“The Computer wore menace shoes” (Mr.X and the Prisoner satire)
This one has so many great lines. I suggest you re-watch it.
Homer: I was an astronaut.
Computer Sales guy: Of course you were. Just slide the deed of your house through here…
Machine: You are on your Fifth Mortgage.
Marge: I’m glad you won the Pulitzer…
Homer: Finally!
Why did you think a giant balloon would stop him?
Girl: Shut up! That’s why!
And one of my favorite visual gags ever - when homer escapes the island via raft, it cuts to his house. Somehow the raft is parked in his driveway. It’s so absurd, I love it.
And I have to defend some of the historical/fairytale episodes, too. I love how they can condense the general feeling from a great work of art into some very potent skits. In particular, the Hamlet parody we get…
Polonius : I hide behind curtains because I have a fear of getting stabbed!
Laertes: Daddy’s stomach is crying.
Lisa: Well that’s it, nobody out-crazies Ophelia. Hey nani-nani with who and the Heeey! drowns
I think this is a winner (in worst episodes), because I cannot imagine watching even a moment of it again. All the others have a segment worth watching or a few enjoyable riffs.
I think isn’t so much the lack of funny scenes and dialogue (hell, even “Kill the Alligator” and “Saddlesore” had a few good lines) but the fact the ADD structure of the episode was seemingly put together without care. It was basically a “joke machine” where the storylines just barely exist and only for the purpose of hanging whatever crazy gags they come up with on them. That kind of approach might work for something that’s supposed to be always-over-the-top outrageous like “Family Guy” but not with “The Simpsons.”
There’s a similar bit in the ep where Ned starts dating again. After a pondside chat with a loon who spoke only to her dog (in baby-talk, yet), Ned makes a panicked escape in a swan-shaped paddle-boat, which also ends up parked in the Simpsons’ driveway, without explanation.
I’ve seen very few of the new episodes of the past few years, and several of the bad episodes mentioned here I’ve mostly forgotten. Which I guess is a pretty good sign of low quality. But there is one fairly recent episode that really left me thinking “What the HELL?” It was “Lisa the Drama Queen”, which is basically a remake (I can’t even say it was a parody) of the film Heavenly Creatures only with a happier ending.
To someone unfamiliar with this film I think this would be a rather unfunny and somewhat nonsensical episode, but maybe not an especially bad one. But it was obvious to me from the scene where Lisa meets her new, British-accented friend Juliet in art class that this episode was based on Heavenly Creatures, and that’s just CREEPY. I mean, The Simpsons can be pretty dark at times, but had this episode ended the same way as the movie (or the real-life case that inspired it) then Lisa and her new friend would have wound up beating Marge to death with a brick.
The episode did not include any murder attempt and as best as I can recall never even alluded to a murder scheme, but if anything that just made it worse. The whole episode I’m fearing/expecting that Juliet will suggest murdering Marge, and when it ended with no such thing happening then I wondered why on earth the show’s creators went to such great lengths to recreate the plot and imagery of Heavenly Creatures. The episode evoked the very disturbing idea of Lisa and her new friend brutally murdering Marge, but never directly addressed this idea and so did not dispel it either. It’s just left hanging, unspoken but clear enough to anyone who’s seen the movie. The whole thing made me feel kind of sick.
It was more depressing, since I realized that while I was Bart’s age when I first saw the Simpsons, Homer’s High School years are now getting very close to overlapping mine.
I’m with most people in that I find most of the Simpsons episodes have some funny moments that make it worthwhile.
I really can’t stand episodes where Homer’s a jerk. Not a doofus… that’s charming. Just a plain jerk. The kind where they warn him that he’s being a jerk, but he does it anyway, whatever “it” is.
Dead Putting Society - Where Homer gets so caught up in besting Flanders he gets Bart to compete in a mini golf championship with Todd (or Rod?)
When Flanders Failed - Homer wishes for Flanders’ failure. Even though he does a 180 at the end, I can’t stand this episode.
Thankfully, this seemed to have died off back in the early seasons…
My absolute favourite episode: Lisa’s Substitute, where she falls in love with her substitute teacher - a dreamy, thoughful, Jewish man. Granted, the implications are toe-ing the line, but they never cross it. Well done.
I don’t understand the hate for the 90’s grunge flashback.
I thought it was pretty funny and it follows the same path that Homer is a stupid Renaissance man getting a grammy in a barbershop quartet, going to the moon, and blundering into every other feat he’s accomplished.
I don’t think it’s a retcon because the Simpsons have always been fast and loose with their time line anyway. I don’t think it’s necessarily an update because they need an update and it doesn’t magically negate anything else that’s happened before. It’s just another story in their lives where Homer invents grunge music and wins Marge from a stupid jerk on a stupid bike.
Any episode in seasons 1 thru 10 is immediately exempt, because no matter how bad they may have seemed the show’s second decade topped it. And them some.
A definingly bad, shark-jumping moment for me was the episode with Keifer Sutherland, Homer joins the army or something. The scene near the end where Homer’s being chased by the remote helicopter and it quickly descends into Warner Bros cartoon buffoonery. Couple things:
[ol]
[li]South Park already did this in their post-9/11 episode, and they did it brilliantly (both funny and topical and editorial all at the same time)[/li][li]Matt Groening himself once said that the show would never descend into actual cartoon-like comedy[/li][li]While watching it (and thinking about the above) I suddenly realized this was not a Halloween ‘anything-goes’ episode, they actually had sunk to this![/li][/ol]
I know it will probably not seem that big a deal to most, but as a life-long, liked them when they were Tracy Ullman shorts viewer, it was for me.
Besides, the last 7 or 8 seasons have been so unbelievably Family Guy-esque bad that it isn’t really even worth singling out any one episode. Be easier to try and find a really good, old-school one during this time…