Fri, April 29, 2005
Can The Simpsons Ever Improve?
When I first read the "New York Times" article about the revival of The Simpsons with a fresh writing staff and a new direction, I was really excited. Matt Groening seemed energized, and said he thought the show was turning a corner and had more bright days ahead of it – and I figured, he's ridiculously wealthy, what reason does he have to lie to us?
Then I started watching a handful of backlogged Simpsons episodes from this season. They'd just been piling up on TiVo while I was busy watching something funnier like Arrested Development. Or C-SPAN. These episodes featured a couple of laughs scattered here and there, but for the most part, they were a huge waste of time. My biggest concern isn't the preposterously farfetched story lines, it's the way the recent crop of episodes has laid waste to the entire "Simpsons universe."
The humor and the social satire of the show used to come from its analyses of mundane, relatable everyday things like parenting and relationships and school. Sure, zany things would happen – there's humor in hyperbole – but the world remained more or less intact. Lately, the Simpson family seems to be constantly globetrotting and rubbing elbows with celebrities, leaving no time for their normal lives. I can't complain that it strains realism, because The Simpsons never promised us that. But when Bart hops onstage with gansta rappers and Homer choreographs the Super Bowl halftime show, it becomes a lot harder to laugh at them as regular people like us. In the old days, episodes like "Deep Space Homer" were like a pleasant anomaly – a brief rift in the otherwise ordinary Simpsons world, hilarious but fleeting. You could kind of think of them like dream sequences, because with the show's stateless approach all their events were forgotten in time for the next episode. Now, the show revels in these off-the-wall adventures and takes every opportunity to recall them from past episodes. (Perhaps the writers are just desperate to remind us of the show's former glory.)
But it's not just the crazy stories and the miscast celebrity guests. I'm worried that the recent spate of episodes has permanently damaged the "world" of The Simpsons – to the point that no future episodes can fully restore it. I just finished watching "Future-Drama" in which Bart and Lisa get (yet another) glimpse into their future, and Marge and Homer are split up – among other things. The title is a nod to my favorite animated Matt Groening TV series ever – but don't think the writers stopped there. They had to go all the way past the subtle joke and smack into the obvious one that interrupts the story, placing Futurama's Bender in Homer's car at one point. Maybe I'm overreacting, but I really dislike these shows that dig into the future (or the past) and crop up a bunch of wacky situations just for cheap laughs. The characters take a distant back seat to hacky jokes: they're not the foundation of the story any more, they're just a vessel for one-liners. Why do the writers do this? Don't they realize that they're tampering with the makeup of their precious fictional universe?
As Groening points out in the article, the success of the show is due in large part to its characters. I realize that because the characters of the show don't age, it's tempting to employ flashbacks (and flash-forwards) to explore other eras and other situations, but this sort of work must be handled with great care. Tampering with Homer and Marge's meeting and the future of their marriage might be acceptable as part of a carefully orchestrated story arc over the lifetime of the series (as on Futurama), but it never seems to be handled that way – certainly not recently. Homer and Marge's prom wasn't so bad (back in the heyday; the re-revival of it in the recent Arnie Ziff rehash episode was so-so), but the summer camp story? And this undersea bachelor pad situation? Yuck.
So now I'm convinced that not only is the current season pretty awful, but it's bringing down future seasons with it – they'll bear the burden of the irreparable damage that has been done to the Simpson family over the last two years or so. They've lost their "everyfamily" appeal and I don't see how they can ever get it back. Hopefully next year we'll see a "back to basics" approach, but it could still take some time to erase the cultural memory of Selma's adopted Chinese baby and Springfield's Frank Gehry-designed penitentiary. If something doesn't happen soon, we'll end up with a situation where there are more bad Simpsons episodes in existence than good ones – at which point, my faith in television might just implode.
© onebee · all rights reserved
Brandon — Fri, 4/29/05 11:21am
Sigh... you're right. The mundane happenings vs. big event argument was one that I had not thought about, but when I think back over the episodes I've disliked in the past 2-3 seasons, most of them took the Simpsons out of their everyday existence. And it's coincided with (or created) an increase in the celebrity guest voice actors just playing themselves.
Hmm, see now I want to go off to tvtome.com and do a study on this, run the numbers and see if there's been a significant increase. It'll have to wait until the unpacking is done though. Stupid lack of unpacking gnomes!
Bee Boy — Sun, 5/1/05 9:11pm
Aha! Albert Brooks tonight... you got no complaints. Halfway through, I was wondering if they'd have brought him in just to do the voice for Jacques the bowling teacher in the new "opening" (and, if so, whether he'd be in the credits). But then they handed him the second half of the show! Hooray! Laughs on a Simpsons episode! Note the time and date!
(Also, nice Volvo wagon. Sweet!)
Anonymous Coward — Mon, 5/2/05 11:09am
Yep. Five guest voice appearances, five funny characters. I think we've determined the way for the show to save itself - more Albert Brooks improvisations and hilarious line-readings. And look - a new Albert Brooks movie in the works!
Brandon — Mon, 5/2/05 2:26pm
Ahhh crap, that was ME, not some anonymous coward! Stupid lack of login helper monkeys!
"Mr. X" — Tue, 6/28/05 6:18am
I hate to admit it, but you are right. The latest season is...well...i would say over imaginitive, the writers do not realize that they dont need to strain this hard for a story line. They could just, as many comics do, analyze real life situations, this was done in many past seasons.Nobody really cares about inconsistancies such as the characters not aging, but inconsistancies such as totally unplausable situations such as the constant barrage of celebraties...thats a right royal pain in the ass.The Simpsons always has been and always will be man kinds greatest achievement, but they need to repair their writings. Maybe some likely situations? Such as bart or lisa having a serious bullying problem? And also, in earlier seasons Homer was smarter, fix him.I myself am a script writer, I am only 18 but without modesty, i know i am a good one.I aspire to oneday right for the show, i have dozens of scripts and would gladly even have them used and not recieve credit for it. If anybody agrees with my ideas, or anything that i have put forward, please say something...
"jubee" — Tue, 6/28/05 6:23am
wow thats right, and yes you should submit your ideas to somewhere, or build a wesite? season 18 arrives soon, but it seems to have better story lines than the past 3 seasons. So we are already seeing some slight improvements.
Bee Boy — Sun, 12/2/07 2:52pm
I just watched a couple of Simpsons episodes after letting them languish on TiVo for almost a year. It occurs to me that in some ways the show is a victim of its own immense popularity. Special celebrity guest voices are simply too easy to come by, so the temptation to write scenarios for them becomes impossible to resist. Given the nine-month gestation period for animated television (except South Park, of course – they've got theirs down to nine minutes), this weighs the show down with enough dated pop-culture references to fill a dozen Shrek sequels.
When you hear the current writers talking about the show, they talk about how they marveled in awe of The Simpsons when they were younger, and how excited they were to join the staff. They read the same stories we did about how the Simpsons writing room was the most riotously fun workplace on the planet. What must it be like now? A monotonous, mirthless slog? It's hard to picture anyone tittering with laughter as these jokes are being pitched. I'm imagining forced hilarity, like the "morning zoo" radio show in the Comedians of Comedy movie where the host brings out a whoopee cushion with a clear expectation that shit is about to get hilarious. Patton Oswalt regards it with all the exhausted derision you might muster for... well, a recent Simpsons episode.