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Is it just me or has the simpsons  lost their touch along the way! I mean just watch the last Halloween episode. It sucked, it spoofed some good or memorable films and that's it! They need to stop ruining the flavor. Oh well...I'll watch the Korean soap The Immortal Yi-Soon Shin or American Dreams.

Also they are canceling Grounded for Life! How could they? It was actually funny and good!

They've been bad for a few seasons now (they're on 16, they started tanking somewhere around 13). But while I could sit through the previous episodes, this new season is completely unwatchable. I used to be a huge fan of the show- now I just want to see it canceled.

The simpsons should have ended while they were still in their prime,  it looks like they are going to beat the dead horse just like they did with the X-Files.

I don't think they need to cancel it, just STOP SUCKING. X-Files didn't have to start sucking either, it seemed intentional, everyone always knew it would suck if Scully and Mulder ever got it on. It's not like there's a finite suply of good episodes, they probably just have crappy writters now. It jumped the shark as abruptly as any show ever has; at the precise moment when Homer was mounted by the rutting panda. I think that abrupt shark jumps like this indicate some kind of shake up in the writting department. The should get Rossane to whip the show back into shape, not that she's funny, but she's great at firing crappy writters.

There is a much more serious problem that's not getting enough attention: Funny parts are being edited out of the re-runs!!!!!!! Remember in the Halloween episode where world-tyrant Flanders sics the hounds on Homer, he pulls a bunch of sausages out of his coat and says, "These sausages will give me the quick energy I need to outrun those dogs" and eats them? Last time I saw that, he just runs and dosen't say anything funny! It's a humorless action sequence!!! I can't remember any other specific examples (which bugs me, my memories might be the last record of how funny the show used to be), but with alarming frequency, I'll watch a re-run and anticipate one of my favorite punch lines, *and they do the set-up* and cut out the PUNCH LINE, so that they are saying things for NO REASON. It's like "Hey Bart, are you enjoying your breakfast?" "Yes, I am." Has Lucas attached one of his injecto-pods to Groenig?

I was luke warm on them until last year's halloween special. After that I just gave up. Their one chance to be creative,  and they blew it.

And Grounded for life ended up over on WB, don't know if it got canceled from there or not, I think it comes on Friday nights.

Grounded for life is still on the WB I believe. I dont think the new simpsons episodes are that great either. But every episode they do manage to pull some interesting tricks out of their sleaves.

Thi is the final simpsons season I believe. 16 seasons is damn good though, i do wish they had some better writers working on some of the episodes.

'Simple simpson' was one of the worst episodes when it really did have some potential.  if they spent more time on the plot  of each episode they would have more oppertunities for jokes.

First-grounded for life-I enjoy it; it's stupid, watch re-runs of Simpsons (watching one now :) yeah sad) also thought they sucked ages ago.  Think 'they' signed up for at least 3 more years tho. Faves - first treehouse "Quoth the Raven Nevermore" Don't know why they didn't do stuff like that again, Pet Sematary ep does not count.  & The Cat Burgular "On my way to the ground, I noticed he was wearing sneakers;for sneaking" love it. Hates: eps like where Homer gets "raped" by a panda - and it goes downhill from there.

BTW, how DID badmovies get onto Simpsons?

It started sucking years ago. However, I almost thought it was getting back on track for a couple of episodes last season. After this week's episode, I'm sure it's all over. It's as if they're stuck for stories, and just assembling combinations of characters and situations that haven't been put together yet. "Hey, let's put Marge and Nelson together." So Marge can bring out Nelson's sensitive side (which Lisa already did years ago). Bart can be afraid of Nelson, who has gone back to being a simple bully, even though he's been shown as one of Bart's friends for a long time now. And Lisa can worry about her image in a way that is totally out of character, and was also already done, more or less, in the episode with Lisa Kudrow. The whole episode was just a mish-mash.

And have you ever noticed that Nelson's family never remains consistent. In one episode, they showed his dad - a biker who looked nothing like the most recent dad - and hinted that his mom was also around. In other episodes, it was suggested he lived with his dad and his mom was absent. Then at some point they came up with the idea that his dad had run off.

WORST EPISODE EVER!

Sorry that rant sounded like Comic Book Guy

Damn you SaintMort, you stole my line.  (I was going to say Worst. Halloween. Episode. Ever.)
With most shows you've got to deal with actors wanting to leave and what not, all the Simpsons needs is some fresh/good writers.  There are still some good episodes, but it is wildly uneven now.

Why did they stop with FUTURAMA - wasn´t it much better than the Simpsons?

I liked Grounded for Life.  Not enough to make a point of watching it, but it was kind of entertaining.  

