Lol dude I get exhausted playing that game at the local free play.
― a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Monday, 4 December 2023 05:21 (nine months ago) link
Double Dragon is much, much shorter
― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), Monday, 4 December 2023 05:32 (nine months ago) link
touched by your fun dad and son arcade experience, frogbs
― flopson, Monday, 4 December 2023 06:07 (nine months ago) link
he has no idea how good he has it
― frogbs, Monday, 4 December 2023 14:40 (nine months ago) link
I wish they let smithers be this evil on the show
https://64.media.tumblr.com/06398f409df0b3f4fa349e3fc66e0a1f/tumblr_oruio8GgKu1qhvf1mo1_1280.jpg
― Left, Monday, 4 December 2023 15:07 (nine months ago) link
thats what makes the game interesting, it was released in 1991 while Season 2 was still airing, so it was mostly developed before the show started getting good. it's got that early Simpsons bootleg weirdness to it.
― frogbs, Monday, 4 December 2023 15:19 (nine months ago) link
When you didn't have cable and your exposure to this show was all the merchandise and the arcade game, you thought it was going to be Bart in blue t-shirts, Bartman this, Bartman that
None of us knew it was actually going to be about the PTA disbanding and such
― hiroyoshi tins in (Sgt. Biscuits), Monday, 4 December 2023 15:27 (nine months ago) link
tbf the show WAS very Bart-focused early on
― a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Monday, 4 December 2023 15:30 (nine months ago) link
people had a lot of cows back then
― Left, Monday, 4 December 2023 15:45 (nine months ago) link
thoughts on the postulated season 33+ "renaissance"? I've seen a few episodes and some of them were actually pretty good considering, you know. others not so much. at least it feels like some people on staff are actually trying for once. on the animation side it's a lot less bland than I remember it being for a couple of decades (the "new" opening is still a disgrace)
people have always blamed new writers for ruining the show but if anything it's the old harvard boys in charge (who haven't been hungry or funny since the 90s) who are holding the simpsons back from becoming something really cool (in a new way, not in a "neoclassical" sort of way). in theory I think they could take it somewhere very interesting (that's if julie kavner's throat holds up, and if disney doesn't keep slashing the budget)
― Left, Monday, 4 December 2023 15:47 (nine months ago) link
xpost My mother loved that Simpsons game because she was in a bowling league when I was like 9 or 10 and since dad was working she'd bring my bro and I to the alley and that video game kept us pretty much preoccupied for hours
― a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Monday, 4 December 2023 15:47 (nine months ago) link
I've seen a few newer episodes that made me chuckle but admittedly haven't given it much of a go yet.
once the show started to be ok with Family Guy-ish gags and 'reference' jokes, though, it wasn't for me.
― a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Monday, 4 December 2023 15:49 (nine months ago) link
idk the only reason I know johnny carson is a thing is because of classic simpsons and I'm not sure I ever needed to know
but in general I agree - actually it's shocking how family guy-esque the episodes from just before family guy started already feel. clearly it was the style at the time
― Left, Monday, 4 December 2023 15:54 (nine months ago) link
This happened last night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9ZU0fGoQ00
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 4 December 2023 16:30 (nine months ago) link
OK sure
love them but I hoped the pop song montage era of the show was behind us - at least the gen xers have taken over from the boomers now I guess
― Left, Monday, 4 December 2023 17:42 (nine months ago) link
hang on no I don't love them I mistook them for someone else that's embarrassing
― Left, Monday, 4 December 2023 17:50 (nine months ago) link
It was only when Maisie saw a TikTok video of Bart and Willie that she realized that he was still alive, so she reconnected with him. Willie then ran back to Scotland to get married to her. Bart is upset over this because he thought that he and Willie had a connection over their dislike of girls.
don't want to jump to conclusions but this sounds like a skipper to me
― Left, Monday, 4 December 2023 17:52 (nine months ago) link
We've been watching the early era Simpsons with our son. my wife actually hadn't really seen much of it either tbh. That first decade, the episodes are so sharply done, it's just mostly very effortless with the rare awkward moment coming from whenever they're inserting celebrity cameos. Some of those actually do work though a lot of them just feel like the episode is pausing to incorporate them. And then once it hits its family Guy era, it feels like entire episodes are pausing for strained gags gags (and more callous, nastier ones at that) which would have just been an easy layup and all the funnier for it in an earlier time.
