[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
She likes The Simpsons
[/QUOTE]
A lot of people do. (It’s been on for over a decade.) As animation, the characters can visually remain constant (compare that to “The Beaver”). The Flintstones, IIRC, didn’t last nearly as long.
Please bare with me; this post is a little long, but has a legitimate point.
Even so, this thread eventually will be one of those that has so many pages you don’t even bother to open it. Already it’s getting "me too"s.
My own “me too” is the Monorail episode, if nothing more than for the opening few minutes: Burns tries to dispose of nuclear waste in a city park, he’s fined by the EPA, and the city has a town-hall meeting to decide what to do with the fine the EPA imposes on Burns (which for some reason goes to the city, rather than the Feds). (When have you ever been to a town-hall meeting? Those three members of this message board can raise your hands now.)
Mayor Quimby (the proverbial corrupt politician) tries to trick the town populace into thinking the fine is lower, but LISA, a girl of about 12 years of age, is the only one to protest (clearly a feminist assertion, which is common in the series).
Then a guy shows up who’s obviously a modern-day Professor Harold Hill (The Music Man). (Those three members of this message board who have seen The Music Man can raise your hands now.)
The (incredulous) audience (of the town-hall meeting) erupts into a quintessentially American entertainment phenomenon of breaking into (Broadway-style) song and rhyme. (A common “Simpsons” practice.) It is obviously based on the *The Music Man’*s song “…and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for ‘pool’.”
My point is that truly to enjoy the “Simpsons” you have to have a deep knowledge of American culture, and if you’re not familiar with American culture over the past, let’s say 20 years, you won’t get a lot of the humor. There was a Super bowl episode where the characters covered their mouths because it was during the Clinton impeachment time. (The idea being that maybe Clinton wouldn’t be president by the time the show aired; clearly the writers didn’t think the Senate would convict Clinton–it was just a joke that only someone up-to-date with U.S. politics would see as a jab at the U.S. Congress.)
The “Simpsons” airs in many countries besides the U.S.
(It’s for that reason, I think, that they put in a lot of the slap-stick humor–Homer scratching his butt, etc.) They want to send the show abroad, and increase profits and residuals. This has, in the past, confused me.
For example, how do you communicate Mayor Quimby’s accent in Spanish? His Boston (Kennedy) accent is meaningful only to people in the U.S. I have no idea how the Spanish-language voice-over artists accomplish this–or whether they even try to accomplish this. (They recently went on strike, but I don’t recall why.)
What other countries will get the joke of the beginning of the Monorail episode, where clearly they are doing a parody of a very American Broadway/Film musical classic (“The Music Man”), which predates the births or most of their viewers?
My favorite SUB-PLOT (not episode)? It’s when they take the old Christmas tree (in May) to the dump, and, all (except Marge, who becomes a religious adviser), delight in finding things discarded by others. Homer finds a box of detergent that has an emblem that uncannily resembles himself. The Japanese company sends him a video with an ad that promotes the detergent, and which is both realistic and hilarious.