I haven't watched the Simpson's since about the third season.  What was that, ten years ago?

If I'm in the mood for a sitcom, I watch reruns of Married With Children.  Wish they'd release season 3 on DVD, it's the first really good one.

Dude, what are you talking about? The Simpsons rule! Who cares if they lost their touch a little? Just look at how long the seasons have run.

Longevity isn't a good reason for supporting something. If it's 'lost it's touch a little' (more like a LOT) it's time for the show to retire.

The Simpson's have lost touch?  Folks, the kids have been in the same grade for 16 years!!!!  It's never really been IN touch.

I agree that the episodes aren't as good as they have been in the past, but you had to love the Bart as Hugh Hefner.  Come-on...James Caan in the tree house and then falling to the Sonny Corleone execution hit....great stuff.  How about the sign..."you must be at least this cool to enter" with the picture of Milhouse.  I laughed my ass off.

The Halloween one wasn't as good this year but the next couple have been pretty good.

Agreed, I liked the Playdude episode. Lots of good gags in that one, and having read a few old 70s skin books as an adolescent, it was bang on. The James Caan cameo was great too. But then the episode that followed, with Nelson's dad, looked as if it was hastily cobbled together out of spare parts.

As for the Halloween episode, those haven't been good for years. In the early seasons, you could usually count on the Halloween episode to be one of the year's best, because there were even fewer limits on the story than usual, and they could do some really crazy stuff (for the Simpsons, that's saying a lot). But probably the last half dozen Halloween episodes have ranged from mediocre to crap. Really disappointing.



Post Edited (11-23-04 07:38)

The reason the show has taken such a nose dive is the writing. Have you ever heard of Dana Gould? Take a look at some of his work. And now they're letting Dan Castellaneta write? Why? Why?

I'm pretty sure that there are good young writers in Hollywood who just can't get work because they're not Harvard grads. Otherwise, there's just no talent out there. And I'm not naive enough to believe that.

What they've done to the show is criminal and I've lost a ton of respect for Groening and his staff. The way they've tanked these characters is just unreal. The only thing I can think to do is to start writing episodes and mailing them in. They won't get read, but it's the only hope we have of getting the first decent season in 10 years.

That is a good idea man, let's do it! I mean all of us badmovies people, collaboratively.

They are  going to cancel Grounded for Life. Since Simpsons jumped the shark it is now a bad show.

Yes it was

I always loved the one Halloween episode with the random angry Lepricun(sp?) at the end that just yelled random irish gibberish, but that one was of the only recent ones I really liked.

That one was okay. I liked the 2001 spoof.

>There is a much more serious problem that's not getting enough attention: Funny
>parts are being edited out of the re-runs!!!!!!!

They do that with quite a few shows, so that they can cram in an extra 5 seconds of commercial time.

I have two Treehouse of Horror that I love....

1.  Homer and the Time Travelliing Toaster....NO DOUGHNUTS!!!

2.  All of the kids are being made into food at the school....."please to have more of the sloppy Jimbo.....tomorrow we are serving Uder-bratten.

Ha, ha, ha......gotta love em.

Those were from the same year, which also had The Shinning. That was one of the best Halloween specials they've done. I especially enjoyed the running gag of Willy getting axed every time he comes to the rescue, a la Scatman Crothers.

I also liked the Night Gallery episode, with Flanders as the devil, the gremlin on the bus, and Bart Simpson's Dracula. The one with King Homer and the talking Krusty doll was pretty good too. The second special, with the nightmares about the monkey's paw, omnipotent Bart, and Burns' robot, was another outstanding one.

Interesting that all the best Halloween specials were from the first five they did. The next few were hit and miss, with maybe one good segment out of three, or even one or two really good gags. I got a kick out of Citizen Kang (Clin-ton and Bobdole), which must have been eight years ago, and the Y2K bit was funny even if it didn't take advantage of the wealth of Maximum Overdrive references that were possible. The last few have been disappointing all around. Funny, when you actually look back on all of them, it's been about ten years since the Simpsons have done a great Halloween episode.

One of the problems, besides the poor writing in general, is that they've largely gotten away from the horror, and are making Halloween episodes of three off-the-wall stories that don't always have much to do with Halloween.



Post Edited (11-23-04 12:52)

The Halloween episode with Mr. Burns as Dracula was hilarious. My favorite part of that was when they first met him in the house and the shadow that he cast on the wall was doing various things, including playing with a yo-yo. They certainly have gone down hill. I haven't watched that show on a regular basis for about 3 years now.

I think the Simpsons used to be great but it's been in decline for a while now. I mean now when I hear the phrase "The Simpsons are going to..." I just change the channel. Really, I think the problem is that the original spirit of the show - a playful undermining and mockery of society.