― omar little, Monday, 4 December 2023 18:11 (nine months ago) link
Subtract 1 (one) "gags" from that post
I don't watch modern Simpsons much (maybe 1 episode a year) but my impression is that the joke writing is generally okay, but the show has gotten mean-spirited and cynical, and also it seems to be weirdly dismissive of its own audience. it feels like the writers are scared of coming up with something clever and having it go over someone's head. like here I think you have a classic Simpsons gag which they basically ruin by having the characters talk through it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B9EZXV3Gt4
(though I guess this episode is probably 20 years old by now, lmao)
― frogbs, Monday, 4 December 2023 18:17 (nine months ago) link
I dunno, I for one would have appreciated a couple more characters providing additional information on Otm Shank and perhaps saying his name another time or two. That would have been very, very funny.
― Great-Tasting Burger Perceptions (Old Lunch), Monday, 4 December 2023 18:22 (nine months ago) link
like the episode is pausing to incorporate them. And then once it hits its family Guy era, it feels like entire episodes are pausing for strained gags gags (and more callous, nastier ones at that) which would have just been an easy layup and all the funnier for it in an earlier time.
― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Monday, 4 December 2023 18:25 (nine months ago) link
a Simpsons obsessed fan told me back around 2000 that the episode where Homer refuses to give Grandpa his kidney and flees the hospital is where he jumped ship because it was a level of callousness that was far removed even by Homer's standards
― a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Monday, 4 December 2023 18:28 (nine months ago) link
they have hundreds of full episodes of johny carson tonight show on tubi and ive been watching it, lots of the topical humor is lost on me but it’s really funny and a lot weirder than i expected
― flopson, Monday, 4 December 2023 18:29 (nine months ago) link
this movie was so bad, i saw two entire rows walk out! and these people were all on a plane!
― a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Monday, 4 December 2023 18:30 (nine months ago) link
it bothered me when i started to notice how common it became to just set up a deadly thing in the scene and end the scene with homer doing it – drink poison, grab a live wire, pull the plug on somebody, etc. Obviously there was always surreal violent slapstick but at some point it became a reflex to just constantly have homer making the most violent & gruesome choices in any given scene, to the point of becoming untethered from what an actual joke is. That’s what they were supposed to be parodying with Itchy & Scratchy but it just took over the actual show.
― waste of compute (One Eye Open), Monday, 4 December 2023 18:43 (nine months ago) link
the thing that made Homer endearing in his ridiculousness in early Simpsons is that he had a humongous heart even if it wasn't immediately apparent at times, from the letter he wrote Marge when he left temporarily to get a job and save up enough to help raise Bart, and he had plenty of moments of being a bad parent/husband, but he was teachable. he always took the stupidest, clumsiest route to the destination but would eventually get there.
― a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Monday, 4 December 2023 18:54 (nine months ago) link
xp Flanderization (unsurprisingly the Simpsons is the trope namer & has its own subsection): https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Flanderization/TheSimpsons
By the ninth and tenth seasons, he started to become a Jerkass, and by the eleventh season he lost whatever impulse control he had left, Took a Level in Dumbass and became a dangerously imbecilic, aggressive alcoholic with no emotional control, bursting into tears and throwing a temper tantrum on a regular basis. Lampshaded in "The Simpsons' 138th Episode Spectacular":Troy McClure: Professor Lawrence Pierce of the University of Chicago writes, "I think Homer gets stupider every year." That's not a question, professor, but we'll let the viewers judge for themselves. (Cue montage of Homer being increasingly stupid)
― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Monday, 4 December 2023 18:56 (nine months ago) link
On our last rewatch I remember being surprised by there being bits in season 2 where Homer is a complete cunt who doesn't care about Maggie or forgets that she exists
It obviously got to more ridiculous/all-consuming levels by the time of Grimey (who had it coming)
― hiroyoshi tins in (Sgt. Biscuits), Monday, 4 December 2023 19:00 (nine months ago) link
homer's cruelty has been well documented but his transformation into loudmouth party dude in the late 90s is an underreported aspect of his downfall as a character. he's actually pretty cuddly these days but the damage has been done
IMG isn't the main villain of the simpsons decline but he's the biggest supporting villain imo - he's the one who said they don't need women writers because it's a guy's show. of course marge and lisa were treated even worse than usual at this time. he also wrote the episode where homer killed maude flanders because they couldn't be bothered to pay her voice actress (the main effect of which in universe - because she was such an undeveloped character - was to permanently destroy the comedy between homer and ned)
