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iamsosmrt posted:You mean the scam part of the actual device? It worked in canon right? I only made the scam observation on a recent re-watch under the lens of a cynical adult. i mean a rich successful "white" dude storming back with a ton of people willing to back his latest snake oil is absolutely what happens basically *gestures*
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Jun 25, 2020 17:43
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I feel this episode from around ‘10 was a really common plot in shows focusing on people obsessed with Facebook/MySpace if they were late to the game The episode starts in a courtroom where Lisa is on trial. The Blue-Haired Lawyer is accusing her of bringing devastation upon Springfield because of her selfish desire to be accepted by others. Lisa starts telling everyone in the courtroom about her side of the story. A few months ago, she and her family went to the new mall in town. There, she encountered her schoolmates Sherri and Terri and asked them if she could spend some time with them at the mall. The two twins said no to Lisa, which made her realize that she has no real friends. Later, Lisa went on Homer's computer and discovered that it is easier to make friends online than in real life, and thus she started a social networking website called SpringFace to get friends. The site became instantly popular among all the citizens of Springfield and Lisa made over a thousand friends in a short period of time. However, Lisa soon noticed that these friends only talked to her on SpringFace and not in real life. She also discovered that the website grew too big to control, with people becoming so addicted to it that they even used it while driving their cars. This caused chaos in the town after numerous car crashes and deaths. In the present time, the court orders Lisa to shut down SpringFace, and Lisa agrees to do this. The people of Springfield throw away their smartphones and computers soon after the website is closed. When Lisa looks outside her window, she sees Sherri and Terri and a bunch of their friends playing Marco Polo, and they invite Lisa to join them. Patty and Selma are then seen competing in a rowing race against the Winklevoss twins at the London 2012 Olympics, with Patty and Selma winning. This is followed by a short entitled "A Simpsons 'Show's Too Short' Story", animated in the dark, grim style of American artist Edward Gorey.[1] It tells the story of how Bart was a troublemaker from the day he was born, and shows him and Milhouse wrapping Springfield Elementary School in toilet paper.
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Jun 25, 2020 19:54
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charity rereg posted:i mean a rich successful "white" dude storming back with a ton of people willing to back his latest snake oil is absolutely what happens basically *gestures* Heh, if anything this episode probably helped build the conditioning foundation for the acceptance of rich white guys at face value for a whole generation of kids. I do agree with your point, but I think it's salient to acknowledge that his ridiculous invention actually "works" in the show when it really has no business doing anything but playing random Danny DeVito phrases in response to any noise.
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Jun 25, 2020 20:07
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iamsosmrt posted:Herb's return to success was also pretty questionable. I mean I guess he used ingenuity, but you could also look at the baby translator invention as a huge scam to rip off new parents. If it’s any consolation one of the zombie Simpsons episodes made him broke again.
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Jun 25, 2020 20:13
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Holy poo poo, looking into Herb's return caused me to learn about Homer's half sister in England. It also pinpointed for me the first season I never watched, 15, though it was due to going to college moreso than being anti-Simpsons. What was the reaction to her at the time? I've literally never heard of her existence, even as a joke, until now.
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Jun 25, 2020 20:25
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iamsosmrt posted:Holy poo poo, looking into Herb's return caused me to learn about Homer's half sister in England. It also pinpointed for me the first season I never watched, 15, though it was due to going to college moreso than being anti-Simpsons. I think that it was a throwaway joke (maybe the end of the episode? I don't really remember) so I don't think anyone really cared, especially since it was one of the post season 10 episodes.
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Jun 25, 2020 20:34
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Yeah, the plot is Abe going to Britain to meet an old flame which gets distracted for general Britain adventures until the end scene, where Abe meets her and she shows him her daughter, who looks very much like a female Homer and Homer tells her she’s the most beautiful woman he’s met.
