The Simpsons: A Journey Through Shit

[Pink Gregory]

Someone I worked with once stated that he preferred later Simpsons because it was more like Family Guy.

Ye gods.

[JamesTC]

I only like the later Simpsons when they go widescreen. The black bars on the side of earlier episodes confuse and distress me.

[St_Eddie]

One of the traits of Zombie-Simpsons is the writers' reliance upon anthology shows; this week the Simpsons tell tales based upon classic literary characters; this week the family tell tales based upon sea shanty origins; this week the fucking cunts tell tales of being alternate dimension cunts... ad nauseam, ad infinitum.  A clear sign of the writers running out of original ideas and they always made for the most boring episodes.  Even the dreaded clip shows were preferable by comparison.

Something I've noticed in recent episodes is a tendency towards casual gore and gross-out stuff, way beyond the point where it feels appropriate for this kind of show. I think the most recent one I've seen was a "Homer in Roman times" episode which just had maiming and slaughtering all over the shop. Not to say comedy gore can't be funny, but it feels weird and unpleasant in The Simpsons.

The first time I recall seeing this was in an episode where Homer had his guts disemboweled by a badger in a throwaway joke, which was magically healed by cartoon logic in the very next scene.  Every bit as revolting, as it was nonsensical.

...good Family Guy jokes.

That's an oxymoron, if I ever saw one.

[idunnosomename]

The first time I recall seeing this was in an episode where Homer had his guts disemboweled by a badger in a throwaway joke, which was magically healed by cartoon logic in the very next scene.  Every bit as revolting, as it was nonsensical.

that was twenty years ago! as evidenced by the ask jeeves parody site they put up

https://web.archive.org/web/20010223210106/http://thesimpsons.com/badgers/

[Blumf]

Have The Simpsons done a Family Guy style cutaway gag yet? I'm sure they have, but can't think of one.

[Dayraven]

At what point did every episode title have to be a shit pun? I liked the old "X vs Y" and X the Y" formulas, and the flatly descriptive ones like "Bart Gets an F" and "Whacking Day" - seems like the actions of a much more confident show.

They've always done plays on other things, but every title being a desperate pun seems to set in round about season 10 or 11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Simpsons_episodes_(seasons_1–20)

[St_Eddie]

Have The Simpsons done a Family Guy style cutaway gag yet? I'm sure they have, but can't think of one.

Well, they did a pathetic crossover episode, so there's that.

[JamesTC]

It wasn't a cutaway gag but Goofy getting put in a gas chamber is as Family Guy as The Simpsons has gotten up to now.

[Ferris]

Well, they did a pathetic crossover episode, so there's that.

What?

It wasn't a cutaway gag but Goofy getting put in a gas chamber is as Family Guy as The Simpsons has gotten up to now.

What?

[thr0b]

Well, they did a pathetic crossover episode, so there's that.

Lots of Simpsons fans criticised it for not being like the Simpsons. But it was a Family Guy episode, not the other way around. I thought it worked very well, and was much funnier than anything put out by the Simpsons proper in a very long time.

The exchange between Peter and Homer toward the end tickles me every time.

Peter: Homer, I'm a Family Guy.
Homer: I'm a The Simpsons.

It's stupid, but it makes me laugh.

[Ornlu]

The first time I recall seeing this was in an episode where Homer had his guts disemboweled by a badger in a throwaway joke, which was magically healed by cartoon logic in the very next scene.  Every bit as revolting, as it was nonsensical.

Oh god, I took a bit of a dive into the unnecessary Zombie-era gore recently. One such being an episode where a tonic for all Springfield's elderly residents or something causes their eyes to dangle out of their sockets(??) (click here for nightmares)

Also, that Halloween episode from god knows when that has Sideshow Bob engage in a crude Face/Off parody by SLICING HIS FACE OFF and swapping it with his cellmate. Apparently that's now one of the character's official running gags too?? Where his face UPROARIOUSLY slips back off his skull and exposes the horrific muscle & sinew underneath. I'm not even linking that one. Fuck all the way off.

[St_Eddie]

Lots of Simpsons fans criticised it for not being like the Simpsons. But it was a Family Guy episode, not the other way around. I thought it worked very well, and was much funnier than anything put out by the Simpsons proper in a very long time.

The exchange between Peter and Homer toward the end tickles me every time.

Peter: Homer, I'm a Family Guy.
Homer: I'm a The Simpsons.

It's stupid, but it makes me laugh.

Nah, mate.  It was shit.

[Consignia]

It wasn't a cutaway gag but Goofy getting put in a gas chamber is as Family Guy as The Simpsons has gotten up to now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5El0ypdADg8 Jesus, it's just bloody awful. And that's about over ten years old as well!

[JamesTC]

To warm up I watched a classic episode. The last classic episode to be exact. Season 15's I, (Annoyed Grunt)-bot is the last episode that reaches well above average and could sit in a classic season without seeming too out of place. Who knows, will there be another classic amongst the next thirteen seasons?

