Piston Hyundai
Member
Nope, still not watching.
Here's my thought question for everyone. How do we judge The Simpsons at the point? Do we go by the spectacular highs of the early to mid 90s? Or, do we include all of the bad stuff as well, and if we do, how do we balance it?
Because, if we weigh the good and the bad episodes, not only is the show underwater, it's drowning.
And that's just sad for as good as the show once was.
I remember watching some lousy episode with Frank Grimes's son about a decade ago. And here we go again.
I'm still waiting for the conclusion of Homer3. How did he get home? What type of erotic cakes did he purchase? WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?It's for the treehouse of horror episode
so it's not canon or anything
Nothing is stopping anybody from talking about how great it was. It's just that nerds LOVE to be negative and miserable.To quote Doug Walker: "Can The Simpsons end already so we can start talking about how great it was rather than how bad it's become?"
Here's my thought question for everyone. How do we judge The Simpsons at the point? Do we go by the spectacular highs of the early to mid 90s? Or, do we include all of the bad stuff as well, and if we do, how do we balance it?
Because, if we weigh the good and the bad episodes, not only is the show underwater, it's drowning.
And that's just sad for as good as the show once was.
Holy shit really?
Yeah, he turns up in "The Great Louse Detective" (Season 14, episode 6).Episode when Homer is king of Mardi Gras. (edit: Back in early 2000s?)
There were some decent gags, but most of the stuff with Grimes Jr. was terrible.When Homer questions how Frank Grimes Sr. could've had children if he wasn't married, Junior explains, "He happened to like hookers, okay!?"
You know what makes this extra funny; Grimes already came back, less than two years ago, in Treehouse of Horror XXVI.
Lyle.It's not. It was a bad episode, Grimes was a bad character and anyone who likes that episode has bad taste.
Fuck fox for employing hundreds of hardworking artists both domestically and abroad with stable work for the last two and a half decades?Just think about it. Half of the Simpsons VO's here in Germany are already dead and this fucking show still continues. Fuck you Fox
Was it a really small role? Like just being in a crowd?
At this point, what can the writers even write about? The show's been on for almost 30 years no?
It needs to die, go out with dignity.
still waiting for the "marge becomes a robot" episode
still waiting for the "marge becomes a robot" episode
Also the one in which Moe's get a cellphone
and Bart a bear.
And this crazy marriage in which something happens :")
I never understood how someone could work at a nuclear power plant but only make enough of a salary to live in between bowling alleys.
I remember disliking the tone of the original episode and haven't really ever been able to enjoy it since. Meh.
It was a good example of the evolution of Homer to being a stupid, mean-spirited moron instead of the bumbling but well-intentioned buffoon in the earlier seasons. I hated that transformation.
Fellas:
You do realize that the Homer depicted in “Homer’s Enemy” is a satirical take on certain elements of Homer’s character and history that we (meaning, the writers at the time) always found excessive, right? At least that’s what it was intended to be, and I realize the distinction may well be so subtle as to be meaningless to many, if not most, fans.
But, that said:
Anything that may have happened after that episode and that season should not be extrapolated from the content of the Grimes story.
On the continuum between Homer the Misguided but Essentially Well-Meaning Oaf Next Door and Homer the Absurdly-Gluttonous World-Famous Idiot with No Recognizable Human Traits or Emotions, we usually tried to to stay to the left. Not always, but usually.
But for this episode, as a counterpoint to Grimes, we intentionally threw in a lot of stuff that was ridiculously over-the-top (or so we thought) like Homer snoring at the funeral, for Pete’s sakes, and hauled out of the closet all his most unrealistic (though hilarious) past adventures (he went into outer space! he won a Grammy! President Ford moved in and invited him over for nachos!).
If Frank Grimes had crossed paths with the fairly normal Homer (of “Lisa’s Pony” for instance) it simply would not have been as funny or as clear, satirically, as it was to have him cross paths with the ridiculously-boorish world-famous glutton that we depicted in “Homer’s Enemy”.
