at the most over and over and over.

It has to be some obligation because Seinfeld is finished and any and every episode plays.

We get the old ones a billion times a week.

Trade

I still watch the new ones hoping for the increasingly rare brilliant episode, or at least a couple of genuine belly laughs, but they're few and far between.

One of the most telling things to me is the fate of SNPP, one of the earliest and longest-running fan sites. For the longest time, they'd provide detailed capsules of every single episode, with production notes, "Did You See?" trivia, transcripts, just about everything you can think of. Halfway through Season 13 - specifically, right after the episode with Reese Witherspoon as Rainier Wolfcastle's daughter - they simply stopped, and have never started up again.

I think about where the show is now, then think about the fact that one of the best fansites around gave up nine years ago. At this point, they've had more bad seasons than great ones. The last DVD set I bought, the last season I think contained more unequivocally good episodes than bad ones, was season 11. I can't imagine buying any after that, even though season 12 has three or four episodes that I love (Lisa the Tree Hugger, Hungry Hungry Homer, Trilogy of Error and, uh . . . that season's Treehouse of Horror was good?)

but the africa one is the first 100% horrible, 'why am I watching this shit' episode

They showed this here a few nights ago. It was the first time I'd seen it and came to the same conclusion as you. And last night I caught the one where they go to China, and that was almost as bad. The episodes where the Simpsons visit foreign countries are so fucking grim.

With the exception of Australia and the one where Bart is a foreign exchange student in France.

A recent-ish episode that takes off 'Goodfellas' (including Homer quoting 'I get to live the rest of my life as a shnook...' at the end) was pretty good, but yeah, pretty terrible overall.

Although searching for that ep found this, which is kinda brilliant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RyqtrGnicc

Ugh, hated that episode, which tried to pull an Armin Tamzarian with Fat Tony, only stupider. I think the only joke I laughed at was Homer's camera wig bursting into flames.

Only family trip ep. that I recall being any good is Australia. Brazil sucks, Africa sucks, China sucks. Japan sucks.

The NYC one is when I started to tune out. Also recall getting off the boat after the Johnny Cash/chili trip ep, which may also be the one with Bart shoveling mini-pony poop and commenting "how can all this come out of such a small horse?" or something like that. I was, like, poop jokes? Really?

Ha, the NYC and chili trip ones are two of my all-time Top 10. So quotable.

otm both in my top 10 no doubt

Yeah, the chili thing is all-time.

chili one is 'tv as work of art' territory

it's "maybe if you didn't go to the bathroom so much you wouldn't be so small"

which is in the upper echelons of 'clever' as poop jokes so I think

Do you think poop jokes have to do more with laziness or this point that I made: "I especially hate when it seems like they've done market research to appeal to younger demographics with hip references or unsubtle physical comedy."?

Maybe both.

I mean, the whole trip thing aside, there's

Hello? Is this... [reads his paper] GBM? Uh, yeah. I read in the personals that you were seeking a soulmate. Well, I also like rainy days and movies. Uh-huh... [apprehensively] Uh, no, I don't like that... Or that... No, it's not that I'm afraid. [very quickly] I'm going to hang up now, bye-bye.

looking at snpp.com -

Gradually, alt.tv.simpsons and Simpsons-L became more and more quiet. Additionally, the number of the kind of Simpsons fans who love the show enough to find a place to discuss it has decreased in general.

horse poop is from the carnie episode, isn't it?

Do you think poop jokes have to do more with laziness or this point that I made: "I especially hate when it seems like they've done market research to appeal to younger demographics with hip references or unsubtle physical comedy."?

Maybe both.

― Evan, Thursday, February 10, 2011 10:43 AM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

how i yearn for the more sophisticated "eat my shorts" era

They certainly didn't depend on those things in the earlier ones.

Only family trip ep. that I recall being any good is Australia. Brazil sucks, Africa sucks, China sucks. Japan sucks.

Their trip to England sucks too - a parade of poor gags about British celebs, and the stereotypes didn't have the surreal OTTness which made the Australia one funny.

Japan had the odd funny bit as I recall.

I like the japan one

England one is especially terrible I thought, it doesn't even pretend to have a storyline for the majority of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuNahIa2Gxo