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Jun 25, 2020 20:36
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Going from Herb I to Herb II strengthened my conviction the Usenet nerds are right, but it might have been an off episode; I don't have an essay prepared
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Jun 26, 2020 09:32
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The whole joke of the first Herb episode is that Powell Motors is already floundering for the same reasons as pretty much every American car company in the 80s and 90s is- they're unable to make products people actually want, out of touch with their customers and refuse to do market research, and can't even communicate internally. Herb, the board and the engineers all treat each other with absolute contempt, which is clearly ruinous to the entire company. The whole episode's premise is that nobody in the company is actually able to sit down and have a conversation to figure out what someone wants and needs, and Herb's only idea is to treat Homer as an archetype of 'the common man' and give him absolute power over the project despite having no idea what he's doing. The Homer is just the straw that breaks the camel's back.iamsosmrt posted:I do agree with your point, but I think it's salient to acknowledge that his ridiculous invention actually "works" in the show when it really has no business doing anything but playing random Danny DeVito phrases in response to any noise. I mean people would probably buy that. I'd buy that. Where can I buy that
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Jun 26, 2020 10:28
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The whole joke of the first Herb episode is that Powell Motors is already floundering for the same reasons as pretty much every American car company in the 80s and 90s is- they're unable to make products people actually want, out of touch with their customers and refuse to do market research, and can't even communicate internally. Herb, the board and the engineers all treat each other with absolute contempt, which is clearly ruinous to the entire company. The whole episode's premise is that nobody in the company is actually able to sit down and have a conversation to figure out what someone wants and needs, and Herb's only idea is to treat Homer as an archetype of 'the common man' and give him absolute power over the project despite having no idea what he's doing. The Homer is just the straw that breaks the camel's back. I feel like that isn't really made clear in the show and the ending just feels like the writers are saying Homer did something wrong and deserves to feel bad for some reason.
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Jun 26, 2020 13:57
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I think it's made clear, it's just a secondary/supporting thread to the main story of Herb clinging to Homer as a lifeline and Homer letting him down (whether he could reasonably have done otherwise or not). And that primary story is what inevitably leaves you thinking "well that's a downer". Data Graham fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Jun 26, 2020 |
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Jun 26, 2020 14:02
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It's also hard to convey to people that episodes like that were made as a response to discussions in the culture at the time, and that if you didn't experience them, you missed out on a lot of what the show was trying to have a conversation with.
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Jun 26, 2020 16:29
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Plan Z posted:It's also hard to convey to people that episodes like that were made as a response to discussions in the culture at the time, and that if you didn't experience them, you missed out on a lot of what the show was trying to have a conversation with. Yeah, I guess I had watched that one as a kid and it's kind if stuck with me as one that generally bums me out everytime. I do like that "That car Homer built in that episode of The Simpsons" is kind of a cultural touchstone now.
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Jun 26, 2020 16:37
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(moving to its own post) The main "twist" being that Homer only wanted a family connection (and his family thought they'd hit the jackpot due to a strange windfall of fate), but it turned out Herb was the desperate and "poor" one in search of salvation. Homer saw the way his life might have gone in a parallel universe (cf. the reflection in the limo window), which looked awesome at first but ended up being an ugly quicksand trap of narcissistic behavior and a cautionary tale. It's a pretty intricate story really, and I feel like the followup didn't live up to it conceptually Data Graham fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Jun 26, 2020 |
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Jun 26, 2020 16:44
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Really a big part is that Herb might not be that different from Homer, just having failed upwards to a higher level. The Homer is probably a riff on the Edsel, though there's certainly no shortage of poorly-conceived cars as a result of desperate flailing to appeal to a market the manufacturer clearly doesn't understand and doesn't want to. Funny thing is a few of the suggestions, like larger cupholders and a built in video game (or at least a TV screen in the back seats) have become standard features in some modern cars.
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Jun 26, 2020 16:44
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I'm going to have to rewatch the Herb episodes now because of this thread.
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Jun 26, 2020 19:23
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While The Homer episode likely is referencing a specific failed car, I think that "company tries desperately to touch base with its customers and fails spectacularly" is a common enough occurrence that it holds up. Especially as an adult, having worked at many companies and seeing similar stunts going down.
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Jun 26, 2020 20:07
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CodfishCartographer posted:While The Homer episode likely is referencing a specific failed car, I think that "company tries desperately to touch base with its customers and fails spectacularly" is a common enough occurrence that it holds up. Especially as an adult, having worked at many companies and seeing similar stunts going down. It's likely the Edsel, which is commonly mistaken as a single car but it was a Ford marque that was directly competing with higher end Fords and lower end Mercurys. They were widely considered ugly, but to my brain they look like any old 50's car
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Jun 26, 2020 20:22
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I've been rewatching some of the best episodes of the simpsons, and there's some jokes that land like new simpsons jokes do. The bellhop in the Mindy episode was real unfunny, e.g.