Now it's just more episodes for the sake of more money - the show is almost painful to watch though, it's so dull and listless. It's a shame really but it's just difficult to maintain a high quality indefinitely. I mean, yes there aren't a finite number of good shows but even the best TV shows have to finish sometime and as innumerable (Buffy, Frasier, Simpsons, X-Files, Angel (although that got better), ER, Cheers) different programmes demonstrate, sure you can run 5-6+ seasons but eventually, you're going to run out of ideas - which I suppose in and of itself surprising really. The show Sliders literally had infinite potential, the X-files did too. Buffy and Angel certainly had a lot of scope but got too caught up in their own incessant soap opera. Yet they all fail eventually.

I remember when I first saw Family Guy, I thouhgt that it was good but that it was perhaps too deriative of the Simpsons (I mean, there are some things that seem to be copied directly, example Homer the Moe and "Doin' Toad" both involve the protagonist smashing a jukebox while imitating the Fonz and then bleeding a lot) but now I realise that Family Guy in fact does the Simpsons better than the Simpsons.

Right now, the Simpsons is coasting on the momentum it built up in its early seasons, when it was fresh, new, clever and still had an edge. Back when each episode seemed to be carefully crafted with layer upon layer of humour. The first season is hard to watch, but the show hit its stride fairly quickly and got steadily better for the first few years, as Springfield and its residents became a more complex community.

Looking back, the decline probably started long before anybody noticed it. I'd say the show probably peaked around the fifth or sixth season, and the quality and number of really outstanding episodes started to drop off. The Halloween specials are probably a good indicator. There was still some way to go before it started to get noticeably bad a few years ago. The Simpsons might still be funny to the less discriminating viewer, but the great satire and intelligent humour that made us fans is long gone.

It's lasted as long as it has on sheer momentum and fan loyalty. Like Happy Days and other shows that lasted years longer than they should have, it got too popular, too big to die quickly. It has other advantages. The fact that the characters never age, and voice work is less of a commitment for the actors than live action, has kept the cast intact. The constant rerunning of the good early episodes has probably done much to keep fans hungry for new Simpsons, although it also makes the lowered standards more apparent. It could even be generating new fans. I imagine there is a steady stream of kids who weren't even born when the show started, who are discovering the superior reruns, or at least becoming old enough to appreciate them. Of course, you can only watch them so many times.

The way things are going, the last of the die-hard Simpsons fans are going to get sick of it pretty soon. Hard to say what kind of a future it will have after its cancelled. Classic shows of the past have lasted decades in reruns, but the Simpsons have been largely burnt out while the show is still in production.



Post Edited (11-24-04 07:56)

I think it jumped the shark around when South Park came out. Suddenly, the writers got it into their heads that people wanted outrageousness, and started writing wackier and wackier plots. The problem, which has become more obvious since the shock of South Park wore off, is that that show couched its wackiness in sharp satire, like the Simpsons used to before it went off the deep end. I hated South Park when it first came out, but now I realize it's really closer to what the Simpsons used to be, while the Simpsons have become what I thought South Park was.

Vermin Boy wrote:
> I hated South Park when it first came
> out, but now I realize it's really closer to what the Simpsons
> used to be, while the Simpsons have become what I thought South
> Park was.

Interesting thought. I agree, the Simpsons has gone from satire to craziness for its own sake. And it's almost as if the writers think it's more clever when something doesn't make any sense at all. They still try to satirize once in a while, but it just seems like they pick an easy target (not necessarily even a timely one) and take not-too-subtle potshots at it. While the humour used to be swift and carefully targeted, it's now equivalent to staggering over and shooting the side of a barn with a sawed-off shotgun from five feet away.

There used to be more to the Simpsons than just a bunch of gags and references thrown into a blender. It's like comparing Airplane! or Naked Gun to any of the other spoofs that imitated them. To somebody who doesn't understand it, it's just a matter of heaping on a bunch of zaniness, celebrity cameos and pop culture references. Look at the results, and you can appreciate how difficult it really is to do a good spoof. Most of them suck. Comparing early Simpsons to recent Simpsons is much the same.



Post Edited (11-24-04 09:41)

>>There is a much more serious problem that's not getting enough attention: Funny
>>parts are being edited out of the re-runs!!!!!!!

>They do that with quite a few shows, so that they can cram in an extra 5 seconds of >commercial time.

JohnL

Do they go out of their way to cut out the funniest line in the episode with those other shows? It's much more noticeable in the Simpsons reruns. Someone start a thread to brainstorm our script ideas.

The wacky stuff started with Connan O Brien. I think first truely bizarre episode was the monorail episode.

