Simpsons to reveal gay character

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

You like Futurama because it has a cult appeal? Gnnn!

[Robot DeNiro]

I thought Futurama was rubbish, mainly because the characters were badly thought out.  A rasta accountant?  Hilarious!  Er, no, not really.  A Jewish lobster?  Awful.  Fry was a standard lazy stupid guy (but not lazy or stupid enough to be funny) and Leela had no personality at all as far as I can remember.  The Professor was good, and "Good news everyone" was a great catchphrase.  Bender was the show's only saving grace.  

The plots were imaginative, but it didn't make me laugh.  I think that's because the dynamics between the characters didn't throw up enough funny jokes.

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

My Sweet Lord! Zoidberg, Fry, Leela and all the supporting characters "not thought out"?

Cripes, even one-episode characters are well-thought out. My favourite being the 80s guy.

[Robot DeNiro]

Well, Zoidberg and the accountant guy have never once made me laugh.

Maybe it's the fault of the writers for not thinking of funny enough jokes for their creations to say, but I maintain that the characters themselves are to blame.  The relationships are either not clear or don't have much comic potential.  There's no real power structure for a start, which although not essential is what most sitcoms are based on.

Can you tell me what Leela's comic traits are?  Where do her jokes come from (apart from the one eye of course)?

I think I saw the eighties guy one.  was he a yuppy?  I seem to remember that being one of the best episodes, and yes it was because the 80's character was so good, because they were using him to make certain types of jokes with clear, recognisable targets.

[king mob]

Of course its a gimmick, it'll get some people watching then be swiftly forgotten about.

King Mob's incredible powers of reason make their fat arse known again.

I take it your beta blockers have worn off.

[Bill Oddie]

In the Episode "Jaws Wired Shut" one of Marge's sister's arms is seen waving from the "in the closet" float in the gay pride march, so that's no shocker. Rodd and Todd Flanders are also shown to be gay in "Bart to the Future".

The whole programme's already full of bummers if you ask me.

[Mister Six]

Well, Zoidberg and the accountant guy have never once made me laugh.

What?

----------------------
FRY
Er, are you sure you know what you're doing?

ZOIDBERG
Please, young lady, I'm a professional. Now open your mouth and let me look at your brain.

(Fry opens his mouth)

ZOIDBERG
No, the other mouth.

FRY
I only have this one.

ZOIDBERG
Only one mouth, eh? Interesting.... Now, put this in your mouth and say phtffftfttphphphpphhh

FRY
mrfgffphpphhfpfphpfpf

ZOIDBERG (outraged)
What? My mother was a saint!


-----------------
That's great and you know it, you miserable sod.

Can you tell me what Leela's comic traits are?  Where do her jokes come from (apart from the one eye of course)?

She mostly plays the straight man to the crew, so she doesn't have "comedy traits" to speak of. There are one or two jokes about her being so boring here and there, though, and her nonexistent love life and crappy childhood are sometimes mined for gags.

And this...

A rasta accountant? Hilarious! Er, no, not really. A Jewish lobster? Awful

See, what you're doing there, right, is you're listening to the voices but not to the jokes. "Father Ted's just about a bunch of Irish priests! Rubbish!"

Which season of The Simpsons had that episode where they go to Brazil? That was absolutely diabolical.

[Bill Oddie]

Which season of The Simpsons had that episode where they go to Brazil? That was absolutely diabolical.

Season 13: "Blame it on Lisa".



Season 13 never quite managed to fall as low as 14, but by god it tried.

[imitationleather]

I love Futurama and so the person who was saying that the characters were poorly realised and that the show wasn't funny had me flailing my arms wildly at the monitor. I'd say that the characters in Futurama are some of the best formed and rounded of any comedy programme, let alone animation, that I've ever seen. The storylines (apart from the dodgy ones that could have just been set in the 21st century) all show a lot of imagination and the humour is hilarious.

