… has been at least slightly better lately than it was originally? There’s a pit thread going on right now about how much the movie is going to suck. I don’t know, the movie could suck, but definitely not because the latest seasons were bad – because they just weren’t.
To take some of the religious devotion out of this, I only consider seasons 3 through 18. The typical complaint I hear about the later seasons is that they have gotten dumber, but to me they’ve simply gotten a lot more abstract and random. This is inevitable because they either have to recycle material or expand their sphere of parody and mockery – and they do both to an extent.
Some the more recent episodes like Midnight Rx, On a Clear Day I Can’t See My Sister, Bart-Mangled Banner, Please Homer Don’t Hammer 'Em, Weekend at Burnsie’s, Jazzy and the Pussycats are just as smart and witty as the classics like Stark Raving Dad, Mr. Plow, Bart Gets an Elephant, etc. However, while the old style of one-liners and smart obscure references still persist something like the brilliant epic battle between Skinner and Bart using allergens on a stick would just not fit in an older episode.
So I don’t get it, where does this idea come from? Are people just tired of it and are used to the older format of more direct humor? To me, Simpsons went from “George Carlin stand-up funny” to “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life” funny. What am I missing here?
Oh no! I’m busted! Umm… it was a typo… I meant… Dennis Miller? What do you whippersnappers like? Demetri Martin? Dane Cook? … it’s a typo… I meant one of those… the keys are right next to each other… I swear.
I actually think the movie has a decent-enough chance of reviving the franchise as back to broad popularity (rather than a niche following), and agree with the OP (to a certain extent) that recent seasons have not been as bad as conventional wisdom say they are.
A thorough analysis would be too exhausing, and really a lot of this is a matter of taste, but its only really fair to compare similar types of episodes. Something like “Itchy&Scratchy&Marge”, a satire on the nanny-impulse which has at its core a topical issue from itas day & age (violence in children’s cartoons). Looking at it clinically, the “plot” of that episode was as far fetched, jerky/twisting, and (yes) preachy as in, say, “Midnight Rx”, a Homer get-rich-quick scheme driven by the social topic-du-jour, prescription drug prices.
The difference, of course, is in the bits that decorate the plotlines, and the advantage/disadvantage of later seasons is that we knew the characters so well that a lot of the humor became self-referential. However this type of thing is best used as a seasoning, and for the major part of the bad years it was a main course (I’m looking at you, “Insane Clown Poppy”, a pretty much unwatchable mess).
The Simpsons Movie, perhaps, will avoid this because (1) more recent episodes have used less of this, and (2) to appeal to a broad audience (and critics), they’ll have to scale this back.
The absolute nadir of the series was the 11th season, which contained such “gems” as “Saddlesore Galactica” (magical singing jockey elves? Wha the fu…?), “Kill the Alligator and Run” (that ridiculous Florida episode), “Take My Wife Sleaze” (maybe the most cartoonish episode ever), and “E-I-E-I-D’oh”. So obviously I think it’s gotten better since that season.
And even that season had “Behind the Laughter”, “Bart to the Future” (Lisa’s future presidency), “Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder” (Homer and Maggie themed eps are a pretty safe bet) and some minor classics like Homer becoming a food critic and becoming a missionary (even when he doesn’t believe in Jeebus).