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iamsosmrt posted:The episode I found most egregious was Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily where the Flanders become foster parents to the Simpson kids due to incredibly lazy writing. There's some good gags to make up for it, but it really comes off as a storyline written around some good gags. Yeah but some of those gags are are stupendously good, though. "I'm a big, four-eyed lame-o, and I wear the same stupid sweater every day, and-- The Springfield River!"
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May 19, 2020 02:30
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Lemon posted:Yeah but some of those gags are are stupendously good, though. My dad used to look and act like Ned for a while in the 90's. Man he did not like that scene with the holy water burning Homer
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May 19, 2020 02:48
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Uh, Pa, I cut my finger on the screen door again
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May 19, 2020 04:27
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iamastupidbaby posted:The episode I found most egregious was Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily where the Flanders become foster parents to the Simpson kids due to incredibly lazy writing. There's some good gags to make up for it, but it really comes off as a storyline written around some good gags.
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May 19, 2020 04:58
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Mokelumne Trekka posted:I always hear "who the gently caress watches new Simpsons episodes?" as a rhetorical question, but I find it an interesting serious question. There are the diehard fans, of course. But I just can't see a niche that gives the network reliable ratings, yet it apparently exists. It definitely does, and it's one that makes a lot of sense: people are stupid and like things they recognize. Really, that's what keeps it afloat, at least that's my theory. A year or so ago I overheard coworkers in a common area talking on a Monday about the previous night's episode - one that was described here and seemed awful. Anyways, one coworker said something along the lines of "its good background noise, and good for a few laughs." That's the people that watch it - those that don't really watch it, and remember that The Simpsons Is Funny. They remember it being very funny when they were younger, and probably haven't seen it since then. So they turn it on without really caring to sit and watch it, leaving it on while they play switch or cook dinner or brows Facebook or whatever else. Every once in a while Homer says d'oh or they hear a super shallow joke and they giggle and that's that. I don't think anybody really sits and watches the show that much anymore, so who cares if the jokes are shallow or lazy? Any effort would be wasted. I suspect there's also a subset of people who have just always religiously watched it every Sunday night, and continue to do so. I suspect most of this group never cared for or "got" the clever humor in the first place, and only enjoyed the surface level jokes. Thus, to them, the show hasn't changed much because they don't recognize the jokes are lazy now. It's kind of like a weird natural selection - the only people still watching are those who don't care that the show's got lazy and unfunny, and thus there's no encouragement to improve. Everyone who cared about the show having quality was weeded out years ago - both in the fan base and writing staff. CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 07:10 on May 19, 2020 |
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May 19, 2020 07:07
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You just described one of my friends and his girlfriend perfectly. They can't really remember any classic episodes but just vaguely remember them being funny. They watch new episodes, as in, its on while they both sit on the couch staring at their phones. They catch a few jokes here and there but otherwise have no idea what the episode was about when it ends. This is how they watch -all- TV though, whether its Breaking Bad or some throwaway reality show.
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May 19, 2020 07:19
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iamsosmrt posted:The episode I found most egregious was Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily where the Flanders become foster parents to the Simpson kids due to incredibly lazy writing. There's some good gags to make up for it, but it really comes off as a storyline written around some good gags. I dunno, felt while that one revolves around some contrivances, CPS does highlight some indications of neglect and abuse that aren't solely a result of a string of bad luck. (though they really should check the school out more) Most TV nowadays is basically the same as radio- background noise for people who don't care to pay attention and are usually spending most of the time on their phones.
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May 19, 2020 07:31
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PinheadSlim posted:Season 7 is usually when good shows start to show faults. All the way from MASH, to The Simpsons, to The Office it seems to be a normal thing. The thing always amazes me about American TV (especially compared to British sitcoms which generally have six episode runs) is how long your seasons are. At 20 episodes a season, a show going into its seventh season will have had 120 episodes. No wonder they're running on fumes by that point.
