I've been watching Simpsons season 14 on DVD and I've been enjoying it, but it seems like a lot of episodes all have the same pattern. The Simpsons go to some sort of public event, where they will walk by a lot of sight gags and Homer will do something embarrassing. Eventually, something will happen to cause the event to end prematurely, but a character/item/set up from the event will lead to a foreign environment by the second act. Here there will be new characters / character interactions / sight gags and the protagonist of the story will try to fit in. However, in their haste to be accepted they will put this new situation in jeopardy. The third act will usually consist of the protagonist hitting bottom, but it will usually be resolved by previously unseen outside forces. The protagonist will be forgiven, but will never enter into or acknowledge that foreign environment in any future episodes.
So far on this season dvd there's been
"Moe Baby Blues" Flower show, Moe befriends Maggie, Moe gets rejected for being too pushy, Maggie gets kidnapped, Maggie gets rescued
"CE D'oh" Homer goes to an adult education class, replaces Burns, find plant too hard, Burns comes back
"Bart of War" Flanders' Beatles collection, joins boy scouts, becomes evil in attempts to win, sings "O Canada" and everyone is happy and never mentions it again
It's not quite a traditional three act structure because the characters involved in the actual conflict aren't introduced until after the first commercial break. Are there more episodes that fit this pattern? Am I just some pretentious douche on the internet making up patterns where there aren't any?
So far on this season dvd there's been
"Moe Baby Blues" Flower show, Moe befriends Maggie, Moe gets rejected for being too pushy, Maggie gets kidnapped, Maggie gets rescued
"CE D'oh" Homer goes to an adult education class, replaces Burns, find plant too hard, Burns comes back
"Bart of War" Flanders' Beatles collection, joins boy scouts, becomes evil in attempts to win, sings "O Canada" and everyone is happy and never mentions it again
It's not quite a traditional three act structure because the characters involved in the actual conflict aren't introduced until after the first commercial break. Are there more episodes that fit this pattern? Am I just some pretentious douche on the internet making up patterns where there aren't any?
