|
Detective No. 27 posted:That's been my opinion. Attempting to fix him would basically be putting a bandage on a gaping infected gunshot wound. He's racist, yeah, but he's also really anachronistic in a way most of the other characters are that made more sense in a 90s context than today's. It suddenly struck me one time that the Simpsons was weirdly anachronistic from the very start - the situation of "Dad works a well-paid unionised blue-collar industrial job, Mum's a housewife and drives a station wagon, kids idolise a clown hosting a variety hour on TV" (and loads of other stuff) seems odd even for the early 90s. Someone - perhaps in this thread? - said that, in the early seasons at least, much of it is really a show made in the 90s by Gen-Xers reflecting their childhoods in the 70s.
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2019 16:08
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 18, 2024 01:35 |
|
|
My parents (let's face it, my mum made all those sorts of decisions...) were pretty liberal and never gave the tiniest bit of credence to any of the 90s moral panics and basically taught and trusted their kids to not go on stupid bits of the internet (although I ended up finding this place...) The one exception was that mum forbade my sister or I from watching The Simpsons. We couldn't even get it at home when it first arrived in the UK since we didn't have Sky, but we were under strict instructions not to watch it round friends' houses. I have no idea what she thought was so terrible about it (she steadfastly denies that she was ever such a pearl-clutcher now). We were allowed to watch stuff just as (if not more) subversive and 'gritty'. A few years later she had no problem with South Park - she thought it was infantile garbage but we were allowed to watch it. I can only assume she'd caught some drift of how middle America was up in arms about this awful cartoon that was corrupting the Western world's moral values and thought that it must be shockingly depraved rather than 'the kid's a proud underachiever, the Dad's a bit of a slob and there are satirical swipes at American institutions.' The ban was lifted when we went on a holiday to a resort in Turkey one summer. There was a lounge space where the older kids could watch TV in the evenings under loose supervision and there were some Simpsons VHSs there. Mum watched 10 minutes of one episode (pretty sure it was the Stonecutters one), said we could keep watching them and left. A few years later they were running the Simpsons on BBC2 at 6.30 in the evening just after Neighbours. Hardly the mark of a show that's going to corrupt the nation's youth. You Are A Elf posted:“unobtanium” But we're in a world where beloved techbros like Elon Musk put Spaceballs references into their cars and name them so the complete range spells out 'S3XY'. It's not so hard to believe that some lovely Silicon Valley corporation that found a new rare element would name it Unobtainium. At least not as hard as it was in 2009.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2021 20:21
|
|
|
Hyrax Attack! posted:I hadn’t seen it’s a wonderful life so when they have the Jimmy Stewart bank manager claiming the bank’s money was in Bill’s house & Fred’s house I thought he was trying to deflect the mob’s anger by making wild claims that Bill & Fred were to blame. Still works. I was genuinely surprised (and slightly disappointed) that the last line of the famous 19th century coming-of-age novel wasn't "...and then they realised they were no longer little girls, they were little women." Another classic example of how peak Simpsons could craft a reference joke that was funny even if you had no real idea what the reference was. Moe tearing up while reading classic literature to the homeless is a perfectly cromulent joke. That it's also a one sentence parody of Little Women is a bonus.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2023 23:27
|
|
|
Last Chance posted:Also I don't think you see anything like that angle with the mirror reflecting him and Marge. probably hard to pull off back then, but would be simple now, but nah.. dont need stuff like that anymore. I saw the episode with the Krusty Comeback Special recently, and for the first time noticed that during the intro when Krusty's singing Send In The Clowns, there are a couple of bits where they 'crossfade' shots like it's a live action multi-camera studio filming, with Krusty seen from different angles at the same time. And then I thought "wow, that must have been really tricky to pull off when it was all hand-drawn". That's a peak Simpsons episode, imo and that effort and skill that went into the animation, and for no real reason (it wasn't in the service of a gag, just a 'look') really speaks to why the show was so good then.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2023 21:23
|
|
|
I watched a season 2 episode at the weekend for the first time in ages - "Brush with Greatness". Is Ringo Starr the best celebrity cameo from the golden era? Certainly I think his delivery of "I hung it on me wall!" might be the best celebrity line reading.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 4, 2023 16:51
|
|
|
Can't really go wrong with that one. My mind always goes to "Last Exit To Springfield" as the definitive classic Simpsons episode. It hits all the key things that made the show so good without any extraordinary plots, celebrity cameos or characterisations. Just in case it's not clear what I mean - eps like "Bart Gets An F" or "Deep Space Homer" are in many ways better-written, funnier or more powerful but they're extra-ordinary episodes. Although "Bart Gets An F" would be a brilliant example of how S1 and S2 could flip between comedy/animated wackiness and heart-tugging/grounded family issues.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2023 13:43
|
|
|
When my sister and I used to watch the simpsons during the good years, we would cook up theories about why, in the opening titles, the family were in such a rush to get home to cram onto the couch to watch the TV. I had this notion that that would be a good ending for the series ("when they decide to end it, which must be soon - it's not like it'll keep going to series 20 or whatever" - BalloonFish, aged 11, 1998) to end with the intro sequence - in the last season up to the end Homer loses his position as safety inspector and goes back to the 'shopfloor' (so he's wrestling with the glowing carbon rod), Lisa starts biking too/from school etc. etc. And then there's some big TV moment or event or reveal that all the Simpsons have to be home to see. They all pile onto the sofa, but instead of the fanfare it just ends. Single-digit-season-number Simpsons could probably do something cool and funny with that idea. I wouldn't trust current Simpsons to.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2024 10:25
|
|
|
FulsomFrank posted:I'm not old enough to have seen the arguments about this when it came out but is this a proto-internet Simpsons slapfight? Like the nerds arguing about Kirk vs Picard? Wikipedia posted:Conversely, the episode was not initially well received by many fans of the show's earlier seasons, as it was a particularly absurd early example of the show taking a more joke-based cartoon approach to comedy, rather than the more realistic situational style of comedy it had employed in its first few years. In 1995, during the production of the seventh season, Yeardley Smith said of the episode as "truly one of our worst—we [the entire cast] all agree".[6] Is this complete oblivious to what made everyone like the show, or just looking back from golden heights of S7 and being able to say that Marge vs. the Monorail really was one of the worst at that stage? Have to wonder what Yeardley thinks of the 600 or so episodes since then!
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2024 14:55
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 18, 2024 01:35 |
|
|
You Are A Werewolf posted:This musical bit caused an uproar at the time and Bart had a follow-up chalkboard gag that said “I will not defame New Orleans” lol Marge's comically raspy and rough singing voice here sounds better than her normal voice now. The whole Streetcar! sequence is so good. The show lost the ability to do things that were both clear parodies but were also quality work in themselves ages ago. I also love how Springfield theatre uses an entire rotating two-sided set just so it can appear as the Superdome at the start. Like how the perennially cash-strapped Springfield Elementary had a giant animatronic Mount Rushmore to lower in for the Presidents Day show.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2024 18:20
|
|