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Jun 26, 2020 21:22
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My experience with classic Simpsons isn't that they were any where near perfect, but that there was a genuine organic effort to make funny TV. There's a lot of little touches and jokes throughout those episodes, aside from the earnest heart that's in most stories. I watched some Zombie episodes on Disney+ a few weeks back and once you flip back to classic episodes, the difference is night and day. The newer episodes have a soulless sterility.
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Jun 26, 2020 21:59
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The Edsel was sort of a mess all over. It had reliability issues possibly due to its strange manufacturing process, there was an economic recession that likely resulted in people not wanting to shell out for a premiere car model, drivers weren't able to confidently use its steering wheel-mounted transmission controls (there was a normal stick-shift version, though), the way its rear lights were designed made it look like the turn signals were pointing to the opposite of the intended direction. There were tons of other factors, including the car industry in general having troubles in the late '50s, but it's hard to name all of that stuff so people decided to just pick one thing to harp on and that was that the grille kinda looked like a vagina. Fun fact, Robert McNamara (yeah, that one) was called in by Ford to help clean up the mess that the Edsel made (The Simpsons actually pointed out some of the problems that led to The Edsel mess), and his tenure at Ford led right up to when he worked under Kennedy. While he vigorously streamlined a lot of defense procurement as Defense Secretary, he had a handful of projects like the M551 Sheridan that would turn out to be MIC-equivalent versions of The Edsel.
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Jun 27, 2020 00:02
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The episode where homer joins the naval reserve physically pains me, despite airing during the golden era of seasons 1-10
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Jun 27, 2020 00:29
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Really a big part is that Herb might not be that different from Homer, just having failed upwards to a higher level. I think Herb was supposed be the mythical self made man who ended up losing his way when he got to the top, not someone who failed upward. Wasn't it a plot point that he was raised in an orphanage and scrubbed toilets to pay for Harvard? I could be mixing him up with Rodney Dangerfield here... Of course the whole self made man myth is kind of ridiculous unless you're talking about the cave-person who discovered fire or something. rap music posted:The episode where homer joins the naval reserve physically pains me, despite airing during the golden era of seasons 1-10 The one Simpsons/Navy thing that really bugs me is where Bart has a boy band that sings yvan eht nioj to subliminally get people to join the Navy. That not what "join the navy" sounds like backwards, drat it! Also I feel like boy bands making up nonsense phrases is more of a 50s-70s thing than the 90s-00s boy bands Bart's band was parodying. The Moon Monster fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Jun 27, 2020 |
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Jun 27, 2020 02:22
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rap music posted:The episode where homer joins the naval reserve physically pains me, despite airing during the golden era of seasons 1-10
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Jun 27, 2020 02:38
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Iron Crowned posted:It's likely the Edsel, which is commonly mistaken as a single car but it was a Ford marque that was directly competing with higher end Fords and lower end Mercurys. The Edsel's differences probably stood out more at the time. It did have some features that would later become standard (like the Homer, coincidentally), like warning lights for malfunctions and child safety locks on the rear doors, but those apparently had a tendency to malfunction themselves due to the poor manufacturing management and added to the sticker shock. Apparently in hindsight and once the kinks were ironed out it's not actually a bad car, but it was absolutely the wrong car for the time, and definitely like the Homer in that the design clearly missed the point completely on everything that people were finding lacking with the company's current offerings. Actually, it might be meant as a specific reference given there's no indication the Homer is a bad car mechanically, and IIRC Homer drives it home at the end? The main problem is, like the Edsel, it's ugly and baffling in appearance, overpriced, has a lot of pointless features and doesn't at all solve the problem it was made to.
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Jun 27, 2020 05:25
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J-Spot posted:That was one of those weird episodes made by the staff of The Critic because Fox wanted to produce more episodes per season than the normal crew could handle. Those episodes always felt really off to me but I still like them better than almost anything from seasons 13 onward. They usually have some great gags at least and I like the x-files ep.