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May 19, 2020 08:01
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Ned, have you thought about one of the other major religions? They’re all pretty much the same... That episode is loaded with great lines, it’s officially good 
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May 19, 2020 13:27
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Party Boat posted:The thing always amazes me about American TV (especially compared to British sitcoms which generally have six episode runs) is how long your seasons are. At 20 episodes a season, a show going into its seventh season will have had 120 episodes. No wonder they're running on fumes by that point. That isn't really a thing anymore for most shows
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May 19, 2020 13:41
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To Americans, the idea of a show only lasting for six episodes is like "wtf, why even bother  "I think our traditional perception is that a show should be an ongoing "thing" you do for literally a quarter of a year, you build a nightly routine around watching it at a certain time with your family. It's less about being a single self-contained creative work or story, and more about being a long-term habit for consumers to form and watch ads for 13 weeks
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May 19, 2020 13:45
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Things have been changing a lot with the rise of streaming and cable companies going from king poo poo to a collapsing empire. Pretty much the entire production pipeline for TV was built around filling timeslots with as much content as possible, but with cord cutters being a thing- with the cable companies mostly having themselves to blame for making their service as inconvenient as humanly possible- they're having to change things up in a hurry.
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May 19, 2020 13:56
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Lol just thought of a "new" episode I saw part of, (by new maybe 2006 or something) in which Marge sees Dr. Marvin Monroe and she says, "I haven't seen you in years!" "Oh, I was very sick" was his reply. It didn't seem like a joke though. Like, that is the legit reason the writers came up with.
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May 19, 2020 15:01
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He should have said "Oh, I was never popular"
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May 19, 2020 15:05
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eh, I don't think it's super fait to complain about "lazy writing" for the purposes of setting up jokes/comedic situations. Even the absolute best simpsons episodes treat the world as completely malleable and willing to operate on moon logic, and the characters as (primarily) joke-delivering mechanisms. The Simpsons do have some successful heartstring-pulling moments, but for the vast part I would say the writers care way more about telling jokes than anything else.
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May 19, 2020 15:06
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I watched the season finale because I was bored, there's also a dude who tries proposes to the therapist with his dead mother's ring that he exhumes from her grave. She chooses the dogs over a Tuscan honeymoon, he puts the ring bag in a bag labeled "Dead Women's Rings," and idgi two days later.
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May 19, 2020 15:24
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Mokelumne Trekka posted:Lol just thought of a "new" episode I saw part of, (by new maybe 2006 or something) in which Marge sees Dr. Marvin Monroe and she says, "I haven't seen you in years!" That's a deep cut joke. I'm pretty sure he appeared in the clouds with Bleeding Gums Murphy, and on a tombstone during a Treehouse or Horror at some point.
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May 19, 2020 15:27
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Iron Crowned posted:That's a deep cut joke. I'm pretty sure he appeared in the clouds with Bleeding Gums Murphy You're thinking of the 138th episode spectacular which had the aforementioned "never popular" joke. The joke with the clouds is that they were all James Earl Jones characters (Mufasa, Darth Vader, himself doing "this is CNN")
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May 19, 2020 15:31
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InsensitiveSeaBass posted:I watched the season finale because I was bored, there's also a dude who tries proposes to the therapist with his dead mother's ring that he exhumes from her grave. She chooses the dogs over a Tuscan honeymoon, he puts the ring bag in a bag labeled "Dead Women's Rings," and idgi two days later. That was a very odd subplot. I'm not sure why the dog therapist was getting calls and proposals from some random dude the whole episode. I thought maybe he was played by her husband or something who just wanted to be on the Simpsons and took the opportunity of his wife being on it to get on. But no, he's voiced by someone who's been on the show 6 times and is not married to Cate Blanchett.
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May 19, 2020 15:43
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Dr Monroe was semicanonically dead, then revealed to have just been very sick I found that line hilarious, too. unlike the other retcons, it doesn't matter at all
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May 19, 2020 15:43
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The real reason he stopped appearing beyond the early seasons is doing the voice was particularly hard on Harry Shearer, like some of the Julie Kavner voices
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May 19, 2020 16:37
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Then why is Marge still alive
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May 19, 2020 17:00
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Yeah, it's very weird how they're so reluctant to replace the aging and/or dead voice actors who can't play their characters anymore, but maybe Julie Kavner and the other top-billing VAs have the most insanely expensive contracts to buy out or Fox is just lazy as hell and doesn't care.
