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When they started creating episodes around guest stars (who play themselves) instead of creating one or two jokes for them in a larger episode plot.
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Aug 23, 2014 18:23
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Fateo McMurray posted:When they started creating episodes around guest stars (who play themselves) instead of creating one or two jokes for them in a larger episode plot. That and the change to the four-act setup. Anyway, a quote: eatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepudding
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Aug 23, 2014 18:27
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CBJSprague24 posted:I hesitantly started watching the Every Simpsons Ever marathon on FXX and was glad to be reunited with some of the classic episodes I grew up with (including Homer's triple bypass, which I remember watching on a US Airways flight in 2000 for some reason). I gave up on watching new episodes when Simon Cowell became a talent judge at a pre-school Maggie was trying to gain acceptance to and probably hadn't watched a full Simpsons episode since 2005 prior to last night. I think the cracks start to show in the 9th and 10th Season and then around season 15 you get the current incarnation of the Simpsons. They slowly start moving away from a family dynamic to amplifying the worst of each characters personalities. Also, there is a subtle shift to from when they had 24 minutes to 21 or 22 minutes.
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Aug 23, 2014 18:36
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It was 1997. The awful episode about Burns holding the trillion dollar bill, Homer's favor to Patty and Selma, and that awful one about the angel at the shopping mall. I can't remember an imperfect episode before that. I think it depends entirely on how old you are.
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Aug 23, 2014 18:37
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CBJSprague24 posted:Since this is the place I talk most TV-related stuff, I'm curious as to the Goon consensus as to the point the show started to fade, and when it completely imploded into crap. I've seen articles say it was in the 2002-2004 timeframe when things started to go sideways, but didn't know if that was consistent with what others thought. There are a couple points which often come up with that question. My personal bugbear has been "Skinner's Sense of Snow", where Homer gets sprayed in the face with a ranch dressing hose and the episode ends with Lisa honking like a camel while a fume-dazed Homer gropes Bart in the background, though the line "You did it, Nibbles! Now chew through my ball sack" may redeem it somewhat. The following, however, is often marked as a turning point:  Season 12, basically, upped the raunchy humor and kind of anarchic "we don't give a poo poo about characters anymore". I actually like a lot of S10-11 episodes but 12 is where it starts getting dire. CharlieFoxtrot fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Aug 23, 2014 |
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Aug 23, 2014 19:34
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IMO seasons 15-19 were better than 11-14. With seasons 20-25, it felt like the new formula was running dry.
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Aug 23, 2014 20:16
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For me, the first season that I find feels particularly off in my mind is Season 11. For what it's worth, it still has it's share of episodes that I genuinely enjoy, but when it got bad, it got really bad (the standout examples in my mind being Kill the Alligator and Run, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge, and loving Saddlesore Galactica). Comparitively, I feel like Seasons 12 and 13 are a little more consistently enjoyable to watch for me looking at the episode lists, but I admittedly haven't actually watched either of them in the ballpark of around a decade, so I may very well be talking out of my rear end on that one. 
Trash Boat fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Aug 23, 2014 |
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Aug 23, 2014 21:41
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Is "actor 3" in Checkin' In supposed to be Robert Downey Jr?
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Aug 24, 2014 15:48
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CBJSprague24 posted:Since this is the place I talk most TV-related stuff, I'm curious as to the Goon consensus as to the point the show started to fade, and when it completely imploded into crap. I've seen articles say it was in the 2002-2004 timeframe when things started to go sideways, but didn't know if that was consistent with what others thought. The first decade of the show had a lot of staff turnover. Show runner duty was handed off every two years and always resulted in a shift in tone that sometimes rubbed people the wrong way. When Mike Scully took over in season 9, he took the show in a cartoonier, slapstick direction. Scully turned The Simpsons into The Homer Simpson Show, shoving most of the other characters into the background. The family dynamic was replaced by whatever wacky situation Homer got himself into for the week, and Homer himself became a much more obnoxious character. Typically Homer's antics would escalate into a ridiculous action sequence by the third act. Scully stuck it out for four seasons, two more than any previous show runner. He was replaced by Al Jean whose arrival was originally welcomed with a lot of optimism by Simpsons fans. Jean did tone down a lot of the excesses of the Scully era, taking some of the focus off of Homer and cutting down on the action sequences and meta-humor that had characterized the past couple of seasons. As a trade-off he made the show rather safe and bland. Jean's idea of restoring the focus back to the family dynamic resulted in a lot of plots that can be boiled down to one member of the family offending another with a reconciliation in act 3. Any attempts at satire are generally toothless and inoffensive so they don't alienate any members of the audience. The Simpsons became Fox's version of Mickey Mouse, too obsessed with its own status as a cultural institution to remember the creative energy that made it popular in the first place. Jean has run the show since season 13. His seasons have never been great but at this point he doesn't seem to be trying anymore. Starting around season 20 or 21 the show became been much worse than any that came before. Most episodes today are absolutely lifeless and creatively bankrupt. The writers are so starved for plot ideas that you can rarely relate to the situations the characters find themselves in. Many episodes are so disjointed and lacking in basic story-telling structure that you wonder how anyone involved could ever get a job as a professional writer.
