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Whenever I think back on when The Simpsons changed for me, for some reason I usually think of the screamapillar episode first. There have almost certainly been lower points, possibly even in various classic episodes, but man that one stands out as especially terrible to me. Nonsensical plot, awful jokes, a pointless celebrity guest star, all to build up to an extremely lazy comment on reality TV that even at the time seemed hackneyed.
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Jun 29, 2020 10:11
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I don't remember much about the boy band episode, but even when I first watched it (I was probably around 12-13?) I remember cringing at the bit where N Sync would make their big entrance by dancing to some random tune before one of them just says "Word!". I know that there had been jokes based around "this is what the celebrity does/is famous for" in much earlier episodes ("What do you mean your work is done, you didn't do anything!" "Heh, didn't I?") but it just seemed super dumb and forced. And if I remember correctly they actually did it more than once.
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Jun 30, 2020 17:16
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:"Those wack invertebrates will sting you -- OLD SCHOOL!" still makes me laugh. That, Lieutenant L.T. Smash, and superliminal messaging are all decent gags. Is the bit with the MAD Magazine guys sitting around a table - "I know, why don't we just call it Everybody Hates Raymond?" (everyone laughs) "It took us all night but it was worth it." - in the boy band episode or the New York episode? Because I liked that bit.
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Jun 30, 2020 17:35
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Plan Z posted:The one where I finally noticed it was really going downhill was one where Homer lost his license for driving with a ton of electronic crap plugged into his cigarette lighter. He then starts walking everywhere he goes, forcing Marge to run all of the errands. She then subconsciously tries to kill him with her car, and all is forgiven in the third act when Homer gets Jackson Browne to sing for her. It had everything, from dated takes on dated subjects, to nonsensically-paced three-act plots. I just looked this episode up and remembered that it was the one where my own avatar master Steve Buscemi shows up for literally a single gag, possibly in the middle of a bad musical number? I remember at the time that was singled out as being perhaps the worst use of a guest star in the history of the show.
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Jul 2, 2020 07:01
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This has probably been asked a million times before now, but since I stopped watching properly around season 16-17, who are now considered to be the worst guest stars ever on the show? I know that the Lady Gaga episode is infamous for basically just being a puff piece disguised as a Simpsons episode (as is the Elon Musk episode?), but who are some others? I guess this could include guests who were just used badly, and guests who are/were just flat-out bad people (Mel Gibson, Ted Nugent, MJ, etc). Looking back, what turned me most off the show was the increase in random nonsense plots and wacky jokes that never land (despite the excessive amount of effort spent to get them there), but as a teenager one of the things that made the newer episodes look so much worse was how each one seemed to have at least one token guest star in it, usually voicing themselves and not doing anything remotely funny or relevant.
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Jul 2, 2020 20:31
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Data Graham posted:Julian Assange Oh God, they actually had him on?  Is this what we call "the Tony Blair tier" of bad Simpsons guests?
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Jul 2, 2020 21:00
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I was listening to the season 4 commentaries recently and Streetcar! is especially great because they were told by the Tennessee Williams estate that they could only use, like, a line or two from the play, so making it into a cheesy musical (that completely negates the original meaning of the play) was a very creative way of getting around that.
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Jul 3, 2020 18:52
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Syndication has always been a strange concept to me because it's not really a thing here in the UK. Even now that I basically know what it is, there are bits of it that I don't really understand. With The Simpsons, the only cuts I can remember were more for content reasons. Like when Marge goes to see Mrs Krabappel on parent's evening and she reveals that Bart had a knife concealed inside a Krusty doll, or during the St Patrick's Day parade where part of the festivities involve blowing up "John Bull's Fish and Chips". It was really jarring to see those two bits on DVD, and perhaps as a result they make me a little uncomfortable. That, and I never like it when Bart is implied to be violently malicious, and the IRA gag literally hit a little too close to home for me.
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Jul 5, 2020 14:18
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The Moon Monster posted:The lowest point of the Simpsons is this display in a Niagra Falls wax figure museum (from the lovely wax figure thread) Lisa looks like she just came in straight from a Hellraiser ripoff, and I'm getting major hillbilly serial killer couple vibes from Homer and Marge. As an aside, I've only been to Niagara Falls once and it was on the Canadian side. We were told, "Don't worry, it's not as tacky as the American side", in which case the American side must be an absolute living nightmare (aside from it being in America lolol).
