The Big Picture: The Simpsons Is Still Funny - Pt. 1

[Yvl9921]

Yeah, you've made this argument before with Akira, and it doesn't hold up in either case. The tenure of when I watched The Simpsons was from when I was about 13 to when I was about 16, and I didn't exactly "grow up" in that time period. I came in around Season 7 or 8, and watched the reruns obsessively along with the new episodes. But after a couple years I started to notice that it just wasnt funny anymore. I can still go back and watch older seasons and they're still funny, but I might get maybe one chuckle per episode after a certain point.

 

[umbraticus]

i hate it when people stop in the middle of their story . lol

 

[Lizardon]

Love the Simpsons, love this episode.

Still dosen't explain why "That 90's Show" is the biggest spit in the face for longtime viewers. I HATE that episode, same with "Kill the Gator and Run" and "Sattlesore Galactica".

I think we can all agree though, "Marge vs the Monorail" is one of, if not THE best episodes of the series.

I'm pretty sure the hatred for "That 90's Show" comes from how they retcon the story of how Marge and Homer got married and began their family.

And I agree with Bob's assessment of the series as having it's ups and downs but generally staying above average, with a few excellent episodes every season, along with a couple of duds.

 

[LordBojangles]

Heh, "promising, but primitively executed" = still from Transformers: the Movie. Very good, Bob.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Ha! It's so true (to me) about the show suck when I stop watching it when I went to University. Ok granted I did thought it started to suck a year before I went.
I'm getting the feeling that the part where it started to suck is when they got alot of money.

 

[JoJo]

I don't think the perceived decline in quality is down to what you said Bob, I watched the Simpsons from around 2002 to 2008 on UK television (first BBC2, then C4) meaning that I got a mixture of episodes from older and newer seasons... and the older ones, excluding a few of the oldest, were definitely superior. The newer episodes have turned the characters into in-jokes of themselves, the "Smithers is gay" jokes are the worst, it didn't used to be funny because he was into men, it was funny because he was such a lackey that he was solely into his own completely unattractive evil boss.

 

[NinjaDC]

Never really got the whole "Simpsons now are ****" thing"
Sure, they are not as good as their golden seasons do to shear age of being over 20 seasons old,
but they are still pretty good & I always make an effort to catch the holiday special eps (especially halloween)
There still great when compared to true *****, like the current Family Guy
Now there is a series that has turned to *****

 

[Jyggalag]

The show lasted too long to be funny for me anymore. That's it. There is no "last good one." The show's funniness fluctuated throughout it's life. The old shows weren't that great, then it started getting really good, then it became a little drawn out, then there were fresh ideas, and then eventually I was finished watching the series. I overheard that they're still making new episodes so I might tune in if I feel like it. (Most likely not.)

 

[shogunblade]

I still quite enjoy the Simpsons. I think the thing that Bob hasn't touched, but probably will in his next episode is that it doesn't work for some of the younger crowd because of how it's not so Edgy with its humor. That doesn't mean it isn't, but Family Guy kind of pandered to me when I was a kid and it was on Tv (I was about 11 or so when it first premiered), and for awhile, it was funny, but then I had slowly got used to the formula and find Family Guy to be rather disappointing with its idea of humor to the Simpsons, where when I watch that show with my family (My folks are almost in their 60s, and they loved the show enough that I could watch it at four or five), I don't have to feel embarrassed because one shows idea of funny is actual jokes then using the word "Vagina" as a punchline, which it isn't.

I think that is a factor into why Simpsons is considered on a downhill slope, because the writers aren't willing to degrade themselves into simple jokes and cheap backhanded slams when a nice twist of a certain word and you have a joke that may not work, but at least feels like a concerted effort.

 

[BrotherRool]

My sisters (12) prefer the new episodes the old ones. I guess this is evidence supporting you.

And I have to admit, looking over their shoulder, there were a lot of good episodes in what they were watching. I don't even feel I like it less, just the general excitement generated by entertainment in my life has reduced as I begin to realise it might not be the most fulfilling thing ever.

