Yeah, Homer’s two falls down Springfield Gorge were very realistic.
A lot of the funniest episodes are in the third to eighth seasons or so, because they established a world that’s fairly realistic in the first years and then started to push the boundaries with speeding monorails and things. Even when the situations are impossible there’s a humanity to the characters. As things get more extreme, that gets lost, and I think they’re trying to move back in the more natural direction lately. It’s never going to be exactly the same because you can’t repeat yourself and probably there’s less “realism” expected on TV these days.
But that’s just the thing. In the 90’s, the series was sit-com like, but they also really took advantage of the cartoon medium for visual jokes and surrealism.
It kind of makes me think about Monty Python’s Flying Circus, who also combined smart dialogue with cartoon pieces. But for one, Monty Python’s dialogue and cartoon weren’t ever really combined (Terry Gilliam had seperated pieces) and for the other they never had much of a story. It was all randomness, all the time.
Simpsons went from sit-com to adding cartoony randomness to the just right amount. In the episode I mentioned two posts ago (3F02), we both see Bart get torn over losing his soul, in a very heartfelt way, while in a completely different shot we see Moe deep-fry a romantic dinner (“to perfection”!), candle light, bottle and all. They went from one extreme to the other but always balanced it really well.
This is a little off topic, but my least favorite episode of the Simpsons (out of the ones I’ve seen, which is mostly the first 10 seasons or so) is one that most other fans seem to like: the Frank Grimes episode. I still don’t understand what was supposed to be funny about that episode. As I watched it, I just got more and more angry on Grimes’ behalf, which can’t be what the writers intended. I guess I wasn’t supposed to sympathize with him.
The ending was the worst – they were at his funeral and Homer says something like “Change the channel, Marge.” WTF? Homer has always been stupid, but apparently now he can’t distinguish reality from something he’s watching on TV?
It’s not in my top ten, but I consider it an above-average episode. I like it more for the theme than for laugh-out-loud funny quality of, say, “Deep Space Homer”, possibly my favorite episode.
IMO, it’s a statement of how big a role luck (vice hard work) and being a ‘regular guy’ (vice striving to excel) play in life. And how America is the ultimate beneficiary of this. And possibly that Homer is the ultimate example of this in America (“In any other country, you’d have starved to death long ago”).
My favorite Marge episode has always been the one where Homer inconsiderately gives her the bowling ball with “Homer” inscribed on it for her birthday, thinking she won’t want it and will give it back to him, but she determines that she will learn to bowl and has that French guy (Jacques?) hitting on her while showing her how to bowl.
My brother and I, me a former and he a current member of the restaurant industry, used to howl with laughter at the Jacques line describing brunch:
<<French accent>>“It’s not quite breakfast, it’s not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end.”
Good times. Now I’m gonna have to dig out all my DVD’s and watch them again!
My problems with anything past season 10 (and even parts of season 10, though there were enough episodes I liked that I bought that set) are pretty much what has been mentioned earlier. I also have a love/hate relationship with Ken Keeler: He wrote several classic episodes of the Simpsons (and also Futurama) but he also wrote The Principal and the Pauper. I think it’s an idea that could have been salvaged and done better than it was. I think an episode exploring Skinner’s early life and time in Vietnam, why he decided to be an elementary school principal, and so on could have been done perfectly well (heck, he still could have been inspired to do it by his commanding officer) without the whole false identity thing.
