bad jokes in the classic Simpsons era

[samadriel]

I think Bart vs Australia is easily the shittiest episode of good-era Simpsons. Even so, there's a handful of good jokes, but to pick just two shit ones, there's "knifey spoony" (what a boring placeholder for a proper joke), and "chuzwozzers", which strikes me as a possibly-racist, definitely-ignorant "haha, Aboriginal languages sound stupid! Don't Australians come up with stupid names for things!" remark. BvA is definitely a sign that the Simpsons couldn't do international travel episodes, even at the height of their powers.

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

I think Bart vs Australia is easily the shittiest episode of good-era Simpsons. Even so, there's a handful of good jokes, but to pick just two shit ones, there's "knifey spoony" (what a boring placeholder for a proper joke), and "chuzwozzers", which strikes me as a possibly-racist, definitely-ignorant "haha, Aboriginal languages sound stupid! Don't Australians come up with stupid names for things!" remark. BvA is definitely a sign that the Simpsons couldn't do international travel episodes, even at the height of their powers.

somebody lost a game of knifey spoony

[sevendaughters]

OI PRIME MINISTER

[Video Game Fan 2000]

The shittest "classic" episode is easily Lady Bouvier's Lover for me.

The tone is totally off. So many weird gags it feels more like a dry run for later Family Guy than Simpsons. The animation cel subplot is fine but the rest of it is uncomfortably cruel about older people and its got a bit of Zombie Simpsons misogyny about how it treats Marge's family.  Some real bad dumb Homer jokes like "its not Magaggies birthday?" as well.

Bart V Australia is good. It's full of silly jokes and the jingoism clearly ironic. Chuzwozzers joke is racist as hell tho

[Sebastian Cobb]

Surely we see some jerk-ass homer in Brother from Another Planet.

[TheQueensboroBridge]

What a fun thread.

[sevendaughters]

never been a big supporter of the 'laughing at the oddness of place names' = 'probably racist' theory. Britain has places called Twatt, Geocrab, and Upton Snodsbury. It gets old as humour and there are better jokes to make, but phonetics make certain sounds and juxtapositions hilarious to non-native speakers. I bet it works the other way around too.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Australian place and animal names being ignorant/nonsensical is already a racist joke, though. Comes from arguments about whether anglacised indigenous or apparently dignified colonial names should be used. The joke isn't "this is silly word", its "if australians had the choice between toad and chuzwozzer, they'd choose chuzwozzer" - Uluru for Ayer's Rock, etc.  I don't think it matters that the joke has become so repeated by now that the context is vanishing.

Same with Irish surnames but stronger since no one is losing their job over being called O'hanrahanrahan.

[samadriel]

Surely we see some jerk-ass homer in Brother from Another Planet.

Nah, Homer can do bad things - even comically-exaggerated bad things - without being "Jerkass Homer". The difference is that Brother From the Same Planet has a Homer whose sins and flaws come from relatable human weaknesses, while Zombie Simpsons Homer is just a hollering subhuman who does bad shit because the writer's from is still under the delusion that behaving badly = surprising = funny.

As for "chuzwozzers", remember the kid says "I'd have called them chuzwozzers" - the suggestions is that Aboriginal words are just dumb shit those Aussies come up with off the top of their heads. It actually seems doubly as racist to me that they had a white kid say it - not only are Aboriginal words dumb shit, they're being made up by dumb white Australians!

[sutin]

The Hank Scorpio episode is rubbish. I didn't know it existed until about 2010 either, it never seemed to be repeated.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

The Hank Scorpio episode is rubbish. I didn't know it existed until about 2010 either, it never seemed to be repeated.

Ever see someone say goodbye to a thread?

[JamesTC]

I always hated the bit with the really funny joke that made me laugh.

Burn thread to ground.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

You are Lisa Simpson? More like you are turning the television set off! What a load of crap, how can he be the best supply teacher ever he thinks his students forget their own names? And they mispelled Dustin Hoffman's name in the credits and all.

Do it for her? Do me a favour more like.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Ever see someone say goodbye to a thread?

Yes, once!

Now, is that 'once' several seconds ago, or at some other point in the past?

[Video Game Fan 2000]

The answer to the viking joke still makes me mad. Outrageous.

Its like Quentin Tarantino confirmed the morons who think Pulp Fiction is set in hell and the briefcase contains Wallace's soul.

