Confession: I don't like Simpsons

[JuntMonkey]

I know that the Simpsons is considered one of the greatest shows ever, especially by people in my age group (mid-20's). People talk about how deep and layered and brilliant and hilarious it is.

But I just don't get it. I mean it's okay. If I was on a desert island and had to choose between 3 seasons of Simpsons or 3 seasons of Family Guy, I would easily pick Simpsons. I'd pick Simpsons over a lot of shows. But genius? Eh.

When I was 8-11 first watching it I loved it obviously. As I got older though it stopped working for me. The past few years I've been watching the DVD's; I just finished Disc 1 of Season 3, which is supposed to be when it really got great. Still not doing it for me.

So what am I missing? One of the problems I have with it is that it's just a typical sitcom, animated. I hate typical sitcoms. I hate lame manipulative emotional endings that "show how close they are as a family".

I read an article that talked about the decline of the show through the years. It said how back in it's heyday, an episode would end with Homer tenderly putting his arm around Marge as they walked into the sunset. But now it would end with him nonsensically blowing a dart into her neck. I don't know how good or bad the execution of it actually is, but as a general rule I would far prefer the latter.

One scene that I loved in a newer episode from few years ago was when they did Hamlet. At the end, back in front of the couch, Bart says something about the story being lame. Homer responds with "...but Hamlet was made into a hit movie called...Ghostbusters" at which point the Ghostbusters theme plays, they dance, and the episode ends. I love that scene and that's the type of humor I would prefer from the show.

Anyway - should I finish up the third season (called one of the best) before I give up on it completely?

Points of reference: I think Seinfeld is the most brilliant comedy ever, and Arrested Development (which I've only recently seen) is also incredible - both are in my top 5 overall shows. Family Guy is very overrated. It has a lot of that ridiculousness that I like, but ultimately falls flat. South Park is much better than FG and Simpsons. Spinal Tap yay, Ghostbusters yay, Dr. Strangelove yay.

[youtalkfunny]

The Simpsons has been on for about 20 years. It was great for about 3-5 years.

If you've been watching the other 15-17 seasons, you probably weren't very impressed.

[JuntMonkey]

[ QUOTE ]
The Simpsons has been on for about 20 years. It was great for about 3-5 years.

If you've been watching the other 15-17 seasons, you probably weren't very impressed.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually I've hardly watched new episodes at all since 1993 or so. The last few years I've watched seasons 1, 2, and now part of 3 on DVD.

[Blarg]

Your growing up coincided with the show getting worse. Predictable result.

The show's character has changed enormously. It used to be cutting edge, more layered, and have much more differentiated characters. Now everybody is, pretty much, nice. Even the worst of them. There's not a single Simpsons character these days who isn't pretty darn lovable. The bite went out of the show.

Interestingly, your own taste is a little off. The ending you describe is proof of the lameness of the show these days. They just ran out of ideas and don't even pretend anymore, and worse, they aren't even ironic about it really. It just lays flat and there it is, cut to commercial, PLEASE. A dart in Marge's neck? Why not just Bart making fart noises, already?

You're too young to have been able to put the show, when it first came out, into the perspective of the sickening, smarmy, Cosbyfied, Reaganized, James Wattified grossness of when it came out and realize how cool and daring that was in those times when baloney was being crammed down the culture's throat and up its ass at the same time with such an alarming fury. And now that it's at its worst, you take it as if that defines the show at its best. Worse yet, you don't even know what you're looking for, if you're looking for quality. There's just too much Simpsons to choose from, and the bad and indifferent weigh equally with you as does the good. You don't remember what you're missing and what it's worth; the show has become, largely, just another show. Better than most, but these days that's pretty much saying absolutely nothing.

The anarchy and slyness of the show is largely gone, and it's good to sell a loaf of wonder bread with. But when it came out, it had huge balls.

If you say that it's nothing that great now, you'd be right and wouldn't get many arguments.

I do think that the kind of snarky revisionism that says it was never any good in the first place, or only good for a few seasons is off base and too clever by far. That, too, will pass in time. The show will probably wind up eventually being recognized as having an amazing, very long run of really high quality before devolving into an average product. Actually, the average product is so horrible that The Simpsons may never come close to reaching that abyss.

[Green Kool Aid]

I've been an on and off Simpson's watcher for the last 10 years. What season(s) would you guys say the show peaked at?

Also, I hear a lot about how the show lost its edge when the focus shifted from Bart to Homer. Is this true? If so, to what extent, and when did it occur?

[Blarg]

I'm not an avid follower like I used to be. That said, the show changed a lot but not always in clear ways.