Season 20 - Episode 2 - Lost Verizon

Skinner runs out of fuel so needs to walk to the gas station. On the way back, Barney is doing community service and believes Skinner is a huge beer can and attacks him whilst the school children watch on. Bart misses out on the hilarity so asks Marge for a cell phone, so he doesn't miss out on funny happenings in the future, but she declines as the family don't have the money.

Bart tries to make the money for the phone by collecting balls on the golf course, but he steps on the toes of Greenskeeper Willie. Bart is dejected until Denis Leary throws his phone in anger and Bart takes it. Bart starts getting phone calls for Denis Leary so starts using the phone for pranks. Marge takes the phone from Bart and speaks to Leary who suggests handing the phone back with the GPS on, so she can track his movements.

Homer and Marge track Bart on the computer and start to stop all of his mischief such as watching an R rated movie and digging up a grave. Lisa discovers the charade so tells Bart. Bart attaches the tracking chip to a bird and the family chase it to the Shelbyville Bird Sanctuary.

The family have now been gone for three days with Bart home alone and a bit lonely. The family track down the bird and Lisa checks the internet to see that the bird is flying south and is heading for Machu Picchu but chooses not to mention it to Marge and Homer. The family are now at Machu Picchu. Marge has a dream at Machu Picchu which encourages her not to be so overbearing. The bird lands on the laptop and they figure out what happened. The family return home after two weeks and Bart acts cool for a few seconds until he begs Marge never to leave again. Joke about Maggie being left at Machu Picchu and being worshipped as a god. Credits roll.

5/10 - Maybe I am in a good mood, but I rather enjoyed that. A good improvement.

[dissolute ocelot]

Season 20 - Episode 2 - Lost Verizon

5/10 - Maybe I am in a good mood, but I rather enjoyed that. A good improvement.

This is definitely one of the better ones: it combines utter awfulness (nobody has ever given a fuck about Dennis Leary), with a rather sweet plot about Lisa visiting Macchu Picchu, as well as some nice stuff about Bart being home alone, which is IIRC quite impressively animated with its mix of fun and terror. It scores by actually having some proper characterisation of Bart and Lisa, allowing them to be more than one-dimensional caricatures: it's great when Lisa realises she can get the family to go to Peru, and it's also fun watching Bart on his own. Shame the first half is very weak.

[JamesTC]

Season 20 - Episode 3 - Double, Double, Boy in Trouble

Homer is distracted from buying a lottery ticket by Bart messing around, so Lenny buys the ticket and wins $50,000. Lenny spends the money on a party. Bart ruins Marge's dress with some mischief, so she has to wear her backup dress. Marge worries that Bart's bad behaviour isn't a phase. Lenny is planning on giving everybody at the party one of those vacuuming robots, but Bart switches them all on which wreaks havoc. Bart is punished by Marge. Bart finds his posh twin Simon and switches places which is the plot of the episode.

Bart has everything he ever wanted (just like he did in that episode when he was Burns' heir). Bart has a racecar bed. Simon hates living amongst the Simpson family and Lisa suspects something is up. Bart realises Simon's half brother and sister are horrible people and Simon reveals they resent him. Bart bumps into Mr Burns who reveals how all of his older relatives died, so he got the family fortune. Bart worries that Simon's brother and sister will try to kill him on a ski trip and Simon feels the same. Simon reveals the swap to the family and warns them of what might be happening...

Homer: Thank you future Bart for travelling back in time to warn us.

Well that line made me laugh. Homer rescues Bart. Simon returns to his rich life. Marge tucks Bart into bed. Credits roll.

4/10 - All a bit rushed and badly paced to go any higher, but it was a good try.

[idunnosomename]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5El0ypdADg8 Jesus, it's just bloody awful. And that's about over ten years old as well!

what the fuck is this unfunny shit

jesus cunting wept

[JamesTC]

Season 20 - Episode 4 - Treehouse of Horror XIX

In the opening, Homer tries to vote for Obama but it keeps registering it as McCain. The voting machine murders Homer.

Untitled Robot Parody

A parody of Transformers. Bart buys a toy car for Lisa for Christmas, but it is actually a transforming robot. Turns out other stuff around the house are robots. Homer and Flanders' car transform and fight. All the robots around town transform and fight. Marge convinces the transformers not to fight, but they instead decide to enslave the planet. The end.

How to Get Ahead in Dead-Vertising

Maggie is sent to daycare and is unhappy, but it then made to feel better by a mural including Krusty. Krusty demands the mural is removed as it infringes his intellectual rights so Homer shoves him which leads him to being murdered in a wood chipper. Some business men visit Homer and tell him that they can put dead people in adverts and they don't have to pay them so they want Homer to kill them. Homer kills George Clooney Prince and Neil Armstrong. All of the celebrities gang up in heaven to get revenge on Homer. Krusty kills Homer, so he locks them out of heaven and walks into the sunset with gay Abraham Lincoln. The end.

