simpsons question

[marios]

Family Guy started out OK, developed into a funny-ish show and then became seriously unfunny by season 3. I can't even be bothered to watch it now and i can't believe anyone would pick it over the peak years of the Simpsons.

[The Red Heifer]

I'll add my $0.02 if no one minds:

Simpsons: On it's day, the funniest show on TV ever. Cutting humour that made you think, political commentary, or just laugh out loud slapstick, it was brilliant. The downside is when (usually Marge) forces a totally, well, forced line:

I feel like a secretary on Administrative Professionals Day

Also, when they say stuff like, "It's us, The Simpsons", to me it goes back on the writers promise on The Simpsons never being aware of their celebrity. There's too much forced silly lines and self-reference lately. Glimpses of brilliance, but it needs to change.

Futurama: Wonderful wonderful stuff as well, it lacks in the series length though, you feel cheated. And while Bender and Zoidberg are classic characters, Leela can at times be very annoying. As was said, the supporting cast often made this show, Zapp Branigan being the main one.

Family Guy: Sharp form the start, even though it bore similarites to the Simpsons in family make-up, it was willing to push jokes that even the Fox network wouldn't take. The first 3 seasons are fantastic, the belly laughs often stronger than the Simpsons. Once Seth MacFarlane was vindicated and got his show back, it wasn't as good. Latest episodes have flown by me with a Maxwells Golden Pickaxeesque stoney silence. Too many 'LIKE THAT FUCKING TIME WHEN", and stupid fucking songs, like that Dumpster Baby one. We get it Seth, you have a fantastic voice. You can also be a right smug cunt sometimes too.

South Park: This show is so underrated. It pushes more boundaries than Family Guy, but whereas FG can sometimes be anchored by its attempt to shock, SP seems to be more flowing and smoother written. Consistenly the best cartoon ever written. The Simpsons merely had higher highs. The downside? "Well, I learned something today..."

[Muskrat]

You can't buy publicity like this.

[Maxwell's Golden Pickaxe]

Latest episodes have flown by me with a Maxwells Golden Pickaxeesque stoney silence...

although...

do you mean I'm not responding to alternative points of view in this discussion?

[The Red Heifer]

Latest episodes have flown by me with a Maxwells Golden Pickaxeesque stoney silence...

although...

do you mean I'm not responding to alternative points of view in this discussion?

I was saying, when the new Family Guys are on, I was sitting through them without raising a faint smile, like you have been in the latest Simpsons. Especially that one with the Dumpster Baby song in it, I know I go on, but that episode was one of the worst things of anything I've ever seen ever. I wasn't having a dig at you or anything champ!

[Maxwell's Golden Pickaxe]

Oh yeah, that's cool, I just wasn't sure what you meant.

Funny, I watched a new Family Guy last night after logging off here and it didn't have the same appeal for me, as I kept thinking of the criticism of the show that's been on this thread.

Still, halfway through the second episode that was on, I was in stitches again.

[Piggly Wiggly]

Yeah, that was a good article but it only confirms what we already knew.

Sideshow Bob stepping on a rake nine times

I never really understood this. Is it a reference from Cape Fear? It's probably the weirdest gag they ever did.

That episode is the Cape Fear episode, but that bit was just a stroke of luck. They needed to fill 9 seconds or something, so instead of writing a few extra lines they just had Sideshow Bob step on the rakes before cutting to commercial. The beauty of the bit is that, in the course of those nine seconds, it's funny, then it's not funny, then it's hilarious.

When that episode premiered, I was still coming down from an LSD trip and had a real "are The Simpsons fucking with me!?!?!" type reaction.

It remains a favorite scene to this day.

I share with many of you the opinion that Season 9 was the beginning of the decline, and that 4-8 are the absolute peak. I felt, at the time, that the show was "the Beatles of Comedy", and I suppose it is ultimately not my problem that the show became more gag based, more self referential, and less satisfying. I still enjoy my DVDs of favorite episodes.

If I were to pinpoint what is now missing, I would probably reference the episode where Homer is briefly reunited with his mother only to lose her again. The episode which ends with him sitting silently in the country as the sun sets. A fairly moving scene. Later episodes simply don't have that type of emotional core.

"Simpsons In Africa" was on tonight, and seeing it a second time only made me hate it more. I haven't seen most of the episodes, post 2001, but I can't imagine that even one of them falls quite that flat.

