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March 28, 2024, 09:27:41 AM

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When did The Simpsons jump the shark?

Started by ThisIsHardcore, June 23, 2013, 05:59:45 PM

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Replies From View

I think they've missed the chance to make the show good again.  Time has moved on too much.

St_Eddie


St_Eddie


St_Eddie

Sorry about that.  I'm not used to posting via my phone.

Avril Lavigne

Quote from: Replies From View on February 14, 2019, 12:49:24 PM
I think they've missed the chance to make the show good again.  Time has moved on too much.

In other words...


JamesTC

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on February 14, 2019, 09:05:21 AM
DVDs are a bit redyndant, no? Is there any demand for them after season 11/12 or so?

I own up to Season 17. Got the later few seasons quite cheap but I do plan on owning all of them they release. Just waiting for Season 18 to hit that adequate price point. Even when the episodes are lower in quality, they have the commentaries which are usually informative and entertaining.

I think by Season 17 it is still an okay show. I personally include Season 9 and 10 in the golden era and miss out the first season. The next few seasons are still good and then it dips again for Season 15-17. I swear it was around Season 18 when I stopped watching new episodes so maybe the downward trend continues even further. The odd episodes I've seen after that vary from being up to the standard of the Season 11-14 quality and just absolute shit (some episode about Lisa being addicted to second-hand smoking).

If you want a weird show for change in quality then look no further than the sister show of The Simpsons: Futurama. The films were lower quality Futurama but then when it came back for four 13 episode seasons it was absolutely bipolar. You varied from classics like The Late Philip J. Fry, The Prisoner of Benda and Overclockwise to crap like Yo Leela Leela, 40% Leadbelly and Attack of the Killer App.

Menu

Quote from: Blumf on February 14, 2019, 10:45:21 AM
That's easy:

Analogue-Marge head turn with a mixture of emotions and a flourish of movement.



Robo-Marge head turn routine activated!

But I can forgive the cheap and dull animation if the writings up to scratch. So far, whatever season Channel 4's up to hasn't gotten past the crud.

Call me when they get to this stage:


She looks a bit goofy in that first one though. I'm not being contrary but I genuinely prefer the second one. Or at least I don't really care.

Menu

Quote from: Replies From View on February 14, 2019, 12:49:24 PM
I think they've missed the chance to make the show good again.  Time has moved on too much.

Please try a new one before you put your foot down.

Menu

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on February 14, 2019, 11:00:34 AM
I agree with you about the latest episodes, there's still the occasional absolutely atrocious one but there have been some which are surprisingly sweet and funny, I especially liked the recent episode by Al Jean where Lisa gains respect for Homer after he speaks out about clothes which sexualise kids, and it had a strong b-plot with Bart visiting a school therapist.

Yes, that's better put than I managed. The newest ones aren't trying to be SHOCKING and OUTRAGEOUS like they were a few years ago. They are very similar in tone to late-period Golden Era. I think many people's opinion on here has been understandably scarred by how it was ten years ago. It's changed again and worth checking out.

ToneLa

Quote from: Menu on February 14, 2019, 07:23:15 PM
Yes, that's better put than I managed. The newest ones aren't trying to be SHOCKING and OUTRAGEOUS like they were a few years ago. They are very similar in tone to late-period Golden Era. I think many people's opinion on here has been understandably scarred by how it was ten years ago. It's changed again and worth checking out.

Tell THAT to the AV Club!!


Menu

Ouch! But isn't it true to say that the contemporary internet hated Golden Period Simpsons too. That's just the nature of being a fan of something. You hate everything the thing does.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: ToneLa on February 14, 2019, 09:33:17 PM
Tell THAT to the AV Club!!



On the flip side they do quite often like it.



The Simpsons for me is comfort tv these days, I hate the bad episodes with a passion but the good ones remind me of how much I adored the show in the early years.

Ant Farm Keyboard

There was a noticeable and gradual drop in quality when Mike Scully was the showrunner, from seasons 9 to 12. There were other issues, like the animation getting much more restrained due to memos asking for it (or Brad Bird departing), but the key thing was writing.