It's the Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse

I've never seen Charlie Brown so this parody is completely lost on me. Millhouse waits for the Grand Pumpkin (which Bart had already told Millhouse that he had made up). Millhouse starts to cry which brings the pumpkin to life. The Grand Pumpkin takes revenge on everybody for carving up pumpkins. Lisa realises Millhouse can bring stuff to life by believing in it, so she tells him of Tom Turkey in order to bring that to life to fight off the Grand Pumpkin. Tom Turkey takes revenge on everybody for eating turkeys. Marge wishes the viewers a happy holiday. Credits roll.

3/10 - Inoffensive I guess, so it doesn't go any lower but that was weak.

[neveragain]

I quite enjoyed that one, particularly the Charlie Brown bit (and I've never seen that show, it's just funny). Homer's murders of Prince and George Clooney are very crudely edited on the C4 broadcasts.

There's also a recent Treehouse with a Black Mirror parody which was pretty good.

[St_Eddie]

Skinner runs out of fuel so needs to walk to the gas station. On the way back, Barney is doing community service and believes Skinner is a huge beer can and attacks him whilst the school children watch on.

I'm relieved to read that the later seasons maintained that vital sense of relatability.  Many is the day upon which I ran out of fuel and so needed to walk to the gas station. On my way back, I always ran into the town drunk doing community service and he always believed that the secondary school headmaster was a huge beer can and wanting to attack him, whilst the school children watched on with indifference.  We've all been there.

[ArtParrott]

I quite enjoyed that one, particularly the Charlie Brown bit (and I've never seen that show, it's just funny). Homer's murders of Prince and George Clooney are very crudely edited on the C4 broadcasts.

Also the line/section with Nelson calling the Grand Pumpkin a racist, which got a laugh from me, is cut for some reason.

[Marner and Me]

I'm relieved to read that the later seasons maintained that vital sense of relatability.  Many is the day upon which I ran out of fuel and so needed to walk to the gas station. On my way back, I always ran into the town drunk doing community service and he always believed that the secondary school headmaster was a huge beer can and wanting to attack him, whilst the school children watched on with indifference.  We've all been there.

Rooted in reality.

[rude soil]

And it was all a dream.

[MojoJojo]

Have The Simpsons done a Family Guy style cutaway gag yet? I'm sure they have, but can't think of one.

I seem to remember something about the Simpson's writers, feeling a bit pissed off that Family Guy was ripping it off, made a deliberate policy to not have any more cutaway gags to distance themselves from Family Guy, although the policy didn't stay long. Although I can't find anything on google to back this up.

According to google, The Simpson's basically invented the cutaway gag - although didn't actually have that many. They tended to feel like they were inspired by the actual plot of the episode, unlike Fmily Guy which often feels like the writers have a bag of prepared cutaway gags they want crowbar in somewhere.

Cutaway Simpson gags I can think of- that baseball player in the mystery spot, Burn's "When pigs fly" bit,  the car bed bit.

[thr0b]

"The Land of Chocolate"

I don't see them as the same as a Family Guy cutaway. They're almost always plot-related, and usually as a dream/imagination sequence.

Family Guy's don't have to be linked to the plot in any way.

[Shit Good Nose]

Most of Family Guy's cutaways are, and always have been, complete non-sequiturs. 

I know most people hate Family Guy because of the cutaway gags, but I've always personally thought they've been the show's strength - there's many an episode where the main story has been piss-poor but it's been saved by some excellent cutaways.  There was a period after (I think) season 8 or 9 when they all but completely did away with the cutaways and went for a more mainstream plot focus, and that run of episodes (may have even been a whole season - I can't remember now as it was several years ago) was a real slog (which, admittedly, says a lot about the writing of the show's main storylines), and then the cutaways came back (presumably because they knew the show was weak[er] without them).

Even though Family Guy is also WAY beyond its welcome now, I think on balance I'd take a new Family Guy episode over a new Simpsons episode, purely just because quite a few of the cutaways are still funny.


I acknowledge that VERY VERY few CaBbers share the above PERSONAL SUBJECTIVE opinion, and that has always been the case, and I have always acknowledged that that has been the case in other threads where Family Guy has been discussed.

[JamesTC]

I personally think Family Guy was good for the first four seasons. Went downhill quite quickly afterwards. I think I stopped around Season 7.

Might watch a few later seasons when they are added to Disney+ at the end of February.

[checkoutgirl]

unlike Fmily Guy which often feels like the writers have a bag of prepared cutaway gags they want crowbar in somewhere

Ah yes, the South Park manatees.

[checkoutgirl]

Bit off topic but why is Seth MacFarlane so contemptible to me? I've never thought too much about it but the revulsion is overpowering whenever I see him on screen.

[Shit Good Nose]

Bit off topic but why is Seth MacFarlane so contemptible to me? I've never thought too much about it but the revulsion is overpowering whenever I see him on screen.

Probably because he's very ubiquitous, efortlessly successful and often a bit smug with it. 

He doesn't rub me up the same way, but I totally understand those that share your opinion.