The Simpsons

the thing that made Homer endearing in his ridiculousness in early Simpsons is that he had a humongous heart even if it wasn't immediately apparent at times, from the letter he wrote Marge when he left temporarily to get a job and save up enough to help raise Bart, and he had plenty of moments of being a bad parent/husband, but he was teachable. he always took the stupidest, clumsiest route to the destination but would eventually get there.

xp Flanderization (unsurprisingly the Simpsons is the trope namer & has its own subsection): https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Flanderization/TheSimpsons

By the ninth and tenth seasons, he started to become a Jerkass, and by the eleventh season he lost whatever impulse control he had left, Took a Level in Dumbass and became a dangerously imbecilic, aggressive alcoholic with no emotional control, bursting into tears and throwing a temper tantrum on a regular basis. Lampshaded in "The Simpsons' 138th Episode Spectacular":

Troy McClure: Professor Lawrence Pierce of the University of Chicago writes, "I think Homer gets stupider every year." That's not a question, professor, but we'll let the viewers judge for themselves. (Cue montage of Homer being increasingly stupid)

On our last rewatch I remember being surprised by there being bits in season 2 where Homer is a complete cunt who doesn't care about Maggie or forgets that she exists

It obviously got to more ridiculous/all-consuming levels by the time of Grimey (who had it coming)

homer's cruelty has been well documented but his transformation into loudmouth party dude in the late 90s is an underreported aspect of his downfall as a character. he's actually pretty cuddly these days but the damage has been done

IMG isn't the main villain of the simpsons decline but he's the biggest supporting villain imo - he's the one who said they don't need women writers because it's a guy's show. of course marge and lisa were treated even worse than usual at this time. he also wrote the episode where homer killed maude flanders because they couldn't be bothered to pay her voice actress (the main effect of which in universe - because she was such an undeveloped character - was to permanently destroy the comedy between homer and ned)

there isn't really a main villain afaict other than time and an unhealthy addiction to the status quo (giving us absurdities like millennial homer and marge) - and many of the other supporting villains are the heroes of early simpsons after they got rich and tired and complacent

something I miss that got lost pretty early on is the level of class consciousness in the early seasons. I think the transformation of mr burns from villain to harmless old kook is symptomatic of this perspective getting lost as the writers got waaaay too comfortable with hollywood

actually in reeeally early simpsons (the shorts) homer is a massive dick in a more realistic abusive way (groening working through his daddy issues) and I'm glad they grew out of that fast because it wasn't funny

with any long running show I think the overall tone is something that you can't really mess with - even if you add a bunch of characters and change the overall style of humor I think whatever amount of heart and absurdity you have in first couple seasons is what you have to stick with. like with Seinfeld for example if they wanted to do an episode where it was revealed that all the characters really did deeply care about each other I don't think even the best writers on the planet could've pulled it off. and I think that's why the finale didn't really work, it's hard to buy the characters' cumulative misdeeds coming back to haunt them, because that's not how the show ever really worked in the past

a Simpsons obsessed fan told me back around 2000 that the episode where Homer refuses to give Grandpa his kidney and flees the hospital is where he jumped ship because it was a level of callousness that was far removed even by Homer's standards

― a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Monday, December 4, 2023 11:28 AM (forty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the x-ray with grandpa's exploded kidneys struck me at the time as gross and mean in a way the show usually veered short of

though I admit the Simpsons writers were so good they actually *did* make this work with the Frank Grimes episode, which as I'm sure many people have speculated would've been perfect as a series finale

that even made it onto their albums, like when Mr Burns says during "Look At All These Idiots" (from The Simpsons Sing the Blues) -

That man by the cooler
Drinking water, as if it's free

[SMITHERS]
Oh. That's Homer Simpson, sir
A drone from sector 7-G

[BURNS]
Yes, well, call this Simpson to my office
And stay to watch the fun
If he's 6 feet when he enters
He'll be two feet when I'm done

only real banger on that album

they really put a lot of work early on into developing homer's insecurity as it relates to economics and his experience at work (the christmas episode is an outstanding example) - they lost much of this even while the show was still peaking - by the time grimey shows up everyone including burns now loves homer for some reason

king of the hill - which in some ways is more conservative than the simpsons - does a lot more interesting things with class and employer/employee relations after the simpsons kind of stopped taking it seriously

Grimey episode was kind of an outlier though, I thought the point was everyone saw Homer as a loveable goof because that's how the people watching the show saw him, so the episode was saying "yeah but what if you really had to deal with a guy like this"

and yeah KotH was pretty good with that sort of thing, Hank's relationship with Mr. Strickland is a pretty nuanced thing and imo actually kinda foreshadows the way Republican voters view Donald Trump

something I miss that got lost pretty early on is the level of class consciousness in the early seasons. I think the transformation of mr burns from villain to harmless old kook is symptomatic of this perspective getting lost as the writers got waaaay too comfortable with hollywood

OTM, I've been re-watching the early years as well (in the midst of season 3) and I'd forgotten the degree that the family was economically struggling--lots of mentions of missing car payments or late payments. I don't think that material vanished completely, but certainly seemed to be less of plot focus as seasons went on.

