Last Great Simpsons Episode

Mine would be the Tokyo ep, though the Stan Lee ep was a hoot too.

That's it! My brain thanks you for finding its missing grey cell

seriously, though, to say there hasn't been a great episode since season eight and, like, nineteen ninetey-seven is silly.

so i'd go for an episode from before then but not sure which...will get back to you

I can't rember when it came out, but in a different way, the spinoffs-triptych episode is eerily prophetic, another watershed moment--although very funny in the not-funny way today's not-funny episodes aren't, or at least aren't consistently.

"When the Big Easy calls, you gotta accept the charges!!!"

I would say that Simpsons lives on in Futurama, but that'd would be wrong on so many levels.

okay its gotta be 'Homer vs The People Of New York' or the one where they all join the Navy (utterly ridiculous but funny enough to make up for the feeling you get that the writers just stopped caring altogether)

the spin-offs one was good - but talk about jumping the shark!

Well the idea is it's kind of apocalyptically good and/or bad, annoying, etc ... as well as exactly the 'flip' on Homer and the whole golden-age gestalt mentioned above.

Missed the Homer clones ep.--I'll check it out. The crayon ep. is very good. By the Tokyo one you mean Mr. Sparkle?

RJG: Do you really think the show's been consistently good since '97? Or is your cutoff later? PS I'm still a big fan, just not like I was. Some of the antihumor that works is still great, even--I just feel like they never sustain it (or the plain old funny) for a whole episode anymore. And many shows are just duds altogether, anymore.

two sparks of gold in a bag of shite then, as they say....somewhere

Sure, but: was Marge ever even supposed to be esp. likeable? OK, maybe waaaaaaaay back, but they made her a mostly-wet blanket pretty fast ...

The Grimes episode (also season 8) was terrible because it was almost completely joke-free. It was the WORST EPISODE EVER at the point it was made. Worse stuff came later.

Homer -> Jerkass Homer
Marge -> Neurotic Housewife
Lisa -> PC Thug
Bart -> Bart, but he was always a boring character.

Oh, god yes. "Remember to recycle, kids... TO THE EXTREME!"

PS Anyone--what season is Homer & Krusty & "without a da loop, it is nothing." (Or for that matter, what season is Mr. Sparkle?)

Courtesy snpp.com

Now I'm thinking of the Troy McClure line, how does it go ... "actually that was a trick question. These characters were never popular ..."

Tell me (link me?) more ...

logic dictates this makes it better than any episode after then, given that most of them involve Homer finding a new line of work however temporarily

I'M TALKIN' DOWNTOWN.

I betcha a whole dollar the title is "Trilogy of Error."

Remember, my being Matt Groening's cousin means I'm right.

clam juice, hehe ...

For all the hate people throw at more recent seasons ...

I think some of the intros are still strong ... eg: can't recall how recent it was, but that horrendous Who episode starts out really well (if I'm remebering correctly: the bit with the badger, then the phone, then the badger getting dismissed, all the way through the town hall meeting or whatever, some of Homer's 'policies' ... but then it gets so so so so bad.

Hmmmm, idea for a new thread: success rate for/best-and-worst examples of guest-celebrities-as-themselves episodes ...

Oh yeah? C'mere a minute!

Britney was bad too.

Well, yeah, but since pretty much every episode of the Simpsons post season 9 has been almost completely unconcerned with, y'know, reality, it was just fun to watch them parody the boy bands.

I love the Homer the Clown episode. C'mon Krusty puts a hundred flowers on Bea Arthur's grave and bets AGAINST the Harlem Globetrotters! Plus lots of Fat Tony quotes.

"I don't get it...They love the rats but they won't drink the rats' milk?"

Small celebrity parts can be great if the writers remember to write jokes for them. My favorite was James Woods in Homer and Apu.

(from one of my top 5 eps 'Last Exit To Springfield')

"Lisa, if you throw the spellingbee, we will give you free admission to the 7-Sisters college of your choice."

later...

"Come to Barnard! Columbia's cute little sister!"

