Simpsons might actually be finishing

[Pink Gregory]

Harry Shearer doesn't do it any more, right?

You'd think they'd have called it a day after 1/3 of the voices was gone. 

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Harry Shearer doesn't do it any more, right?

You'd think they'd have called it a day after 1/3 of the voices was gone.

Shearer still works on the show.

[Phil_A]

Harry Shearer doesn't do it any more, right?

You'd think they'd have called it a day after 1/3 of the voices was gone.

Never actually officially quit, he just makes noises that he might do every time the cast contracts are up for renewal. Saying that, his appearances on the show have drastically scaled down in recent years. I've just been scanning through synopsis of recent episodes and it looks like Shearer-voiced characters feature in very few of them.

[Pink Gregory]

You'd think that might be more to do with his age than phasing him out, but it could be both.

[idunnosomename]

You think they might just stop making the simpsons entirely

[Pink Gregory]

I've been recording odds and ends of season 13 off the teevee recently.  Still a bunch of laughs but the spirit had clearly gone, and this was even before celebrity cameo saturation point. 

Case im point, saw a season 19 one guest starring Jay Leno and he doesn't even have any funny lines.  He's just...there.

[imitationleather]

I always feel weird when I'm reminded that somewhere out there The Simpsons is still being made.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Never actually officially quit, he just makes noises that he might do every time the cast contracts are up for renewal. Saying that, his appearances on the show have drastically scaled down in recent years. I've just been scanning through synopsis of recent episodes and it looks like Shearer-voiced characters feature in very few of them.

I don't know, I mean he does Burns, Smithers, Skinner and Flanders, and all of them have featured in the show a fair bit this year.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

This article from Dead Homer Society on why The Simpsons is unkillable is a few years old but still rings true, IMO:

https://deadhomersociety.com/2017/09/01/why-zombie-simpsons-is-unkillable/

[ajsmith2]

It will definitely never end now. The actress who did Martin Prince's voice died a little while back, and instead of retiring the character like they've done before when other voice actors died (Troy McClure, Mrs Krabappel), this time they re-cast. A disturbling new precedent has been set.

Even if the main series eventually ends, there will be spin offs etc keeping the property going (literally) Disney style at least until Western Civilisation collapses. Over the next few decades, I predict among other iterations live action and CGI versions, as well as a curated 'actually good' reboot set in the 90s made by Gen Zers/algorithmic AI programmes who have studied the first 10 years so thoroughly that they can recreate the vibe of the classic era to a tee, down to the classic animation style.

[idunnosomename]

god. how shitty

https://twitter.com/aljean/status/1193548440690724864

[Jumblegraws]

It will definitely never end now. The actress who did Martin Prince's voice died a little while back, and instead of retiring the character like they've done before when other voice actors died (Troy McClure, Mrs Krabappel), this time they re-cast. A disturbling new precedent has been set.

Tress MacNeille has voiced Lunchlady Doris a few times in the years since Doris Grau died.

[ajsmith2]

Tress MacNeille has voiced Lunchlady Doris a few times in the years since Doris Grau died.

I wish I was making this up, but they tried to get around that by renaming her Lunchlady Dora, and then claiming with a straight face that the identical looking Dora was intended to be an entirely different character. Martin Prince is the first time they've straight up re-cast a character with a deceased voice actor without any such qualifications, and immediately too (Doris/Dora at least had a decade plus of respectful grace as an unspeaking background character).

https://rubbercat.net/simpsons/news/2014/03/lunchlady-doris-secretly-replaced-by-lunchlady-dora.html

'After Simpsons voice actress Doris Grau passed away in 1995, her character Lunchlady Doris remained in the show. Or so we thought! It turns out that at some point in the series Doris was silently replaced with a pod person named "Lunchlady Dora," who just happens to look and sound exactly like her.
Out of respect for the late Phil Hartman, his characters Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure were completely retired from the show (well, eventually... they still made occasional background appearances until 2003). This wasn't the case for Lunchlady Doris, who lurked silently in the background for years.

Her silence was broken in a 2009 episode, when Tress MacNeille took over the role with a pretty dead-on impression. Some viewers felt recasting the character was disrespectful to Grau. However, it turns out it was actually a "new" character, "Lunchlady Dora," a loophole that made the move perfectly ethical. Although MacNeille was credited as Lunchlady Dora in that episode's press release, this little change was not mentioned in the actual show until 2013, when Groundskeeper Willie casually mentioned making sweet love to Lunchlady Dora (my fanfic came true!), and a second time in last night's episode, where Dora is mentioned in the school newspaper. AV Club writer Sean O'Neal tweeted about it, assuming it was a typo, which lead Michael Price to set the record straight and confirm it's a "different" character:

@seanoneal @ditzkoff The show introduced Lunchlady Dora after Doris Grau passed away. So we did the opposite of forget.
— Michael Price (@mikepriceinla) March 31, 2014

[Jumblegraws]

Ah, I stand corrected. I'd seen the character in couple of newer episodes but didn't know about the "Dora" jiggery-pokery.

[idunnosomename]

Edna Krabappel of course was retired when Marcia Wallace died as well. bloody hell that was 2013. maybe they thought it was going to end back then?

[JamesTC]

You'll never stop The Simpsons. Have no fear, they've got voice actors for years.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

You'll never stop The Simpsons. Have no fear, they've got voice actors for years.

At this stage they could probably Frankingstein whole scripts out of the audio of the existing 673 episodes.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Frinkenstein.

[petril]

with the bolts and the lightning and the hewasthecreatoooooorrr

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

At this stage they could probably Frankingstein whole scripts out of the audio of the existing 673 episodes.

They are already doing writing whole scripts by taking random elements out of the existing 673 screenplays.

[mippy]

I think the Elon Musk episode was the absolute nadir.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

I saw one lately where Bart got struck by lightning and was in a coma and Lisa decided to fuck with him (because that's something Lisa would do, for absolutely no reason) by whispering to him that he could see dead people and it was so obviously a Halloween episode idea that ran long so they had to horse on this stupid framing story of him being in a coma "in reality". There was one funny moment when Coma World Bart had to help a ghost to move on by pranking the ghost's rival. The ghost went "at last I can move on" and then began to sink into the floor - "Uh-oh-" before vanishing in flames. That was it. One funny moment.

[JamesTC]

I have just discovered that Sky broadcast the 16:9 crop. Grave.