When did The Simpsons jump the shark?

[FredNurke]

Heartbeat got to about nineteen sixty-twenty-two in the end, didn't it?

[ajsmith2]

I don't regularly watch The Simpsons, so my opinion is unfair (though neither does anybody else I know, and they're all righteously het up by Apu's departure), but it seems to me that the show actually can't be good any more. That it simply doesn't make sense. It's been said before, more cogently and by actual viewers and dissectors of the show, but it appears to me that everything about The Simpsons only works in the late '80s and '90s.

The family unit. Their roles. Their jobs. Their backstories. Their clothes. The politics of the town. The hangout locations and friendship dynamics. The pop culture they consume. Even the furniture and decoration. It's inextricably of its era. Leaping from the time-specific Simpsons to the distant scifi world of Futurama was the best thing to do - but for The Simpsons to continue in its stagnant form seems senseless. They should have kept up and developed the setting as time passed, or concluded it with dignity. A successful satire of its time. Springfield isn't a blank, timeless template onto which any old comedy story can be pasted. Homer with an iPhone is Poochie.

It's like Heartbeat continuing to be set in the '60s, but with characters awkwardly handling modern technology and making stilted references to YouTube.

Yup. Great post. This is it really. It is the show's curse to be animated, not it's blessing. I often compare it to Seinfeld in this respect, which it started at nearly exactly the same time as and that it's first 9 seasons ran in parallel with. And strangely enough would you believe, Seinfeld ended at the exact point that it's generally agreed that The Simpsons started to curdle. The Simpsons is just as of it's time as Seinfeld was. Imagine if The Simpsons had stopped in 1998 and Seinfeld was still going today. How weird wrong and bizarrely out of time that imaginary Seinfeld series would be is how weird wrong and bizarrely out of time The Simpsons is today.  The Simpsons today is like if a sitcom that started in 1959 was still on the air when The Simpsons began. Imagine how The Simpsons of the early years would have mocked such an absurd anachronism.

[Clownbaby]

Couldn't have said it better maself Thomas

[Thomas]

Thanks, guys. As I say, I'm not a regular viewer, but even I can see this from afar.

Any new series of The Simpsons should feel like Twin Peaks: The Return. Nostalgia should be softly examined and then gutted alive. Characters should age and lose things; especially themselves, in time. The old, complacent, irrelevant world should disintegrate, and the various canonical backstories should overlap and phase between realities. It should go absolutely insane for one final blowout run. It's the only way to kill it now. I'd watch that.

[Utter Shit]

I watched a Halloween episode last night on Channel 4 - I'd forgotten how great the Treehouse of Horrors were.

[darby o chill]

Great opening sequence from S26 ep14.

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

[Blumf]

Great opening sequence from S26 ep14.

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

Very deliberately had the proper Marge head turn in the supermarket. Good.

Anyway, here's the real Simpsons pixels
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BFYzVNgRRQ

[rue the polywhirl]

I don't regularly watch The Simpsons, so my opinion is unfair (though neither does anybody else I know, and they're all righteously het up by Apu's departure), but it seems to me that the show actually can't be good any more. That it simply doesn't make sense. It's been said before, more cogently and by actual viewers and dissectors of the show, but it appears to me that everything about The Simpsons only works in the late '80s and '90s.

The family unit. Their roles. Their jobs. Their backstories. Their clothes. The politics of the town. The hangout locations and friendship dynamics. The pop culture they consume. Even the furniture and decoration. It's inextricably of its era. Leaping from the time-specific Simpsons to the distant scifi world of Futurama was the best thing to do - but for The Simpsons to continue in its stagnant form seems senseless. They should have kept up and developed the setting as time passed (there'd be plenty to examine in ageing baby boomers, and their children growing up), or concluded it with dignity. A successful satire of its time. Springfield isn't a blank, timeless template onto which any old comedy story can be pasted. Homer with an iPhone is Poochie.

It's like Heartbeat continuing to be set in the '60s, but with characters awkwardly handling modern technology and making stilted references to YouTube.

Simpsons worked in the 00s. The episodes that were being screened for the first time in the UK were just about passable and during the launch of the Simpsons Movie it still felt relevant and not too out of touch. It's just the last 10 years where societal and technological trends have made nearly all recentish comedy looking awfully dated plus the fact that Simpsons writers are real obsequious, unfunny and sycophantic when it comes to referencing or trying to follow any modern stuff.

[darby o chill]

Very deliberately had the proper Marge head turn in the supermarket. Good.

Yeah nice touch.

This opening is fantastic.
From S26 Episode 1 which has the line "Krusty is responsible for Itchy and Scratchy... It's also what he calls his testicles" :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m78gYyTrG7Y

The episode's couch gag was the work of Academy Award-nominated surrealist animator Don Hertzfeldt, who was recommended to the show by Mike B. Anderson. It depicts Homer using a time-traveling remote control to regress to his original 1987 character model, then accidentally going into a distant future incarnation of the show called The Sampsans where he and his family have evolved into grotesque, mindless, catchphrase-spouting mutants. Jean deemed it "crazier than we thought" and "the most insane one we've ever done.

[yesitsme]

It's target used to be authority.  Pompous, bloated, encroaching, pervading and cromulent in every way.  Now what is it?  It's the family themselves.  Homer's this, Bart's that, Lisa's learning X and Maggie's some sort of wunderkind.

I don't recall any of the recent one's I've seen having a go at celebrity - they love it now.  Can't get enough of yer Lady Gagers of this world.