On a related note, the hate for the Grimes episode here is baffling. Do people have no love for the "Milhouse's parents split up" episode?

Or say the ep. where Flanders' house gets destroyed?

"It's gone ... gaw-diddly-awn ..."

(and the spanking!)

It is well known that Lisa is a ashkenazi marxist proto-dyke.

You people just can't handle Frank "Grimey" Grimes ...

(and hey, what's Andrew Farrell, chopped liver?)

Interesting that it ran back-to-back with the spinoffs ep., I'd forgotten. I gotta memory like a rusty bear trap ...

I really enjoy the Grimes episode in retrospect though I hated it at the time. It's very different from any other episode of the show.

Part of the trick for me is that it's one of the only times we see how something like an actual human--OK, granted, a really high-blood presure human, but still--might actually react to the "lovable" buffoon Homer'd become. Which is such a stupid, no-turning-back idea I was hooked, and then I thought the execution was perfect. I'm not sure I laughed much, if at all; but when the credits rolled I just sat there stunned and said to myself, wow, that was fucking hilarious-amazing.

(Yes, yes, he was lovable, but I didn't have to work with him.)

[calls therapist]

Am I alone in remembering pre-Grimey Homer as being an oblivious fuck-up who would do the worst thing in every situation? (see also: things that Americans laugh with and Europeans laugh at)

haha yeah most people i know (i'm in england) would say the Grimes episode is one of their favourites ever! don't you find amorality funny???!!!

anyone see the one where the son of Frank Grimes (gah) tries to kill Homer in a revenge attack? ill thought out and totally pointless i felt - i wonder how many watching actually wished Grimey Jr actually had succeeded

other things that have annoyed me recently (said in the Comic Book Store Owner's voice)...

Homer and Marge dancing in that 50s diner place (its just totally stupid rather than actually funny)

Homer and Tony Hawk's skateboarding contest (suddenly Homer can skate, they defy gravity and physics repeatedly, no-one seems to bat an eyelid)

Mr Burns finding love with that traffic warden (yeh right, and, EW they have sex and everything)

the one where Homer is the security enforcer and Fat Tony is about to shoot him but Maggie scares them all off with a gun...another case of rehashing an old incident very badly

everytime Homer gets hurt he howls like Scooby-Doo, its unbearable, i change the channel (Marge)

95% of the show's laughs now seem to come from 'amorality', and i'm not into that at all

as in everyone is really mean to each other or just incredibly stupid - and this is funny (which it sometimes can be but only if the characters are able to retain some degree of likeability...Homer was still likeable even when he was so mean to his brother Herb in that episode where Herb builds the baby translating device...ah, just thinking about Homer's vibrating sperm again calms me right down and makes me smile)

don't you remember that he has a special skateboard strapped to his feet that does tricks for him? and that it is a cartoon?

The Simpsons is a cartoon, or animated comedy that bases itself in our reality - same rules etc. Often in the past these rules were bent, often to extremes and sometimes broken altogether - like when the guy screams 'The PTA is disbanding' and jumps out the window but then Ned says the PTA isn't disbanding so the guy reverse-jumps back into his seat...I can't quite explain why this is okay but Homer's magic skateboard isn't okay, but I feel inside that there is a difference - I guess I just found the PTA thing really funny and the magic skateboard not funny.

whereas Homer needing to be able to compete with Tony Hawk was more integral to the plot of that episode, so it loses credibility for me because of that and the fact they're relying so much more on implausibility, even impossibility for most episodes these days (ten years ago it was rarer and often only applied to 'throwaway' situations as described above)

two examples do spring to mind tho - Homer in space and Homer in the Barbershop Quartet, but at least these concepts are possible if not plausible. i think both did mark a turning point for the show tho - the earliest 'jump the shark' nominations perhaps (at the end of the Barbershop Quartet one Homer just refuses to answer Bart & Lisa's questions as if he made the whole thing up, but then we see him meet the others on the roof for the Beatles pastiche, suggesting it really did happen) - this would bother me were it not for the fact that both episodes are so fucking classic.