However, the show wasn't consistently brilliant. Season 3 contained quite a few ropey episodes (such as 'Bendless Love' and the one with Beck), but even then the pace of the show and the fact that I love the characters so much meant that it rose above the really awful Simpsons episodes. The show really picked up for Season 4, which in my opinon was it's best ever and this shows that a programme can recover from a so-so year. Shame it got axed after that...

[chand]

I thought Futurama was rubbish, mainly because the characters were badly thought out.  A rasta accountant?  Hilarious!  Er, no, not really.  A Jewish lobster?  Awful.  Fry was a standard lazy stupid guy (but not lazy or stupid enough to be funny) and Leela had no personality at all as far as I can remember.  The Professor was good, and "Good news everyone" was a great catchphrase.  Bender was the show's only saving grace.  

The plots were imaginative, but it didn't make me laugh.  I think that's because the dynamics between the characters didn't throw up enough funny jokes.

Aside from the fact that Zoidberg and Hermes had a lot of great lines (google for 'em!), Zapp Brannigan is a fantastic comedy character.

[Robot DeNiro]

I said a Jewish lobster and a rasta accountant weren't funny, and...

See, what you're doing there, right, is you're listening to the voices but not to the jokes. "Father Ted's just about a bunch of Irish priests! Rubbish!"

I was suggesting that Zoidberg and Hermes were not funny and that their character traits were too weird or too limiting to produce good jokes.  I don't really get your point.  Their characters were as I described weren't they?  I never heard a single joke from Hermes and I only heard bad jokes from Zoidberg.

Although that bit that you typed up made me smile.  Thanks for going to the effort, but it won't change my mind.  I've seen enough episodes to know I don't like it .

Leela is a straight person, and I see that as a wasted opportunity.  'The Simpsons' doesn't have a straight person - Marge is the most obvious candidate, but her foibles and her relationship with Homer provide plenty of laughs.  

Oh, and while we're back on topic, I agree with you about 'Blame it on Lisa' - terrible.

imitationleather, I'm with you on the fact that the animation was good and the plots were inventive.  But it didn't make me laugh.

chand, Zapp Brannigan is great, and I would have mentioned him in my original post if I could remember his name.  But as a minor character he couldn't carry the show.  That would be like 'The Simpsons' if the family was dull and lifeless and only Chief Wiggum was funny (see some of Season 14).

I was actually shocked when I realised 'Futurama' was held in high regard around here, as everyone I know thought it was very missable.  I wanted it to be good, so watched all of the first series, and recently saw some later episodes at four in the morning on alternate Fridays on Channel 4.  It still makes me laugh about as much as 'I am Not an Animal' (i.e. not very much).  I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

[5 Knuckle Shuffle]

Which season of The Simpsons had that episode where they go to Brazil? That was absolutely diabolical.

Season 13: "Blame it on Lisa".



Season 13 never quite managed to fall as low as 14, but by god it tried.

Perhaps if you started watching the seriesrather than some salt and pepper, then you might find it funny.
Fucking Ameribrits.

[Mister Six]

I was suggesting that Zoidberg and Hermes were not funny and that their character traits were too weird or too limiting to produce good jokes.  I don't really get your point.  Their characters were as I described weren't they?  I never heard a single joke from Hermes and I only heard bad jokes from Zoidberg.

No, the characters were not as you described, since you basically just said what they sounded/looked like. It's like complaining that Homer is a rubbish character because he's just an American dad.

Hermes: uptight, anally retentive buereucrat who has a request form for everything, including suicide, and has no compassion for other people at all. He's an extremely minor character who doesn't often get jokes in the same way that, say, Lenny and Carl don't. He's usually used as part of the plot rather than for gags.

Zoidberg: A loser. A schlep. A putz. Failed comedian, rubbish doctor, desperately poor and ugly even by giant lobster standards. He's the pathetic punch-bag of the show whose incompetence and misery provide much schadenfreude.

Leela is a straight person, and I see that as a wasted opportunity.  'The Simpsons' doesn't have a straight person - Marge is the most obvious candidate, but her foibles and her relationship with Homer provide plenty of laughs.

