WE'RE SENDING OUR LOVE DOWN THE WELL: The Simpsons Season 3 Poll

STING!
MOM!
DAD!

What's up with Homer recognizing Sting and never having heard of Michael Jackson?

well, homer is also the guy who didn't seem to recognize george harrison and has a starland vocal band tattoo

yeah, good point. A tattoo that appeared once and vanished forever: Contoonuity!

Lisa the Greek: Easily overlooked but great. While the climax is a little too labored to really strike home, there are some great gags, including one of my all-time favorite Marge moments:

BART: Mom, do you know why these clothes are on sale? It's because the kids who wear them get beat up.
MARGE: Well, anybody who'd beat you up for wearing a shirt isn't your friend.

haha, that is such a universal 'mom' thing to say.

It's going to be hard not to vote for either "Lisa the Greek," "Homer Alone" or "Flaming Moe's" simply because they were a few of the episodes that I recorded on VHS at the time of airing and watched over and over. Classic era "Simpsons" is always major comfort food for me anyway, but these episodes in particular.

That said, "Lisa the Greek" is probably my fave because it evokes years of Sunday afternoons of my dad watching football and me occasionally trying to care enough about football to join in.

You

have

reached

the

coach's

hot

line

"Not Duff Dry, Washington!" "OK, OK, they're both great teams."

In sad news related to these polls, Marcia Wallace died yesterday. :(

http://www.tmz.com/2013/10/26/marcia-wallace-simpsons-newhart-show-dead-70/

Very sad to hear.

According to Al Jean, they're going to do the right/respectful thing:

“She was beloved by all at The Simpsons and we intend to retire her irreplaceable character. Earlier we had discussed a potential storyline in which a character passed away. This was not Marcia’s Edna Krabappel. Marcia’s passing is unrelated and again, a terrible loss for all who had the pleasure of knowing her.”

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Watched a bunch more of these over the last few days... "Stark Raving Dad" is indeed as good as y'all said (though the song seemed kinda generic). "Lisa's Pony," "Radio Bart," "Saturdays of Thunder" - all have moments of greatness, though in some the plot mechanics get in the way (I still sort of cringe at the resolution to "Flaming Moe's" - like, Moe couldn't call Homer on the phone once he'd made his decision?). Agreed that "Homer Alone" sort of doesn't go anywhere, and I don't get anything out of the kids hanging out with the aunts. "Separate Vocations" is a solid Bart-and-Lisa episode - Lisa going in the 'bad girl bathroom' is great, but they don't have enough for Bart to do as hall monitor (the great newspaper montage notwithstanding).

"Homer at the Bat" the best surprise of the bunch; I pretty much tuned it out as a kid because baseball, but there are some hilarious jokes in this thing even if I just take the sports people as a bunch of unknowns getting to do funny lines. The warp to another dimension, the 'sideburns,' and Strawberry kissing up to "Skip!" Plus the Wonderbat and basically everything Burns says or does.

I hoped to get around to "Dog of Death" which I think I really like, and "Black Widower" about which I remember almost nothing.

Still, though: "Bart the Murderer."

i'm guessing the 'dinosaurs' parody that opens 'black widower' is one of the more baffling you-had-to-be-there jokes for kids these days and non-americans.

Dinosaurs was broadcast in the UK as well! (I don't know about other parts of the word). We didn't have sky so I saw Dinosaurs years before I ever saw an episode of the Simpsons.

I could probably make a long list of US cultural phenomena and figures who I only knew about as a kid via references the Simpsons.

Does anyone have first hand information about what kids of today make of the George H W Bush moves in next to the Simpsons episode?

I mean, they've probably heard of him! I was aware that Nixon jokes were Nixon jokes even if I couldn't always find them funny.

"the man never drank a Duff in his life"

When I saw the episode with the Jimmy Carter statue I had no idea who Carter was, same with Ford at the end of the end of the Bush episode. I used to irritate my Dad by asking him to explain all the references I didn't get.