Can someone do a quick synopsis of the fabled Grimes episode for those of us who haven't seen it?

Also, I have to idea which series is which after a while. Where does the trucker episode fit in? I liked that.

The surrealism and absurdity are honestly one of my favorite things about this program; it treads in waters most TV-shows (or even cartoons for that matter) don't even dare attempt with such vigor and heart that, even when it turns out not-that-funny, I still am compelled to at least admire their bravery and imagination. When it does work (such as Mr. Burns dropping Homer through a trap door and falling right back into Mr. Burns' office) it easily makes up for the far-reaching 'failures'.

And honestly, even in the most recent episodes, the key elements of what I always loved about this show are still there: the satire, the ha-ha-America-is-so-stupid-yet-isn't-that-why-we-love-it?-isms, and the somehow-still-this-side-of-hokey heart of actual family values (unconditional familial love most notably), and of course THE FUNNY. I honestly don't get this latter-seasons hate.

Nobody includes the first season in the "Golden Age", and its expected that a show like the Simpsons would take a while to figure out what its about. Season 2 had a few clunkers (Bart's dog gets and F, Bart vs. Thanksgiving) but everythign else was k-classic.

>Can someone do a quick synopsis of the fabled Grimes episode for those of us who haven't seen it?

Frank Grimes is a guy who struggled for everything he ever got. He gets hired at the plant, and meets Homer who is a lazy idiot and yet is relatively successful in life. Grimes starts to hate Homer. Homer ineptly tries to make Grimes like him, but this make Grimes more mad. Eventually Grimes goes crazy and accidentally kills himself.

the script is here:

http://www.snpp.com/episodes/4F19.html

If you will read it, you will see it not at all funny because there is no memorable dialogue, no good gags, nothing I expect from the Simpsons. Its just a boring, mean episode.

>Also, I have to idea which series is which after a while. Where does the trucker episode fit in? I liked that.

10? It doesn't matter, seasons 9+ are a crapfest.

Tony "Hey Blink 182, can you keep it down?"
Travis (or whoever) "We do have our own names you know"

or something like that

i still think the funniest sequence of the last few years was Homer shooting up with the pocket pheromones of the pocket fox
-> cut to Homer carrying Marge upstairs with tongue rolling out & babbling incoherently
-> cut to a shot of them all finished and relaxing in bed, when Marge wonders if they've been heard
-> cut to horrified shots of Bart, Lisa, and an awed Flanders.

"...Woooow."

I see that my ah, comments about heart have taken a lot of heat, so I am ad hoc flip flopping! I meant heart as an abstraction, i.e. the center. None of the sentimentalist jive that I love, no siree. Now, that it is heartless/decentered, it's become like Heart of Darkness. You know, with the haze and everything surrounding, meaning is not in the heart but in the yeah.

The 24 parody last night was hilarious.

I don't know if I'd call it a "great" episode, but I liked when Bart drew the cartoon "Angry Dad."

The thing that drives me nuts about the Simpsons now, more than the lack of "heart" or certain characters traits being dropped or exaggerated, is the way the episodes feel like they were written backwards. The 2nd or 3rd segment is where they get to the actual topic of the episode, but the first ten minutes are full of deliberate red herrings that have nothing to do with the rest of the episode. I could see this being fun for the writers or a kind of clever way to fit in multiple plot ideas, but they do it almost EVERY. EPISODE. now, and it makes them feel really disjointed and harder to give a shit about, beyond whether you still like or 'believe' the characters.

I agree, it used to have a neat little plot each week, almost a morality tale, but now it's just a string of loosely connected spoofs and pop culture riffs. Essentially, it's turning into Family Guy, only without the nihilistic stance that makes FG's approach somewhat valid.

i was actually surprised by how many times i laughed last night, during both episodes

Heavy reliance on parodies of popular tv shows and movies puts the Simpsons right on track to become the next Mad magazine.

The 2nd or 3rd segment is where they get to the actual topic of the episode

They've been doing this since forever! And the crazy non-sequitur setups to get to the actual plot are usually the best part.