[JamesTC]

Yes, once!

Now, is that 'once' several seconds ago, or at some other point in the past?

I always took that to mean Homer was remembering several seconds earlier. I think the joke is funnier that way.

Although the joke is still funny if Homer is remembering another separate occasion in which somebody said goodbye to a shoe.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I thought it would be really funny if an obnoxious customer insisted that the clearly alive parrot he bought was dead, wasting an honest merchant's time.
-John Cleese

[dissolute ocelot]

I always took that to mean Homer was remembering several seconds earlier. I think the joke is funnier that way.

Although the joke is still funny if Homer is remembering another separate occasion in which somebody said goodbye to a shoe.

Not wishing to get into one of the most heated debates in Simpsons fandom, but people saying goodbye to a shoe is not that unlikely. I'm sure every child goes through a phase of either saying goodbye to every object in the house before leaving, or goodnight to every object before going to bed. Perhaps procrastination, but still counts.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I thought it was just Homer being stuck and not knowing what to answer and not wanting to sound stupid or inexperienced. Homer barely understands a word of what Scorpio is say and doing.

"[conversation going too fast for Homer to follow]...have you ever seen a guy [do something silly]?" Homer: Yes, once.

[Captain Z]

That bit where Homer falls down the side of the gorge, gets recovered, loaded into the ambulance which crashes and he falls down the gorge again. We've literally just seen that happen, very lazy to repeat the same joke straight after. Plus I don't find it funny to laugh at serious pain and injuries, and I also don't think that an ambulance driver would fail to see a tree immediately infront of them.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I can't believe Chalmers would believe someone would steam clams in their oven and not in a pot. He's a man of the world after all. And its already been established that he finds Skinner to be a highly untrustworthy person. Terrible joke, no wonder its often forgotten.

[Leej88]

Not a joke but when Homer rents out Lisa's room cause of something he did and he just sings the odd couple while Bart says I am gonna make your life a living hell.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Is that where he rents it to some cellular provider headed-up by the recurring Businesswoman? That was shit.

[dissolute ocelot]

Australian place and animal names being ignorant/nonsensical is already a racist joke, though. Comes from arguments about whether anglacised indigenous or apparently dignified colonial names should be used. The joke isn't "this is silly word", its "if australians had the choice between toad and chuzwozzer, they'd choose chuzwozzer" - Uluru for Ayer's Rock, etc.  I don't think it matters that the joke has become so repeated by now that the context is vanishing.

Same with Irish surnames but stronger since no one is losing their job over being called O'hanrahanrahan.

I don't want to say it's not racist, but white Australian culture has a tradition of colourful or apparently nonsensical expressions that aren't all of Aboriginal origin (bushwhacker, swagman, duck-billed platypus, arvo, Waltzing Matilda, bludger, dunny, several hundred words for drinking and vomiting, etc), as well as a lot of interplay between English and native languages. (And, "drongo" which is apparently from an indigenous language of Madagascar, via a shit racehorse.) Definitely not an area for ignorant foreigners to make jokes about though.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

What really gets me in the coach gags that open each episode, you mean to tell me that the whole family is just sitting down and something unexpected happens to interrupt their television watching? And it happens all the time? Bit implausible isn't it.

It's a lot like You Been Framed, you can imagine something unexpected happening but you just ask yourself why they would have the camera set up to film themselves watching television to capture it? I'm not born yesterday.

[Leej88]

Yeah it was not a good episode I do like Lisa and Homer's episodes cause they are so different like when they go to the Museum

[JamesTC]

Why would Marge allow the cashier to not only scan in Maggie but also then pay for her? Seems implausible to me.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I don't want to say it's not racist, but white Australian culture has a tradition of colourful or apparently nonsensical expressions that aren't all of Aboriginal origin

With the exception of "drongo" most of those have fairly evident etymologies or obvious relationships to other terms. The kid didn't say "I'd have called it a hopwarter!" or summat.

Also, its chazwazza which is more clearly a parody of an Australian anglicisation. It's obviously not racist in intent, just by dint that it ignores of the fact that its genre of jokes has shitty colonial history.

Fuck me I did a historicism as a justification for why I think something is problematic. Unclean, unclean.

[idunnosomename]

What are the words "the simpsons" doing coming out of the sky to a heavenly choir? Whats that all about

[Leej88]

You played knifey spooney before have you.