I watched Season 18. I can’t remember a good episode, so I’d like to know what episodes are up there with the likes of “Last Exit to Springfield” and “Marge vs the Monorail”?
I’d say “Flaming Moe’s”, “Homer at the Bat”, “Mr. Plow”, “Whacking Day”, “Krusty Gets Kancelled”, “Homer the Great”, “Bart vs. Australia”, “Who Shot Mr. Burns?”, “King-Size Homer”, and “Homerpalooza”.
I think they meant episodes from the last season or two!
I don’t remember specific episodes, but I do remember that almost every new episode has spawned a Cafe Society thread, and that in some of these threads, some of the posters have expressed the opinion that the episode in question was up to (or almost up to) the standards of “classic” Simpsons.
D’oh! :smack:
Simpsons 4/27 “Apocalypse Cow” went over pretty well, as well as Simpsons 3/30: “Smoke on the Daughter”.
I think Apocalypse Cow is up on http://Hulu.com.
I am not much of a fanatic anymore, so I can’t name recent episodes off the top of my head, but there were a few from the 2nd to most recent season that were so funny I saved them on my DVR, so I’ll check later to see if they’re still there.
I think the show did get really bad for awhile. I’m not sure which season but I remember watching an episode back in ~2003 - a spoof of “Catch Me If You Can” - that was so bad it hurt. But they recovered a lot in the last few years. For awhile there it was so funny my wife was watching and laughing regularly, and I don’t think she’s ever done that. The most recent season was kinda weak IIRC but not horrible.
I think once the tide of public opinion turned against them, nothing they could do would be cool or funny again, so the “bad” episodes (which have always been there) get slammed, and the “good” episodes (which have also always been there) get ignored.
I liked the recentish “Homer drinks the drink that makes him forget yesterday, then tries to remember why/what happened that he wanted to forget”
I liked the “bart gets a drum set” episode, but I recall that was pretty controversial on the board.
They really should have had the kids growing up, even really slowly (one year for every five seasons or something). Five years or so is enough to explore that specific year, and moving on, even just a little, would give more possibilities for the writers, enough to avoid re-hashing old material. Bart in Junior High School, for example, has potential to be awesome.
And if they want, they can keep Maggie as she is. 
I’ll disagree, it was more than novelty. Yes these seasons pale in comparrison to the “golden age” But even then the show was clever and had all of the hallmarks of what would make it great. It was rough because they were trying to find their stride, but compared to what was mostly on the air at the time you could see why it succeeded.
It, like its lowbrow live action cousin of the time Married with Children, offered up an antidote to the sacrine family hour comedies of the time.
It was the Simpsons (Which originally ran Thursday nights) That trounced the all powerful Cosby show. Not merely by novelty but by its disfunctional family setting which is what the viewing public wanted.
And yet it had some of the most bizzarly touching Flanders/ Homer moments in the shows run. Yeah Homer killed Maude, but his attempts to help him adjust were actually sweet and not mean spirited. And showed Flanders as more than just a Doodly diddly neighborino. His grief for the loss of Maud was touching. Even Bart’s half asssed inclusion of Rod and Todd in playing a video game was not mean spirited.
Actually the Simpsons got creamed by Cosby. The only time they did better in the ratings was when Cosby was a rerun and the Simpsons wasn’t. And remember they only went head to head in Cosby’s last season when that show had played out.
One problem for The Simpsons at that point was Fox only had something around 75% national coverage. It wasn’t until the mid-nineties before Fox was legitimized as a network.
IIRC, the Christian rock band was Kovenant*; Testament were {are?} a real-life speed/prog metal band.** “Isn’t that the bass player from Satanica?”.
*And also a real-life Norwegian death metal band, apparently: some days you just can’t make this shit up.
**Classic Spinal Tap moment from their Wiki page: “Steve Souza subsequently left the band to join Exodus…”.
I’ve heard that suggestion before and thought it sounded dumb, but for some reason it sounds like a really good idea at this point. It’s hard thinking of Homer and Marge as only 38 now, when we know they were flower-children/“That 70s Show” types when they dated and had Bart soonafter. As of current continuity, Bart would’ve been born in 1998 - almost a decade after the show began airing!
The drawback, though, is that people would HATE it. The SAME people that bitch now that the show needs something fresh and new would bitch that they trampled a sacred cow by aging the characters. It would be seen as a desperate move like all those 80s shows that would bring a new kid on board to try to save the show just before it got cancelled.
Regardless, I would love to see a season of Bart and Lisa in middle school and then either one of them in high school or one of Lisa in college and Bart trying to get by on a high school education, or both. That’s pure fan wank because I know it’ll never happen.
It was 1974, my senior year in high school. Brenda Morgenstern had my heart…
Wasn’t there a Flintstones spinoff with Pebbles and Bam-bam as teenagers?
its kind one the MOST amazing shows ever. I can actually sit down at any point in any episode and love it. i think that’s pretty rare
Yeah but IIRC it was years later, shortlived, and Saturday mornings instead of primetime.
I didn’t like the Maude death either, but personally, I found the shark jumping point to be the episode (can’t recall titles) with “Armin Tanzarian” or whatever that reveals Skinner’s entire life in the past seasons to be a lie. Around that point was also when guest stars of the moment (like N’Sync) started to make what seemed like excessive cameos to me, and often just cameos of them popping in as themselves for a cheap pop culture reference, rather than playing a fleshed-out character, but I realize there must be tons of exceptions on both sides (they did that earlier too, and probably bust out of the mold often now).
I think I make an important distinction, that “shark jumping” does not mean that every moment of the show thereafter is garbage. I admit I sort of got out of the habit of watching the show on TV every week sometime after season 11 and haven’t seen any of the last few seasons, and don’t feel any particular desire to start up now, but I’m not not watching it on purpose. I’ll cherish the laughs it gave me growing up and probably buy the newer dvds if they ever come out, for a novel experience. I’m very forgiving when I can watch on my own schedule.
Anyway, to the OP, sorry you couldn’t get over the secondary stuff (why am I itching to type “secondary sex characteristics”?). That’s actually the same sort of thing that turned me off from King of the Hill (despite being into Beavis and Butthead)!
Edit: oh yeah, the Simpsons was one of the very few shows that made me laugh out loud on a regular basis. That’s always nice.
Yeah, you have no sense of humor if you don’t like the simpsons. That’s not a dig at you, but a fact.
I know a lot of people don’t like this episode, but I always thought it was modeled on Martin Guerre
To the OP Author: I LOVE YOU, MAN!!! Dang, I cursed the Simpsons from their inception back on Day #1! I hate it, hate it, hate it! I cannot believe America’s intellectual level has stooped to not only scraping the bottom of the barrel, but digging straight through it!
They’ve made a hero of a juvenille delinquent. And, they’ve glorified ignorance and lameness in the family. Homer is a now considered a…a…a roll model!!! These “sheep” of people of all ages have no ability to question what they see. And, Marge is the whimpiest mother authority.
Yes, the dysfunctional family can be funny (like Momma’s Family ala Carol Burnette), but the Simpsons simply are down-right STUPID!!! - Jinx