I don't think I could get into a new episode because the show just looks wrong to me now--too slick, too HD.

The kidney episode also bothered me when it aired, I think it must have been one of the last new episodes I watched.

Actually never mind, I must have given up post-Maude’s death next season.

xp it probably made sense to phase that out as reality outpaced the show; the Grimes episode was that corrective. Can’t imagine a bit like this in anything in the last two decades:

Marge Simpson: Homer, I have to go out to pick up something for dinner.
Homer: Steak?
Marge Simpson: Money's too tight for steak.
Homer: Steak?
Marge Simpson:(unsure)Yeah, sure. Steak.

I've seen some decent newer episodes:

"Pixelated and Afraid" -- Great Marge/Homer episode in the "neoclassical" style
A Serious Flanders" (Parts 1 & 2)" -- out-of-continuity episode, I guess it's pastiche of Fargo but I've never seen Fargo
"Lisa the Boy Scout" -- meta, gags-only episode where the show gets hacked by Anon types
"Carl Carlson Rides Again" -- fun Carl story, I didn't think The Simpsons was capable of writing low-key, non-mean episodes like this anymore

Not exactly classic, I guess, but nothing embarrassing -- and the gags were consistently funnier and less cringey than any episode I can remember from the 2000s or 2010s

for me it was the episode where Bart adopts a baby bird. must've been Season 10 I think, idk if anything was particularly wrong with the episode, it just wasn't funny at all. in fact I remember being a little worried that maybe I'd "outgrown" the show (at the age of 12, lol) but the next week I watched some re-runs and nah, the old ones were still good.

at the time I remember people speculating that Phil Hartman's death caused the show to go downhill, which obviously doesn't really make sense, though I do think having the show's best guest voice actor die might've changed the vibes a little

going through the S10/S11 episodes on Wikipedia, I remember thinking some of them were pretty good, other ones I remember being annoyed at the guest voices. like I didn't really know who Mel Gibson was but his character didn't really feel like a Simpsons character. killing off Maude was I think where I jumped off, just felt way too gimmicky, especially since they teased the hell out of that episode like "some Simpsons character WILL DIE!" as though it was gonna be some big dramatic episode centered around some character, and instead it's just Maude randomly dying for basically no reason, and of course it's 100% Homer's fault, which felt pretty cruel even for this show

the x-ray with grandpa's exploded kidneys struck me at the time as gross and mean in a way the show usually veered short of

― intheblanks, Monday, 4 December 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Totally stopped after season 9 or so and whenever I read about some of the later EPs I just literally can't believe it's the same show

oh yeah I've watched the Serious Flanders episode, if nothing else I applaud them for doing something new. I assume it makes a lot more sense if you've seen Fargo. wasn't really digging how violent and gross it got at the end, it started to feel like those particularly mean-spirited episodes of Family Guy or South Park where it just made you look at something digusting for a full minute. but the parking lot standoff scene actually *did* capture the brilliant absurdity of peak Simpsons in a way that actually did make me laugh so I guess they do, in very limited doses, still got it

like there was another episode where a car is peeling out in front of Marge and she throws a pair of socks at it out of anger, which manages to hit the back window and shatter it, and MOST IMPORTANTLY there isn't a moment where she goes "I didn't think THAT would happen!", it just cuts to the next scene. I guess I gotta admit as bad as the show has gotten there's still always like one or two good jokes per episode

still the stupidest gag of misdirection that makes my brother and I laugh is Itchy and Scratchy Land, where Homer is driving and falling asleep and then they show a car careen off the road and wreck and then it pans to Bart in the hotel going "whoa, glad that wasn't us"

a serious flanders wasn't bad but it felt a bit flat in the same way a full two episode arc of chief wiggum PI probably would - there were a lot of things I liked about it

the best thing I've seen from them in years was the halloween episode from a couple of years ago with the anime style death note parody - most of the credit should go to the studio that made it because they did an amazing job with the designs - the whole thing was probably the first halloween episode in decades where all the segments landed (assuming there aren't many hidden gems I've missed from the 20s seasons)

third segment really freaked me out on first viewing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNBAUpjT0VM

as for misdirects that's literally every joke in season 5 it's quite incredible

"I can't solve this case....can...YOU?"

my brother made a shitty Julius Caesar movie for English class and he tried to do that same POV misdirection joke and it came out so badly

Do they throw the old SimpsonsWorld bodies in a Tesla truck in the above clip?

I've heard from a couple of friends that even as the show's declined the Treehouse of Horror episodes are apparently still very good. guessing it's because it allows them to do a lot of weird/format-busting stuff rather than "Chief Wiggum runs into his old high school crush, voiced by Anne Hathaway" type shit. the Serious Flanders episode was like that too, in fact that struck me as one of the few modern episodes where they actually seemed to enjoy making it