At first it was very anarchic. Everyone in the whole family sucked in their way, and there was no clear star. Then came the Age of Bart. "Don't Have a Cow, Man" and whatever about Bart came to take over the series and its marketing and perception -- an old-time equivalent might be the rise of Fonzie in Happy Days. Bart totally took over the show, and the voracious marketing of Bart was on the brink of sinking the show's credibility entirely. It had nearly completely sold out.

A change had to be made to keep the show from wiping itself out from overexposure. Enter Homer. The change to an emphasis on Homer was the last change the show would undergo. It let some steam out of the bloated publicity machine and let us discover the show again. Luckily, it wasn't a bad choice, at first. Homer, the sad sack, was a good character to follow, less shallow than Bart, whose main motivation was just to rebel. Homer had to fight the man, and societal expectations that he would wipe his ass better or something, but he still had to hold a family together. His job in life was deeper and could spawn much more sympathy and many more shows than Bart ever could. So Homer was in!

Unfortunately, humanizing Homer changed him a lot. He lost the true violence and shaky unreliability of his character, and his alcoholism became kind of cute and acceptable. The public were glad to see their favorite series had been pulled back from the precipice. But to appeal to them, the series went too far.

Mr. Burns became likable; so did that cringe-worthy awfulness of an immoral sycophant, Hitler-referenced creep, Smithers. Apu's cut-throatness got sweeter and somehow warmer. Snake became just simply misunderstood and a nice guy if you'd just give him a chance. Wiggum turned from fascist enahbler to jolly old St. Nick with a pistol. Barney changed from a slovenly alcoholic to a slob.

The series eventually lost its spirit. Everything became safe for the outraged Christians, buyers of the leading brand of bath and kitchen tub and toilet stain removers all, who wrote in weekly complaining of the show's blasphemy and political incorrectness. Matt Groenig made so much money it would have been more cmofortable to vomit up than choke down. The old Matt Groenig took off to Bermuda and barely paid attention to what was coming out anymore. Listen to the DVD commentaries and see how often after the transition to Homer-centrism Groenig even rememberws the episodes he sits in to comment on.

The Simpsons originally came on, like Married with Children, as a splash of cold water in the horrified face of American mealy-mouthed smarmy, bad-faith bullsh*T. It was decried as both genius and unkind and unpleasant, the latter being euphemisms for anything that challenged the lugubrious comfort of the sitcom scene, which never lifted a finger to truly offer viewers any original thoght or sincere feeling or insight whatsoever. This was a series that was actually willing to offend. But it was still t.v. Nobody was marrying goats. It was enough, though, that series like this broke the Cosby-reinforced stranglehold on sweet, toxically vapid family entertainment. The terrifying, frigid smiles of the sell-out culture got a stick up their ass when Groenig came along.

He made his errors, and got caught up in misjudgments, like the celebration of wealth-exploding fairly idiotic Bartdom, that one should probably expect. And then he and his crew caught on and made a brilliant rescue by turning the show away from its first accidental focus on Bart to the focus that would guide it forever after -- the cult of Homer.

And then, it made Homer ever stupider, and kinder, and everyone else kinder too. The show lost its bite. It was transfused into Futurama, which Groenig took much more of an interest in. But that show, anarchic, disrespectful, packed with content on level after level, had a comparatively short run, and Groenig has been only a ghost since then. Now that the tenets of the Simpson juggernaut have been in place so long, who is he, merely their creator, to intervene?

Well, there is a Simpsons movie. And Futurama is coming on the air again, someday, so they say. For sure. But right now, it looks from the outside like Groenig is merely spinning his wheels and wondering what to do with all that money, as his baby floats farther and farther away, blind and indifferent to the magic that spawned it.

[katyseagull]

Wow good post Blarg. I haven't liked the Simpsons for several years now. I could never put into words why, except that it seemed really sappy and preachy at the end of a lot of the episodes and I guess I found Lisa's speeches sort of annoying but that might be because of her voice, I'm not really sure. You explained that well! After reading your post I realized that I probably wanted the characters to go back to being not so kind-hearted.

My observation has been that guys like this show more than girls. I could be wrong though.

[Triumph36]

Blarg -

Isn't this simply a byproduct of the fact that all of the characters were loved despite their shadyness, and that now their over-the-top gimmickry is just trying to continue that shock? It's because Wiggum's mere indifference fails to amuse or shock anymore - so he has to be changed into a cartoon character whose indifference and stupidity is no longer satirizing police incompetence, but has simply evolved into its own entity without any sort of referant to the real world.

