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.

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.