I thought the 24 thing was funny even though I've never seen 24, but what got me the most was "this is our life now, Milhouse, we're dumpster folk" for some reason.

the fake suicide by hanging scene with Martin was pretty great

hm, in all honesty i thought that last night's 24 parody was pretty lame and pointless (ian maxtone-graham, you're capable of much better!)

Heavy reliance on parodies of popular tv shows and movies puts the Simpsons right on track to become the next Mad magazine.

-- Aimless, Monday, May 21, 2007 5:03 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

OTFM

Wonder if the movie will be any good...

I was rather amused to find out last weekend that Van Houten is a street name in North Portland.

uhm, almost all the characters names are taken from Portland streets.

That bit I know. I didn't know that Van Houten was one of them. Terwilliger, Lovejoy, Flanders, et al are pretty commonly traveled, but I never go that deep into North Portland/St. Johns, so I've been seen that one.

The Portland, Oregon Connection
Matt Groening (MG) grew up in Portland, Oregon. {where}

* Arnold:
o street in SW Portland. [corrupt politician Bob Arnold]
* Asa:
o Portland founder Asa Lovejoy. [Mrs. Glicks' deceased brother, Flying Hellfish Asa Phelps]
* Bancroft:
o street in SW Portland. [Burns' unrequited love Mimsy Bancroft]
* Banks:
o tiny suburb outside Portland. [Joe Banks]
* Barlow:
o Oregon trailblazer Samuel Barlow. [commentator Birch Barlow]
o Barlow road/trail/toll-booth.
o Sam Barlow High School in Gresham (near Portland).
o city in Oregon.
* NOTE: in an old Gunsmoke episode there's talk of a wagon train going to Springfield.
* Buddington:
o street in SW Portland. [Buddy "Fallout Boy" Hodges]
* Burns:
o city in Oregon. {ds} [Monty Burns]
o but FAR away from Portland. {av}
* Burnside:
o street in Portland that used to separate the good and bad sections of town. [Burns, Bumtown]
o most of the area north of there is industrial; only near the river are there bad parts north of there. The area is gentrifying rapidly, though. {av}
o street named after Civil War Union General Ambrose Burnside (but not from Oregon). Re-enacted by Homer from "Shari Bobbins".
* Cecelia:
o street in NE Portland. [Sideshow Cecil, genius student Cecile Shapiro]

* Clay:
o street in SE and SW Portland and is one of the major streets in the Downtown section. [Cletus]
* Dolph:
o street in SW Portland. [bully]
o junction on highway to Salem, OR. {mhj}
o Dolph, Joseph Norton (1835-1897). Oregon Senator, 1883-95.
o first name fellow classmate of MG.
* Duff:
o Duffy's Irish Tavern. {pn}
* Ellis:
o street in SE Portland. [bill collector Chuck Ellis]
* Eugene:
o street in NE Portland. [Homer's assistant turned supervisor Eugene Fiske]
o city close to Springfield, OR.
* Evelyn:
o street in SW Portland. [Marge's former high school acquaintance]
* Evergreen:
o street in SE Portland where MG grew up as a boy. [742 Evergreen Terrace] {lisa}
o MG's alma mater, The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. {da}
* Fiske:
o street in N Portland. [Eugene Fiske]
* Flanders:
o street in Portland. {ds}
o Northeast Flanders St. where the signs say "NE Flanders St." Some people have vandalized them to say "NED Flanders St." {av}
o Flanders Street Pub & Brewery on NW Flanders St.
* Grant:
o street in S Portland, also one of the main high schools. [babysitter Ashley Grant]
* Hodge:
o street in N Portland. [Buddy "Fallout Boy" Hodges]