You dummy. Both Lisa and Marge (especially Marge) have no "comic traits" whatsoever, and exist as counterpoints to Bart and Homer, and as emotional centres for the show when the more OTT characters wouldn't work. Marge's relationship with Homer provides humour because she evokes reactions from him (love, tenderness, loyalty) that few other characters can. Same with the Fry/Leela dynamic. Plus, Leela's role as the "boring" straight woman is parodied in several episodes, such as the Anthology of Interest 1 (the equivalent of the Tree House of Horror). Making Leela "wacky" and "zany" would pretty much make her redundant.

[Robot DeNiro]

You dummy.

That's uncalled for.  I went out of my way to thank you for your previous response, let's try to keep it civil shall we?  We're only disagreeing about a comedy show for goodness sake.

Thanks for the expansion of the Hermes and Zoidberg characters.  Maybe I did oversimplify them a bit.  However I still maintain that either they don't have much comic potential, or that their potential is not fully realised, as they don't make me laugh.

You say that Hermes is a minor character who doesn't get jokes in the same way Lenny and Carl don't.  Lenny and Carl get some of the best jokes in the Simpsons!  maybe not very many, but when they get lines they are generally brilliant.  I don't believe the same can be said for Hermes.  Perhaps if you don't find Lenny and Carl funny we just have fundamentally different senses of humour.

Zoidberg, yes he's a punchbag in much the same way as Milhouse is in The Simpsons.  However Milhouse is always optimistic and think's he's great, that he stands a chance with Lisa etc, and that's what makes him funny.  That's why we enjoy seeing him suffer.  Zoidberg knows he's repulsive and useless, so I just find him irritating.  

You say Marge and Lisa are straight characters without comic traits.  I would argue that Lisa's geekiness and desperation to always take the moral high ground are well observed, rich comic traits from which many many laughs have been created.

Marge less so (as you point out) but she does have some funny moments.  Her ultra efficient housekeeping, her gambling habit, her drinking.  She is also used to satirise the loneliness and desperation of the home maker, for example that bit when everyone in the family wants to eat in silence watching the tv:

MARGE: If anyone want's me I'll be in the dining room having a conversation

(Marge leaves and is heard out of shot)

MARGE (with forced jollity):  Hello Marge, how's the family?  (snaps) I don't want to talk about it!

(quoted from memory)

Admittedly she does often play the straight person role, but there is more to her than that.

And Marge plays straight person to Homer, one of the funniest comic creations ever.  Leela plays straight person to Fry, in my opinion dull, unfunny and predictable.  So I'll revise my argument somewhat - sometimes a sitcom needs a straight character, but only if it has funny ones first.  

Making Leela "wacky and zany" might have meant that Futurama had another funny character, something I think it needed.  You dummy (joke).

[Alberon]

Since Futurama appeared I've always preferred it over the Simpsons and I do prefer the characters in it.

Futurama did dip in season 3, but  it did pull up afterwards. Of the supporting characters Hermes is the one I like the least, but Zoidberg is pure class. And the minor supporting characters have always been great fun like Morbo the newsmonster, President Nixon, Calculon, Nibbler and the Hypnotoad.

I find it very hard to care for Homer anymore since, as Dan Castelanata (spelling all wrong I know) said, he is now written like a 'dog trapped in a man's body'. While Fry is much more of a rounded personality.

Maybe I gave up on The Simpsons as it seemed to have fallen into a rut and was becoming too repetitive in its format. Futurama could vary itself more easily due to the retro-futuristic setting so it didn't seem so forced to me. Mind you, after fourteen or so years I might be wanting it to be put down.

[Munday's Chylde]

Futurama is for kids.

There, get cross with that, I'm not even going to back it up with evidence.

[kidsick5000]

As Ive mentioned before, not only is Futurama brilliant, One episode of it made me cry.
Its the one with the dog. And it frigging did it again this weekend just gone.