[The Write Profile]

I share with many of you the opinion that Season 9 was the beginning of the decline, and that 4-8 are the absolute peak. I felt, at the time, that the show was "the Beatles of Comedy", and I suppose it is ultimately not my problem that the show became more gag based, more self referential, and less satisfying. I still enjoy my DVDs of favorite episodes.

If I were to pinpoint what is now missing, I would probably reference the episode where Homer is briefly reunited with his mother only to lose her again. The episode which ends with him sitting silently in the country as the sun sets. A fairly moving scene. Later episodes simply don't have that type of emotional core.

.

One of the most interesting things (for me, anyway) that you discover from the DVDs is how frantic those early years were. Apparently right up until halfway through the third season, the turnover of episodes was so rapid and their struggles against network inteference were so fraught that they didn't really have time to settle down and think too much about what they were actually doing and what they had created. Many of the early guys, particularly Al Jean and Bill Oakley, argue that it wasn't until Season 4 that they had all the major and subsidary characters down to a tee.

For a show whose future, amazingly, wasn't actually gaurunteed until that point (I think it was clear it was pretty much an institution by then), that's a pretty brave and reckless approach to take. Also, the more one finds out about the behind-the-scences 'goings on' of the Simpsons, the more one discovers how important both Brad Bird and George Meyer were to the show's development- both as character-developers and gag-men.

Incidentally, Vanity Fair has a lot of Simpsons-related features in their magazine and on their website this month- they've collected a whole series of reminiscences from the people involved in the show, past and present, as well as offered their own slant on things. Well worth checking out. Rupert Murdoch's comments are particularly revealing.

[Muskrat]

This sounds like a joke, but apparently isn't. Well, it is but not is you're in Vermont. Read on::


Ben & Jerry's delivers Homerific ice cream

July 19, 2007

By Gordon Dritschilo Rutland Herald

SPRINGFIELD — Ever wondered what beer-and-doughnut ice cream might taste like?

No?

Well, despite that grimace, you're probably wondering a little right now, and Saturday will be your chance to taste the unlikely blend of flavors as Ben & Jerry's unveils a special, one-time-only Homer Simpson-inspired ice cream flavor during the celebration of the Simpsons movie premier.

The flavor, called Duff & D'oh-Nuts, is described by the company as a combination of chocolate and cream stout ice creams with glazed chocolate doughnuts. Homer Simpson, the overweight, dopey father in the longstanding popular Fox cartoon, has a penchant for beer and doughnuts.

The reactions Wednesday to the flavor by a handful of Springfieldians ranged from bemused to frightened.

"Wow," said Lois Smith, a bookkeeper at the town office. "Nasty. Chocolate with cream stout beer? No. That's just wrong."

Normally, Smith said, she likes Ben & Jerry's.

"I just don't like beer in ice cream," she said. "And doughnuts?"

However, Smith admitted she probably would try the flavor.

"I'd try anything," she said.

Ron Hoffman, produce buyer at the Springfield Co-op, started laughing as the flavor was described to him. "I should have known," he chuckled after hearing the word "doughnuts." "It's nothing I'd be interested in."Hoffman, too, said he was a fan of the Vermont-based ice cream-maker.

"Generally, I like stuff like their coffee ice cream," he said. "I'm not a fan of the chunky stuff — too much candy."

Sean Greenwood, a Ben & Jerry's spokesman, said he had just tried a sample on Wednesday afternoon — and, aye carumba, he enjoyed it.

"We definitely have some folks here who have some experience in combining flavor," he said. "It's got kind of a grainy chocolate taste, a little wheaty. Then you get this blast of doughnut that comes through with every bite. The doughnut is sweeter than the ice cream."

Greenwood said the company will have people who want more familiar ice cream flavors covered, with plenty of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream — renamed "Chocolate Chip Cookie D'oh" in honor of one of the show's catchphrases.

"It's part of the top all-time line-up," Greenwood said of the cookie dough ice cream. "We think we're going to hit people plenty with that."

Greenwood also said the beer-and-doughnut ice cream was far from the most unusual one-day-only offering produced at Ben & Jerry's.

"We've done some pretty wacky flavors in the past," he said. "We've done hot chocolate, which was chocolate with chili powder, jalapeno lime. … We've had chips 'n' dip that was an onion ice cream flavor. We thought this was an event that justified another crazy concoction."

D'oh!

[the masked man]

Ron Hoffman, produce buyer at the Springfield Co-op, started laughing as the flavor was described to him. "I should have known," he chuckled after hearing the word "doughnuts." "It's nothing I'd be interested in."Hoffman, too, said he was a fan of the Vermont-based ice cream-maker.