Basically, the Homer depicted in that episode was an intentional self-parody, a catalog of gleeful excesses past and present.
If it didn’t come off as such to even the most devoted fans, it was certainly our mistake.
Didn’t somebody say all this on the DVD commentary?
Anyway,
That’s all.
Best,
Bill Oakley
First of all, thanks to Mr. Oakley for taking notice of us, and deeming us to have our heads far enough up our asses to deserve correction, but not so far as to make it unworthy of his time to offer that correction. Furthermore, we hope he understands how much we and so many others appreciate all the work he did on The Simpsons. It is a testament to the power of that work that we’re still talking about it all these years later.
To dispense with the smaller point first, Oakley is absolutely correct that Homer needed to be amped up a little from his usual self to provide a better contrast with the sober and staid Frank Grimes. As he writes, having a character like Grimes cross paths with the Homer of “Lisa’s Pony” wouldn’t have worked.
He is further correct that we can’t reasonably hold the rest of the series against “Homer’s Enemy”. Calling it a “turning point”, as the title of our post did, implies that this was somehow deliberate when, of course, the writers of “Homer’s Enemy” had no way to know that the show was going to go on for another three hundred episodes (so far), and that most of those episodes would feature Homer as an “Absurdly-Gluttonous World-Famous Idiot with No Recognizable Human Traits or Emotions”. In the context of the show at the time, having Homer recite his accomplishments and produce his Grammy worked as “an intentional self-parody, a catalog of gleeful excesses past and present”. It is only the subsequent descent of the series into unintentional self-parody that makes “Homer’s Enemy” seem like an early symptom of terrible things instead of the one-off it was intended to be.
We hope that Mr. Oakley can appreciate that from an audience point of view, privy only to the finished episodes and not the backstage goings on, “Homer’s Enemy” does seem to presage the decline of the show. It is true that this episode did not seal the show’s fate, as it is true that the Homer of “Homer’s Enemy” is much more akin to Homer we love than the one we despise. But for much of the wretched horde of remote wielding tube jockeys, letting Homer enjoy his life felt like opening a Pandora’s Box that had no hope at the bottom.
Sadly, those three hundred plus episodes after “Homer’s Enemy” must be acknowledged. They happened; and they have cheapened The Simpsons. Homer has become malicious, though not in “Homer’s Enemy”, nor even in much of Season 9. While the writers of “Homer’s Enemy” – which is an excellent episode – are not to blame for the ongoing tragedy of later seasons, neither can we ignore this first gaze into the abyss. The world is full of monstrous things that had grand and innocuous beginnings. Had this one not escaped its cage, had the show wound to a conclusion a year or two later instead of staggering on like the undead, we would remember this as the aberration it was intended to be.
Lyle.
Lyle.
You're embarrassing yourself. Go take a lap.
I remember disliking the tone of the original episode and haven't really ever been able to enjoy it since. Meh.
It was a good example of the evolution of Homer to being a stupid, mean-spirited moron instead of the bumbling but well-intentioned buffoon in the earlier seasons. I hated that transformation.
Crippling health care debt. He was hurt in a silo explosion.
The episode with Grimes' son was bad, it was a Sideshow Bob episode though.
Theyre forming a sinister squadron of Simpsons enemies to try to kill the Simpsons, executive producer Al Jean tells EW. If that doesnt make people tune in, I dont know what else we can say.
Just a reminder: there are far far more bad and terrible episodes of The Simpsons than there are good ones.
Discussions on this always remind me of what Bill Oakley, executive producer of seasons 7 and 8 alongside Josh Weinstein, wrote to Dead Homer Society...
Dead Homer Society's response may mirror your own:
Personally, if you ask me? The episode is pure comical genius.
They are trying way too hard to get attention with their treehouse episodes these days
Last year the big thing was that sideshow Bob killed Bart and then kept reviving him to kill him again and again in increasingly grotesque ways. It wasn't funny, just kind of unnerving because there was a ridiculous amount of gore.
But then why would he be surprised that Homer was able to afford a huge house like he does?
the newer seasons aren't terrible guys