* Holman:
o street in NE Portland. [Hans Moleman]
o Holman, Rufus Cecil (1877-1959). Oregon Senator, 1939-45. [Sideshow Cecil]
* Hurst:
o street in N Portland. [German SNPP owner Horst]
* Jasper:
o Jasper road near Springfield, Oregon.
o Jasper National Park (Albreta, Canada).
* Kearney:
o street in NW Portland. [bully] {mhj}
* Laramie:
o Fort Laramie, fort which many pioneers passed through on their way to Oregon. [Laramie Cigarettes]
* Lombard:
o street in NE Portland. [art teacher Professor Lombardo]
* Lovejoy:
o One of two founders of Portland, A.J. Lovejoy and the other is Francis Pettygrove. Each laid 16 blocks of the townsite. Each wanted to name it after his hometown in the East. So they flipped a coin to decide. Pettygrove was from Portland, Maine while Lovejoy was from Boston, Massachusetts. Guess who won? [Rev. Lovejoy]
o street in NW Portland.
o also a Portland park.
o Lovejoy St. passes near the Westside Portland neighborhood where MG lived. {av}
* Lucille:
o street in SW Portland. [babysitter bandit Lucille Botzcowski]
* Martins:
o street in SE Portland. [Martin Prince]
* Milton:
o street in NE Portland. [name Bart accidently calls Martin from "Bart On The Road"] {mhj}
* Monroe:
o city in Oregon. [Dr. Marvin Monroe]
o street in NE Portland (probably named after James Monroe). {av}
* Montgomery:
o street in SW Portland. [Monty Burns]
o Montgomery Park which is on the site of the former Montgomery Wards headquarters for the region. The sign was extremely prominent, and would have been visible all around the city at that time. Montgomery Street is a pretty minor street.
o Mary Anne Phelps Montgomery (1846-1942). [Asa Phelps, Mother Burns]
o she founded the Multnomah Chapter which started the The Oregon State Society Daughters of the American Revolution in Portland.
o daughter of governor John S. Phelps, of Springfield, Missouri.
o her friendship with Ulysses S. Grant is analogous to Burns' mother's affair with President Taft.
* Morgan:
o street in NE Portland. [Grampa said Shelbyville used to be called Morganville]
* Muntz:
o franchised television outlet in Portland during the 1960s. [Nelson Muntz]
* Powell:
o Powell Bld. is a major commercial street in SE Portland. [Homer's brother Herb]
o Powell's is also a huge bookstore in Portland as well. {av}
* Powers:
o street in NE Portland. [neighbors Ruth, Laura Powers]
* Quimby:
o Ramona Quimby is the beloved young heroine of Beverly Cleary's whimsical books about growing up in NE Portland. There's a statue of Ramona in a park in the Alberta Terrace section of Portland, where Cleary lived. [Mayor Quimby] {av}
o also a street, but in NW Portland. {av}
* Rainier:
o city in Oregon south of Portland. [McBain]
o location of Trojan Nuclear Power Plant (closed 1993) owned by Portland General Electric. [SNPP]
o also a mountain 30 miles North of Oregon in Washington.
* Rex:
o street in SE Portland. [prohibition cop Rex Banner]
* Seymour:
o street in SW Portland. [Seymour Skinner]
* Simpson:
o street in NE Portland. [well, d'uh!]
* Sherman:
o street in SE Portland. [catfish General Sherman]
* Skinner:
o pioneer Eugene Skinner founded Eugene, OR in 1853. There is also a mountain nearby named after him called "Skinner's Butte" (pronounced "beaut"). In "Bart's Comet", Bart put a sign on the Skinner balloon reading "HI! I'M BIG BUTT SKINNER". (Seymour Butts, geddit?) {cg} [Seymour Skinner, Eugene Fiske]
* Springfield:
o city in S Oregon. {where}{lisa}
* St. Helens:
o Washington volcano Mt. St. Helens (North of Portland). [Helen Lovejoy]
o road in Portland.
o city in Oregon.
o on a clear day Mt. St. Helens's can be seen from Portland. {mhj}
* Stanton:
o street in NE Portland. [fake name "Bert Stanton" Bart gave from "Bart vs. Australia"] {mhj}
* Swift:
o street in NE Portland. [genius student Sidney Swift]
* Taylor:
o street in SW Portland. [Lisa's new classmate Allison Taylor]
* Terry:
o street in NE Portland. [Sherry & Terry twins]
* Terwilliger:
o boulevard in SW Portland. [Sideshow Bob]
o L.L. Terwilliger, the first principal of a public school in Portland; the school was at 6th and SW Morrison, which is where Pioneer Courthouse Square is today. {av}
* Thompson:
o street in NE Portland. [Simpsons' new name from "Cape Feare" under witness protection program] {mhj}
* Troy:
o street in SW Portland. [Troy McClure]
* Van Houten:
o street in N Portland. [Milhouse]
* Wayland:
o street in N Portland. [W. Smithers]
* Wilson:
o street in NW Portland. [political candidate Wilson DeFarge, Groundskeeker Willie??!!]