And if I remember right, I wasnt the only one on here it affected.

[DJ One Record]

Futurama is for kids.

There, get cross with that, I'm not even going to back it up with evidence.

Haha, good one.

The show really picked up for Season 4, which in my opinon was it's best ever and this shows that a programme can recover from a so-so year. Shame it got axed after that...

I would be inclined to disagree in some ways. Whilst Season 4 features some of the best episodes in terms of plot and characterisation, the gags on the whole seemed to suffer a dip in quality, with jokes being too thinly spread across episodes and consisting mainly of presupposition failures and non-sequiters in place of some of the more well thought out jokes in the first few seasons. And Bend Her and Spanish Fry hit new lows for the series.

[Dark Sky]

a crappy Clausen song

Are you some kind of shit?

Urr...in your eyes, probably...  But speaking purely on musicological terms, Clausen's work on the Simpsons has become boring, staid, and repetitive.  Take a listen to the scores in the first series, and you can instantly tell that Richard Gibbs took a far less clichéd line in terms of variating Elfman's theme, for a starters.

Admittedly Clausen has been doing it for a long, long time now, and is no doubt running out of ideas for variations of someone else's theme.  Plus score wise there's not much more he can do other than short "sting" transitionals to quickly whisk you away from one failed joke to the next, and then the odd bit of "heart-tug" music to make you realise

But I'm digressing from the songs...  The songs...oh dear Lord, the songs...  The songs used to be really cheesy and funny, and if there's one thing I *adore*, it's cheesy pastiche songs and musicals.  I love 'em, I can't get enough of them.  But Clausen only seems to have a handful of techniques which he just keeps reusing, and with the frequency of the songs going up and up, they're becoming less and less spontaneous and amusing.

It's just like the writers thing, "Oh, this episode is a bit dire...what can we do to make it funny?  HEY, songs are funny, let's stick one in."  And so ol' Alf Clausen wheels out his trusty faux-musical style, and someone quickly pens some lyrics full of celebrities or some post-modern joke about how songs are repetitive and crap, and ba-daa!  Three minutes of cheesy smiles and leg kicking which we've all seen before...and before.

Now, I like Ken Keeler's stuff; it may not be as harmonically complex as Clausen's, but he puts much more variation into the styles, and he did some amazing work for Futurama (as did Chris Ting, score wise).

You like Futurama because it has a cult appeal? Gnnn!

Urm, no, that wasn't what I meant...  I just think that Futurama is more of a cult programme, so its die hard followers are smaller in number, but very forcefully fanatical about it.  And I think Futurama does embody that specialist niche in the audience in regards to most of its genius being based in the realms of science fiction, physics, and computer games/programmes, etc.  And people who are not into those specialised areas themselves will not get the jokes, and so thus dismiss Futurama.  Meaning that Futurama can then cater exclusively to its fans, rather than something like the Simpsons which aims for a more mainstream audience.

A rasta accountant? Hilarious! Er, no, not really. A Jewish lobster? Awful. Fry was a standard lazy stupid guy (but not lazy or stupid enough to be funny) and Leela had no personality at all as far as I can remember. The Professor was good, and "Good news everyone" was a great catchphrase. Bender was the show's only saving grace.

You see, you condemn yourself there by saying that catchphrases are "great".  Although the Simpsons has managed to dig its own grave via catchphrases, Futurama got past that (despite the two obvious ones).  I think it's telling to point out that even in episodes made in the first production season they started making fun of the fact that there were catchphrases.  And after that they weren't important at all.  And certainly not part and parcel of the characters in the same way that Nelson is the "ha ha" kid.

Can you tell me what Leela's comic traits are? Where do her jokes come from (apart from the one eye of course)?

As has been pointed out, Leela is for the most part "the straight man", which you could critique, I suppose.  But Leela does have a very well thought out personality and is possibly my favourite character in the series.  Her reasoning, hypocrisy, and multi-facetness, combined with the fact that her character provides a lot of the pathos for the show....  And she gets some cracker of jokes are only be funny *because* she is the "straight man".