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Jul 17, 2020 17:47
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Re Apu, Much Apu About Nothing is one of my favourite all-time episodes. I think Oakley and Weinstein talk on the commentary about how uncomfortable they find it in hindsight (and they were very happy to have cut the scene where Rainier Wolfcastle campaigns in favour of Proposition 24), but I think that's one of its best features. It's also very funny, a great satire on mindless racism and what it means to be an immigrant in the west. I'M SICK OF THESE CONSTANT BEAR ATTACKS! is still one of the first things that pops into my head when I see people complaining online or in the newspaper.
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Jul 30, 2020 15:40
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Data Graham posted:Apu owning Homer with flag history trivia was It's a great scene, and it's even better when I've actually seen it happen in real life.
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Jul 30, 2020 16:39
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Speaking of Willie, I remember reading somewhere that they used him for some really awful gag about the referendum once?
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Aug 6, 2020 14:22
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Wait what
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Aug 7, 2020 16:14
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And then someone steps on a rake.
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Aug 12, 2020 15:04
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Is this basically like when George HW made his "more like the Waltons, less like the Simpsons" comment and the producers sent a rather silly letter in-character as Marge as a rebuttal, only that wasn't public and was only talked about when the DVDs came out ten years later? Two Bad Neighbours is a classic though and Bart's line "Hey, we're just like the Waltons! We're praying for an end to the depression too!" is great.
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Aug 15, 2020 13:38
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I actually caught the one where the old people's eyes pop out on TV a couple of years ago. It was really, really bad.
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Aug 19, 2020 20:23
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I used to really hate musicals too, and while I'm still not especially interested in stage shows, I eventually came to realise that there are a lot of great film musicals out there. Not only are they great watches in themselves, but they demonstrate how great The Simpsons used to be at parodies/pastiches. Even the numbers that don't actually come from musicals (His name is Monty but to you it's Mr Burrrrrrns!).
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Aug 27, 2020 18:40
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The dance sequence in Seven Brides is amazing. Shame about the rest of the film!
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Aug 29, 2020 04:38
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It was paired up with a bunch of things on BBC2: Fresh Prince, Robot Wars, Farscape, My Wife and Kids, led into with The Weakest Link... That I can remember all that probably shows how much I watched it at the time. Edit: there was a time when I was annoyed at BBC for constantly cycling through seasons 1-5. Then we got Sky for the football and even back then it felt like a monkey's paw of some description. Hedgehog Pie fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Aug 30, 2020 |
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Aug 30, 2020 14:51
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I agree completely on the Super Bowl episode. It's not bad bad, but so much of what went wrong soon after can be seen in it. Just so many disconnected jokes revolving around guest stars, try-hard meta-humour that wasn't funny at all, a all-round silly plot, etc.
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Aug 30, 2020 22:47
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I don't get the point of a ninja fetish. You don't even see them coming.
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Sep 7, 2020 09:09
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I feel like it might be in old serial types like Charlie Chan but idk.
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Sep 8, 2020 22:39
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Frog Act posted:I know it's come up in this thread before but the drag episode is on the site where I stream simpsons episodes while I work and goddamn it's just so awful. It has this truly abrasive, awful song and then it transitions into this part where a french narrator is talking about the ennui of the Simpson women and an accordion is playing? then Lisa fantasizes about eating lunch with Gil, Skinner's mom, the old guy with a beard, and the french narrator keeps...going? what the gently caress is even going on? this is more baffling and offensive than the moe's rag episode I just looked this episode up and apparently it's intended to be an Amelie parody? Not that I'm defending it, the show seemed to lose the ability to do good parodies and pastiches long ago. Rosebud first aired in 1993! Speaking of the Moe's rag episode, I've never seen it but I've seen it top plenty of "worst episode" lists before. Why is that, is it just an out-of-nowhere strange episode that's strange just for the sake of it (and also not funny doing it)? quote:i love this joke though Bart's moon party from outer space got a giggle from me upon first viewing (especially R2-D2's fingering skill) but then I realised that it was one of the few gags of its kind in the entire episode, the one where they come to England if I'm not mistaken. My dad loves the "CAN YOU BELIEVE THEY GAVE GIGGS A YELLOW CARD IN THE BOX?" joke as well but eh, I feel like that one would have been better without Homer then claiming that he has no idea what he just said.
