The Simpsons

[Randall]

Pretty awesome. So. Many. References.

[ShyViolet]

Pretty cool deconstruction of "villain" Hank Scorpio from "You Only Move Twice." Also tidbits on Simpson writers plus how the episode holds up today. (Very well!)

https://theringer.com/the-simpsons-char ... .bf8w07wof

Weird I always thought Cypress Creek was supposed to be the Disney town Celebration. (It doesn't exist anymore.). Oh well.

Very good insight:

"The hideously extreme gentrification fantasy feels less far-fetched in 2016 than it did in 1996. In late August, Bloomberg reported that the median home value in Palo Alto had surged to $2.5 million. Three weeks prior to that, a city housing commissioner resigned and moved out because she could no longer afford to raise her family there."

[Ben]

Celebration is no more? That's a bit of a shame...they only just did a documentary about the folks living there a few years back.

[ShyViolet]

I thought I read a long time ago that it was gone. I could be wrong, though.

[Randall]

My friend Alfie still lives in Celebration, where I visited him 4 years ago. However, Disney no longer controls the town to the extent that they once did, having ceded control to other developers. They do still provide some services, though.

[James]

Yes, Celebration is still there -- just got back from the area and saw it there! As Randall says, it's basically just a regular town now. However, Disney is working on Celebration 2.0:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/travel/a ... story.html

[EricJ]

However, Disney is working on Celebration 2.0:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/travel/a ... story.html

Golden Oaks isn't a "town" (like Celebration was Disney trying to cash in on Kissimee's town-next-door business during their Millennium celebrations), it's just a bit of land-development on property that Disney thought they could sell to ultra-upscale consumers who might show off "moving to Disney" anyway.
Sort of like a permanent Vacation Club timeshare, and only slightly more expensive.

[James]

Yep, that's why I called it Celebration 2.0 -- or the next iteration of the idea.

[ShyViolet]

This is an AMAZING site called the “Dead Homer Society” which is basically a defense of the notion that the program that calls itself “The Simpsons” currently airing on Fox is actually a show called “Zombie Simpsons” that bears only the tiniest resemblance to the program that aired from 1989 to about 2000. It densely chronicles the history of the show from the first Christmas episode to nowadays with unbelievable detail. I think everyone should give it a read-through!

(I totally understand that the show still has its fans and I respect that. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the show, this is just a specific argument that it’s not the same show that began in ‘89. But like I said, I completely understand that not everyone feels that way. )

https://deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/zs1/

(Some language here and there, but overall it’s pretty ok.)

[Ben]

I haven’t read that dissertation, but for me The Simpsons that were around from the second season onwards bore little resemblance to the family that appeared in the first season, and certainly further from their Tracey Ullman skits.

So the show has always evolved, from Ullman, through season one and then onwards from season two, where it really got into its groove of what we think of when we say The Simpsons. I think The Movie was a turning point...had they made that a few seasons earlier it might have been more classic, but as it was the show was already not as great as it might have been. I think at this point they’re just going and going so that it’s the longest running show (just not the longest running show of consistent quality).

[EricJ]

I haven’t read that dissertation, but for me The Simpsons that were around from the second season onwards bore little resemblance to the family that appeared in the first season, and certainly further from their Tracey Ullman skits.

The original Tracey Ullman skits were about the lives of every 10-yo.: Bart and Lisa were the main characters, Homer was named "Dad", worked at no identified location, and was about as dumb as every kid's frustrating dad had been at some time in their childhood.

What it became, once Matt Groening's head exploded with fame, was some snarky gadfly-atheist pop-misanthropy that Homer was now The Dopiest Stupid Average Guy in the World, and did the exact same dopey annoying things that annoyed Matt Groening about every other person in the world.
After that, it was about Homer Takes On the Social Futility of Religion, when Lisa wasn't the one singlehandedly curing every other un-PC ill of our society.
The old comic saying has taken down many an "edgy" prime-time toon: "Nothing kills the joke faster than the comic's personal desire to tell it." And then, of course, there was every single other former one-episode bit-character to market as a new recurring A-list character, until we had the literal Cast of Thousands.

(Yes, there was the Monorail episode, but like late-80's SNL, after that, the show became one more example of shows that stopped being funny after Conan O'Brien left.)

[Dacey]

So Eric is saying there have been "no funny" Simpsons episodes since the Monorail one then?

I'm going to assume he somehow hasn't seen Itchy, Scratchy and Poochie, among several other examples.

[EricJ]

So Eric is saying there have been "no funny" Simpsons episodes since the Monorail one then?

I'm going to assume he somehow hasn't seen Itchy, Scratchy and Poochie, among several other examples.

Although we know "Poochie" is a direct jab at Puggsy, the cool-ster dog that helped Tom & Jerry learn to talk and be friends in "T&J: the Movie":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ozYLwMoZg0
(In fact, after Film Roman started working on Ted Turner's T&J movie in '92, all of a sudden, I&S was now a hit, popular cartoon--with an entire episode devoted to how much Bart couldn't wait to see the coolest movie of the year!--and jokes about Itchy & Scratchy hacking each other to pieces with meat cleavers began turning into Disney parodies...)

As for the Simpsons no longer being funny, I'll take the innocently snarky silliness of the Flintstones' absurdist-sarcasm satire, without the layer of free-floating passive-hostility Groening bile that we must find someone to blame for why things in our society are so annoying, and duly punish them with Righteous Flaming Sword of Satire...Which, to Matt, is just about everyone else in the world.

[Dacey]

Yes. Poochie was a direct jab at a character who was barely in a movie which almost no one saw, that had opened five years prior to the episode airing, and who didn't even have any of the 90's characteristics of him.

[EricJ]

Yes. Poochie was a direct jab at a character who was barely in a movie which almost no one saw, that had opened five years prior to the episode airing, and who didn't even have any of the 90's characteristics of him.

And was animated by the SAME STUDIO, by animation directors too much in love with their own industry/fandom in-jokes, who wanted to standup-comic dogpile on any pop-cultural annoyance that besmirched "their" hit-cartoon industry reputation.
And take it from us children of the 90's, we toon fans may not have seen the Movie or anything else about it, but we remembered Puggsy, however briefly, and T&J as new talking friends. That we did.

(No, seriously, do you Point Out Why EricJ is Probably Wrong first, and read the articles later?...Aside from the aforementioned Poochie, what dog of yours and Ben's did I run over?)