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Murphy Brown was a huge scandal because of the arc where she decided to have a child....out of wedlock!
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Sep 15, 2017 18:22
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zoux posted:Bart Simpson caused a bit of a moral panic among evangelicals when the Simpsons first came out, due to his disrespect for his parents. I wasn't even allowed to watch it growing up. It's crazy when you compare it to what's on TV now, but Bart Simpson saying "Eat My Shorts" in 1990 was seriously controversial. Beavis and Butthead was a full blown crisis. I think the "underachiever and proud of it" shirt they sold had lot to do with it.
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Sep 15, 2017 18:28
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zoux posted:Murphy Brown was a huge scandal because of the arc where she decided to have a child....out of wedlock! I feel that was kind of manufactured. It's not like we didn't have TV shows or movies about ladies having babies without partners before Murphy Brown. 3 years before that the movie Baby Boom had a very similar plot and no one cared. Looking up the Murphy Brown plot line, it almost sounds like something the Christian Right would like (ditching a radical parter, having a baby against all odds): Murphy Brown posted:In the show's 1991–92 season, Murphy became pregnant. When her baby's father (ex-husband and current underground radical Jake Lowenstein) expressed his unwillingness to give up his own lifestyle to be a parent, Murphy chose to have the child and raise it alone...At the point where she was about to give birth, she had stated that "several people do not want me to have the baby. Pat Robertson; Phyllis Schlafly; half of Utah!" Which makes no sense because none of those people would have ever wanted her to NOT have her baby. It was a bunch of strawmen on both sides. The writers of the show were trying to make a controversial topic and Dan Quayle blundered right into it. I think the debate on the Right was whether a child needed a father, but I don't think that was what the show was trying to argue.
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Sep 15, 2017 18:43
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Ah, Dan Quayle... We were so goddamn innocent back then.
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Sep 15, 2017 18:48
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Zamboni_Rodeo posted:Ah, Dan Quayle... Oh godammit I just realized that there's no way Matt Groening's new show isn't gonna have some terrible Trump character a la Mayor Quimby and Nixon's head.
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Sep 15, 2017 18:53
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Anything with Trump in it is gonna get weird/cringey fast. Like half his deal is that he's too ridiculous to parody. Also kinda funny given he's been around long enough there's Trump parodies from long before he started dabbling in politics.
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Sep 15, 2017 18:57
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Maybe a fresh start is what's needed for Matt Groening. I'll be cautiously optimistic but expect nothing.
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Sep 15, 2017 18:57
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Inescapable Duck posted:Anything with Trump in it is gonna get weird/cringey fast. Like half his deal is that he's too ridiculous to parody. Sure, the Simpsons joke about President Lisa inheriting a financial crisis from President Trump was a reference to his abortive presidential campaign in 2000 as the Reform Party candidate, wasn't it? (He ran on a platform promoting universal healthcare.)
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Sep 15, 2017 19:33
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Inescapable Duck posted:Anything with Trump in it is gonna get weird/cringey fast. Like half his deal is that he's too ridiculous to parody. The new season of Bojack Horseman dropped last week and one of the main storylines was a celebrity election race and even though it didn't feature Trump or even a direct stand-in for Trump there were still enough jabs in that direction that it felt really dated as soon as it aired.
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Sep 15, 2017 19:48
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Sweevo posted:It's even stranger when you remember that S1 of the Simpsons was such overly-sentimental drivel, and that every episode ended with someone learning a valuable lesson. It says a lot about how bad late 80s TV must have been if a cartoon boy occasionally saying "don't have a cow man" was considered so outrageous. Did you, uh, watch the first season of the Simpsons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYglvcLwkK4
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Sep 15, 2017 20:42
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Wheat Loaf posted:Sure, the Simpsons joke about President Lisa inheriting a financial crisis from President Trump was a reference to his abortive presidential campaign in 2000 as the Reform Party candidate, wasn't it? (He ran on a platform promoting universal healthcare.) It was a reference to Trump being a lovely businessman known mostly for his high-profile bankruptcies
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Sep 15, 2017 21:00
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As the great poet wrote: Hard as a boulder Motha fuckin soulja Boom bam boom!! It's a stick up Vice president Dan Quayle eat a dick up Peep game
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Sep 15, 2017 21:27
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Did you, uh, watch the first season of the Simpsons I've been watching the first season of The Simpsons lately because it's probably my least-watched season of that show, and it's surprisingly a lot funnier and more interesting than I remembered. I had also forgotten about the full intro with Lisa riding with her bike with her saxophone tied down and Bart stealing a bus stop sign. It's sort of trippy to see the one-off characters since the entire Springfield "cast" that's so familiar to us now hadn't been created yet.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR8WWFzrZAg
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Sep 15, 2017 21:43
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Last Chance posted:I've been watching the first season of The Simpsons lately because it's probably my least-watched season of that show, and it's surprisingly a lot funnier and more interesting than I remembered. Yeah, the first season is definitely rough-and I mean rough, both in style and in storytelling. But most of the episodes are still pretty funny in their own right, and do a good job of laying the roots for the show that the Simpsons would eventually become.