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May 19, 2020 17:25
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Cough Drop The Beat posted:Yeah, it's very weird how they're so reluctant to replace the aging and/or dead voice actors who can't play their characters anymore, but maybe Julie Kavner and the other top-billing VAs have the most insanely expensive contracts to buy out or Fox is just lazy as hell and doesn't care. They've had a lot of very public disputes with the actors, but Fox has managed to get their salaries down over the last few years. Past showrunners and writers have often said "Well, we figured we were on the last contract of the show so we thought we'd go crazy with it." I feel like management thinks about it that way too, and has been doing the last few contracts on the premise that they're canceling the show at the end. They have a significant financial incentive to cancel the show. Their syndication contracts with the Fox affiliates are really bad because as long as they make new episodes, the contracts from the early '90s, made before the show was a monster hit, still hold.
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May 19, 2020 17:52
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Hopefully Disney will put the show out of its misery. I'm quite sure they won't let it lie, but it's definitely a case where if it's going to be continued as a franchise, a reboot would be way better than the life support it's on now.
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May 19, 2020 18:26
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Can't wait for The Simpsons All Growed Up where Bart and Millhouse run a skate park together, Lisa is the deputy mayor, and Maggy does cosmetics demos on instantgram.
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May 19, 2020 18:31
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Hopefully Disney will put the show out of its misery. I'm quite sure they won't let it lie, but it's definitely a case where if it's going to be continued as a franchise, a reboot would be way better than the life support it's on now. A reboot would be better, but it'll never reach the heights of the classic years, so I'm not sure if it's worth doing. The Simpsons was an excellent sitcom and a subversive sendup of family sitcoms. Family sitcoms aren't the huge cultural force these days that they were when the show started. So if you rebooted it, you could maybe get a good sitcom going, like Bob's Burgers level of quality or something, but you couldn't be the cultural counterbalance to anything. Family sitcoms are on the outs, so their formulas and tropes aren't good satire fodder. Better to just kill it and let it fade away than throw modern trappings onto it.
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May 19, 2020 18:41
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The Moon Monster posted:Can't wait for The Simpsons All Growed Up where Bart and Millhouse run a skate park together, Lisa is the deputy mayor, and Maggy does cosmetics demos on instantgram. It couldn't be any worse than it already is TBH
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May 19, 2020 19:07
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Mokelumne Trekka posted:Lol just thought of a "new" episode I saw part of, (by new maybe 2006 or something) in which Marge sees Dr. Marvin Monroe and she says, "I haven't seen you in years!" I remember that too and I also remember it being oddly shoehorned in. IIRC that IS the joke. Like, he's just in a scene and that exchange happens. I'm assuming that they needed to fill an extra couple of seconds or couldn't figure out how to end the scene and the writers had just been sitting on that joke.
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May 19, 2020 21:06
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pooch516 posted:I remember that too and I also remember it being oddly shoehorned in. IIRC that IS the joke. Like, he's just in a scene and that exchange happens. It's an episode I just saw, where Marge writes a steamy romance novel with Homer as a terrible husband and Ned as the hot romantic guy, while the B plot is Homer acting like a crazy homeless person to get money to buy a gift for Marge, but then keeps going with it because of the money he makes. But yeah it does seem to come out of nowhere. Watching season 10 on there are a few characters that are new from that point that do appear a lot more, like the "YESSS" Guy, Lisa Nagel (Female executive) and weirdly enough Disco Stu.
