What is the Nadir of the Simpsons?

[Problem Machine]

Has anyone mentioned yet the super-fucking-transphobic lesbian wedding ep? That struck me as a particularly low point.

[Griddlelol]

Has anyone mentioned yet the super-fucking-transphobic lesbian wedding ep? That struck me as a particularly low point.

 

Which episode is that?

[Problem Machine]

Apparently S16E10, "There's Something About Marrying". It was a big thing coming out for marriage equality I guess... except for it basically dives right fucking into the whole deceptive cross-dresser trope, and has the person in question being physically hit in a moment we're seemingly supposed to applaud. It made me uncomfortable at the time I saw it for reasons I'm much better equipped to articulate now that I'm more familiar with trans issues.

[dartmonkey]

Homer isn't the dick I remember from that episode.

Perhaps I'm misremembering, I just recall that episode being disappointing and Homer becoming more irksomely dickish than endearingly oafish. There were a few smirks but it was a wasted opportunity.

 

I also remember the 'buzz' around a mystery main character's death and then discovering it was Maude. Not Grampa. Not Santa's Little Helper. Not even Barney or Moe. Maude 'Megaton' Flanders.

[SecretAsianMan]

I feel really bad for Flanders.  First he loses his wife and the mother of his children to a t-shirt cannon, then he later loses his second wife.  Granted the loss of Edna was outside of the writer's control but I still feel for stupid Flanders.  I did like the small scene that he shares with Nelson where they remember her.

[I_smell]

I know this thread is already really long, but I was thinking recently about Homer's gray-area ties to Maud Flanders' death.

 

Homer Simpson DOES NOT come back from that. Layering Frank Grimes ontop of this, it's insane.

How do you do that to a character you created, that you're responsible for? I invent goofy little characters and mascots, and I love these guys, I could never just fucking harpoon their reputation that hard. I wouldn't even let someone else do that as official canon! How did this decision make it out of the very first conversation! This whole thing is completely inappropriate for The Simpsons!

 

And the episode where Ned makes the Leftorium and Homer's refusing to tell anyone about it? WHAT!

 

On an unrelated note, when they had Jon Lovitz as The Critic appear for a whole episode: I didn't know who that was. I had no idea about literally anything he was talking about, and I still don't. Apu needs to get United States citizenship to stay in Springfield- What is any of that? It's not Principle Skinner making steamed hams, I know that much.

[tegan]

Homer not even being sorry about being indirectly responsible for Maude's death is just the worst.

 

Now, now, now. Don't beat yourself up. I'm the one who drove her out of her seat. I'm the one who provoked the lethal barrage of T-shirts. I'm the one who parked in the ambulance zone, preventing any possible resuscitation. Uh, but there's no point in playing the blame game.

[BobbyBesar]

Well, with regards to old Grimey, from some of the articles discussing the 25th anniversary (some of which were probably linked in this thread), it appears that Oakley and Weinstein thought they were destroying Homer. They assumed The Simpsons was on the verge of being canceled (for general senescence) and were systematically disassembling it to see what they could build out of those weird parts.

 

That doesn't really directly account for Maude's death, but I suppose by that point the writers had simply internalized Homer's impenetrable blamelessness as core to the character, to whit: there was nothing left to destroy because he was already well into being a caricature of himself.

[Ben X]

I always think of that moment in the Binky the fish ep where Homer is leaving the plant late and shouts "Echo!" down the corridor. It's such a nice little character moment that later Simpsons would never take the time out for.

 

I've bought the first five seasons on DVD and am slowly watching them through, seeing a lot of eps for the first time in a decade. I definitely agree with my comment above - other similar little moments include Bart laughing at a farty ketchup bottle or telling his dad to get out of the way of the telly and Homer resignedly muttering, "shut up, boy". And as the person I was replying to pointed out, there's a lot more sincere drama in it. I was almost tearing up at the blowfish ep.

 

I can totally see what synth means about the animation looseness and filmic style too - stuff like fisheye lensing or high/low angles, and stylised dream sequences or moments - like the wonderful momentary shift to pink background and use of single-frame jump-cuts when Marge enters detention in The Way We Was, or the great choreography of the 'kids playing outside' sequence from Marge And Itchy And Scratchy - give it a much more artistic feel than later seasons. Perhaps that stuff is still around post-season 9, though, and I'm just wearing poop-tinted glasses.

 

Synth, do you have a link to those Brad Bird style guides you mentioned ages ago?

 

EDIT: heh, we were saying the same stuff nine years ago!

[tegan]

EDIT: heh, we were saying the same stuff nine years ago!

 

Have no fears, we've got stories for years, like:

Marge becomes a robot,

Maybe Moe gets a cell phone,

Has Bart ever owned a bear?

Or how about a crazy wedding?

Where something happens, and-do-do-do-do-do.

 

[syntheticgerbil]

I've bought the first five seasons on DVD and am slowly watching them through, seeing a lot of eps for the first time in a decade. I definitely agree with my comment above - other similar little moments include Bart laughing at a farty ketchup bottle or telling his dad to get out of the way of the telly and Homer resignedly muttering, "shut up, boy". And as the person I was replying to pointed out, there's a lot more sincere drama in it. I was almost tearing up at the blowfish ep.

Yeah it's almost night and day how different the show is. I have a really soft spot for Seasons 1-4. I think 5 is when things started changing, although slowly.

[GavinTheAlmighty]

It's hard to say when The Simpsons hit rock bottom, or if it even has.  The general opinion I've heard is that it's not worth watching after "Behind the Laughter".  There have been individually good episodes since then, such as "Tales from the Public Domain", but the prime will always be 1-7 for me, with plenty of laugh-worthy moments in 8 and 9.  The beginning of the end was the Frank Grimes episode, which I've always hated, because it felt a little too "Peter Griffin" for me.  The main difference between Homer and Peter is that Homer was likeable.  I wouldn't call him malicious against Grimes, but there was a terrible tonal conflict at the end of the episode, with Homer at the funeral saying "change the channel, Marge!" and everyone laughing.