Plus there's the fact that Futurama is lot more linear in terms of storylines, and actually has some semblance of story "arcs".  All the relationships change in realistic gradual progressions throughout the four seasons and you do actually wish, want, and feel for the characters.  Well, I do, anyway.

I think perhaps Futurama is one of those programmes which requires a bit of dedication, thus its having more of a specialised hardcore fanbase.  Plus I love it for its Cohen-brand humour, the reason I loved so much of the Simpsons round the season 5, 6, whenever, slot.

Plus it has neato CGi in it of spaceships and shooting and laserbeams and stuff, which is well cool.  Who can diss that?

-Nick

[Bill Oddie]

Perhaps if you started watching the seriesrather than some salt and pepper, then you might find it funny.
Fucking Ameribrits.

Eh?

[Neil]

He's making an hilarious joke about your usage of the term "season" rather than "series."

[Bill Oddie]

Ah right.

[El Unicornio, mang]

It is a season though, it's called that because seasons generally last for 13 episodes, 13 weeks, which is the length of an actual 'season' (ie: summer, winter, etc). Series better describes British shows which only last for 6 episodes.

I think there must be a phobia out there which describes British people's irrational fear of American terminology, I must say I suffer from a mild form of it myself. The other day I heard a woman on an advert pronounce 'apricot' as 'a-pri-cot' rather than 'ay-pri-cot' . I was livid.

[Bill Oddie]

I could care less about it myself.


;)

[Consignia]

It is
I think there must be a phobia out there which describes British people's irrational fear of American terminology, I must say I suffer from a mild form of it
myself. The other day I heard a woman on an advert pronounce 'apricot' as 'a-pri-cot' rather than 'ay-pri-cot' . I was livid.

It could be sub-concious, like the English language is one of our things, and someone else is using our things in a way we don't like. Like a child with a toy.

[El Unicornio, mang]

The odd thing is, though, that Americans speak purer English than British people, as their take on the language is mostly taken from how the English (mainly the upper crust lot who spoke 'proper' English) spoke in the 1600s, whereas ours have evolved more with regional slang. I've met lots of British people who I've been unable to understand because of slang or deep accents but I've never been unable to understand an American.

Sorry, this has nothing to do with The Simpsons!

[Robot Devil]

I don't think The Simpsons has dipped in quality as much as people seem to think: there have always been a few poor eps a season/series/whocares, take season 4, for every "Marge vs. The Monorail", there's a "Marge in Chains" (in my opinion, the best and worse that season respectively).

[mikeyg27]

As Ive mentioned before, not only is Futurama brilliant, One episode of it made me cry.
Its the one with the dog. And it frigging did it again this weekend just gone.

And if I remember right, I wasnt the only one on here it affected.

I didn't go as far as crying, but it did get me very emotional, particularly because it took me completely by surprise. I'd never expected Futurama to play the emotion card so spectacularly.

[Key]

As Ive mentioned before, not only is Futurama brilliant, One episode of it made me cry.
Its the one with the dog. And it frigging did it again this weekend just gone.

And if I remember right, I wasnt the only one on here it affected.

I didn't go as far as crying, but it did get me very emotional, particularly because it took me completely by surprise. I'd never expected Futurama to play the emotion card so spectacularly.

Yes, the episode with Fry's brother was also very well done and touching to the point where you forget its a cartoon.

[TotalNightmare]

The odd thing is, though, that Americans speak purer English than British people, as their take on the language is mostly taken from how the English (mainly the upper crust lot who spoke 'proper' English) spoke in the 1600s, whereas ours have evolved more with regional slang. I've met lots of British people who I've been unable to understand because of slang or deep accents but I've never been unable to understand an American.

Sorry, this has nothing to do with The Simpsons!

also... the french influence on the english language made many changes that the american english weren't effected by.

Hence the whole Theatre/Theater thing (for example)... who said that you don't learn aything here!?

well, me!