The show was facing a big issue, writers exhaustion and turnover, due to the anarchic spirit there. The writers would spend weekends refining scripts in the writers room or in another retreat, as they cared about the material. After a few months there, they would eventually get many offers from other shows, with a big raise involved and more reasonable hours.
Mike Scully managed to curb down the turnover by establishing rules. Scripts became something much more modular. Until his days, the B-plot was most of the time related to the main plot. During his tenure, you can see that the opening act is totally unrelated to the rest of the plot, apart from one tenuous detail, then the B-plot moves forward at a totally different pace using characters that are leftovers from the main story. This way, the writers wouldn't work overtime, as they could "isolate" the problems, and I think they could substitute parts between scripts if some elements needed a few adjustments.

This allowed the writers room to stay stable for years, but also resulted first in mediocrity then in cringe worthy episodes such as Saddlesore Galactica (season 11, the worst episode I had seen so far, with the leprechauns musical number) or Homer vs. Dignity from season 12 (Homer gets raped by pandas). It didn't go worse when Al Jean returned, but it didn't go better (he didn't change the methods established by Scully), and the show then resumed a slow slide into irrelevancy.

Phil_A

Does anyone else think Jean is planning on just riding the Simpsons gravy train all the way to retirement at this point? Will he ever stop? It seems like his niche is so firmly cemented that its difficult to imagine anyone else in the role at this point, like Jean and the Simpsons have become so symbiotically linked that it's now impossible to separate the two.

It seems the show is doomed to remain entirely stagnant under his watch, no point rocking the boat after all this time, eh? Unless something drastic happens like a main cast death, nothing on The Simpsons is going to change.

Menu

Quote from: Phil_A on February 14, 2019, 11:19:02 PM
Does anyone else think Jean is planning on just riding the Simpsons gravy train all the way to retirement at this point? Will he ever stop? It seems like his niche is so firmly cemented that its difficult to imagine anyone else in the role at this point, like Jean and the Simpsons have become so symbiotically linked that it's now impossible to separate the two.

It seems the show is doomed to remain entirely stagnant under his watch, no point rocking the boat after all this time, eh? Unless something drastic happens like a main cast death, nothing on The Simpsons is going to change.

Well my contention is that it's got substantially better in the last two or three years. Maybe Jean's staying to reestablish his reputation or something?

Thursday

When he came back in Season 13, the show improved in some ways, and the show did go through a shift in style. If he'd done a 4 year term like Scully, and then someone else took over, I feel like perhaps the show could have continued to improve or at least just continued to change interesting ways. As it is it just shuffled on with it's format established forever. Even within the post-classic framework it became stale.

imitationleather

It's not an original observation: But whenever I see a newer Simpsons (caveat: I don't think I've seen a "new" one since about 2010) and they have smartphones or flat-screen tellies or computers or whatever it is just wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. The Simpsons exists in an eternal early '90s world. That is where it belongs. If they had decided to do 300 seasons but kept it in that time bubble it might not be so bad. But put The Simpsons in the modern world and give Lisa a Snapchat or whatever shit they're probably doing now and it's like the fucking Doctor Who and Eastenders cross-over they did for Children in Need. Atrocious.

ToneLa

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on February 14, 2019, 10:00:54 PM
On the flip side they do quite often like it.



The Simpsons for me is comfort tv these days, I hate the bad episodes with a passion but the good ones remind me of how much I adored the show in the early years.

Aahh so they do. Odd to say something is unsatisfying then give it a good grade.

Grading new episodes of The Simpsons. A job for life but one you wouldn't want!

neveragain


Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: neveragain on February 15, 2019, 01:30:01 PM
Dunno what that means.

It's a reference to The Mary Whitehouse Experience, and is suggesting you're a lying cunt who deserves to die (or that he's not sure he believes you, at least). He's wrong though, I quite liked that episode too.

petril

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on February 15, 2019, 03:39:15 PM
It's a reference to The Mary Whitehouse Experience, and is suggesting you're a lying cunt who deserves to die (or that he's not sure he believes you, at least). He's wrong though, I quite liked that episode too.

well, general "growing up in Britain from the 70s until the early 90s or so". But that would include TMWE. And indeed, everything David Baddiel did since.

