I presume there’s a thread about this somewhere but I can’t find it.
I saw this episode last night. The most notable thing about it is…
SPOILERS!
that they rehashed Homer and Marge’s earlier life stories, except set it in a bizarre hodge-podge of the barely remembered 1990s. This episode is amongst the best of the last few years of dross that they’ve done but it still felt sacrelicious for them to have rewritten Marge and Homer’s past, having dealt with it so beautifully in earlier episodes. The college prof character was fairly funny, taking the piss out of college was done in a fresher than expected way. This episode made me think that maybe they should just start again. Remake old episodes updated, get rid of the 4th wall destroying shenanigans and start telling stories again or that Matt Groening should do an animated show called ‘1990s’ or something like that.
Here’s the original thread. A lot of people did see the episode as sacreligious, but it didn’t bother me, and I liked the episode. The show has been on so long that it’s contradicted itself all over the place and I’ve mostly stopped worrying about it. I just see the different stories of Homer and Marge’s relationship as different situations for the same characters.
I’m not sure exactly what you’re suggesting, though. You mean pretend to start the series from scratch as if the previous 18 season or so didn’t happen? I don’t like that idea. The fans would feel cheated, and it’s a sitcom. They rarely make references to what’s happened in previous episodes - although they’ve started to do that more recently, and I like it when they do it.
I think it’s too soon to do a quality 1990s series; not enough time has passed in my opinion. I’m not sure it’s been tried. The Winner did it, I think, but I saw a few minutes of the pilot and that was staggeringly unfunny. For now I’d like Groening to stick with the Simpsons and Futurama, although I’ll check out whatever else he does.
It was Jon Stewart, during an interview with Groening on The Daily Show, who first called my attention to the inconsistency in Homer’s and Bart’s ages - i.e. if Homer knocked up Marge right out of high school (i.e. when Homer was 18-20) and Homer is “now” 38 or so, Bart should be in his late teens, at least.
The episode had some mild chuckles for me but since I wasn’t remotely into grunge, I was indifferent to all the Cobain stuff. The intolerantly ultra-liberal professor is a bit of a cliché, too. I think it worked best with cynical jokes of characters in the 1990s expressing optimism about the early 2000s.
In two years’ time, it’s going to be 2010 and the events of “Lisa’s Wedding” probably won’t take place. The Simpsons, like most animated characters, live in the world of the now, yet perpetually remain the same age- which certainly messes things up chronologically. I thought it was an amusing episode, and they even went out and said that it makes no sense chronologically.
I think that’s why they’ve aged Homer and Marge a bit over the years - that or the fact that Homer is in such bad shape and looks older than he is. Originally he was 36 and she was 34. Now they’re both about 40.
I liken it to the Marvel Universe convention where “now” is always 10 years since Reed Richards et. al. got caught in that cosmic ray shower and turned “Fantastic”. Since the Simpsons don’t age either they have to remain locked in the past where 10 years ago is still the 70’s, or they occasionally re-align the “now”. A lot of people got hung up on Groening’s promise years back never to do anything with The Simpsons that wasn’t possible for a “real family”, but that ship sailed long ago…