I don't remember ever not knowing who Nixon was, though.

haha i'd just done a report on nixon for school when i saw that episode and i felt so proud of myself for understanding why that was funny. ditto the alger hiss joke they made in another episode.

I think the only famous person ever mentioned on The Simpsons that I wasn't familiar with right away was Pablo Neruda. #philistine #yolo

I saw the 'Lisa's first word' episode for the first time in years recently and finally got the 'where's the beef?' 'no wonder he carried Minnesota!' bit that had baffled me when I was 12 or whatever

Makes me think of reading old Mad magazines as a kid and having to figure out references based on context.

"I'm afraid it's splitsville for Delta Burke and Major Dad" was a puzzler. Still funny tho

I was also surprised when I found out MacGyver was a real TV show.

what about Matlock?

have to admit i had no idea who linda lavin (object of bart's prank calls in some episode) was until recently.

And Dr. Demento's been off the air for a few years, so that might be another noodle-scratcher for today's kids.

Makes me think of reading old Mad magazines as a kid and having to figure out references based on context.

They used to get the Mad super special/ reprints in my local newsagents when I was a kid, but not the new issues, and I must have spent hours reading spoofs of American TV shows that that got cancelled years before I was born, and possibly were never broadcast in the UK anyway.

i had never heard of alger hiss until right now. i guess that joke flew by me each of the hundred times i heard it.

I used to get kind of freaked out as a kid when they would have caricatures of Peter Lorre or Bing Crosby etc in loony toons cartoons.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H7_3XKUG_5U/TxJYcU1dwbI/AAAAAAAAMJ4/fDg2cfl000g/s1600/OUTTA%2BWOIK.png

Coming up next season we have STOCKDALE FOR VEEP

i still don't know who rory calhoun is.

Actually, thinking about Mad, there's a Simpsons gag that is both about this kind of thing and was an example of it for me when I was a kid, where Bart and Milhouse are reading a Mad super special: 'they're really sticking it to this Spiro Agnew guy! He must work there or something'.

xp He's the one that's always standing and walking.

ah right.

Dammit Phil beat me to it.

i had never heard of alger hiss until right now. i guess that joke flew by me each of the hundred times i heard it.

I'd only heard of Alger Hiss this past week, when he was the answer to a crossword puzzle.

As someone who grew up in the UK consuming a lot of US TV/movies/comics etc, looking back I'm always disconcerted at how easily I just didn't notice a lot of the references I was unfamiliar with, it makes me worry about how much I'm still missing now.

I don't know if this ever came up in the 'that's were I'm a viking' thread, but I wonder if non North American viewers were more likely to interpret the line as 'ralph means that sleep is an area in which he excels', because they were used to there being references/phrasings etc that they were unfamiliar with and inferring what they meant based on context, and N Americans were more likely to understand the line literally if they had never heard 'viking' used as a metaphor for 'adept'.

(I had always taken it to mean 'ralph means that sleep is an area in which he excels', and I don't think it occurred to me it could be read any other way until I saw that ilx thread.)

more likely to understand the line literally if as they had never heard 'viking' used as a metaphor for 'adept'

"and that little boy that nobody liked, grew up to be.... Roy Cohn"

was the first time I ever heard of Roy Cohn (altho I was familiar with HUAC and the blacklist and McCarthy etc.)

that line still makes me lol. Harry Shearer's delivery is so perfect, the pause lasts exactly the right amount of time.

I have always gotten Nixon (and Alger Hiss!) jokes thx to reading Doonesbury when I was like 8

Fox to air "Bart the Lover" on Sunday:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/fox-will-air-bart-the-lover-in-honor-of-marcia-wal,105011/

http://i.imgur.com/7OOzo.png

Doh, thought "Bart the Lover" was the one with Sarah Gilbert. It's a lovely sendoff, though one that, when I first watched, completely confused me with all the Gordie Howe stuff.

xpost hah!