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Sep 15, 2017 22:53
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Inescapable Duck posted:Also kinda funny given he's been around long enough there's Trump parodies from long before he started dabbling in politics. I'd say he's moved well beyond "dabbling", dude.
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Sep 15, 2017 23:03
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BiggerBoat posted:I'd say he's moved well beyond "dabbling", dude. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC3W1BiUjp0
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Sep 16, 2017 00:06
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Yeah, the first season is definitely rough-and I mean rough, both in style and in storytelling. But most of the episodes are still pretty funny in their own right, and do a good job of laying the roots for the show that the Simpsons would eventually become. Family Guy had a recent episode where some crudely-drawn characters from the first episode make a cameo appearance, because meta.
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Sep 16, 2017 01:24
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knife_of_justice posted:Family Guy had a recent episode where some crudely-drawn characters from the first episode make a cameo appearance, because meta. I thought they did a time travel episode where they went back to the pilot episode. Or did they do the same gag twice?
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Sep 16, 2017 01:58
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knife_of_justice posted:Family Guy had a recent episode where some crudely-drawn characters from the first episode make a cameo appearance, because meta. Simpsons did it. Edit: 
Acebuckeye13 has a new favorite as of 02:21 on Sep 16, 2017 |
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Sep 16, 2017 02:12
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There was also the episode where Lester and Eliza saved Itchy and Scratchy, and got Apu out of jail.
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Sep 16, 2017 05:13
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That's so lazily done. At least the Family Guy episode ('Back to the Pilot') took pains to show off the extensive character/animation differences, i.e. it actually looked like a mixture of digital and cel-based animation. Those Simpsons families just look like they were knocked up in an hour on Flash, and the Ullman Simpsons looked much cruder than that.
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Sep 16, 2017 06:19
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That's been the last 10(?) years of the Simpsons. I remember being really impressed with it at first but it lost all of its charm.
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Sep 16, 2017 06:42
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knife_of_justice posted:That's so lazily done. At least the Family Guy episode ('Back to the Pilot') took pains to show off the extensive character/animation differences, i.e. it actually looked like a mixture of digital and cel-based animation. Those Simpsons families just look like they were knocked up in an hour on Flash, and the Ullman Simpsons looked much cruder than that. That's the only family guy episode I've seen in the past ten years or so that I actually enjoyed precisely because of that
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Sep 16, 2017 06:53
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FreudianSlippers posted:As the great poet wrote: It's a bitch, gently caress George W. -- can't be true -- I wanna choke him, because he's a snitch I'm talking about George W. Smith From city council, he ran in '93 Out in Oakland, you probably didn't hear about him
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Sep 16, 2017 16:06
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BiggerBoat posted:I'd say he's moved well beyond "dabbling", dude. I honestly wouldn't.
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Sep 16, 2017 16:09
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Straight White Shark posted:The new season of Bojack Horseman dropped last week and one of the main storylines was a celebrity election race and even though it didn't feature Trump or even a direct stand-in for Trump there were still enough jabs in that direction that it felt really dated as soon as it aired. Nah. It was probably inspired by Trump but it was more like "A lot of people just want to be told what they want to hear instead of actually voting for their best interest." which isn't something Trump invented.
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Sep 16, 2017 16:17
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Straight White Shark posted:The new season of Bojack Horseman dropped last week and one of the main storylines was a celebrity election race and even though it didn't feature Trump or even a direct stand-in for Trump there were still enough jabs in that direction that it felt really dated as soon as it aired. I expected this to be the case going into season 4, but I honestly have to disagree with you on this one, even though I think that campaign plot line was the weakest element of this season. For one, the main focus was still on the characters personalities instead of just focusing on the satire. Moreover, the political satire is very broad and targeted more at how the media covers politics instead of aiming at the politicians themselves. Trump never even gets a mention, instead the focus is on how media is takes an extremely shallow view of politics and doesn't take things as seriously as they deserve to be, which ends up promoting unqualified idiots. Trump is certainly the worst case of that happening in a while, but he's hardly the first time this sort of thing has happened and I doubt it will be the last.
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Sep 16, 2017 17:59
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I'll agree that the campaign plot wasn't Bojack's strongest, but like hell it was weaker than the near-completely unconnected clown dentistry storyline.
