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

"lisa its your birthday" is legit one of the most emotionally effecting pieces of music I've eve heard.

Got my choice narrowed down to Flaming Moe's ("HELLOOOOOOO ST LOUIS!") or Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk ("ve Germans aren't all smiles und sunshine").

Oh, alright, and Bart The Murder ("TV's Doogie Howser, Neil Patrick Harris as Bart Simpson").

I made a game of it - seeing how many times I could bounce it in an hour, and then trying to beat that record.

I always forget The Otto Show is season 3 (same wort Separate Vocations), which is to say I always think it's 4 because it's just so matured as an episode. Like, what a perfect episode.

Wort? I mean with

narrowed it down to these five:

bart the murderer
homer at the bat
bart the lover
burns verkaufen der kraftwerk
flaming moe's

ugh, forgot about teh leftorium!!

Bart: Uh, say, are you guys crooks?
Tony: Bart, um, is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving
family?
Bart: No.
Tony: Well, suppose you got a large starving family. Is it wrong to steal
a truckload of bread to feed them?
Bart: Uh uh.
Tony: And, what if your family don't like bread? They like... cigarettes?
Bart: I guess that's okay.
Tony: Now, what if instead of giving them away, you sold them at a price
that was practically giving them away. Would that be a crime, Bart?
Bart: Hell, no!
Tony: Enjoy your gift.

I made a game of it - seeing how many times I could bounce it in an hour, and then trying to beat that record.

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, October 22, 2013 7:19 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

really great because it references this line earlier:

Bart: You're making me lick envelopes?
P.S.: Oh, licking envelopes can be fun! All you have to do is make a game
of it.
Bart: What kind of game?
P.S.: Well, for example, you could see how many you could lick in an hour,
then try to break that record.
Bart: Sounds like a pretty crappy game to me.
P.S.: Yes, well... Get started.

okay, bart the murderer it is.

this whole dream sequence was brilliant
http://www.springfieldfiles.com/albums/signs/0300.JPG

Wort? I mean with

― Fiddler on a hot tin roof (ed.b), Tuesday, October 22, 2013 7:26 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My son's name is also Wort.

I voted for Stark Raving Dad completely unironically, and actually I think it might be my favorite episode ever. It's just structured so great, everything builds from inside the family. Bart puts his red cap in the laundry, Homer doesn't want to do fill out his questions, Lisa's birthday is coming up, and all of a sudden the episode simply explodes. But what I really love about it is the darkness in it, the glimpses of Lisa singing to herself (Happy birthday, overlooked middle child) and obviously her incredible poem (I hat a cat named Snowball / he died, he died / mom said he was sleeping / she lied! she lied!) But also the darkness of what happens at the mental institution. And also, when it turns corny - and boy, does it turn corny - it only helps the episode, because it never undercuts the darkness of the earlier scenes. The song is still written by an insane person, and their final explanation of his behaviour only makes him more insane.

All in all, I love this episode, and I've obviously spent way too much time thinking about it. It just hits a sweet spot between cynicism and corniness, which I fall for every time. I would put money on the episode having suffered from the association with Michael Jackson, but it's really a marvel all the way through.

Oh god, I forgot Lisa's poem! Ugh, yeah, gotta rewatch that one. I do think the Jackson connection put me off, even originally, as I didn't really know his music and was just bothered that the Simpsons was getting derailed by this weird cameo for a big celebrity.

Best bit of the ''made a game of it'' is how Skinner gives Bart a knowing look, as if this is a little inside joke they share.

I was always partial to Bart's Allan Sherman-esque first pass at Lisa's birthday song:

Lisa, her teeth are big and green.
Lisa, she smells like gasoline.
Lisa, da da da Disa.
She is my sister, her birthday, I missed-a.

Also:

- The One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest group therapy session where Homer can't stop mocking the agoraphobe.
- "You mean there really is a Bart? Good lord!"
- The asylum hold music being Patsy Cline's "Crazy."
- This argument:

Marge: I told you kids you were going to send your father to the crazy house!
Bart: No, Mom, you said poor house.
Marge: I said crazy house.
Bart: Poor house.
Marge: Crazy house.
Bart: Poor house.
Marge: Crazy house!

Oh, and "Careful, men, he wets his pants!"

Man, they were LOVING those hold music gags for a couple of years there.

''Do you really think your son could be the leader of an underworld criminal syndicate?''
''Well, no....not the LEADER...''

Best bit of the ''made a game of it'' is how Skinner gives Bart a knowing look, as if this is a little inside joke they share.

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, October 22, 2013 8:35 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The clock's second hand going backwards was a genius touch.

Also great delivery from Cartwright. ''Cad..I ..Gho... DOW.'' The whole opening sequence is a lovely link between the 'believable trials of a real life kid' and the absurdism of the 'Bart becomes a Mafia bartender' storyline.

Also: Homer walking into Bart's room, completely filled, to the ceiling, with cartons of cigarettes: ''have you started smoking? ..Don't lie to me, boy... A-HA!''

These weren't the conventional character patterns that had worked so well, and one could see why cast members Harry Shearer and Julie Kavner openly hated Swartzwelder's script.

looking at shearer's wiki it appears he does still care about the qualify of the simpsons - sad to see him continue, though getting paid $300k per episode seems like a 'cool deal'

love the shot immediately after this where homer imagines a tombstone reading 'r.i.p. ned flanders,' pauses for a long second, and then goes 'eh, too far.'

Great variation on this in "Lisa's Pony," when Homer is late with Lisa's saxomophone reed, and Marge is going through scenarios in her head.

[imagines Homer fixing a flat tire] Maybe.
[imagines Homer chased up a tree by a bear] No.
[imagines Homer abducted by aliens] That's a long shot.
[imagines Homer at Moe's Tavern] Bingo.

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130915164231/simpsons/images/6/69/Lisa

Ended up voting for Bart The Murderer because this:

Flowers
By
Irene

And also that it shows up Moe as the asshole he really is - why is Homer even friends with him, with all the times Moe's stolen his ideas/taken advantage of him!?

http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/homerbeer5.jpg

Haha yes fair point :)

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