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So I'm a huge loser and recently listened to a bunch of the DVD commentaries because it's sort of like fresh Simpsons content. You can hear it go out of them at Season 9. There's actually a core set at the top (Al Jean, Jim Brooks, Matt Groening) who have been there for nearly all the show's run, but in the early seasons they talk a lot about how vigilant they were about quality (animation aside), and at Season 9 that all stops and they start talking a lot more about how stuff in the shows breaks "rules" that they had in earlier seasons. I mean the epitome of the guys at the top not caring enough to fight for the quality of the show was them handing it over to Family Guy to make that abomination. No way would Groening or Brooks have allowed someone else to defile their characters like that in 1992. They make compelling points too that when Fox shortened the show by 2 minutes, it hurt a lot. The best jokes are often extraneous to the plot, but they're the first to get cut to make time because they don't advance the plot. They still make a few good episodes a year. You can usually count on the heavily promoted gimmick episodes to be good, like the recent hourlong Great Gatsby sendup or the Lego one.
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# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 15:04 |
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# ¿ May 6, 2024 03:42 |
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Cubone posted:Tik Tok is funny and weird and I'm glad it happened. the couch gags should have free reign to be stupid and not make sense There's been a marked improvement the last few years, although they still put out some enormous turds from time to time. But no one knows this because no one actually watches The Simpsons anymore.
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# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 21:17 |
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Son of Rodney posted:Anybody who thinks that the appreciation for seasons 1-10 is just nostalgia really should watch them in order from the beginning. I did this about 2 years ago and enjoyed it a lot but stopped around season 12 because it really, really did turn way worse. Someone said it before but it really is the heart that is gone. The simpsons had real problems that were often packaged in comparatively whacky scenarios, and usually the characters developed somewhat. Today it's more like everyone behaves like their own stereotype, and then apologizes at the end without any sincerety. Also the jokes. The jokes are gone. quote:Also didn't marge and homer get divorced in some new episode? What happened with that? There was a recent dream episode where they break up and Homer bangs Lena Dunham. Also they divorced in Season 8 when Milhouse's parents divorce and Homer gets needlessly paranoid about the state of his own marriage and heads off what he thinks is an impending divorce by Marge by doing it himself. And they have a pretty severe breakup in the movie, but not for very long.
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# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 00:31 |
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Drunken Baker posted:What was the episode where Groening demanded his name be taken off? It was because someone changed one of his jokes from an actual joke to a random non-sequiter. (I think) It was the Season 6 crossover with The Critic. Right in the middle of the golden era.
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# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 10:29 |
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PallasAthene posted:Did the Simpsons writers make up a conversation from Marge like they did with Barbara Bush, or was that a joke cover for an interview with Matt Groeining? I believe they did a fake interview with Marge. I know Matt Groening personally drew the other pictures in the issue, which you should not go googling for and when you invariably do, remember that Marge was based on his own mother.
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# ¿ Feb 8, 2017 05:16 |
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Scudworth posted:The guy who wrote that episode is responsible for some of the worst poo poo eps that occurred while I was still watching it, including the NYC one, the tomacco one, the garbage man one, and the one where Maude dies. And the Marge getting implants one. Haha, he's won 6 Emmys and he's now an executive producer. He's been so handsomely rewarded for making GBS threads up the Simpsons.
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# ¿ Feb 8, 2017 08:56 |
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luncheon meat posted:one of my least favourite Simpo writers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7dLlzUE2JY Now I wonder if this was based on Norm McDonald not putting up with that poo poo. PostNouveau fucked around with this message at 10:47 on Feb 8, 2017 |
# ¿ Feb 8, 2017 10:38 |
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TwoStepBoog posted:I don't see why Marge v. Monorail is constantly ranked as the best Simpsons episode. Sure, it's good, but I don't think it's the best. It's no "You Only Move Twice"
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# ¿ Feb 8, 2017 20:53 |
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CharlestonJew posted:remember the episode with Frank Grimes Jr. who had the exact same plotline and died the exact same way because gently caress creativity right They didn't have remotely the same plot. The Frank Grimes Jr. One was a mystery. Also the original had, like, funny jokes, whereas the Frank Grimes Jr one they forgot to put those in. Hopefully someone got fired for that blunder.
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# ¿ Feb 9, 2017 00:47 |
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Ein cooler Typ posted:Yeardley Smith only does Lisa and she gets the same amount as real voice actors like Dan Castellenetta who can do many chracters Hank Azaria doesn't even voice a family member.
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# ¿ Feb 9, 2017 21:17 |
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Son of Rodney posted:Simpsons really, really should have aged the people just a bit. New circumstances, new developments, new perspectives. It could have been something more than the flaming tire heap of springfield that it is now. The Lego episode.