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May 20, 2020 02:07
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Pet peeve of mine but I can’t stand that the “eeyeeess guy” is considered to be a Simpsons character / invention
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May 20, 2020 02:13
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Data Graham posted:Pet peeve of mine but I can’t stand that the “eeyeeess guy” is considered to be a Simpsons character / invention I grew up thinking it was an original thing just because I had no idea who Frank Nelson was and Simpsons didn't really do direct character + actor parodies that often. You get stuff like Azaria's Bronson but it's either used sparingly as the actual actor or as a much broader voice blueprint like for the sarcastic guy. Characters like Fat Tony and Wolfcastle have obvious influences but they're distinctly original characters, they never feel like they're using the exact script of the characters that inspired them. It's a big difference between early Simpsons and Family Guy, which absolutely loves to take a character bit from something else and stick it virtually unchanged into their own scenes. Over the years it's basically become a fun part of the show since Family Guy has so many obvious, verbatim remakes of famous scenes that you basically have to accept them as parody and/or homage, but the vague or uncredited "references" always feel super hacky. I always think of that Jesus as a bad magician scene that was lifted wholesale from some old comedian's Tonight Show act and he sued over it. I generally don't know what makes writing "lazy" whenever people argue about it, but that sort of poo poo has gotta be up there.
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May 20, 2020 12:08
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I'm not going to say this was breaking point for me, but I remember a joke in an early 2000s Simpsons episode that goes something like this: It's a flashback episode in the 70s. Homer, Lenny and Carl are at a quarry or something. Lenny says, "Hey, have you heard about the Internet?" "Oh yeah, what's that?" Lenny points to his swim trunks, "It's an inner-netting that really feels comfortable!"
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May 20, 2020 20:56
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Ror posted:I always think of that Jesus as a bad magician scene that was lifted wholesale from some old comedian's Tonight Show act and he sued over it. I generally don't know what makes writing "lazy" whenever people argue about it, but that sort of poo poo has gotta be up there. I had no idea about that, I thought it was an original joke. I've always hated the obscure "references" in Family Guy that are really just a joke lifted from something so old that most viewers will have no idea it's a reference. When they actually try and put effort into a reference it can be pretty good though. Like the first episode they made after they were cancelled (North by North Quahog) was actually very funny and contained tons of solid references. The entire episode is a reference itself to the Aflred Hitchcock movie, from the cropduster attack scene to the fight on top of Mt Rushmore to the title of the episode itself. And when you think about it The Simpsons referenced the same cropduster attack scene when Marge was remembering her childhood. But it was very random and unless someone had seen the 1959 movie it was from then they might think it was an original joke.
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May 20, 2020 21:03
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PinheadSlim posted:And when you think about it The Simpsons referenced the same cropduster attack scene when Marge was remembering her childhood. But it was very random and unless someone had seen the 1959 movie it was from then they might think it was an original joke. They do make a joke about the randomness of it at least  Frinkiac ain't giving me the caption for some reason but the entire setup is just Marge's mom saying "This is what a cornfield looks like"
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May 20, 2020 21:07
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PinheadSlim posted:And when you think about it The Simpsons referenced the same cropduster attack scene when Marge was remembering her childhood. But it was very random and unless someone had seen the 1959 movie it was from then they might think it was an original joke. That movie was under 40 years old at that time so there were plenty of people who were a lot more familiar with it than we are now at 60 years out.
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May 20, 2020 21:07
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https://twitter.com/aljean/status/1263144036421890048?s=21
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May 20, 2020 22:41
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technically the bottom part that was cropped out of the 16:9 episodes was the lowest point of the simpsons...
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May 20, 2020 23:02
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Who gives a poo poo about missing out on one joke a season due to the cropping, where the gently caress are the commentary tracks? e: What jokes were butchered by that anyways? I can literally only think of the one with the three types of duff coming from the same tube. I'm sure there must be more but I can't remember any.
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May 20, 2020 23:08
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One joke I just saw ruined was in Trouble with Trillions where Homer puts the knocked out FBI agent's hand on another agent's butt. Half of it is cropped out and the person I watched it with asked me what Homer did. Honestly that's all I remember from burning thru seasons 2-9 on Disney+ and I'm dumb and didn't notice the cropping until then
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May 21, 2020 00:18
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