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Sep 16, 2017 18:13
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Krispy Kareem posted:I feel that was kind of manufactured. It's not like we didn't have TV shows or movies about ladies having babies without partners before Murphy Brown. 3 years before that the movie Baby Boom had a very similar plot and no one cared. Looking up the Murphy Brown plot line, it almost sounds like something the Christian Right would like (ditching a radical parter, having a baby against all odds): What didn't age well (starting from that) was the idea of TV episodes that pushed boundaries and the like. In fact the '90s were quite the decade for blowing up the idea of stagnant TV and launching into full revolt against the Religious Right's way of creating outrage to extort the media into toeing the line they created that was supposedly 'real America.' Seriously, look at the change from the early '90s with the Right bitching about Murphy Brown to 2000 when the Internet is showing all sorts of porn and other discourse while most of America decided paying for TV was better than dealing with five to six different networks that was offering poo poo like Shasta McNasty and Homeboys from Outer Space. We literally went from starched collars screaming that giving birth was obscene to free and ready Internet porn that nobody could control. It was quite brilliant, actually. So, the idea of outrage to blackmail TV into toeing a Christian line is something that has completely vanished. Yeah, I'm sure there are freaks doing their little lists about what not to watch (aka what to be scandalized about when you're complaining instead of living), but notice that a lot of shows getting bullshit outrage are either rightfully ignored or actually courted as a way to make more cash.
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Sep 16, 2017 21:20
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I liked Shasta McNasty 
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Sep 17, 2017 05:26
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zoux posted:Bart Simpson caused a bit of a moral panic among evangelicals when the Simpsons first came out, due to his disrespect for his parents. I wasn't even allowed to watch it growing up. It's crazy when you compare it to what's on TV now, but Bart Simpson saying "Eat My Shorts" in 1990 was seriously controversial. Beavis and Butthead was a full blown crisis. I couldn't watch it either yet Christmas Vacation is one of our favorite christmas movies so.... Milo and POTUS has a new favorite as of 06:20 on Sep 17, 2017 |
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Sep 17, 2017 05:59
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zoux posted:Bart Simpson caused a bit of a moral panic among evangelicals when the Simpsons first came out, due to his disrespect for his parents. I wasn't even allowed to watch it growing up. It's crazy when you compare it to what's on TV now, but Bart Simpson saying "Eat My Shorts" in 1990 was seriously controversial. Beavis and Butthead was a full blown crisis. i guess at some point they came around 
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Sep 17, 2017 06:42
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For all the people who mentioned all the "oh no people think I'm gay!" Chandler stuff in Friends, did you know there was a Matthew Perry movie where that was the entire premise?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPqkFhl4LkM&t=38s Whatev has a new favorite as of 06:52 on Sep 17, 2017 |
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Sep 17, 2017 06:44
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Didn't Flanders start off as a normal guy who got way into religion, almost in an over the top way where it just became joke after joke?
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Sep 17, 2017 06:45
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bobjr posted:Didn't Flanders start off as a normal guy who got way into religion, almost in an over the top way where it just became joke after joke? He was a poster child for a character who became more and more exaggerated over the years, though it was a fairly gradual process. He was originally pretty much a guy who was nice and considerate to the point of a doormat who is relentlessly taken advantage of by Homer, and then suffers a lot of misfortune (His house destroyed in a hurricane and having a breakdown afterwards, his wife dying, and a few other things) and deals with other kinds of weirdness. (He's actually 60 years old. Clean living) Eventually he started becoming more overly religious, and his children went from cheerful and hyperactive to terminally naive disasters waiting to happen. I kinda figured it might have been a reflection of Christianity in American culture becoming more niche, extreme and scary to secular and moderate people.
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Sep 17, 2017 07:37
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You know what aged well? The Red Green Show. I watched a couple episodes from the first season the other day and they're still as charming as ever. I'm sure there's some episode where Harold gets a flip phone or something, but the central sketch comedy skeleton holds up just fine.
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Sep 17, 2017 08:05
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hard counter posted:i guess at some point they came around Christian pop culture is perpetually a decade behind the rest of the world so getting into The Simpsons in 2001 checks out. bobjr posted:Didn't Flanders start off as a normal guy who got way into religion, almost in an over the top way where it just became joke after joke? His whole thing was originally being better than The Simpsons at everything including being a better Christian since, as mentioned earlier, the Simpson family has always been church-going. He was a good friendly person but him being an evangelical fuddy-duddy was something the character involved into over time, even drinks in the early episodes.
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Sep 17, 2017 10:01
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Originally they wanted Flanders to be more of an overt nemesis to Homer, but when Harry Shearer tried a voice on the studio felt he sounded like such a nice guy they made him basically the perfect neighbor. Being religious but not weirdly so was just part of the nice guy image.
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Sep 17, 2017 10:33
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Flanders was weirdly religious, but not so much that everyone couldn't immediately relate to him to that one family that seemed normal on the outside, but when you stayed over you found out they only watched Christian television and thought spices were indecent.
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Sep 17, 2017 12:47
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There were a couple of really pro-Christianity episodes in the Simpsons, which was weird to me as a godless non-American: Homer steals Cable, which is wrong because Christianity is real and you will go to hell for that Homer the Heretic, where they say God didn't burn down his house but He totally did. And Jesus works through all people even heathens like Apu. Anyway, moral is you must go to church.
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Sep 17, 2017 13:06
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