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# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 02:47 |
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Sentient Data posted:...was a relatively boring cash-in on the lego movie, and it even followed the same moral lesson if I'm remembering right Nah it was good. Also good was "Barthood" and "Halloween of Horror" in Season 27. I liked the recent hourlong one "The Great Phatsby," but it leans heavily on rapper stereotypes and is saved by the guest voices making something out of those characters. Mostly the recent seasons are bland and forgettable. Every once in awhile they do a good one, every once in awhile they do an atrocity.
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# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 06:52 |
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Drink-Mix Man posted:If I were on the writing staff and were determined to put any effort into things, I would pitch an hourlong series finale which is basically a big "what if the show had aged in real time?" imagining where the characters would be now and what adventures they could have been on. "Holidays of Future Passed" from Season 23 was a bit of a look ahead type episode, and it was written as a series finale for if the cast negotiations went south. It was also a good late era episode.
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# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 08:00 |
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Maya Fey posted:Are there any episodes from the past ~10 years worth watching? Even the worst Futurama or South Park seasons have a couple The Lego one, "Barthood," "Halloween of Horror," "Holidays of Future Passed," "The Great Phatsby," and "There Will Be Buds" (somebody else recommended this one. I don't remember it at all. Apparently it's about lacrosse.)
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# ¿ Feb 11, 2017 10:27 |
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New episode update: It stinks!
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# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 10:53 |
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54 40 or gently caress posted:I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the last two seasons of futurama were so very bad that they ruined earlier funnier seasons. Horrible pacing. Horrible jokes. Total garbage Haha, Tracey Ullman hated giving part of her show to the Simpsons and claimed to be too busy to do a voice for them. I can understand where that came from, but it's real funny that that small bit of pettiness probably cost her ~$100 million.
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# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 21:38 |
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Every musical episode is cringe-inducingly bad. It's embarrassing to get caught watching them. Except the "Evita" one.
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# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 07:14 |
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There was a new episode tonight. It featured Patton Oswalt as a mental manifestation of Bart's guilt and a framing device of Lisa talking right to the audience. Chess superstar Magnus Carlson was a guest voice, and he loving sucked real bad. Rod and Todd (who had not been in the episode up to that point) solved Bart's problem by performing a literal miracle.
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# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 07:53 |
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death by computer posted:The exact point where I started questioning if bringing Futurama back was necessarily a good thing was the Susan Boyle Boil episode. And the moment I knew for a fact that it wasn't was the loving kid's show episode ("I MUST GET MY HANDS ON THOSE HEALTHY PURPLEBERRIES!"). Yeah those two sucked bad. I read somewhere the kid's show one was going to be the series finale like all the other seasons that ended on weird anthology episodes, but then someone saw how lovely it was turning out and put the kibosh on that. The real series finale was good, as was the one where they're firemen and the murder mystery one, just from the last season. It's a lot like the Simpsons though. You could endlessly harp on the atrocious ones or just ignore them and still get some enjoyment out of the nonatrocious ones.
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# ¿ Feb 26, 2017 07:19 |
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Blind Pineapple posted:Futurama suffered from too many restarts that kept shaking up the natural story arc, not so much a dearth of ideas. Poor Ken Keeler wrote FOUR series finales for Futurama.
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# ¿ Feb 27, 2017 07:55 |
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Son of Rodney posted:One thing this thread has taught me is that I'm propably the only person who enjoyed the Futurama movies. All of them. Repeatedly. I liked them alright. The second one was good even.
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# ¿ Mar 1, 2017 01:39 |
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The real finale was a pretty good episode, but a weird ending for the characters. The fourth movie's ending would have been an alright ending, but the one where Bender gets overclocked and uses math to see into the future was written as a potential series finale too, and that one would have been the worst. Devil's hands was the best of the finales for sure.
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# ¿ Mar 1, 2017 08:07 |
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sassassin posted:Frank Grimes Jr. is one of the better Sideshow Bob episodes. All the Sideshow Bob episodes are golden except the recent one where he uses science to get superpowers or something.
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 01:53 |
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I dunno what that other synopsis was, but the episode tonight picked up directly after Kamp Krusty, with the kids coming home to therapy for their trauma. Also, Homer becomes volcel. I think the people from Masters of Sex were the guest stars or maybe they were just making fun of them. Their voices aren't distinctive enough to tell. It was ... not good but not an atrocity.
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 10:46 |
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sassassin posted:There are a dozen of them including one where he has an Italian family and "vendetta!" makes up half the dialogue. The Italian family one was good. He has a good thing going and desperately begs the Simpsons not to blow it up and Lisa gets drunk and blows it up. What's not to like?