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Jun 27, 2020 05:41
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spaceblancmange posted:They usually have some great gags at least and I like the x-files ep.  What's not to love
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Jun 27, 2020 12:29
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J-Spot posted:That was one of those weird episodes made by the staff of The Critic because Fox wanted to produce more episodes per season than the normal crew could handle. Those episodes always felt really off to me but I still like them better than almost anything from seasons 13 onward. Ah, that explains that episode a bit. It felt like a movie parody after all.
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Jun 27, 2020 15:26
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The more I revisit the classic era, the more I notice things about it like that bellhop bit, where it feels like a modern era forced joke. Or episodes that have a really weak plot structure similar to modern episodes. I used to regard them all as perfect writing but it’s not as perfect as I used to view it when viewed under a modern lens. Still, the episodes are always funny so none of these things make the episodes bad. The way the classic era episodes vary from relatively grounded to very absurd to a mix is one of the many things that maintain its status of greatness. It’s been brought up before, but while something like Bob’s Burgers has been fine for its entire run, every episode hits the exact same beats and as a result, almost none of them are memorable or stand out.
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Jun 27, 2020 15:59
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SweetMercifulCrap! posted:It’s been brought up before, but while something like Bob’s Burgers has been fine for its entire run, every episode hits the exact same beats and as a result, almost none of them are memorable or stand out. Ah yes, the "Everybody Loves Raymond" formula
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Jun 27, 2020 16:06
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SweetMercifulCrap! posted:The more I revisit the classic era, the more I notice things about it like that bellhop bit, where it feels like a modern era forced joke. Or episodes that have a really weak plot structure similar to modern episodes. I used to regard them all as perfect writing but it’s not as perfect as I used to view it when viewed under a modern lens. Still, the episodes are always funny so none of these things make the episodes bad. Yeah pretty much the only episodes of Bob's Burgers I can recall quickly are the ones with Mr. Fishodor and his brother. Other than that, individual songs stand out. I wonder if Central Park is any good.
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Jun 27, 2020 18:07
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The soap-opera in the episode where Homer prevents a meltdown is very  today.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz0PSSreCuE&t=38s Edit: Fixed link. Just that it straight-up shows sexual-assault before cutting to the news broadcast. By Today I mean in the era where MeToo is now a thing. Inspector Gesicht fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jun 27, 2020 |
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Jun 27, 2020 18:41
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Inspector Gesicht posted:The soap-opera in the episode where Homer prevents a meltdown is very I'm out of touch, what happened today?
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Jun 27, 2020 18:57
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The Moon Monster posted:The one Simpsons/Navy thing that really bugs me is where Bart has a boy band that sings yvan eht nioj to subliminally get people to join the Navy. That not what "join the navy" sounds like backwards, drat it! Also I feel like boy bands making up nonsense phrases is more of a 50s-70s thing than the 90s-00s boy bands Bart's band was parodying. The bolded part was my problem with it, in addition to the fact that the reversed (forwarded?) "yvan eht nioj" melody wasn't right either. The only funny thing I remember about that episode was the Lieutenant L.T. Smash's name.
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Jun 27, 2020 19:35
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CodfishCartographer posted:I'm out of touch, what happened today? "Today" as in "in this day and age".
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Jun 27, 2020 19:46
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YeahTubaMike posted:The bolded part was my problem with it, in addition to the fact that the reversed (forwarded?) "yvan eht nioj" melody wasn't right either.
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Jun 27, 2020 19:56
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Yeah! And what about the scene where Itchy hits the same rib twice but produces two completely different sounds?? I don't know what you're talking about, so I'm guessing it was considerably less conspicuous than the central theme of an A-plot.
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Jun 27, 2020 23:55
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Yeah! And what about the scene where Itchy hits the same rib twice but produces two completely different sounds??
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Jun 28, 2020 00:13
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YeahTubaMike posted:I don't know what you're talking about, so I'm guessing it was considerably less conspicuous than the central theme of an A-plot. You're banned from this historical society! You, and your children, and your children's children! For three months.
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Jun 28, 2020 00:31
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J-Spot posted:That was one of those weird episodes made by the staff of The Critic because Fox wanted to produce more episodes per season than the normal crew could handle. Those episodes always felt really off to me but I still like them better than almost anything from seasons 13 onward. Huh I did not know this was a thing!
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Jun 28, 2020 01:00
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