Thread killer.

The 24 parody (episode 21, season 18) was one of their best in a while and certainly one of THE best show parodies. Better than the X-Files, Cribs, Sopranos, etc. On par with the Behind the Music parody from many many seasons ago. Also the animation was unbelievably good: lots of dynamic shadows, changes in focus, 3D "camera" movement, etc. And it's been that way for this season... too bad it's been mostly wasted by clunky writing.

The switch to sepiatone when Martin commits wedgicide was awesome.

On Oregon tip above, Matt Groening was always dropping refs to Beaverton, Ore., in Life in Hell. "Could it hold a Betaverton, Oregon full of comic books?" Beaverton is fucking funny: name of course+shit boring town+Nike headquarters.

The 24 parody (episode 21, season 18) was one of their best in a while and certainly one of THE best show parodies.

...to me it was just more of the same lazy, sub-SNL shit. HAY GUYS JACK BAUER! oh christ i hate the simpsons now.

I can't believe they're really going to make a movie. haha Homer eats donuts.

That's not all, I belive he sustains painful injuries as a result of his clumsiness and stupidity at various points.

# Twentieth Century Fox registered the internet domain SIMPSONSMOVIE.COM on 22 April 1997, nine years before the movie finally was green lighted.

# This movie is not just traditionally animated, as they used computer animation to make the backgrounds.

# The Simpson's movie will debut in Springfield. 20th Century Fox is holding a contest to select 1 of 16 possible Springfields (spanning from Oregon to Nebraska to Massachusetts) to decide which city will host the premiere.

# Cybersquatting

# Pixar is, like, sooooo scared right now.

# The fattest real world Springfield should win the marketing gimmick contest.

Matt Groening's cousin.

...to me it was just more of the same lazy, sub-SNL shit. HAY GUYS JACK BAUER! oh christ i hate the simpsons now.

yeah I feel this too - toothless mass media parodies of other mass media = snoozeville.

Ok ok ok it's pretty piss poor and has been for a minute. No arguments here. I just noticed a slight bump in quality.

I'm sorry but i still find it more entertaining than the lionshare of other television comedies, including 'edgy' shit like Tim & Eric Awesome Show and Human Giant. There's nothing funny about extreme kayaking or mortal kombat hackeysack... when will the pasty white tv comedians understand this??

the pop culture referentialism of it is something that's become ingrained in the culture and has just lost its novelty, but they keep at it anyway. Its become their stock-in-trade at this point, Pop Culture Reference + Springfield characters = a whole episode. I think when they first started doing it (Homer in 2001/The Right Stuff, for example...? There's probably a couple earlier ones, maybe Burns and his teddy bear cf. Citizen Kane?) it was comparatively rare to see a primetime sitcom-structured show run through a bunch of references to films or other TV shows - it was a kind of "naughty" thrill. But now its been run into the ground.

So should they have hung up the towel a long time ago or retooled into a Daily Show-style current events humour programme?

Saying that current <i>Simpsons</i> is funnier or more entertaining than whatever comedic detritus du jour is extremely faint praise, not to mention that by most absolute standards, watching the post-"Golden Age" is a tiresome burden.

xpost They should have retired the cashcow like, a decade ago.

pop references go all the way back to season 1 and lawrence of arabia duders...

family guy still uses a ton of refs and is still funny. there was a women's clothing store on it the other day called BRITCHES & HOSE.