Replies From View

Correct.  TMWE didn't invent "chinny reckon".

bradaaron87

The panda rape was a low point, whenever that happened? Surprised they're still being churned out. Living off the glory years, no doubt — about '91 to '96.

marquis_de_sad


ToneLa

Quote from: bradaaron87 on February 16, 2019, 01:55:47 AM
The panda rape was a low point, whenever that happened?

That was "only" season 12!

alan nagsworth

For the most part I don't see why people can't just walk away from the show and get on with their lives instead of the constant bleating of "oh they're killing it!". Seasons 2-8 for me are the most endlessly rewatched thing I've ever seen, I love it more than I love a lot of my friends and I have a bizarrely encyclopaedic knowledge of each episode, but I could not give a single fuck about the show's subsequent decline or any scraping returns to form. It's not been even remotely close to what I'd consider good for two decades now. The tone, the animation style, the modernising of the cultural references (unavoidable but nonetheless instrumental), the voice acting, all of it. There's so much that makes it such a Trigger's Broom that even when good new episodes come out and I happen to catch one, it's not like I'm doing an It's A Wonderful Life through the town screaming "IT'S BACK GUYS OH MY GOD".

Two fucking decades mate. Even as a child I noticed this right away and washed my hands of it. Who cares?

Soup Dogg

Thanks for that worthless contribution.

St_Eddie

Quote from: alan nagsworth on February 24, 2019, 11:59:55 AM
For the most part I don't see why people can't just walk away from the show and get on with their lives instead of the constant bleating of "oh they're killing it!". Seasons 2-8 for me are the most endlessly rewatched thing I've ever seen, I love it more than I love a lot of my friends and I have a bizarrely encyclopaedic knowledge of each episode, but I could not give a single fuck about the show's subsequent decline or any scraping returns to form. It's not been even remotely close to what I'd consider good for two decades now. The tone, the animation style, the modernising of the cultural references (unavoidable but nonetheless instrumental), the voice acting, all of it. There's so much that makes it such a Trigger's Broom that even when good new episodes come out and I happen to catch one, it's not like I'm doing an It's A Wonderful Life through the town screaming "IT'S BACK GUYS OH MY GOD".

Two fucking decades mate. Even as a child I noticed this right away and washed my hands of it. Who cares?

I think that you're way off base if you think that people within this thread are obsessed with the downfall of the show.  It's not like we're having sleepless nights, fretting over its continued decline and praying to the heavens for it to end.  It's just a bit of a shame, is all.

I think what truly exemplified that shame for me was when I was having a discussion about The Simpsons with a young woman (around 15 years my junior) and she told me that she had absolutely no interest in watching the show "because it's not my kind of thing.  I don't find it funny".  It transpired that she had never watched any of the classic episodes and had only seen Zombie-Simpsons.  That's a crying shame, any way you cut it; whole generations who will write the show off because they associate it with the modern era incarnation.  They won't be willing to give the classic era a shot, no matter how much you try to explain to them that it's essentially a different show to the current era and quite honestly, who can blame them?

If I grew up with Zombie-Simpsons, then I doubt that I'd be arsed to try watching the earlier episodes on somebody else's recommendation either.  I mean how different could those earlier shows be in terms of humour and quality?  Of course the answer is night and day but one can't expect younger folk to take your word on that.  That's the shame right there; the financially motivated continuation of the show has tarnished its legacy, doing irrevocable damage to its image and reputation.  I'm not heartbroken by that fact but it's also not a complete non-issue, as you imply.

ToneLa

What Alan is saying is Simpsons discussion peaked between pages 4-9, but here on season 81 the writers of this thread are just repeating themselves in a vain attempt to harken back to the golden days of this thread!

The celebrity cameos are as bad as ever.

St_Eddie

Quote from: ToneLa on February 24, 2019, 12:35:21 PM
What Alan is saying is Simpsons discussion peaked between pages 4-9, but here on season 81 the writers of this thread are just repeating themselves in a vain attempt to harken back to the golden days of this thread!

The celebrity cameos are as bad as ever.

I don't know why you're expecting quality celebrity cameos within this thread.  Think they've got better things to be doing in all honesty, mate.