It's the same thing as why Final Fantasy X is always going to be my unbeatable mecca of gaming. You can never quite recapture the joy of first discovering a game where you kept saying 'just one more savepoint'

 

[Worgen]

I liked the first season but I didn't really really like till a bit later when they got the chars down a bit better, but then around 2000 or 2001 it just got to the point where I just couldn't watch it, I mean I could watch the old ones and did but the new ones just blegh, they just kind of sucked for me, oddly enough now they seem to be getting better again.

 

[rdaleric]

I do really like the Simpsons, however to me this is the problem, after all it was named after one of the characters

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization

 

[Nerdstar]

i still love the Simpson's! i remember watching them back in the day when i was younger. my next door neighbor was a big Simpson's fan so occasionally when we would hang out some times all we would do was watch the Simpson's and we had some laughs when we played the games on his awesome sega (was a Nintendo kid myself) i stopped watching it for awhile (I cant really remember what season i really stopped on) because i would usually miss it when it first came on so i had to catch the reruns on the WB channel (now CW here) but eventually it just got to where i had literally seen every episode and wasn't getting new ones. so i stopped watching for awhile so i could let them make new ones (sort of like going into stasis for a while) and then once i checked to see if they had new ones i immediately began watching again.

 

[walsfeo]

Is he gunna say it was The movie?

Or perhaps Futurama.

 

[Redd the Sock]

I can't pin the point the Simpson's lost it for me, but I can say why: over exposure. The show isn't reay any better or worse, but after a while the plots are reused, and the jokes are foreseeable. I still make a habit of watching every new episode, but even the Treehous of Horror didn't do it for me this year.

 

[SonicWaffle]

Never really got the whole "Simpsons now are ****" thing"

I heard it a lot as a teenager, from people with access to Sky and the latest episodes, which I did not have. Looking back now, those series (from about 10 to 18) are by far my favourites. Season 18 is currently airing (or re-airing, I dunno) on C4 here in the UK and it is hilarious.

Where I personally found it went downhill was post-movie. The animation changed and seemed slightly off to me, and even though the format was much the same I just didn't find myself laughing at it.

With that said, there is one maxim that will ever and always hold true; there is no such thing as an unfunny Moe episode. I love that seedy little freak.

 

[Icehearted]

The audience changed, obviously, but so did the formula. I think it was Groening that talked about how as his personal life changed, as well as that of the staff and writers, the formula changed from being about the comedic antics of Bart Simpson to the sill adventures of Homer Simpson. Watch early seasons and you will see exactly what he's talking about. There is a palpable but subtle transition from things being largely Bart-centric to lots of plots that made Homer essentially the star of the show.

As we grew up, so did the Simpsons, as Bob mentions in the perceptual sense, but in many ways the writing did this pretty literally as well. We all matured together, and I still love the show.

 

[Furioso]

I agree with this, at one point I stopped watching it and just kind of mindlessly attached to the "it's not good anymore" crowd, and then I started watching reruns on tv, found them to be very good, looked at the episode dates, and was surprised to find they were fairly recent

 

[JoshTheater]

Edit: Seriously, I don't usually write posts this long...sorry about that. The Simpsons was my greatest obsession as a kid/teenager, so I can be quite passionate about it, which the book I've written below makes pretty obvious.

-----

I am a 20-year-old hardcore Simpsons fanatic, so I suppose I should share my experiences and opinions here.

I began watching The Simpsons regularly during season 12, which made me around 10 years old. At the time I was in love with it. At first I didn't realize how much of The Simpsons there was, but FOX showed reruns every weeknight, and I made it a point to watch it every single night. By the time the DVD sets started being released (which I now own 1-13 of and have watched numerous times, including with the commentaries) I'd already seen almost the entire series simply through those reruns.