Matt Groening's cousin.

-- Leee, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 21:40 (24 minutes ago) Link

well, they painted themselves into a corner. They couldn't do character-driven family-sitcom stories forever, so they switched over to this broader, cultural satire formula. Its not as funny, but it will allow the show to go on indefinitely, cuz they'll never run outta material and they never have to worry about continuity or actors aging or whatever.

Shoulda thrown in the towel around Season 10 I think.

x-post

Was "Blame it on Lisa" post season 10? That one could have been the season/series/network finale and I would have been happy.

I loved the bit in a recent episode where Lisa pointed out the contradiction between the laissez-faire programming on Fox Network and the hyper-conservative party line of Fox News. Then Homer got hit in the groin by an anvil or something.

family guy still uses a ton of refs and is still funny. there was a women's clothing store on it the other day called BRITCHES & HOSE.

Yeah, that's a real knee-slapper. Can't wait for the goddammed lolcat reference.

did you see brian sing the rick astly song

i only saw the 'Take On Me' pastiche today.

family guy is unwatchable

Yes, I saw the dog sing the eighties song. My ribs broke into pieces because it was A DOG singing A RICK ASTLEY SONG.

HAHAHAHA PP is painfully OTM. I've had this conversation w/my boyfriend way too many times re: Family Guy, Aqua Teen, etc. He told me, Not all comedies can be about a handsome man falling down." ;_;

i larfed

http://www.hulu.com/watch/19698/the-simpsons-mona-leaves-a

great couch gag

Woah whats this site!? I gotta check this out when I get home.

we call it "Beavertron" locally

Is there any way to get past the regulation on sites like that allows only Americans to view them?

move to america

I had a similar problem with a site with all the Prince music videos: it said that due to copyright reasons only people in the US are allowed to watch them. I don't even understand why that is so; if something is copyrighted in the US, does that mean the copyright is not valid anywhere else?

Use a tor proxy? I dunno.

I tried that one, but it didn't work either.

Can you watch those videos in Australia?

Nup.

I think Tor thing makes your connection totally anonymous, and sites like these only allow you to watch videos if they can detect you're connection is from the US. Is there some proxy site which would make it to look like you are in the US?

Tuomas it's that only Americans understand Prince, his music has not been tested on the people of other nations and we fear lawsuits

I like this level-headed defence of post-peak Simpsons, the gist being: just because it's no longer gamechanging genius doesn't mean it's worthless crap. (He's wrong about A Star Is Burns though) It's weird how a piece which calmly says "hey, it's still pretty funny some weeks" is framed as a maverick stance now.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/01/defend-your-show-the-simpsons/?cid=5238984

yeah an absurdity like "There hasn’t been anything as mind-blowingly wretched as that crossover with The Critic, either" leads me to believe this piece was ghosted by matt groening

also the revelation of a heretofore unmentioned stepmother is not the introduction of a "new twist and layer"

nothing in that piece really beats the defense "name a better show on sundays at 8"

i've watched a bunch of new episodes over the last few months and there's definitely some good moments in most of them. i actually thought the portlandia episode was pretty funny, though the 'heroin addict jazz singer' episode he cites as a high point was terrible.

it helps if you try not to think of it as being the same show that existed from 1990 to 1997 or whatever; the voices and pacing and timing and overall vibe are all so different now that they don't even seem to take place in the same universe as 'marge vs the monorail,' et al.

i think i mentioned this on ilx once before, but one thing that struck me a while back when watching the Bad Years of the simpsons was that mr burns is somehow still funny, even in otherwise shitty episodes. it's kinda poignant, like they fired and replaced all the other characters except for him.

"Homer’s previously unknown stepmother, jazz singer and recovering heroin addict Rita LaFleur..." was actually the last episode I watched, and while it was nice to see an ep that emphasized sentimentality over Family Guy-isms, it was never funny. As a fan since '89 I've tried to find something to like in recent years, but it's really hard.

the voices and pacing and timing and overall vibe are all so different now that they don't even seem to take place in the same universe as 'marge vs the monorail,' et al.