I wonder if he could give me any advice about which remaster of Ram I should purchase? (Sorry...)

[The Modernist]

Am I the only one who thinks The Simpsons was merely a reasonably funny cartoon?
I never found it as sophisticated as people claim and one show is much like the other, Homer is the same throughout and you can see the jokes a mile off very often.

[The Red Heifer]

Am I the only one who thinks The Simpsons was merely a reasonably funny cartoon?
I never found it as sophisticated as people claim and one show is much like the other, Homer is the same throughout and you can see the jokes a mile off very often.

The Heiferette doesn't see that much in it either.

She's coming around though

[The Write Profile]

Am I the only one who thinks The Simpsons was merely a reasonably funny cartoon?
I never found it as sophisticated as people claim and one show is much like the other, Homer is the same throughout and you can see the jokes a mile off very often.

Just out of curiosity how much of the Simpsons have you seen? And what stages? I know this sounds like awfully psuedy and defensive question, but the fact is that there are clearly different periods to the Simpsons, in the mid-90s they acted as a pop cultural sponge where everything from Kubrick to Barthes to Tron could be seamlessly referenced and reinterpreted.

As for Homer being the 'same,' well it's the degree of his, ahem, stupidity that's actual crucial to how the show developed. In early seasons, he's basically a dimwitted but loving father but there was this period where he could be at once mind-boggling dumb and bizarrely perceptive in his recall for arcane things--one of my favourite Simpsons moments is when he somehow manages to recall all of the Iranian Ayotolas, but only so he can justify keeping a tasteless T-shirt. Or the way he sometimes managed to outwit people almost inspite of himself.

But it's true that as it progressed, the jokes and plots got broader and (let's be honest) dumber, the more 'wacky adventures' they decided to send Homer and the rest of the family on the more unfocussed and sloppy it became. Which brings us to the nature of 'seeing the jokes a mile off'- there was a period where the writers seemed to acknowledge this and somehow take whatever premise/gag to its utter extreme.

But then again, this is speaking as a lapsed obsessive so what do I know! For me, along with the best of Seinfeld, it was clearly the pop cultural touchstone of its period. But that's long since past.

Oh and check your pm box

[Piggly Wiggly]

I recently saw an episode from this current season in which a) Bart makes up a scary story which evacuates the lunch room (so that he might help himself to the other children's lunches), which ultimately results in him seeing a psychiatrist, and b) Lisa becomes a home school tutor for a half dozen of Cleetus' children, who end up being exploited by Krusty as a very pandering and cynical Hee Haw style comedy troupe.

It wasn't the greatest episode ever, but this clip made me laugh - mostly at how entertainment often manipulates an audience's very worst tendencies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBEFxbsMXXE

[Tactful Cactus]

I recently saw an episode from this current season in which a) Bart makes up a scary story which evacuates the lunch room (so that he might help himself to the other children's lunches), which ultimately results in him seeing a psychiatrist, and b) Lisa becomes a home school tutor for a half dozen of Cleetus' children, who end up being exploited by Krusty as a very pandering and cynical Hee Haw style comedy troupe.

It wasn't the greatest episode ever, but this clip made me laugh - mostly at how entertainment often manipulates an audience's very worst tendencies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBEFxbsMXXE

That episode had one very funny moment, Cletus' wife "fighting to stop 9/11 in Eye-raq"

[Piggly Wiggly]

Oh, quite a few good lines (one of the things they haven't lost) in that episode.

For whatever reason, "You're BETTER than us!" had me in stitches.

[Muskrat]

Simpsons' drug-related jokes catalogued and discussed.

[toomanyhatz]

Ten years on, folks! Ten years on! And it's still on the air! And I still feel the same way. Its best days are behind it, sure. But it STILL makes me laugh on occasion. Pretty damned impressive. I might even go as far as downright amazing.

[naughty boy]

I don't honestly see any kind of dramatic decline and still enjoy episodes enormously when I watch them.

I think maybe you had to be really immersed in the show during its peak to notice the drop-off in quality. Some people seem to feel really cheated!

[Goat Boy]

I don't honestly see any kind of dramatic decline and still enjoy episodes enormously when I watch them.

I think maybe you had to be really immersed in the show during its peak to notice the drop-off in quality. Some people seem to feel really cheated!

No. The drop off was dramatic and obvious. It's picked up in recent years from the episodes I've seen but it will never be as good again