there isn't really a main villain afaict other than time and an unhealthy addiction to the status quo (giving us absurdities like millennial homer and marge) - and many of the other supporting villains are the heroes of early simpsons after they got rich and tired and complacent
― Left, Monday, 4 December 2023 19:01 (nine months ago) link
something I miss that got lost pretty early on is the level of class consciousness in the early seasons. I think the transformation of mr burns from villain to harmless old kook is symptomatic of this perspective getting lost as the writers got waaaay too comfortable with hollywood
― Left, Monday, 4 December 2023 19:06 (nine months ago) link
actually in reeeally early simpsons (the shorts) homer is a massive dick in a more realistic abusive way (groening working through his daddy issues) and I'm glad they grew out of that fast because it wasn't funny
― Left, Monday, 4 December 2023 19:11 (nine months ago) link
with any long running show I think the overall tone is something that you can't really mess with - even if you add a bunch of characters and change the overall style of humor I think whatever amount of heart and absurdity you have in first couple seasons is what you have to stick with. like with Seinfeld for example if they wanted to do an episode where it was revealed that all the characters really did deeply care about each other I don't think even the best writers on the planet could've pulled it off. and I think that's why the finale didn't really work, it's hard to buy the characters' cumulative misdeeds coming back to haunt them, because that's not how the show ever really worked in the past
― frogbs, Monday, 4 December 2023 19:11 (nine months ago) link
a Simpsons obsessed fan told me back around 2000 that the episode where Homer refuses to give Grandpa his kidney and flees the hospital is where he jumped ship because it was a level of callousness that was far removed even by Homer's standards― a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Monday, December 4, 2023 11:28 AM (forty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
― a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Monday, December 4, 2023 11:28 AM (forty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
the x-ray with grandpa's exploded kidneys struck me at the time as gross and mean in a way the show usually veered short of
― intheblanks, Monday, 4 December 2023 19:11 (nine months ago) link
though I admit the Simpsons writers were so good they actually *did* make this work with the Frank Grimes episode, which as I'm sure many people have speculated would've been perfect as a series finale
― frogbs, Monday, 4 December 2023 19:13 (nine months ago) link
that even made it onto their albums, like when Mr Burns says during "Look At All These Idiots" (from The Simpsons Sing the Blues) -
That man by the coolerDrinking water, as if it's free[SMITHERS]Oh. That's Homer Simpson, sirA drone from sector 7-G[BURNS]Yes, well, call this Simpson to my officeAnd stay to watch the funIf he's 6 feet when he entersHe'll be two feet when I'm done
[SMITHERS]Oh. That's Homer Simpson, sirA drone from sector 7-G
[BURNS]Yes, well, call this Simpson to my officeAnd stay to watch the funIf he's 6 feet when he entersHe'll be two feet when I'm done
― a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Monday, 4 December 2023 19:13 (nine months ago) link
only real banger on that album
they really put a lot of work early on into developing homer's insecurity as it relates to economics and his experience at work (the christmas episode is an outstanding example) - they lost much of this even while the show was still peaking - by the time grimey shows up everyone including burns now loves homer for some reason
king of the hill - which in some ways is more conservative than the simpsons - does a lot more interesting things with class and employer/employee relations after the simpsons kind of stopped taking it seriously
― Left, Monday, 4 December 2023 19:33 (nine months ago) link
Grimey episode was kind of an outlier though, I thought the point was everyone saw Homer as a loveable goof because that's how the people watching the show saw him, so the episode was saying "yeah but what if you really had to deal with a guy like this"
and yeah KotH was pretty good with that sort of thing, Hank's relationship with Mr. Strickland is a pretty nuanced thing and imo actually kinda foreshadows the way Republican voters view Donald Trump
― frogbs, Monday, 4 December 2023 20:03 (nine months ago) link
OTM, I've been re-watching the early years as well (in the midst of season 3) and I'd forgotten the degree that the family was economically struggling--lots of mentions of missing car payments or late payments. I don't think that material vanished completely, but certainly seemed to be less of plot focus as seasons went on.
I don't think I could get into a new episode because the show just looks wrong to me now--too slick, too HD.
― blatherskite, Tuesday, 5 December 2023 16:31 (nine months ago) link
The kidney episode also bothered me when it aired, I think it must have been one of the last new episodes I watched.
― JoeStork, Tuesday, 5 December 2023 16:37 (nine months ago) link
Actually never mind, I must have given up post-Maude’s death next season.