This is OTM. There's one moment in the peak years I keep thinking of when trying to pinpoint why it's been so meh for so long. In the Do What You Feel Festival episode or whatever it's called, when Mrs. Krabappel asks the class what the first message sent by Gugliermo Marconi was, Milhouse says "I want-a change-a my name-a!" Edna says, "Good one, Milhouse," and he lets out a chuckle that cracks me up every time (and the writers/producers; on the commentary, that moment causes them to lose it). I can't think of any similarly off-the-cuff goofy moment in that vein over the last 12 seasons or so.

I watched one episode that had a scene where Marge got upset and threw a pair of socks at someone's car (maybe Homer's, I don't remember), and then socks actually broke the rear window, I laughed pretty hard at that.

Otherwise totally agreed; what's upsetting is that they kind of *try* to recapture the old vibe sometimes with odd nonsequiturs and "hidden" jokes that feel really forced. Something like "my name is also Bort" seems so beyond this current crop.

the critic is also a culprit, but i blame futurama for the bulk of the simpsons brain drain.

I've been rewatching Futurama, up to midway through season 2 now, and they really did take all the best people. At its peak, Futurama was like a joke firehose, just a constant spray of hilarity.

yeah I'm a little shocked at how great Futurama was (and still is, sometimes). The Critic was also great though it's a lot of the references are really dated, but most of the best episodes are just as clever as the good Simpsons ones

yeah, 'the critic' is still classic. for some reason the cutaway parody gags on that show don't grate on me the way the ones on 'family guy' et al do.

I dunno how many real classic episodes the show had (outside of the "Penguins can't fly!" one) but there were so many great individual scenes on that show.

btw the "ghost Orson Welles" flashback was way better than anything Family Guy will ever do, theres your reason

Really anything Welles-related on The Critic was gold. Maurice Lamarche is a hero.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH1PJTY9AVA

"Futurama" is not only funnier than 2/3rd of "The Simpsons" - which is to say, what, post season 8? - but it's also more moving, too, when it wants to be. It's got more freedom to be ridiculous without being ridiculous.

what I like too about it is it gets away with playing a little fast n loose with credulity (esp with time paradoxes and heads in jars) but when they want to, they'll apply actual, verifiable math geekery to things as well. Like the forumla to dertmine how many ppl were needed to swap bodies so they could all get back to their own. Ken Keeler developed that himself!

I was watching the episode last night where Fry's head gets grafted onto Amy's body after the car accident, and when they're talking in the storeroom, on one of the shelves behind them are two large, identical books labeled P and NP. David X. Cohen loves his math jokes.

The Critic is classic.

i'm not that big on post-return 'futurama' but it was classic up till then.

year 252525 is super-classic

was that the time travel one where the universe looped back upon itself? because that was one of the most impressive episodes of any animated show I had ever seen; I didn't think it was any more or less funny than usual but the story was incredible

Yep. "The late Phillip J Fry". One of the best episodes they've done overall, and one of the only great ones out of the new seasons (certainly, the latest season has been a major disappointment for me).

oh yeah, forgot about that one. that's possibly my favorite episode -- but i'm a sucker for time travel stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOZTDP8Ff9w

that character resembled my real grandpa in so many ways, RIP dude :(

I've prolly said it before, but the Simpsons still has some amazing gags, but the timing of the jokes is so slow and measured and condescending and oldskool sitcommy now. Like the whole seasons 2-9 were built on this rapid fire interplay that live sitcoms could t do. But now we've come to expect it from Arrested Development and 40 Rock and Simpsons are now moving at Family Guy paces.soanylemts where they just wait. On. A. Punch line. Which would have never flown in 1994.

lol 40 rock

D-40 Rock

I laughed at "Happy Annibirthentines Day!".

that was the last time I laughed at the Simpsons

Your momma's on 40 rock.