I saw Das Bus last night.  It's not a great episode, Homer's internet business B-story is pretty weak but it's still got some really great gags.  Otto listening to the tape of kids bus songs, ...Mauuuuuddddeee heeeyyyy?, the two goons being like adult members of the Super Friends, loads and loads of gags.  Funny even in a not great story.

Now it still packs in the jokes.  They're just not funny.

[Glebe]

Those two couch gags posted above are fantastic, never saw the computer game one before.

Oh yeah, and agree with everyone about Thomas' post, good points, sir.

[VelourSpirit]

I can tell within a few seconds if a Simpsons episode is from season 8 or later just from hearing their voices. Something about their delivery changed, probably the direction. It's like the voice actors are constantly being told 'make it more obviously a joke' and 'sound more self satisfied with your witticism'.

[Replies From View]

And "Sound like you are a minimum of 80 years old."

[New Jack]

It's target used to be authority.  Pompous, bloated, encroaching, pervading and cromulent in every way.  Now what is it?  It's the family themselves.  Homer's this, Bart's that, Lisa's learning X and Maggie's some sort of wunderkind.

I get like a sixties counterculture vibe from classic Simpsons. The voice acting is straight, but the jokes are at the expense of everything: the police chief is corrupt, the scientist is incompetent, the mayor takes bribes, the billionaire is evil. Just gloriously takes potshots at everything, take THAT world!!

And now, yeah, it's shite. Honestly, if this series ran backwards it would make total sense. You watch an episode from now and it's stilted and awkward and the humour is aimed internally. But if you ended up watching the earlier series later for the first time, you'd think Ah! They've grown! They've figured out how to mock the world around the family as well! They have peaked! They've learned!

[VelourSpirit]

Maybe I shouldn't have watched this out of context but what the FUCK https://youtu.be/7PtrVbA99_A?t=149

[Glebe]

Maybe I shouldn't have watched this out of context but what the FUCK https://youtu.be/7PtrVbA99_A?t=149

That is DARK, man.

[Thursday]

I can tell within a few seconds if a Simpsons episode is from season 8 or later just from hearing their voices. Something about their delivery changed, probably the direction. It's like the voice actors are constantly being told 'make it more obviously a joke' and 'sound more self satisfied with your witticism'.

Nah you're wrong you complete idiot, you don't know want you're talking about... that's not until season 9.

[New Jack]

Maybe I shouldn't have watched this out of context but what the FUCK https://youtu.be/7PtrVbA99_A?t=149

Maybe I'm a triggered soyboy Liberal cuck snowflake who should get back in my safe space to dip an avocado in quinoa, but that was horrible

[Bhazor]

Just saw the recent Survivor based episode. Jesus wept. Horrendous shit. Uncaring shit. Doing it for the paycheck shit.

[Replies From View]

Maybe I'm a triggered soyboy Liberal cuck snowflake who should get back in my safe space to dip an avocado in quinoa, but that was horrible

Was it referencing something?  It had the vibe of something we were meant to find funny because of the way it "quoted" Brian Griffiths strangling a crocodile or similar.

It can't have just been HAHA BART KILLS OSTRICH anyway.

[garbed_attic]

Maybe I'm a triggered soyboy Liberal cuck snowflake who should get back in my safe space to dip an avocado in quinoa, but that was horrible

just remember what a CUCK barts used to be when he  cried over killing that baby burd

[New Jack]

just remember what a CUCK barts used to be when he  cried over killing that baby burd

What a CLUCK!

Was it referencing something?  It had the vibe of something we were meant to find funny because of the way it "quoted" Brian Griffiths strangling a crocodile or similar.

It can't have just been HAHA BART KILLS OSTRICH anyway.

I googled it and apart from the godawful title (How Munched is that Birdie in the Window) I don't think it was!

It did seem to have a plot but it's fuckin awful. The AV Club gave it a B- back in 2010. Which I suppose was a more innocent time

[BritishHobo]

It's Simpsons Day on More4. I haven't watched old episodes in ages, and I'd forgotten about the stupid edits Channel 4 made. In Mr Plow, Homer is getting interviewed by a cop outside the house after totaling both cars when drunk. The cop asks him what kind of business Moe's is, and he thinks 'don't tell him you were at a bar'. Before he's even finished thinking the word bar it cuts to him on the side of a random road, inexplicably flagging a truck down.

Is it that bad to say porn on TV?

[ajsmith2]

Maybe I shouldn't have watched this out of context but what the FUCK https://youtu.be/7PtrVbA99_A?t=149

What a pile of complete fucking shite. And it's been going for 8 years since!

[momatt]

Maybe I shouldn't have watched this out of context but what the FUCK https://youtu.be/7PtrVbA99_A?t=149

Didn't even make me smile once.

[Ferris]

"As president, I would demand a science fiction library featuring an ABC of the overlords of the genre: Asimov! Bester! Clarke!"

"What about Ray Bradbury?"

"I'm aware of his work."

[kalowski]

"As president, I would demand a science fiction library featuring an ABC of the overlords of the genre: Asimov! Bester! Clarke!"

"What about Ray Bradbury?"

"I'm aware of his work."

A lovely moment.

[nero]

Don't know if any of you are familiar with the New Zealand gritty Maori drama 'Once Were Warriors' but this mash up made me weep with laughter. Homer the Muss...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=susU9lTMNKE

[petril]

"I'm aware of his work."

I can't read that line in anything other than the voice of Professor FJ Lewis, Emeritus Professor of History at All Souls College, Oxford

[gatchamandave]

Because he's your boyfriend...