I loved the show for somewhat different reasons than you put forward. Bart was never one of my favorite characters, and although the fact that it was an adult cartoon that appealed to me at first and got me to start watching, it wasn't what made me want to watch it all the time. It was the brilliantly-written conversational humor and cheeky visual gags, the fact that for every hilarious joke there was also a touching moment, the fact that the show touched on issues that even live-action adult shows were afraid to talk about. Those were the things that always got me, even at a young age.

As I continued to watch, I didn't sense too much of a steady gradual decline. Since I first started watching the new episodes of season 12, I accepted that every once in a while one of the episodes wasn't quite as good as the rest, or that some were just downright bad. Since I didn't have any of the DVD sets at the time, I didn't know which of the reruns I watched were from what seasons, but there wasn't a single rerun I saw that I thought was bad.

To me that seems to disprove your "outgrowing" argument, at least for me. Since I was exposed to the older episodes and the new episodes at the same age, and held the same standards for both (I was too young to do otherwise), I can't see how my age or anything else skewed my opinion. Nobody else I knew was a big Simpsons fan, so there was never anybody who told me that the new episodes weren't as good. I just seemed to accept that the reruns were always excellent, and the new episodes were somewhat hit-or-miss, even if I still enjoyed the new episodes.

As I already said, I sensed no gradual decline in quality. I enjoyed the series all the way through season 15 about the same as I always had...in fact, I remember particularly enjoying the season 15 finale. But when season 16 started, something felt entirely different. It felt like an entirely different show. Every episode just seemed like total crap. I continued to watch regularly through the beginning of season 18, but there were only a few (and I literally mean a few) episodes that I thought were any good, and even those I didn't consider great. I thought that perhaps the show was sucking because they were putting all their efforts into the movie, and when I went to see the movie and enjoyed it, I thought that perhaps now the show would get back on track...but it didn't. I haven't watched the show regularly since then, and I likely never will again.

At the time I guess I assumed that I had outgrown the show, but in retrospect I can't see that as being the case. Once I started buying the DVD sets and watching through them, I still loved every single episode (although I feel personally as though it found its real stride around season 5, keeping a consistent peak quality through season 8), even the few ones I hadn't seen before. It was at this point, rewatching them, that I sensed the gradual decline that began for me after season 10, but I still enjoy everything through season 15. At the time I stopped enjoying the show, however, it wasn't gradual...it was literally that season 16 felt entirely different. Looking back at some of those episodes, I can see why. The voice actors approach to their characters seems to change completely. The show feels much more frantic, the pop culture references are far less subtle, the jokes feel way too forced, and the stories feel much less thought out.

I understand that it's entirely possible, hell even probable, that I'm rationalizing my opinion, and that indeed it was the ages I was when I watched that affected my opinion. But I still stand behind my view that from season 16 and onward, the show became not just not as good, but unwatchable.

I don't know how much of The Simpsons you've seen, MovieBob, but if you're basing your "The Simpsons are still good" argument on the basis that most people say that it sucked after season 10 and you still find season 14 enjoyable...perhaps you should be a little more patient and watch further to see what everyone means. There are 23 seasons now...that;s plenty of time after season 14 for the show to start sucking. Still, if you've actually seen every episode of the series and continue to watch the new episodes, and it's your opinion that it still maintains a certain level of quality, then I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I'm happy to hear your opinions on my favorite show of all time, and am looking forward to seeing part 2.

 

[RTR]

For some reason, I can't stand the first season. It's probably due to the fact that the show was still coming together and stuff like the animation and voice acting was still off compared to subsequent seasons, but to me the real Simpsons as I know them started coming together at Season 2.

Also, I can't say I've ever truly despised an episode of the show with the exception of That 90's Show, particularly because it took one of the most important aspects of the Simpsons' backstory (the struggle between Marge and Homer before they marry and Bart is born) and rewrites it for the worst, mostly so that the show can poke fun in a "meh" sort of way at the 90's. I'm sorry, but I just don't buy Homer inventing grunge music, or the way Marge treated him throughout the episode.
That said, it's worth it for this line from Homer: "He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life."