― JoeStork, Tuesday, 5 December 2023 16:40 (nine months ago) link
xp it probably made sense to phase that out as reality outpaced the show; the Grimes episode was that corrective. Can’t imagine a bit like this in anything in the last two decades:Marge Simpson: Homer, I have to go out to pick up something for dinner.Homer: Steak?Marge Simpson: Money's too tight for steak.Homer: Steak?Marge Simpson:(unsure)Yeah, sure. Steak.
― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Tuesday, 5 December 2023 16:41 (nine months ago) link
I've seen some decent newer episodes:
"Pixelated and Afraid" -- Great Marge/Homer episode in the "neoclassical" styleA Serious Flanders" (Parts 1 & 2)" -- out-of-continuity episode, I guess it's pastiche of Fargo but I've never seen Fargo"Lisa the Boy Scout" -- meta, gags-only episode where the show gets hacked by Anon types"Carl Carlson Rides Again" -- fun Carl story, I didn't think The Simpsons was capable of writing low-key, non-mean episodes like this anymore
Not exactly classic, I guess, but nothing embarrassing -- and the gags were consistently funnier and less cringey than any episode I can remember from the 2000s or 2010s
― Chuck_Tatum, Tuesday, 5 December 2023 17:00 (nine months ago) link
for me it was the episode where Bart adopts a baby bird. must've been Season 10 I think, idk if anything was particularly wrong with the episode, it just wasn't funny at all. in fact I remember being a little worried that maybe I'd "outgrown" the show (at the age of 12, lol) but the next week I watched some re-runs and nah, the old ones were still good.
at the time I remember people speculating that Phil Hartman's death caused the show to go downhill, which obviously doesn't really make sense, though I do think having the show's best guest voice actor die might've changed the vibes a little
going through the S10/S11 episodes on Wikipedia, I remember thinking some of them were pretty good, other ones I remember being annoyed at the guest voices. like I didn't really know who Mel Gibson was but his character didn't really feel like a Simpsons character. killing off Maude was I think where I jumped off, just felt way too gimmicky, especially since they teased the hell out of that episode like "some Simpsons character WILL DIE!" as though it was gonna be some big dramatic episode centered around some character, and instead it's just Maude randomly dying for basically no reason, and of course it's 100% Homer's fault, which felt pretty cruel even for this show
― frogbs, Tuesday, 5 December 2023 17:06 (nine months ago) link
― intheblanks, Monday, 4 December 2023 bookmarkflaglink
Totally stopped after season 9 or so and whenever I read about some of the later EPs I just literally can't believe it's the same show
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 5 December 2023 17:09 (nine months ago) link
oh yeah I've watched the Serious Flanders episode, if nothing else I applaud them for doing something new. I assume it makes a lot more sense if you've seen Fargo. wasn't really digging how violent and gross it got at the end, it started to feel like those particularly mean-spirited episodes of Family Guy or South Park where it just made you look at something digusting for a full minute. but the parking lot standoff scene actually *did* capture the brilliant absurdity of peak Simpsons in a way that actually did make me laugh so I guess they do, in very limited doses, still got it
― frogbs, Tuesday, 5 December 2023 17:16 (nine months ago) link
like there was another episode where a car is peeling out in front of Marge and she throws a pair of socks at it out of anger, which manages to hit the back window and shatter it, and MOST IMPORTANTLY there isn't a moment where she goes "I didn't think THAT would happen!", it just cuts to the next scene. I guess I gotta admit as bad as the show has gotten there's still always like one or two good jokes per episode
― frogbs, Tuesday, 5 December 2023 17:20 (nine months ago) link
still the stupidest gag of misdirection that makes my brother and I laugh is Itchy and Scratchy Land, where Homer is driving and falling asleep and then they show a car careen off the road and wreck and then it pans to Bart in the hotel going "whoa, glad that wasn't us"
― a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 5 December 2023 17:28 (nine months ago) link
a serious flanders wasn't bad but it felt a bit flat in the same way a full two episode arc of chief wiggum PI probably would - there were a lot of things I liked about it
the best thing I've seen from them in years was the halloween episode from a couple of years ago with the anime style death note parody - most of the credit should go to the studio that made it because they did an amazing job with the designs - the whole thing was probably the first halloween episode in decades where all the segments landed (assuming there aren't many hidden gems I've missed from the 20s seasons)
third segment really freaked me out on first viewing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNBAUpjT0VM
― Left, Tuesday, 5 December 2023 17:53 (nine months ago) link
as for misdirects that's literally every joke in season 5 it's quite incredible
― Left, Tuesday, 5 December 2023 17:56 (nine months ago) link