[Henroid]

Sam Simon, one of the show's original creators, died yesterday. He was there for the first couple seasons and helped establish the show's original tone / feel. He also wrote for Cheers. So it's definitely a sad, sad day.

[syntheticgerbil]

That sucks, I've heard a lot of theories on not so good Simpsons changes having a lot to do with his absence. If I recall he didn't leave amicably.

[SecretAsianMan]

I'll always remember him the way he was depicted on the show

 

[syntheticgerbil]

That is who I want to be in 30 years.

[Bjorn]

Nothing says you have to wait that long, live the dream now!

[tegan]

That sucks, I've heard a lot of theories on not so good Simpsons changes having a lot to do with his absence. If I recall he didn't leave amicably.

 

He managed to arrange things so that he would get royalties an residuals for what turned out to be his entire lifetime past his season five leave, and ended up giving away all of it to charity when he found out he had cancer.

 

He picked some questionable charities (namely PETA), but he was a legitimately admirable guy.

[syntheticgerbil]

Yeah I looked him up yesterday and saw this quote from him concerning his charity:

The truth is, I have more money than I'm interested in spending. Everyone in my family is taken care of. And I enjoy this.

 

That's such an awesome attitude.

[Henroid]

He was a pretty frequent guest (mostly by way of calling) on the Stern Show, and when remembering him they talked about how he more or less avoided deep discussion of his cancer diagnosis and battle. Not out of denial, but he wanted to have people around him happy and would move on with the discussion.

 

I also heard, though I dunno if this is true, that he would buy zoos and immediately set the animals free? I hope it's true. There's a quote of him somewhere saying that someday people will look back on us and our era, considering us barbarians for caging animals for viewing entertainment.

[tegan]

See, that's the kind of shit I'm talking about when I say questionable charities. Zoos get us valuable research, provide a safe environment to breed and raise members of endangered species, and help raise public interest in zoology; and most of the animals that wind up in zoos are rescued from the exotic pet trade, circuses, or poaching operations, not captured in the wild. It's the same reason I get angry when vegans say that eating honey is cruel when honey production is both a) not at all harmful to bees and reason number one that we as a species haven't wiped them out yet.

I get it, zoos are a compromised solution and there are likely better ones that are either too expensive (zoo budgets are already notoriously low since they draw most of their funding from public interest, which bullshit like this actually hurts) or just things that we haven't thought of yet. But thinking that it's less cruel to release unprepared animals used to the safety and regular feeding of a zoo into the wild to either die of starvation or get eaten is a childish, idiotic belief.

 

(to make it clear: I am one hundred percent okay with rescuing animals from circuses [which Simon also did] or zoos that abuse or neglect their animals, but the concept of zoos is a valuable one and I hate it when PETA assholes think they're doing a good thing by shutting them down)

[Ben X]

I know this thread is already really long, but I was thinking recently about Homer's gray-area ties to Maud Flanders' death.

 

Homer Simpson DOES NOT come back from that. Layering Frank Grimes ontop of this, it's insane.

How do you do that to a character you created, that you're responsible for? I invent goofy little characters and mascots, and I love these guys, I could never just fucking harpoon their reputation that hard. I wouldn't even let someone else do that as official canon! How did this decision make it out of the very first conversation! This whole thing is completely inappropriate for The Simpsons!

 

And the episode where Ned makes the Leftorium and Homer's refusing to tell anyone about it? WHAT!

 

I'm still moving very slowly through my re-watch. and just realised that the Leftorium episode is the second episode of the second season! So, do you think they harpooned the character only 15 episodes in? Or was this a blip, an omen of things to come? Personally, I think of that as a typical Homer move - schadenfreude and thoughtless meanness or selfishness up until the point that he's confronted with the consequences and has a big enough heart that he feels guilty and tries to fix it. Similar to the big fish episode. I think this balance being a central part of Homer is why they lampooned it once the show started eating itself, with Frank Grimes and the like, where Homer's selfish acts get ever worse and don't even require his penitence to be forgiven by everyone.

[Problem Machine]

I think in the Leftorium episode Homer showcases a very human, petty kind of dickishness rather than the overblown cartoonishness of later episodes. Actually, the gag where he's imagining successively worse fates for Ned, gets to the gravestone, says "ehhh too far" and goes back to imagining the store failing could almost be a joke making fun of later episodes if time worked that way.

[Ben X]

I just realised that I got confused and it's actually the second episode of the third season. Still pretty early on, though!

[SuperBiasedMan]

I think that example mostly shows that it's the tone and little details of writing that gave later episodes a different feel even if they're comparable on paper, Grimes Homer doesn't seem the same as Leftorium Homer. And, the episodes treat them totally differently. We see Ned's business failing while he maintains a stiff upper lip, it's a human portrayal of despair when the thing he's dreamed of for so long is dieing and killing his own family's lifestyle. It hammers on Homer's conscience to the point that Homer actually rounds up enough people to save Ned's business.

 

The joke of Grimes is that Grimes is unprivileged while Homer is privileged beyond what he realises. Homer remains totally ignorant of it, and ignorant to the suffering of Grimey, while everyone in the show just laughs at the antics, uncaring. It ends with Grimes dieing and Homer being asleep at his funeral, while everyone laughs at his antics again.

 

Forget about even judging quality, these are just two very different tones to write an episode on and definitely give a different portrait of Homer and a whole different worldview.