>Buffy and Angel certainly had a lot of scope but got too caught up in their own
>incessant soap opera.

Actually, Angel was cancelled mostly due to a network screwup. The WB decided it was interested in developing new shows based on Lost in Space and Dark Shadows. Since they couldn't afford all three shows and they were *SURE* that the two new ones would be hits, they cancelled Angel. Then the morons decided that maybe Dark Shaows (there was already a failed revival) and Lost in Space (the old show is looked at as being incredibly corny and the movie kinda tanked) wouldn't be such big hits after all. Later the WB was quoted as saying that maybe it was a mistake to cancel Angel.

What I want to know is; How can I become a network programmer? I mean, is the lobotamy required, or just strongly encouraged? :-/

>Do they go out of their way to cut out the funniest line in the episode with those
>other shows?

Sometimes. Several witty lines were cut out of the Buffy reruns.

   every season someone, usually canadian, does a topic like this.

And yet the monorail was one of their best episodes. One of the problems with the Simpsons, and I suppose with most shows, is that when something works, they try to give people as much as possible.

Consider the episodes that begin with one situation just to lead, in convoluted fashion, into a completely different plot. Like soccer leading into an episode about guns. That was funny the first couple of times, but they do that sort of thing all the time.

The same thing can be said of Homer. He started out as a sort of slow-witted lout who was more or less a believable caricature of a typical slob. They made him dumber, and it was funnier, because the humour was still clever and on target. But they kept doing it until we got episodes where he was just an idiot who did stupid things for no good reason. Some were still funny, but others fell flat.

People liked the wackiness, so they gave us more of it, without really understanding why it worked in those early episodes.

Does illustrate why the show is still going strong. I haven't really liked it for years, but I've been a fan for so long, I still watch it like clockwork. Don't know if it's out of curiosity or sheer habit. It's hard to give up on a show that was great for a number of years, and still manages to pull out a decent episode once in a while. Also hard to break a habit that has lasted so long.

But the show is dying. The quality has been dropping off for the past decade - very little at first, but more noticeably each year. They have rallied a couple of times and pulled it up for a while, but it is sinking.

Not sure what you meant by the 'Canadian' crack, especially when Gecko Brothers and most of the people on this thread aren't. Still, I can vouch for there being a lot of people with discriminating taste in comedy up here :)

Simpsons always sucked!

simpsons is horrible now. they include pointless grossout now (the one where Homer's knee scab grows over ralph's hand). the writing is horrible

Me I am more and more a fan of SOUTH PARK.
One week ago I saw a very funny episode of South Park: "The Death-Camp of Tolerance" (German: Todescamp der Toleranz)
Yeah, that was really really sick!!!

Garrison hires a gay slave whom he sticks a RAT IN THE ASS !!!

The rat is called Lemmiwinks and makes her way out of the gay ass, supported by the ghosts of other animals that died there...
I couldn´t stop laughing - that was as funny as shocking!

Compared to SOUTHPARK the SIMPSONS are absolute s**t -
- they´re too harmless and too boring.

Homer used to be my favorite character now I just can't stand him. It;'s like he tries too hard to be annoying. South Park is definatley the better cartoon cause the original creators are still the core creative department. I feel like Simpsons is just a heartless how now, tyrign to appel to the lowest denominator audience. For me Simpsons started going downhill from 1999 (boyband era when pop culture in general was horrible)

The funniest thing on TV is what I'm watching right now:  William Shatner, singing as Denny Crane on "Boston Legal".  
Any show can become bad if it goes too long.  People get tired.  It's human.  Right now, Boston Legal is hungry, fast & absurd.  Shatner really digs his part & you can see the fire in everyone's eyes.  
Cut to 5 years from now:  The show is still on.  Shatner is sick of playing Crane.  He phones in his role.  The original writers have all been fired because they got too expensive.  It's dead on arrival . . .
TV eats its young.  Be happy when you can find anything at all on it worth watching.
peter johnson/denny crane

peter johnson wrote:
> Cut to 5 years from now:  The show is still on.  Shatner is
> sick of playing Crane.  He phones in his role.  The original
> writers have all been fired because they got too expensive.
> It's dead on arrival . . .
> TV eats its young.  Be happy when you can find anything at all
> on it worth watching.
> peter johnson/denny crane

yeah i am with you on that peter. The only thing i find good watching is aqua teen hunger force and if they go on to long it will bomb. The simpsons just grew too stale. Its been on for 16 seasons! it should have ended awhile ago. for evey 1 good epsidoe  thiers 3 bad ones. same way I feel about south park.



"I know I know ive been exposed permeant psychoses..
at least the colors are nice"- Aeon Flux