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 11:06 |
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Sun Wu Kampf posted:The only post season 7 episode I liked was the one where Homer disguises himself as a battlebot and fights a bunch of robots. Dude, "You Only Move Twice" was Season 8.
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# ¿ Mar 8, 2017 00:59 |
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Tonight's episode was about how every kid gets a trophy these days because everyone who writes this show is 60.
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# ¿ Mar 20, 2017 10:46 |
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sweetmercifulcrap posted:let me guess.. is there a joke about receiving a trophy for receiving a trophy? You're goddamn right there is. Lisa is the 60-year-old man's self-insert because she wants to EARN her trophies.
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# ¿ Mar 20, 2017 21:18 |
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Aesop Poprock posted:I thought the writers for the simpsons now were all like 20-to-30 somethings who grew up with the show and are incapable of writing anything outside of the box they conceptualize the characters as being I mean there's plenty of 20-30-somethings who buy into all that generational hate poo poo too. You know the dumb ones.
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# ¿ Mar 20, 2017 21:33 |
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The B plot of that episode was actually pretty good, so I'm not being entirely fair. Grandpa gives Bart a pocket watch that's been a family heirloom since it was stolen off a corpse in Gettysburg in 1982.
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# ¿ Mar 20, 2017 21:41 |
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cool new Polack jokes posted:Though tbh Matt Groening was not needed after he created the characters. Probably already mentioned itt but his original plan was to have Marge be a Life in Hell rabbit underneath her hair. The commentaries make it seem like Groening was pretty crucial quality control. I don't know if he wrote much, but they talk about his rules a lot in the early seasons and then in the later seasons when the quality starts dipping, there's a whole bunch of wacky gags where they're like "Matt shot this idea down a dozen times before relenting" or "This breaks one of Matt's early rules." I think he also made them go to a new animation studio in Season 3 that greatly improved the animation quality.
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# ¿ Mar 21, 2017 21:59 |
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Oh hey, tonight was another episode about how millennials suck. What a coincidence.
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# ¿ Apr 3, 2017 03:17 |
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Drink-Mix Man posted:I just tried watching the one about Bart dissecting frogs and I turned it off after five minutes. How the gently caress do you get a job writing for an enormously well-known, highly-rated, culturally significant show like The Simpsons and write humor so infuriatingly half-assed? I have to imagine there are tons of legit talented, funny comedians out there that would probably kill for a chance to be on the writing staff for a show like this and make it funny again. Certainly Fox can afford to pay actual talent for it. Why does everything play like some hungover screenwriting student whipped something up the night before a due date? I doubt that there are funny writers just clamoring to get a job on a show that's widely seen as having been poo poo for 18 years. And I doubt Fox can afford to pay for actual talent given the shitfit they throw everytime the actors contracts come up.
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# ¿ Apr 4, 2017 00:17 |
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Fried Watermelon posted:Every episode in season 3 is contained in his brain prison No see Rick died at some point in the past when he was in peril and all the episodes after that are the dreams of a dying man. Also Morty isn't real, he's a split personality of Rick. Birdperson was a ghost the whole time.
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# ¿ Apr 6, 2017 21:56 |
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get that OUT of my face posted:i'd rather not know the context or the joke they made about this The context is college students these days
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# ¿ Apr 19, 2017 10:12 |
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Astoundingly Ugly Baby posted:What would be a good final episode for the Simpsons, taking into consideration that it has apparently been poo poo for longer than it had been good? At this point, would a simple quiet mercy killing be enough or would an episode or two providing some sort of closure be preferred? The Christmas episode about 5 years ago "Holidays of Future Passed" was written a long time ago as series finale. I don't know why they randomly used it, but it was good and would have made a fine ending.
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# ¿ Apr 24, 2017 00:33 |
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Calaveron posted:S32E15 In a flashback to his teenage years, Barney uses his Mapple MyPhone to accidentally record Homer playing Seven Evenings at Moe's starting the Let's Stream Headfeed craze, meanwhile Marge launches her journalism career by writing short, punchy articles full of animated gifs for the new website Hummveed. Guest stars Felix McPewdiepie and Lena Dunham. Lena Dunham has already been a guest. IIRC, Homer fucks her.
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# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 08:31 |
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Wizard Master posted:What episode was this Looks like a photoshop from the episode where Skinner and Edna are hooking up and Bart reveals them making out in the closet.
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# ¿ May 1, 2017 03:51 |
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drat Marge just straight-up kicks a dog in the last episode.
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# ¿ May 22, 2017 11:09 |
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# ¿ May 6, 2024 03:42 |
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canyoneer posted:Yes. You don't even have to go to the studio to do it anymore.
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# ¿ May 25, 2017 17:33 |