tegan

What is the Nadir of the Simpsons?

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I think so. Just like people used to demand that their Blu-rays have so much DNR that the actors looked like they were made of plastic, because noise is obviously a "flaw" in the transfer, people would rather have a full quarter of the image cut off than see black bars that only belong on "grandpa movies."

 

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And yeah, I hate that shit. I mean, there's a single button on most TV remotes that adjusts aspect ratio, right?

 

It's a shame, because I really would like a cleaned-up Simpsons BR release. Not to remove cel dirt or anything, just the fairly severe compression artifacts on the current DVDs. That's probably not possible since the show was meant for TV and not film, but whatever.

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I think so. Just like people used to demand that their Blu-rays have so much DNR that the actors looked like they were made of plastic, because noise is obviously a "flaw" in the transfer, people would rather have a full quarter of the image cut off than see black bars that only belong on "grandpa movies."

Oh yeah apparently they threw DNR on top of it as well.

 

Here's an article, as Simpsons is especially tragic considering all of the background gags: http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/24/6060887/fxx-is-cropping-standard-definition-simpsons-episodes

 

I supposed to late fans who have hardly ever seen the episodes, it won't matter because they have been watching them widescreen anyway, but it's still disrespectful to the people who worked on the show when it was 4:3.

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I just watched Treehouse of Horror XV. It opens with a montage of clips from every previous Treehouse of Horror and ends with a parody of The Others where The Simpsons are haunted by the ghosts of their Tracey Ullman selves. It's like the entire special was designed to remind you how much better the show used to be.

 

But hey, at least it has Lisa reminding the audience that snow only happens when it's cold.

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I thought that too. Plus, apart from their costumes, the anime family look just like Simpsons characters with slightly larger eyes whereas the others fully adopt a distinct style specific to the source material.

 

Just make them all fucking Sailor Scouts or something, geez.

 

 

An aside: I thought it was weird that almost every family had a Santa's Little Helper but none of them had a Snowball II, then I realized that Snowball II hasn't appeared on the show at all since 2011 (2010 if you don't count Treehouse of Horror), and has only made ten appearances since replacing the original Snowball II ten years ago.

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Yeah, and some of those have pretty distinctive styles... Homer as Zoro doesn't even have the chest scar, and the others don't seem very on-model either. It's not very good pandering, is it?

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I don't know what Marge or the dragon are supposed to be.

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It's not my fault I can't recognize things with that ugly Simpsons veneer over the top!

 

that's right i said ugly simpsons is not an attractive art style

 

THE NADIR WAS EPISODE ONE

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The whole of the segment is about the family being haunted by the ghosts of their Tracey Ullman selves, ending with this bit:

 

Lisa: "I just had a worrisome thought. If there can be two incarnations of The Simpsons, why couldn't some evil marketing entity produce millions of others?"

John Ratzenberger as CG faux-claymation Homer: "All right Simpsons, welcome to our new home!"

CG faux-claymation Santa's Little Helper: "Yo yo, Santa's Little Helper is in da house!"

 

And then all the others start showing up. I assume that the CG faux-claymation Simpsons would be either the "soulless CG movie" Simpsons ala "anime" Simpsons, or maybe Pixar since it's John Ratzenburger.

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this thread is going to be revived every time there's a bad Simpsons episode isn't it

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Uh, this just feels like a throwaway crowd scene joke. I'm not seeing how this is The Nadir of The Simpsons. The anime family feels like they have different designs because they have more than a pan's worth of screentime and enter the scene one after the other.

 

I mean, Two and a Half Men would kill to have a joke that had thought behind it like this. Is this what people complain about when they complain about zombie Simpsons? Is it that petty?

 

So I guess I ask with renewed vigour, are we going to keep doing this every time The Simpsons has an off episode?

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At this point I'm just using it as a "complain about The Simpsons" thread.

 

If you're looking for more in-depth criticisms of TOH XV...

 

-it's overly explainy. Every joke and every character's motivation is explained to the audience by the characters at all times. The first segment has things like Lisa explaining a visual gag that amounts to her letting us know that snow is cold. Character frequently announce how they're feeling (that makes me feel angry!), sometimes to nobody in particular.

-Homer goes on complaining about annoying emails from private schools and tricky golf courses at one point, which are maybe the most first-world problems possible and makes me wonder if this is supposed to be the same family that had to scrimp and save for an operation for their dog.

-the first two segments just kind of peter out with no satisfying conclusion. The second is especially bad since it just devolves into "these are scenes from films that Stanley Kubrick also directed."

-there's all kinds of weird scripting problems. The second segment has a caption explain that years have past, but the characters explicitly refer to the time as having been "months." The third segment has a love triangle between modern Homer, vintage Marge, and modern Marge; with vintage Homer seemingly standing just offscreen never having anything to say or do even though he should be furious. He only intervenes when Marge specifically mentions it.

 

Not as bad as the TOH I mentioned in the first post, but still full of problems.

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this thread is going to be revived every time there's a bad Simpsons episode isn't it

Hmm, I'm methodically going through Simpsons Season 8 on DVD and have been listening to a lot of the commentary but I suppose I don't have anything to really say. The animation is nearly completely soulless, stiff, and stale at this point, but the writing is still overall great. I recently finished the episode with Seymour and Krabapple getting together and I remember it as being a bad episode when it was actually quite good. I really loved the Krapabble focused episode many seasons ago as well though, which the commentary admitted they were somewhat coming off the heels of.

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At this point I'm just using it as a "complain about The Simpsons" thread.

 

If you're looking for more in-depth criticisms of TOH XV...

 

If you're going to be this pedantic about The Simpsons, I'm going to point out that it's Treehouse of Horror XXV.

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