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Sep 9, 2020 14:52
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Toy Story I can understand because the franchise is an institution and very popular still to this day. But I don't think there's quite as much love for Be Kind Rewind out there, even if a horror version might be kind of interesting if done well (it won't be). EDIT: The election bit will be cringey bad and will probably be a poll option in a future version of this thread.
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Sep 15, 2020 17:08
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Diz-Nee-Land (a parody of the theme park Disneyland)
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Sep 29, 2020 17:05
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When was the first time they tried replacing most of the cast anyway? Around seasons 9-10? Hence that throwaway "And no one can tell the diddly-ifference!" gag.
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Oct 1, 2020 17:04
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Did it really take them that long to do a full-on Exorcist parody?
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Oct 16, 2020 06:44
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My parents requested The Regina Monologues earlier. It's as bad as I remembered it.
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Oct 31, 2020 04:14
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Ror posted:Requested? You have parents with favorite zombie Simpsons episodes? They can't take long films (we're all alcoholics) so I suggested some Simpsons to pass the time. This led to "put that one where they come to England on!". quote:Imagine getting to write a sociology paper about satire in the Simpsons but it has to be about a terrible episode. For me, this cushions the blow about probably never being able to study in North America.
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Oct 31, 2020 05:43
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Don't be rough, this is all we have left now.
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Nov 9, 2020 08:02
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J-Spot posted:It was a mess but probably not bottom 10 material. I'm curious as to what a bottom 10 looks like now!
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Nov 10, 2020 23:46
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I don't say evasion, I say avoision.
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Nov 16, 2020 07:53
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Greg12 posted:the thing that made me break my streak of watching every new one was the gorillas coming out of the gem mine It's a real bad episode. What even was the first "The Simpsons are going to ___!" episode? Maybe the Australia one? Which while not one of my favourites still seems light years away from the Africa, London, Brazil, etc episodes.
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Nov 18, 2020 23:26
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Did Michael Moore then show up.
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Nov 19, 2020 12:23
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Milo and POTUS posted:AD's weird as poo poo because while I do think it's best episodes are well in the past it's still pretty decent at a point where Simpsons was probably at its nadir. I think this is the season where I stopped watching because I remember some episodes but not others. The Ricky Gervais episode was promoted like crazy here in the UK. The adverts were funnier than the episode itself. Most of them sound vile though. I distinctly remember the "Grampa contemplates suicide and becomes a matador for some reason" episode and rolling my eyes so hard at the "diePod" joke.
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Nov 23, 2020 18:14
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Heh, that post ought to hold those little SOBs...
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Nov 24, 2020 06:05
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She didn't do it.
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Nov 24, 2020 18:51
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I prefer the interpretation that Bart is quietly brilliant, which was seemingly much more prominent in the earlier seasons. It wasn't the popular image of him taken up by merch and so on, which was quaint even then and more of a Dennis the Menace throwback than anything else (referenced countless times in the show proper), but to me it makes him a much more likeable character. He's a troublemaker, but he was also treated badly from the word go by his school, his peers, his family (often inadvertently), and other authority figures in an American bubble town that is essentially its own universe. Nobody told him that he could be good at something and enjoy it, or even gave him a clue as to what that might be. I sometimes think there should be more characters like early seasons Bart. I like the Oakley/Weinstein seasons, including the Lisa babsysitter episode in a somewhat off-beat way, but it probably is the first time we get a darker treatment of Bart in that he might actually be quite disturbed. Later seasons ran all the way with this, to the point where I distinctly remember episodes where he's just an outright psychopath, albeit one that still seemed weirdly out-of-date if they were trying to do an honest depiction of 21st century "troublemakers", which they almost certainly weren't. Overall it was a bit upsetting!
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Nov 26, 2020 15:43
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Imagined posted:He did put Homer into a coma in season 4. Granted, this was because a single shaken-up can of beer seemingly managed to blow up the entire Simpson house.
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Nov 26, 2020 18:12
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Yeah those are good points. The final scene works great in escalating the tension especially as most of the other people in the room behave like sane humans, and the writers had enough confidence resisting having Homer or Bart be the cause of the breakup. They wisely cut Krusty's unnecessary appearance which in later seasons would have been accompanied by Crazy Cat Lady and Sea Captain. And Sideshow Mel.
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Dec 3, 2020 22:20
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