I haven't watched new episodes of the Simpsons in a while - the show is simply too off the wall with no structure or grounding to hold it there, and even the writers comment about how they just throw jokes at the audience in far faster pace than they did back then.

Another problem with the show is that when I look at the writing staff, almost all of them are in their 40s or 50s and either worked on the Simpsons in the early 90s or Seinfeld or whatever - their satire of modern culture is often so misguided, I can't even understand what they're going after.

[daveT]

I notice many of the jokes are like inside hollywood jokes. If you have ever been on set, you would see what I am talking about. I agree that the show lost it's bite. It was a kids show that kids weren't allowed to watch. It was a pie in the face of american culture, and a harsh review at the time.

The Tracy Ullman shorts will forever remain the classics.

[kioshk]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not an avid follower like I used to be. That said, the show changed a lot but not always in clear ways.

At first it was very anarchic. Everyone in the whole family sucked in their way, and there was no clear star. Then came the Age of Bart. "Don't Have a Cow, Man" and whatever about Bart came to take over the series and its marketing and perception -- an old-time equivalent might be the rise of Fonzie in Happy Days. Bart totally took over the show, and the voracious marketing of Bart was on the brink of sinking the show's credibility entirely. It had nearly completely sold out.

A change had to be made to keep the show from wiping itself out from overexposure. Enter Homer. The change to an emphasis on Homer was the last change the show would undergo. It let some steam out of the bloated publicity machine and let us discover the show again. Luckily, it wasn't a bad choice, at first. Homer, the sad sack, was a good character to follow, less shallow than Bart, whose main motivation was just to rebel. Homer had to fight the man, and societal expectations that he would wipe his ass better or something, but he still had to hold a family together. His job in life was deeper and could spawn much more sympathy and many more shows than Bart ever could. So Homer was in!

Unfortunately, humanizing Homer changed him a lot. He lost the true violence and shaky unreliability of his character, and his alcoholism became kind of cute and acceptable. The public were glad to see their favorite series had been pulled back from the precipice. But to appeal to them, the series went too far.

Mr. Burns became likable; so did that cringe-worthy awfulness of an immoral sycophant, Hitler-referenced creep, Smithers. Apu's cut-throatness got sweeter and somehow warmer. Snake became just simply misunderstood and a nice guy if you'd just give him a chance. Wiggum turned from fascist enahbler to jolly old St. Nick with a pistol. Barney changed from a slovenly alcoholic to a slob.

The series eventually lost its spirit. Everything became safe for the outraged Christians, buyers of the leading brand of bath and kitchen tub and toilet stain removers all, who wrote in weekly complaining of the show's blasphemy and political incorrectness. Matt Groenig made so much money it would have been more cmofortable to vomit up than choke down. The old Matt Groenig took off to Bermuda and barely paid attention to what was coming out anymore. Listen to the DVD commentaries and see how often after the transition to Homer-centrism Groenig even rememberws the episodes he sits in to comment on.

The Simpsons originally came on, like Married with Children, as a splash of cold water in the horrified face of American mealy-mouthed smarmy, bad-faith bullsh*T. It was decried as both genius and unkind and unpleasant, the latter being euphemisms for anything that challenged the lugubrious comfort of the sitcom scene, which never lifted a finger to truly offer viewers any original thoght or sincere feeling or insight whatsoever. This was a series that was actually willing to offend. But it was still t.v. Nobody was marrying goats. It was enough, though, that series like this broke the Cosby-reinforced stranglehold on sweet, toxically vapid family entertainment. The terrifying, frigid smiles of the sell-out culture got a stick up their ass when Groenig came along.

He made his errors, and got caught up in misjudgments, like the celebration of wealth-exploding fairly idiotic Bartdom, that one should probably expect. And then he and his crew caught on and made a brilliant rescue by turning the show away from its first accidental focus on Bart to the focus that would guide it forever after -- the cult of Homer.

And then, it made Homer ever stupider, and kinder, and everyone else kinder too. The show lost its bite. It was transfused into Futurama, which Groenig took much more of an interest in. But that show, anarchic, disrespectful, packed with content on level after level, had a comparatively short run, and Groenig has been only a ghost since then. Now that the tenets of the Simpson juggernaut have been in place so long, who is he, merely their creator, to intervene?

Well, there is a Simpsons movie. And Futurama is coming on the air again, someday, so they say. For sure. But right now, it looks from the outside like Groenig is merely spinning his wheels and wondering what to do with all that money, as his baby floats farther and farther away, blind and indifferent to the magic that spawned it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you writing a thesis? You sound like the fat comic-book guy.