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Aug 24, 2014 17:43
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Thanks for the info. I've rediscovered a fandom of the show I haven't had in years watching the marathon and lost because everything I'd seen about the show in the last decade pointed to "Don't waste your time". I didn't think the movie was that great, either. For whatever reason, the last episode I can remember watching as it premiered and enjoying was The Lastest Guns in the West in 2002. From there, it seemed to be something I didn't enjoy as much before giving up on it altogether with stuff like Simon Cowell's guest appearance which was an obvious "Hey, this plot is kinda like American Idol, and Simon Cowell is ON American Idol! You should watch it!". Plus, I watch quite a bit of NASCAR and NFL on FOX and haven't seen a new Simpsons episode previewed which was worth watching. Fateo McMurray posted:When they started creating episodes around guest stars (who play themselves) instead of creating one or two jokes for them in a larger episode plot. Having watched very little of the show in almost a decade and having been repulsed by the previews of the new episodes when I see them, I agree with this. Just watched A Fish Called Selma and I picked up on Troy's agent being Jeff Goldblum without the show having to scream "Hey look, it's (Special Guest) on The Simpsons!".
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Aug 24, 2014 17:58
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CBJSprague24 posted:From there, it seemed to be something I didn't enjoy as much before giving up on it altogether with stuff like Simon Cowell's guest appearance which was an obvious "Hey, this plot is kinda like American Idol, and Simon Cowell is ON American Idol! You should watch it!".
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Aug 24, 2014 18:25
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I will always say that my favorite Simpsons era was the Oakley & Weinstein era. Maybe because a lot of the stuff they like is similar to my interests. Lisa the Iconoclast is by far my favorite Lisa episode, and its a great one for Homer. "You're ususaly right about this kinda stuff, and I want in on the ground floor!" And as for a general classic era, I'd say season 3-10 is probably the strongest. After that there are more duds than hits, and slowly it just grows and grows. I still enjoy later episodes, but not nearly as much as the earlier stuff. Recently, I've found the episodes getting much better, but when they miss, they miss hard. The Gaga episode and the Halloween episode with the farting spiderman among the lowest of the low. I'd say the Angel Episode is by far my least favorite episode. All Singing All Dancing is pretty close, only due to the really, really bad songs from the Snake segments.
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Aug 24, 2014 18:35
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The angel episode is awful. The last one I watched all the way through had jockeys living in a magic tree. I was in high school and I can remember any interest I had in the show vanish right then. The one with Skinner getting outed as an imposter is actually pretty funny up until the bizarro end.
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Aug 24, 2014 18:48
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I would say a few episodes into season 9 (around when Scully took over) is where the rot really set in. And then most of the remaining Scully era was just an embarrassment. It did get better once Jean came back as showrunner, but I petered out the middle of the last decade or so. By then I felt like it was definitely funner than under Scully, but something was just lost. What does it say that off the top of my head possibly the only Simpsons thing anyone likes to really quote in the past 15 years is Stupid Sexy Flanders. Also it kinda hurts that as of now FXX is up to the end of the next to last universally tolerable season and we still have over a week's worth of episodes left
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Aug 24, 2014 18:58
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twistedmentat posted:The Gaga episode and the Halloween episode with the farting spiderman among the lowest of the low. Jack Gladney posted:The last one I watched all the way through had jockeys living in a magic tree.
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Aug 24, 2014 19:00
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The magic jockeys episode reeks of we had nowhere to go with this, just throw random crap against the wall to see what happens. I watched the Lady Gaga episode when it aired and I don't remember it being bad (not quite good either) but some of that is probably Lady Gaga backlash.
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Aug 24, 2014 19:15
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Yeah I typically find "When did the show start to go bad?" discussions exhausting, because people act like one episode from seasons 10, 11, 12 or so seals the deal, and I enjoyed the "safeness" of the late teen seasons over Scully's excesses. (Flipping through the updated ultimate guide book, I'm surprised when I'm reminded by stuff that happened S11-15. Like the one episode when an old lady ended up being Carmen Electra or something.) I understand this discussion is kind of inevitable with the FXX marathon. (I'm personally not watching, I'll definitely want to watch every episode at my own pace on my DVDs once and if the show eventually ends. I've seen all of classic Simpsons multiple times, but most of the second decade probably only once.) I thought the angel episode wasn't bad, though I understand it's pretty much a proto "typical" dry Lisa episode that would later keep popping up. This problem was kind of happening even when the show was firmly in its late classic era with episodes like Hans Sprungfeld and the boot camp one coming to mind, which I also thought weren't bad, but could easily be used as "hindsight problems" episodes.
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Aug 24, 2014 19:18
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I think the show was "bad" long before I noticed it. My thought process was "Simpsons is on, Simpsons is funny, if I'm not laughing it's just me missing why it was funny." When I realized that the show wasn't good was the one where Homer is on a submarine.
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Aug 24, 2014 19:37
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The Fuzzy Hulk posted:I think the show was "bad" long before I noticed it. My thought process was "Simpsons is on, Simpsons is funny, if I'm not laughing it's just me missing why it was funny." I've never seen "Simpson Tide" mentioned before in the "poo poo Simpsons" discussion. Sure, it's faintly a retread of "Deep Space Homer" but it's chock full of great lines, including the whole "Soviet Union? I thought you guys broke up" sequence. I also see that it's the last of the Jean/Reiss episodes, which I guess explains why people don't like "Trouble with Trillions" which comes after it, but I'd disagree with them on that too...
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Aug 24, 2014 20:42
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J-Spot posted:The Gaga episode actually takes the coveted title of "Worst Episode Ever!" according to viewer rankings. Personally I'd give the nod to 'Moe Goes From Rags to Riches' from the same season. That's a great website (and I'm going to have some fun with other shows on there) and it gives a graphical representation of the bottom beginning to fall out around 200.
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Aug 24, 2014 21:27
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It's kind of scary to me that I can finish half the gags in these classic episodes from memory, even when I don't remember all the details of the plot. I did see them in syndication multiple times well into college, but not at all for a good 10 years. What if I had read poetry as a child instead?
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Aug 24, 2014 21:31
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J-Spot posted:The Gaga episode actually takes the coveted title of "Worst Episode Ever!" according to viewer rankings. Personally I'd give the nod to 'Moe Goes From Rags to Riches' from the same season. The Gaga episode was the one that killed the Simpsons for me. I'd been getting kinda sick of the show for a while now for reasons outlined (celebrity guests in self-serving, self-promoting roles that don't help the story and instead enslave it plus all the other poo poo) but still watching. That one did it. I might have half-assedly watched an episode or two afterwards, but I just completely lost interest in the show and stopped watching. It was just so loving awful. The episode felt like it had been written by Lady Gaga's PR team as an advertisement for her and all the humor was just so god drat dire and lame. Then I realized that the same could be said about most celebrity episodes and also that there were so loving many of them, and just kinda stopped watching.
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Aug 26, 2014 11:44
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Der Shovel posted:The Gaga episode was the one that killed the Simpsons for me. I'd been getting kinda sick of the show for a while now for reasons outlined (celebrity guests in self-serving, self-promoting roles that don't help the story and instead enslave it plus all the other poo poo) but still watching. That one did it. I might have half-assedly watched an episode or two afterwards, but I just completely lost interest in the show and stopped watching. This episode airs on my local station Thursday at 5. I'm tempted to watch just to see how low "low" was, but I'm afraid it'll kill my rediscovered positive vibe toward the show. On a related note, I'm tempted to ask the local FOX affiliate to start showing the classics again.
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Aug 26, 2014 17:33
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CBJSprague24 posted:This episode airs on my local station Thursday at 5. I'm tempted to watch just to see how low "low" was, but I'm afraid it'll kill my rediscovered positive vibe toward the show. I don't know if they're allowed. I watched the local reruns for many years after I quit watching the new ones, and years ago they all switched over to ones I hadn't seen before.
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Aug 26, 2014 19:26
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Jack Gladney posted:I don't know if they're allowed. I watched the local reruns for many years after I quit watching the new ones, and years ago they all switched over to ones I hadn't seen before. Netflix does something similar, all of their shows are about 8 seasons at most, even if the actual show has more seasons.
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Aug 26, 2014 20:01
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